“So, I think we have two options. We wait here and hope the door opens again. If we’re lucky, it might open again in three hours if it’s on the cycle I think it’s on. And if I’m wrong, well, it might be two days. But we can be careful with the water. Oh, and I have food.”

“What’s the other option?” Olivia asked. She tilted her head up to the sky. No clouds, no stars, no moons.

“We walk north for an hour. Stop where we are, take notes and rest for thirty minutes, and then walk back here.”

Olivia nodded. “That’s the point of you doing this, right?”

“Yeah. Also, I think it will be worse for us if we just sit here. Like, emotionally. Just waiting, hoping that the easier option emerges, seems psychologically bad. For situations like this, I think it’s always better to be doing something.”

“How do you know?” Olivia asked. She stood up. Smoothed out her dress and then pulled some of the grass out as hard as she could. The sisters peered down at the soil. It was unremarkable.

“I don’t know,” Ayanna finally answered, “but it feels right.”

They started walking north.

“Oh, and one time I was home sick from school and watching the Today show, and they had these two college students on it who had been abducted from like a nightclub. And one of the girls admitted she froze in the van they were thrown in, like completely curled up like a pill bug. The other one went nuts. She didn’t care they had guns. And was like punching and screaming and kicking and it saved their lives. The girl who did nothing is still in intensive therapy. The girl who went wild said she felt really good about herself. She had saved their lives.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that on the Today show,” Olivia said. “Every time I’m home sick, it’s always a white family who adopted a chimp and then the chimp killed one of them.”

Ayanna kept her hands in her pockets. She didn’t want Olivia to notice they were shaking. She could keep her voice even as the adrenaline rushed through her, but it still felt like having drunk too many energy drinks. It would pass, Ayanna reminded herself. She fought the urge to hug her sister for so easily deciding to buy into the idea that this was normal. Took a deep breath and reminded herself to pay attention to everything here.