A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter twenty-three

t w e n t y - t h r e e

*

The first thing I notice when I wake up is that I'm still sprawled across Arjun's lap and there's a damp patch on his jumper where I've snored and drooled. The second thing I notice is that I feel remarkably less sick, as though I could sit up right now and not be downed by a violent wave of nausea and regret. The third thing I notice is that although I've been asleep for over an hour, I can still feel the weight of his hand on my head.

I shift and accidentally elbow his thigh in my effort to sit up, grappling with my seatbelt and rubbing bleary eyes. It's not an elegant move when I've been curled up horizontally for so long, my legs fizzing when I let them down.

"Ah, Sleeping Beauty has risen," Arjun says, adjusting himself in his seat. He's probably been uncomfortable for eons and he's just too nice to wake me up or shove me off his lap. "Just in time, too. We're about to get to Badwater Basin."

"Shit, already?"

"Already," he says with his trademark smile, that kind of wry, half-cocked grin. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd gone and died on me."

"I wouldn't be so inconsiderate," I say, stretching out the tight crick in my neck.

"How're you feeling? Did the sleep help?"

"A lot. I feel a lot more human now, and less like roadkill, though I could drain a lake right now." I haul my bag onto my knees and search through for a drink, but I come up with an empty bottle. Arjun wordlessly passes me one from his stash down the side of our seats, and I manage what I hope looks like a grateful smile when I twist off the cap and glug half before I gasp for breath.

"There's plenty more where that came from," Arjun says, "and you're gonna need it. We're about to hit the hottest heat you've ever known. Don't go dehydrating on me, ok?"

"I won't. How hot is it?"

He pulls out his phone and shows me his weather app, which shows our location as Furnace Creek, and the temperature as fifty degrees Celsius. I can't even imagine that kind of heat when the worst I've ever known is probably thirty-five, and that's enough to have me uselessly sweating as I seek shade.

"It's dry heat, though," he says, "so at least it won't be sticky and humid."

"Pit stop!" Sam calls out as we pull into the Furnace Creek visitor centre. "We're going to stop here for about fifteen minutes so you can pee and fill up your water bottles before we head to Badwater Basin, which is about twenty minutes from here."

I don't realise how cool the van is until Adedayo swings open the sliding door and I'm hit by a wall of heat that almost knocks me back into my seat. It has me breathless for a moment, totally stunned by the attack of hot air, and the name of this place makes sense. It literally feels like walking into a furnace.

A display board outside the centre proudly declares that it is currently 123.8°F and even without the conversion, I'd know that that is crazy fucking hot. I can feel it in the way sweat beads my hairline the moment I get off the bus, my limbs instantly sluggish from the heat.

Fifteen minutes flies by, during which time I finish and refill my water twice, and I wait until Arjun's back from the loo before I head in. Getting back in the van is like a godsend, returning to conditioned air and the seat that must be shaping to my arse.

As we come to a stop twenty minutes later, Sam turns around and says, "The hottest temperature ever recorded in the U.S. was one hundred thirty-four degrees, recorded right here in Death Valley, over a century ago. Today, it's just over one twenty-nine degrees – that's about fifty-four degrees Celsius, for all you metric fans."