I splashed water into my eyes to get rid of the redness and gave my reflection in the mirror a soft, pitying smile. With just another deep breath, I was ready to head back out and face the rest of the day.

As I stepped out of the bathroom and back into the blistering sun, I noticed the two men from inside the store were now standing outside, leaning against a massive, blindingly white pick-up truck. The bald one spun his head around to stare at me, and I could have sworn he nudged his friend, who was staring at his phone, to point me out from across the parking lot. I blushed out of embarrassment and timidity, and shuffled over back to the other girls.

"Are those guys staring at us?" I whimpered.

"Why?" giggled Kait, with a mocking grin. "Which one do you want to hook up with, the bald one or the fat one?"

"No, I mean-" I stammered, "don't they seem weird to you?"

"Get used to being stared at, Sarah, men here love chubby blondes like you," answered June, playfully twirling a lock of her red hair around her finger.

"Yeah, don't pay attention to them," added Ana, who shrugged the men off with a disinterested wave of her hand. "They're already walking away anyway."

They hopped into the car, and seconds later, the engine started and their car swiftly backed up out of the parking lot and away from the gas station, leaving behind a thick cloud of dust suspended in the air. We left just a short while later, and although I felt my mood was a little lighter, the two men had burdened me with a heavy gut feeling that I just couldn't shake off.

After two more hours of driving in the sweltering heat, June and Kait passed out in the back seat. Peace at last, I thought - and Ana, who gave me a sweet knowing grin, most likely agreed. A faint cumbia melody played on the radio, crackling with static every time the narrow road we were driving along slithered between two mountains.

A few golden rays of sun peeked through the leaves of tall pines and avocado trees that grew out of cracks in the rock and filled the still, dusty air with glittering light. With June being fast asleep, I was now able to open the windows. Ana - as to avoid the large potholes, fallen stones strewn across the road, and the occasional oncoming traffic - drove slowly enough that I could clearly hear what sounded like thousands of tropical birds, whose songs sounded so familiar yet so foreign. Like when you're listening to someone speak a language you don't quite know, and although you can't quite make out the full sentences, you understand just about enough words to try and guess what they are talking about.

It was almost a mystical feeling, and I was just starting to finally believe in this supposed miraculous retreat. Whatever Kait, June, and even Ana had come to seek didn't really matter - I felt that at the end of the road I'd find an otherworldly place, with nothing to remind me of home. No more smell of pluff mud and cheap whiskey; no more of the chattering of a 90's VHS of Saturday Night Live skits on replay in my mother's house; no more lightbulbs hanging from a wire in a ceiling, flickering with a greenish-white light. Just me, the trees, the birds, and a heavenly sunset.

"How is your mother doing?" asked Ana, as if she'd read my thoughts.

"She's okay... I think." I shrugged, "At least she doesn't seem worse. I went to see her last week, you know, just to check if she's fine, bring her some food and toiletries, and this time, we didn't argue or anything. So that was nice."

"That's good," she said with a pitying smile.

"To be honest, I don't even know if she still recognizes me."

"Yeah," she added, "my mum told me she'd seen her in the street, and that she seemed a bit out of it."

"Your mom's nice. She's completely out of it," I tittered. "I think she's a bit fried by now, but at least she's not hurting herself or anyone else anymore."

Ana nodded with compassion, but Kaitlyn's high-pitched voice piped up from the back of the car:

"Jesus, I thought this was supposed to be a fun trip."

"You must be confused Ma'am, this is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting," I said, fluttering my eyelashes at her.

The good thing with Kait and June was that they only had a few insults they liked to recycle over and over. Sarah's fat, Sarah's sad, Sarah's boring, yada-yada-yada. Therefore it was quite easy for me to take time and think of a witty comeback, like the ones you come up with an hour after an argument while you're in a shower - l'esprit de l'escalier, as the French like to call it - and all I had to do was to remember it long enough until they would repeat the same thing.

Kait rolled her eyes and went back to sleep, and Ana gave me a discrete grin. I smiled back at her, which was probably the first time I had smiled honestly since the beginning of this trip.

My marvel, wonder, and excitement for the retreat grew bigger with every minute of our drive. Around every bend was a new painting: here, a rusty railway bridge withering away in a pass, under which a little stream bounced off of dusty rocks; there, a lush valley of banana trees and small adobe houses, misty from the smoke of a dozen wooden stoves, where a small child played with two stray dogs as his mother called him from the doorstep; then, a tropical glen where the mountains flowed with the golden light of dusk, and the long grass danced in the breeze.

"This is beautiful, Ana," I said, in awe.

"I know, right? It's incredible,' she answered with a caring smile. "I'm so glad you came with us."

"It would have been a shame to miss out, I mean, it's unreal. Just look at how many butterflies they have! This one looks like a flying Dorito."

"And look at that huge one over there!" gasped Ana. "I've never seen one that big."

"Oh my god!" I shrieked excitedly. "That's a Black Witch, it's the biggest moth in the Americas. They can grow up to ten inches wide."

Ana giggled and shook her head:

"You know the most random things, Sarah."

"Well for some reason, I was really obsessed with butterflies a few months ago," I laughed while my cheeks blushed. "See that blue one over there, I'm pretty sure it's a-"

"Ana, could you please just look at the road, please? I'm feeling car sick already," whinged June.

Way to kill the mood, June. I thought it to myself, very hard, but I didn't say it out loud. At least not loud enough for June to hear it. Maybe Ana heard, or perhaps she was just reading my mind again, as she seemed to do quite often. 

June's intervention put a stop to my daydreaming, and coincidentally, the world now seemed a little blander. We drove down the other side of the mountain range, and the pretty views ran short. No more winding path crossing valleys and jungles, just a straight, deserted road with not much on either side. Just grass, trash, a few trees, and the occasional village. 

As we lost altitude, the temperature rose again - it was a humid, unbearable heat that would make sweat pour out of your forehead and never let it dry. It would drip down your face and from your chin, drench your clothes, and stick your thighs together. Mind you, being the only passenger of the car whose thighs touched while sitting, I might have been the only one bothered by the latter problem.

The road was boring now - although it was a little less bumpy, a little bit wider, and we didn't run the risk of driving off the side of a cliff at every sharp turn. The thrill and the adrenalin had been a fun part of the drive through the mountains, like walking on a tightrope. Maybe excitement was a natural human reaction to dangerous situations, or maybe it was just me, smiling at the perspective of a sudden death that would allow me to escape from this miserable life of mine.

"Sarah," whispered Ana, as she nudged my elbow, "you're talking to yourself again."

Fuck. I had this embarrassing habit of getting lost in my thoughts to a point that I forgot about the world around me. I'd start miming out whole conversations and monologues, mouthing out words and mimicking expressions, raising my eyebrows, smirking, frowning, sighing, sometimes even adding a few hand movements to spice up the talk. For years, I'd given Ana strict orders to stop me every time she noticed me doing it in public, lest people think I'm either crazy or a crackhead.

"Are you sure this is the main road?" asked June, with a tint of anguish in her voice. "There's like, nobody here. I haven't seen another car in hours."

"It's the road that the SatNav is showing," said Ana, shrugging, "as long as it doesn't take us onto dirt roads, I believe it should be the right way."

"I think we're lost," Kait said.

"We're not lost, we're just far from civilization," I sighed.

"Ugh, whose idea was it to come all the way down here?" she answered.

"Uuuh... yours?" I snickered.

"No," mumbled Kait. "June chose the retreat, actually."

"Whatever," I shrugged. "You guys are like the same person."

"At least we are a person," answered June.

"Huh?" I said as I turned around, frowning in confusion.

"I mean like, you don't have a personality. 'Cause you're boring. So you're not a person." she pouted.

I stared at her blankly for a while as I tried my best to understand whether she was trying to make a point, then I gave up and spun back around.

"June, you're not making any sense."

"Wow Sarah, did someone just feed you or something?" snarled Kait to defend her friend. "You're so feisty."

I rolled my eyes and glared at the road in front of us. So straight, so long, it seemed like it would never end. Only a few more hours to go.

It felt like we were going round in circles. On both sides of the road, palm trees had been planted in straight lines that stretched as far as the eye could see. I had dozed off on several occasions, and each time I was woken up when the car bumped into a pothole. As a copilot, I felt I needed to stay awake, yet with nothing interesting to look at, it took all the strength in me to try and keep my eyes open.

Finally, a little distraction came along. A lonely pick-up was parked along the side of the straight road. Three men in black uniforms leaned against the back of the bed, enjoying a simple smoke break in the shade of the palm trees. As we drove closer to them, they threw their cigarettes into the ditch and pulled up their paper face masks. Two of the men walked up to the middle of the road and began to wave us down. As they walked away from their truck, I managed to read the letters painted on the back of it: POLICIA.

"Oh shit, they're cops," I said.

"Fuck, what do we do?" asked Ana, hesitantly pressing her foot on the brakes.

"Just keep going," I answered.

"Guys, they're waving us down," said June. "We have to stop."

"No, Ana," I repeated, a little more firmly. "Just keep going."

"Do you want to get in trouble, Sarah?" barked June. "'Cause this is how you get in trouble."

I sighed as we pulled over behind the police car. I'd read a lot about driving through this country, as I'd heard it was dangerous. Aside from the potholes, the reckless drivers, and the trucks that drove with no lights on at night; one of the main things to watch out for were the illegal traffic stops, where a handful of corrupt cops would make up some bullshit excuse to extort a few bucks out of unsuspecting tourists.

As we came to a stop, I noticed a second car, a shiny white pickup, parked halfway down a dirt road that led deep into the palm oil plantation. I caught a quick glimpse of the man sitting in the driver's seat - or at least just the top of his balding head, and the quick flash of sunlight that reflected in his round glasses. There, again, I felt the same cold chill down my spine. I immediately turned towards Ana.

Four policemen had already surrounded the car - with one standing at every door. While the other three girls rolled their windows down, I chose to ignore the tall man who was knocking on mine.

"Hello ladies," said the man on Ana's side of the car, who spoke in English with a thick accent. "Where are you going?"

"We're driving to our hotel, it's about two hours away from here," answered Ana, as she handed him the map on her phone.

The man played around with the screen for a while, then slid Ana's phone in the back pocket of his pants. Ana let out a small squeak to protest, but didn't say anything else, probably assuming she would get it back later. I shook my head, blaming myself for not insisting on just driving away.

"May I see your passports, please," he said.

The girls quickly bent over to search through their handbags, and the man at my window started knocking more insistently. I cracked it open a teeny tiny bit, just enough to slide my passport through. There was something off-putting about these men, and their faces - or lack thereof. 

They all hid behind their surgical masks and dark sunglasses - they were faceless, anonymous, and seemed almost devoid of humanity, yet I could still feel the oppressing weight of their gazes prying into our car. Just like a deer freezes and locks eyes with a car's headlights as it barrels towards him, I kept staring at the man as I slowly shuffled around my bag to search for my passport.

The man standing closest to Ana, who seemed to be the group's leader of some sort, pushed his head into the car and started sniffing the air. He pulled down his mask to show us how his nose theatrically wrinkled up.

"Have you been smoking drugs, madam?"

"What?" said Ana, as her eyes widened in panic.

"I said, did you smoke drugs? It smells like drugs in the car."

She stammered, and stuttered, and turned to me for help. I shook my head at her as I swallowed down the lump in my throat. Things were going downhill, and fast. I had a gut feeling that this was wrong, that something horrible was about to happen. It wasn't nausea, it wasn't a cramp - it was like a big, heavy rock in the bottom of my stomach that pinned me to my car seat, even though all I wanted to do was jump out of the car and run away as fast as I could.

On one cold night, a few years ago, I had already felt this strange feeling. That night, my dad was a bit too late coming home from work. It happened often, but this time, it felt wrong. On that evening, I sat alone on the front porch for hours, anxiously staring at the end of our street. My mum tried to lure me in several times, with biscuits, a Disney movie, and then the threat that she would ground me if I didn't get my ass back inside now. Finally, she gave up, threw me a big coat, and went to sit inside. When I saw the blue and red lights flashing around the corner where Ana lived, I knew immediately what had happened.

"Ma'am, your passport is invalid," said the man at June's window.

"What? That's not possible," she cried. "I had it renewed two years ago!"

"It says it will expire in 2019."

"No, it was delivered in 2019, you moron!" she blurted out.

"You must come to the police office with us. Please step out of the car and follow me."

June turned to us, and she looked paler than she had ever been - even her freckles seemed to have drained out their color. Her lips moved slowly as if she was trying to push out some words but couldn't muster up the strength to do so. She winded up the window with a trembling hand, while we stared at her silently. She reached over to unbuckle her seatbelt, then back to the door where her tiny fingers grabbed the handle.

"June, don't," I said with a firm yet worried tone. "I think it's a-"

"Step out the car, now!" barked the man all of a sudden, as he grabbed his gun and aimed it at her window. The other men quickly changed their stance, either pulling out their guns or putting their hands upon their holsters. The man standing beside me started banging on the glass again, now with his whole fist rather than his knuckle. June jumped out of the car, with a terrorized look on her face and pearls of sweat rolling down her forehead, and Kait followed right behind her.

"Sarah we have to get out," breathed Ana, as her eyes filled up with tears.

"Start the car and go!" I answered, reaching towards her to lock the car doors.

She shook her head and pushed me back, as she frightfully looked over her shoulders. Her hands shook uncontrollably, and her chest shuddered with rapid breaths.

"Are you crazy? We can't leave June and Kait here!"

"We'll find help for them, don't worry," I said as I pulled her hand away from the door handle and put it on the steering wheel.

"Help? While we're running from the cops? Sarah, are you insane?" she cried, raising her voice.

Her door opened suddenly, and a large-framed officer crept his head into the car, swiftly ending my escape plans. He stared right at Ana, his face only a few inches from hers. I could see her body tense up as she sunk into her seat, and moved her trembling hands away from the wheel to detach her seatbelt.

I painfully swallowed down my forfeit and raised my hands up in defeat. The guy who had spent his last ten minutes knocking on a window in a desperate attempt to get my attention must have noticed my resignation, as he calmly took a single step away from the door to let me out.

The atmosphere outside the car was very unsettling, and a little surreal - like standing on your porch in the eye of a hurricane and watching the clouds roll in. June and Kait were standing by the back of our car, their hands already zip-tied behind their backs. Ana, who was looking straight at me with her eyes wide open and reddened by fear, was being shoved towards them by the largest policeman of the group.

This was wrong. It was all wrong. It was supposed to be an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. Things had taken a quick, unexpected, and devastating turn - from bad to worse. I was confused, afraid, and most of all powerless. Although, as the seconds went by, it dawned on me that my worst fear might be true - these guys were not policemen. The guy who had stood by my window violently grabbed my wrists and tied them behind my back.

A lonely, old, rusty-looking car sped by. All of us - the girls and the policemen - stared right at it as it drove past without slowing down. Everyone stood still as if time had frozen on our side of the road. Maybe I should have done something - screamed, ran onto the road, jumped in front of the car, waved my arms, and begged for them to stop. But I just stood still, barely even turning my head to watch it disappear a long way down the road. We were already defeated, and there was no point in making things worse than they already were.

The zip-tie clicked in my back, painfully pinning back my shoulders. Ana was still looking at me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Rápido," barked the man behind her.

I barely had time to see the men take out black bags from their back pockets and pull them down onto the other girls' heads before I was forced into one too. Disorientated, blind, paralyzed with fear, we were pushed towards their car and thrown into the back of its cabin - so violently and carelessly that I hit my face on the top of the door frame. We were shoved on top of each other like bags of trash, and when the car started and drove off, we were nothing more than a kicking, screaming pile of meat.