We’re lucky.
They keep Kamal and me together at the shelter, in a narrow room that just barely fits a bunk bed and two thin metal lockers, where we stuff most of our belongings. I let Kamal sleep on top, to make it like an adventure. I tell him about the train I once took, from Karachi to Lahore, how it had three bunks that swung down from the wall, each one with a curtain that pulled shut. In the morning, when we stopped at a station, there was a rattling cart outside, and a man handed us milky chai through the window. I loved that trip so much that Ammi used to play a train game with me—she’d line up the dining chairs in a row and then we’d pack a little zippered bag with clothes, a midday meal of parathas and potatoes and pistachio shortbread. I sat in the front seat, my stuffed monkey on my lap, and she would sit behind, pointing out the imaginary sights. See the wheat fields, she’d say. See the sunflowers bending toward us, like sunny faces! I loved my mother most then, for she made me see the world as a place to name and conquer.
“Can we go on a trip?” Kamal asks.
“Yes,” I tell him. “Very soon.”
Soon he is melting-soft with drowsiness and I climb back down to my bed. But I can’t sleep. I lie there, rigid on the thin mattress, alert to strange sounds: a steel door slamming. Footsteps. Children crying. The low calming voice of a grown-up. We are somewhere in Manhattan—I figured out that much from the drive—and in my mind I’m trying to sort out all the bus and train routes we’ll have to take for school. And how I’m going to get people to see we don’t belong here.
I wake to a gray light and someone is knocking on the door, telling us to wash up, because breakfast is downstairs in half an hour.
“Wait!” I call.
The woman pops her head in. She looks tired, impatient.
“This is a mistake. We’re not supposed to be here. I need to talk to the person in charge.”
“Later.” She points to two white towels and a bar of soap on a chair.
We take our toothbrushes and wash up down the hall. Then we make our way downstairs, to a room with long tables and aluminum benches, where they serve us buttered toast and scrambled eggs that taste like jiggly rubber. I keep looking for an adult I can explain our situation to, but mostly it’s kids of all ages, little ones swinging their legs off their chairs, others climbing up and down, and up again. The din of voices, most of them in Spanish.
A girl about Kamal’s age is sitting opposite us. Her sleek black hair is done into two braids, showing a round face, her eyes two dull buttons. She doesn’t say a word but stares at Kamal drinking his orange juice. “What?” he keeps asking, annoyed, but she says nothing, just keeps staring.
“She doesn’t talk,” someone says.
I turn to see a boy, about my age, slender, with a shock of dyed gold hair. He’s got on a denim jacket and hoodie, jeans with frayed holes, done just so. He’s pushed his tray away and is drawing with a pencil on a sketch pad, his wrist moving swift and sure. It’s a portrait, I realize, of the little girl.
“That’s good,” I comment.
“I know.”
Not exactly lacking in confidence, I think.
He does a few more strokes, scrutinizes it for a second, then rips the page out and hands it to the girl. “Rosa, mira.” She takes it, her eyes growing wide. A grin creeps up in her mouth. Clutching the paper to her chest, she twists off the bench and runs off. He swivels to face us. “I make her one every day.” He sizes us both up. “You guys are new.”
“Yes.” I put my hand on my brother’s head. “I don’t think we’re staying, though. It’s just some kind of mix-up.”
He gives me a rueful look and starts laughing. “Yeah, right.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you. Don’t get so mad.”
“I’m not mad. I just have to find out who to talk to.” I stand, scanning the noisy room.
“Good luck,” he calls as I unwind from the bench.
I go from adult to adult, but they all shake their heads. “We’re just aides,” they say. No one seems to have any information. Back at the table I can see the boy is trying not to smirk. “Go ahead, say it. I was wrong,” I say.
“You just have to be patient.”
“I don’t have time,” I grumble.
Something about this boy makes me push back. He’s good-looking, in an unusual way: slender features and long fingers; a slow, sly smile. But he’s also arrogant. On the inside of his wrist is a tattoo—what look like two blue fish, swimming into each other. When I look over again, he’s drawing something else. I start to untangle myself from the bench and tap Kamal that it’s time to go. There’s a tearing sound; the boy has ripped off another page and handed it to me. Then I realize it’s a quick sketch of me—my hair wild, a squint, and my chin pushed out, stubborn.
“We’ll call this one ‘Impaciente.’ Impatient.”
I snatch it from him, face burning.
“Carlos,” he says, grinning. “Me llamo Carlos.”
There’s a rhythm to this place, kindness and prison. But no one will talk to me, let me explain my story. Social workers patrol the hall, pulling the little kids into all kinds of activities: dance and drawing and kickball in the courtyard, then a lunch of greasy macaroni and cheese, and the lounge area, where the TV is left on. It’s hard not to notice the chain on the fence and the front doors, which you can only get in when the receptionist sees you through a camera and buzzes. While Kamal and I are resting in our room with the door open, I see a trail of children, maybe five or six, walk down the hall. When they see us, they turn away, some of them throwing up their arms to hide their faces. My insides flinch. Where did they learn to do that?
Finally, I can’t stand it anymore—I run down the stairs and barge into the director’s office. “You have to do something!” I cry. “We’re not like these kids! We live here!”
The director, Ms. Kaplan, rises from her seat. “You need to cool down. Then I’ll talk to you.”
I drop down on a chair and try to suck down my anxious breaths. Rania, you go from zero to ten like really fast, Fatima always says. Try to chill down to a five. When I’ve calmed, I tell her my name and explain, “This whole thing is just a mistake. We’re not supposed to be here.”
“It’s not so simple.”
“But I have to go to school! I have graduation!” I add bitterly, “I’ve got a life!”
Her voice is low, firm. “Don’t you think all these children had lives?”
I hunch in the chair, ashamed.
“Rania, I’m sorry. This whole situation is a mistake. We’re not even the correct agency for these kids and these two populations shouldn’t be mixed. Children wrenched from their parents. Their parents deported. Lawyers calling me nonstop, trying to track down relatives.”
“I have an uncle,” I say softly.
She scribbles this down. “Do you want to call him?”
“I don’t know his number. I have an address…” My voice fades. I’d tried hunting him down on the internet, but there were four people with the same name in Connecticut alone. And no phone numbers.
“Anyone else who could provide standby guardianship? Or sponsorship?”
I think for a moment. “My best friend? Her mom might be able to do it.”
“I suggest you call. Though now that you’re in the system it’s a lot more complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“It’s not just signing a paper. There will have to be a social worker visit and an interview with all the adults in the household, especially if they’re not relatives. If they agree, they have to appear before a judge.” She taps her pen on the desk. “If your mother had only taken care of this before, it could have been avoided.”
Before? Ammi always tries to take care of everything—right down to telling me to buy her a phone card, which I still have yet to do. Maria Auntie just got scared. We’re all scared.
“What about school?” I ask. “You can’t keep me from that.”
She sighs. “I wish I could send you. We’re so understaffed. And we can’t let you go unaccompanied. It’s just about a week of official classes left.”
My week. My last week of high school.
Numb, I make my way out of her office and call Fatima. I can hear the rush of people hurrying in the corridors. “Cut it out, Omar!” she yells. I’m stung with envy: something so normal, it’s out of reach for me. Then I quickly tell her everything that’s happened and beg her to ask her mother to sign the paper.
“Of course,” she whispers. A bell bleats on her end. “I gotta go.”
“Please. I have to get out of here.”
“I promise. Hold tight, Ra-Ra.”
Kamal and I go back to our room and lie on our bunk beds. It’s hot in the room, the air thick as flannel, making me listless. My phone buzzes, showing an unknown number. I let it ding into voice mail, then check it. It’s Ammi, sobbing. “I’m so sorry, Rania. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We’ll get you out. I promise. I have to go, beta. This isn’t my phone. I love you both.” It’s like everything I’ve ever understood about us, our situation, has widened into this huge movie screen. It’s not just me and Kamal. Or Ammi in Pennsylvania. Something bigger is going on: the white tents we’ve seen on the news; the shifting lines; the children sleeping curled on concrete floors; and now here, covering their faces. We are disappearing, into the holes and crevices of this country.
“You straighten everything out?”
It’s the next day, and I look up from our table to see that boy—Carlos, the one who draws. He carries around a battered army backpack with a beige sketchbook sticking out of the flap. We’re eating lunch, though Kamal is mostly picking at his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
I want to inch away, so I don’t have to see him gloat, but he plops down beside me, straddling the bench. “It’s just a matter of time. I’ve got connections,” I tell him.
He gives me a skeptical grin.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
“Connections,” he says softly.
“Yes! My best friend! She’s taking care of it.”
His face goes quiet. “That’s great, then. You can say goodbye to this five-star hotel.”
He taps the table and gently ruffles Kamal’s hair. “In the meantime, hermanito, you want to play soccer with me?” He lifts up a ball, spinning it in his palm.
Kamal looks up from his moping. He’s as sad as I am—missing Ammi, his last day of classes, playing with Derek and Amir.
“Go ahead, Kamal.” I check my phone. It’s been a whole day and Fatima still hasn’t called or texted. “Thanks,” I add.
Carlos bows, making me flush. “My pleasure.”
I watch them melt into the haze of the courtyard, join the other boys. This Carlos kid is so annoying. But I’m grateful he took Kamal to play. Last night I stretched out beside my brother, his head cradled under my arm until his breaths went even and he fell asleep. He’s back to chewing on his collar and last night I had to strip his bed and do an extra wash. Sometimes I think that is why Kamal is so quiet. He was born out of terror and flight. A boy who carries all our secrets, what came before.
Now I hear someone shout, “Goal!” Kamal’s arms are thrust up in the air. The kids are crammed into a tight circle, shouting, “Game! Game!” Carlos winks, gives me a thumbs-up. I swivel away, trying to ignore the airy lift in my heart.
I don’t know how he does it, but Carlos has a way of charming everyone—the social workers, the kids, the men who push mops across the floor. He draws Rosa and she is always pleased. One morning she wears a shirt with a bear that has sewn-on jiggly buttons for eyes. When we’re clearing our trays, I give her a teasing poke in the stomach and she lets out a laugh. It’s the most I’ve heard from her, and I find myself suddenly buoyed and laughing too.
After meals, Carlos always plays soccer with Kamal in the courtyard. It’s not long before a cluster of boys gather around Carlos and they zigzag in the tight space. He does this again after dinner, which is my favorite time of day, when the heat seeps away from the concrete yard. I’ll bring some novel from the rec room, or scribble in my notebook, while watching them play. I notice Carlos toss back his hair, showing that streak of bad dye. Still, he always makes sure to kick the ball to Kamal, who is shy, and easily winds up chasing after the pack. Sitting on the steps, in the dwindling light, you can’t tell we’re locked in: The kids are just shapes, moving, free.
“Why do you keep following me?” I ask.
He chuckles. “Look around, you see anyone else our age?”
It’s true; most of the kids here are pretty young.
“When’s your birthday?” I ask.
“October. I hit eighteen and adios! Deportado.” He makes a swooping motion with his hand.
“How can you joke about it?”
“What do you want me to do? Cry all the time?”
“What about yelling?”
He pats his knees, stands. “I leave that to you, amiga.”
Amiga. Friend. He’s not my friend, I tell myself. Fatima is. But she still hasn’t gotten back to me about the guardianship paper. Hold tight, she keeps texting. Lidia has texted too, told me she’s working on my mother’s release but she doesn’t have much more to report.
“So, why are you here?” I ask him.
He hesitates a moment, as if deciding whether to tell me. Then he sits back down on the bench. “I was living with my aunt in Long Island.” He starts rubbing his palms on his jeans knees, back and forth. “There was a raid at the factory where she worked.” He pauses. “She did everything for me. She got me here. She bought me this art stuff. She didn’t care. Just as long as I stayed out of trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“You don’t want to know.” He glances away. I notice two faint scars, like thin lightning, streaking his neck.
“Have you always drawn like that?” I ask, pointing to his backpack.
“Yeah. I used to do pictures for the tourists. In Guanajuato. One day this guy saw me draw and he offered to pay for my school. A better school. It was weird. He didn’t have any kids of his own. So I got to go to a school where I learned English. Everything was going great but then he died. And his family didn’t want to keep paying. That’s when my aunt sent for me. I was lucky.”
That word again. Lucky. Different. Special. But those aren’t my words. They were my mother’s. And they aren’t helping me anymore.
Five days here. Five days to graduation.
Soon Carlos and I start finding each other at different times, pretending it’s by chance. After the little kids’ naptime. Lunch, when he slips us some chocolate bars. Or down in the basement, where there’s a pool table and he practices tilting the cue stick from behind his back. Carlos is kind of a Peter Pan—the little kids just flock to him, like pigeons, cooing, nudging, and begging him to play. I start sneaking looks at Carlos—his slim hips, the way he runs in the courtyard, kicking the ball, calling to the kids, sliding in and out of Spanish. There’s a tickling warmth in my ribs.
“Good evening, madam,” he greets me, sitting down and setting the soccer ball between his feet. Sweat glosses his collarbone.
“Why ‘madam’?”
“You’re fierce. Scary. Like my teachers. My physics teacher, man, she was the worst.”
“I’m not that scary,” I say.
He grins. “Good to know.”
“Wait. When did you get here?”
“A few weeks before you.”
“You don’t get to walk at graduation either?”
“Amiga, that ship sailed.” His face looks suddenly tired, old, and he thrusts up from the step and walks away.
In the courtyard, I spot a group of the boys, standing in a knot in a corner, laughing loudly. Several of them are pinching their noses and pointing. Pushing through, I find Kamal hunched on the ground, his arms wrapped around his knees. His cheeks are streaked gray with tears.
“What’s going on here?”
The boys just giggle; most of them only speak Spanish.
“Tell me!” I demand.
“Stink.” A boy pinches his nose. “Stinky.”
I grab Kamal by the wrist and yank him away. Upstairs I make him strip off his clothes and then drag him into the shared bathroom, locking the door, and blast the shower. He’s sobbing. I’m furious at those boys, but at Kamal too, for being able to make a mess and cry when all I get to do is stuff my fear down and worry.
“It’s too hot!” he shrieks, but I grab him by the arm and force him under the streaming water. I scrub his slick body, then rub, hard with a washcloth, and he wails, “Rania, stop, you’re hurting!” But I cannot stop. Finally, he goes still and I do too, hating him, hating myself, and all we are becoming.
The next morning Rosa isn’t at our table. I ask Carlos, who keeps staring down at his drawing pad on his knees. “She has her hearing,” he finally says.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you get it? They put her up there. In front of some kind of immigration judge. She’s lucky because the shelter got her a lawyer.”
“By herself?”
“Yup.” He bites the word off, bitter.
“But she doesn’t talk!”
“Exactly.”
He unwinds his long legs and leaves.
I find him later, in a stairwell. He’s sitting with his wrists on his knees, breathing hard. Now I see there are two Carloses: the charming one who kicks a soccer ball and gives out chocolate bars. And this one, his voice tight with grief. We start to talk—slowly—and he tells me about his own journey here, after his aunt sent for him. There were the trains and the coyote he met at a border town. The days that were so hot his belt buckle singed his fingers; the freezing nights, scrabbling over hard ground, overhead the stars like flashing knives. Once he crouched next to a pile of old bones bleached from the desert sun—those who’d crossed and didn’t make it.
“Why did you leave?” I ask.
“After I lost my patron I went to a different school, where there were boys who picked on me. Then these other guys beat them up. They told me they wanted me to join them. A gang.” He takes a while before he speaks again. “I kept saying no. I tried to do like before. I would go and draw the tourists that came in the main square. But one night I was followed. They took everything—my pencils and they slashed up my drawings. They said they needed me because my English was good, and next time it would be worse. I didn’t believe them. I thought they were just big-mouth boys throwing their weight around. I went to the place where I buy my supplies. A little shop. The owner sometimes gave me things on credit. And I guess…” Here he falters.
“Carlos?”
“They found him. He was hurt bad. He went to the hospital.” He adds, “It was all my fault.”
He rubs the inside of his arm. “My aunt sent me the money and I ran away. And when I finally got here, I had the tattoo done. It’s me as two fishes, swimming away. You can see the bones inside too. The bones I saw in the desert.”
I watch his chest draw inward, as if gathering all his strength. “You wouldn’t believe it, but when we moved from Connecticut to Long Island a few months ago, at the high school, they thought my tattoo meant I was part of a gang. So stupid. Like the guys I’m running from! They sent some policeman to talk to me.” He adds, “I feel like I’m always running.”
We both go quiet. I feel a small pulse of recognition, remembering our suitcase, always packed in the closet. Carlos’s lips are beautiful, curved. But his eyes are sad, so sad. We keep a space between us, almost because touching might hurt too much.
“Me too,” I finally say.
Late afternoon: a group of kids having fun at a table, collaging keepsake boxes with shiny squares and stars and glue. I put a star on Kamal’s nose and he squeals with laughter. Then my phone buzzes. I almost don’t pick up, but then I see it’s Fatima. She’s crying. “I hate him!” she says.
“Who?”
“My father! He said no! He doesn’t want my mom getting involved.”
I lean back against my chair, take a few sharp breaths.
“I’m so sorry,” she cries. “I begged my mom. To please, not to listen to him. For once!” She sniffles. “But she would never do that. God, how I hate them both.”
I don’t have time to hate either of them.
I wrench up from the table, out of the room and up the stairs, just as Carlos comes bounding toward me, proudly flourishing a cinnamon bun in a wrapper, dripping with icing. I try to push past him, but he blocks me. His face goes still. “Someone disappoint you?”
My throat constricts. “How did you know?”
“I know what it’s like,” he says softly.
“I just want to go to graduation! Sleep in my own bed.” I drop down on a step, tears welling in my eyes.
He looks awkward, arms dangling, then sits beside me. “That’s the worst thing. Figuring out who you can count on.”
“She was my best friend,” I whisper.
“Maybe she still is.”
He hands me the cinnamon roll. I take a bite. The icing melts sweet in my mouth.
That night, like all nights, is the hardest. The cries that pierce the dark. There’s an air conditioner in our window but even with the gurgling hum, still I can hear them: the shuffling, restless sounds of other children. Lost children. I keep seeing the desert that Carlos described: a terrible dry field, riven with cracks and fissures. Too many sounds: those who call out in terror. Or the ones who whimper. The others like Rosa who are numb and shiny-eyed, mute. Which is worse. I see all the faces of the social workers, drawn and tired; the art therapist who keeps coaxing children to draw what they feel. I climb up the bunk ladder and gaze at Kamal, stroking his hair. I just want to look and touch him, over and over.
He rolls over, mumbling, “What?”
“Nothing,” I say.
Hours tick by. Graduation in three days. Instagram’s blown up with my friends at school. A party in Prospect Park. Another in someone’s basement. Fatima’s selling braided hair ties with the school colors—purple and white. But it’s Senior Day at Coney Island that most gets me. I play that post over and over: Fatima dancing on the sand, blowing kisses. Her curly hair bounces. Her shoulders are bare and tanned, which must have freaked her mother out. Her whole face shines, like a lit-up sun. Everyone celebrating—without me. I dream about the desert, about glittering stars and bones.
I’ve disappeared.