“You need to leave,” Lidia tells me in the morning.
Carlos and I had fallen asleep in our clothes but I woke early in a panic. Last night came rushing back to me: the policemen, Carlos’s shoulders bowed, his face pale and frightened. I can’t hide anymore. We can’t hide. I called Lidia and blurted out the truth: We weren’t with my uncle. He signed the guardianship form but he left the country. We’ve been working on the Cape. She was furious, saying how dangerous and illegal this was, that I’d put her in a terrible spot as our mother’s attorney. “I could wring your neck, Rania,” she said. “Leave,” she repeats. “Now.”
“But where?” I look around our room—our beach bag, the squashed chip bags, Carlos’s drawings and backpack splayed open with his sketch pad. He’s left to do his breakfast shift. Kamal is still a sleeping lump in the bed. I think about all the people who have helped us here—Doris, Dimitri and the folks who work at the restaurant, Marge in P-town.
“Look. Do you understand how lucky you were? You say that immigration was poking around?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure Carlos is in some kind of database. They just don’t have the resources to connect to that. But you won’t always be that lucky.”
“You talk about him as if he’s a criminal! He’s just a kid. Like me!”
“Rania. Do you have any idea what’s going on out there? They’ve got ICE officers showing up at the shelter.” Her voice cracks. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You have to help us,” I beg. “I’m scared.”
“You should have been scared before.” She says sternly, “You need to come back to New York.”
“No.”
“Rania—”
“We can’t. They’ll put us in the shelter.”
I hear her sigh on the other end. Sunlight is starting to seep through the blinds. Kamal stirs. “Okay, look. There’s this group I’ve heard of. In southern Vermont. They’re not quite set up for situations like this, but I can talk to them.”
“Please,” I beg.
We hang up. I pace the motel room, then step outside, squinting into the sunshine. The mist has gone—already it’s a hot day. Kamal will be up soon, begging to go to the beach or ponds. But all I can think about is last night: the flashing lights behind our car, Carlos frozen, then kissing me, right here. I shiver, even in the heat.
The phone buzzes. Lidia gives me the address, explains that they are waiting for us. Since we’re minors, we can’t stay for too long. But if we head there, we can regroup. “Go,” she says. “Immediately. And call me once you’re there.”
“Thanks,” I breathe.
“And, Rania?”
“Yes?”
“No more lies. Promise?”
I pause. How many lies have the adults told? Everything is a lie! My whole self, not even knowing who my father was. This whole stupid system, where Ammi can’t even get a fair hearing. These clapboard houses and fences and beautiful rolling landscape and miniature golf and fried food—all of it a lie, because it’s not for us. But Lidia has never lied.
“I promise,” I tell her.
When I tell Carlos what Lidia said, he sits with his elbows on his knees, subdued. Then he twists off the bed and starts putting his clothes into his backpack. We realize we’ve bought too much stuff so we drive down Route 6 and buy a big duffel, come back, and jam everything in. We decide to leave after dark because we don’t want to attract too much attention. Carlos feels terrible about standing up Marge, so he leaves her a voice message when she’s busy at the shop, and says something’s come up for next Saturday, but he’ll call later.
And everyone at the restaurant? Doris?
We look at each other, guilty. Then I notice my stack of postcards, sitting by the bed. “We’ll leave them a card.”
We don’t tell Kamal we’re leaving, afraid he’ll say something to the others at the motel. But we do buy sandwiches and take them to our favorite cove, just as the sun is starting to dip. We sit on our towels while Kamal wades out into the shallows. It’s low tide and he keeps going and going. The sun drops, turning the water into ruddy stripes. Streaks of purple and black fill the sky. I’m sure Carlos is going to pull his sketch pad and disappear into his drawing, as he always does.
Instead he puts his arm around my shoulders. His face looks softer, younger somehow. “Thank you,” he says.
I can feel the flutter of his heart against mine. “Always,” I say.
Kamal is sleeping when we leave the motel. First the big duffel, then our backpacks. I bought a pillow and blanket for Kamal, which I set up on the rear seats, and then Carlos carries him out to the car. His feet give a little flutter kick, as if he were in the water, as Carlos settles him down. “Where are we going?” he whines.
“A new adventure, mi amor,” Carlos whispers.
We slip into the front seat, latch our seat belts. I left the postcard for Doris on our made beds, apologizing. My last lie: I’m so sorry. My mom had to go into the hospital and she won’t be joining us after all. We’re going back. Thank you for everything. I wonder if Doris ever believed my story anyway.
I set my hands on the steering wheel, peer through the windshield. The parking lot is empty. Everyone else is in their rooms or out. I just want to stay in this in-between place, swimming every day. I want to kiss Carlos on the sand. I want to pretend we can do this forever.
Carlos points to my mother’s Uber decal. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Very funny.” I start the car and steer us back onto Route 6, toward the mainland.
On the road. Again. All kinds of words ding inside me. Fugitive. Illegal. Law breaker. What about Kids. Stupid. Running. The road is a straight humming line, mesmerizing. I imagine the ocean on either side of us, past the darkened mounds of scrub brush and trees. This stretch of land, dissolving into water, a narrow scrap where others once scratched their way to existence, is still here. Why can’t we do the same?
Soon we are at the Bourne Bridge and taking 495, looping south of Boston, then west and onward, deeper into Massachusetts. Not many cars, the occasional truck rattling past. Every time a pair of headlights flares into our car, Carlos and I freeze, but after a while we realize it is nothing, another car. We are farther into Massachusetts. I fight against being drowsy. Vermont. We are tunneling into a place where we can stay. For now.
I hope.
I slow to an exit and turn down a narrower road. We go for long stretches before a house rises up, sometimes a barn. The shapes of horses against a fence. I turn to tell Carlos—more for him to draw—but he’s resting his head against the window. Asleep. He looks exhausted. Light from the occasional streetlamps slashes across his head and shoulders, a rhythm of dark and light. I think of all he’s gone through, how far he’s traveled, train, desert, road, subway, here. How long can he keep on before he is too tired to go anymore?
I lean over, touch his bare wrist, where the two fish curl and swim together. A surge of warmth spreads through me. I want to keep him safe.
Gravel spits as we pass through two stone pillars. Carlos sits up, alert. Up ahead, a man waits under a portico. In the wash of headlights, his hair seems to float straight up from his pale head, as if underwater. As we unwind our cramped legs and climb out of the car, he looks both anxious and glad to see us.
“Sam?” I ask.
“Yes.” Smiling, he steps forward and takes my hand. Then he turns and grasps Carlos’s elbow, as if he needs to hold on. “Shalom. Welcome.”
Carlos gives a tight smile, almost as if it is too much to ask for, this welcome.
The building before us looms so large. I go to the back seat and rouse Kamal. “No, Ammi,” he murmurs. “Let me sleep!” He tightens his knees against his chest. My heart contracts; sometimes he calls me Ammi. So much is blurred these days.
“I’ll take him.” Carlos reaches in, heaves up Kamal, and staggers behind us, Kamal’s legs dangling against him.
Sam punches a code into a flat gray panel, and a huge door swings open. Before us is an entry with a basket filled with skullcaps, like the ones you see in a mosque. Just beyond, in the hall, cubbyholes and children’s drawings tacked to a bulletin board. Around the bend is a huge staircase, with thick carved banisters, and a giant stained-glass window at the landing. The air smells of Lysol and chalk.
Carlos sets down Kamal, who rubs his eyes and looks around him, confused. “Where are we?”
“A synagogue,” I tell him. “They’ve taken us in.”
We trudge up past the stained-glass window, around a corner, and climb single file through a narrower set of stairs on the side. I feel like I’m in a story where the children are hidden in secret passages. Once I read about this thing called sanctuary—how churches shelter refugees and immigrants. Synagogues too. The idea seemed so fantastic, so unreal.
We gather behind Sam as he jams a key in a door and it swings open to a space smelling of new paint; our feet scuff powder on the floor. He snaps on a light—a bulb hanging from the ceiling. We’re standing in a small hall with different rooms branching to the sides.
“I’m so sorry we’re not quite finished. We didn’t realize it would happen so soon.”
“Neither did we,” I say.
“Thank you,” Carlos adds.
Sam hurries ahead of us, switching on lamps. There’s a living room to our right, nicely furnished. A blue sofa, a table with two folding chairs pulled up against a window. Even a TV, unconnected. A bedroom for Carlos with slanted ceilings, a bathroom with a shower stall, smelling of new plastic. A kitchen with a microwave on a cart and a hot plate with two burners. A narrow bedroom with a bunk bed.
Kamal is more awake. “Cool!” he says and patters forward, clambering up to the top bunk. “It’s like camp!”
I smile, sad. I wish I could make a game of it.
I sit down on the bottom bunk. Inside me there’s a dropping sensation, like an elevator going too fast. It’s just all the places we’ve passed through or fled or lived in, rushing down. I should be relieved—Sam is hurriedly explaining about the keys and locks, while Carlos drags in our duffel bag. But I can’t feel that way. Not yet. I swivel around in the room. Magic hands, kind hands, have made all this happen—the newly polished floor, the freshly painted walls. Soon, like Kamal, I will fall into sleep, into dreams, so long, as if we have traveled oceans and continents. And then I see, on the windowsill, someone has left a small plant in a glazed green pot. Leaned against it is a card: May this home be a sanctuary for those who seek.