The doorbell rings. Mom and Dad aren’t home from work yet. I’m not expecting anyone. I turn off the stove, where I’ve just boiled a kettle of water, and go to the door.
Justin.
Justin Folgar, fugitive from justice.
Stop it.
It’s been fifteen days since I’ve seen him or talked to him, not that anybody’s counting. He hasn’t called or texted. And I certainly haven’t reached out to him.
But hurt and angry and disappointed as I was—still I’m happy, or relieved, or something, to see him. When I went to the US-2 meeting at school, I thought about how Justin ended up in his precarious position through no fault of his own. I thought about how pained he looked when he told me about why he disappeared when the police and EMTs came to the ice rink. How sad he was when he told me about the blue minivan.
How dishonest he was with me for weeks and weeks, not telling me about the blue minivan.
Still. I’m not going to shut the door on him.
“Come in,” I say, in what I hope is a chilly tone. He follows me to the kitchen. “I was just making some tea.”
He doesn’t want any, but I fix myself a mug. We sit at the kitchen table.
“They’re not charging my father with anything. They said the accident wasn’t his fault. It’s official.”
“Good,” I say flatly. “That’s great.”
I can’t help but think: If it’s officially not Mr. Folgar’s fault, is it now officially my fault? I mean, the police have told us that it’s definitely not a police matter—I’m not going to be arrested or prosecuted or anything. But what about being sued by the Dankers?
I did finally talk to my parents about this. Turns out, they’ve been worrying about it from day one. They didn’t mention it to me, though, because they didn’t want me to worry. So we’ve all been in this cone of silence to avoid freaking each other out. They’ve actually consulted a lawyer and talked to their insurance company. What they haven’t done is ask the Dankers, So, are you going to sue our daughter?
Justin continues. “The place my father works, though, this lab—they freaked out because of all the trouble they can get into for having an undocumented alien on the payroll. Even though they’ve always sort-of-kind-of known about it. But now, with all the publicity—they fired him.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, intending to sound sorry, only in a cold and indifferent way.
“And now ICE is all over them—”
“ICE?”
“The government. Immigration enforcement. You know—La Migra. As they say.”
I have never heard Justin say a word of Spanish before.
“Can’t your parents become legal now?” I ask. I think I remember Justin saying that they could have done this years ago but never got around to it. And I heard people talking about it at the US-2 meeting I went to—about going from illegal to legal by filing a bunch of papers.
Justin shakes his head. “It’s not even close to that easy. For one thing, as of last week my dad doesn’t have an employer anymore to sponsor him. You don’t get to stay and get a green card just because you’ve lived here a long time. Just because you think it’s your home.”
“I’m sorry,” I say again. It’s hard for me to stay cold and indifferent. He looks like he’s going to cry. “What will happen now?”
“We can leave voluntarily. Or we can go through a trial in immigration court, which we’ll lose, and then be deported.”
“How do you know you’ll lose?”
“We will,” Justin says. His voice is tight. “Trust me.”
“But your little sisters are citizens!” I say. “That should help.”
“And what about the police not knowing that you’re here?” I ask. “Not knowing that you exist? Remember you told me—how the newspaper said your little sisters were the only kids, and you and your parents were glad about that?”
He half rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t say we’re glad about anything. But yeah, I think so far the ICE doesn’t know I exist. Or my big sister. But who knows how long that can last? And what am I going to do—live here by myself after my parents and the girls go back to Colombia?”
I don’t know.
“So it looks like we’re going to leave,” he says. “In theory, we can come back.”
“What’s the theory?” I ask.
“Say, if my mom or dad finds some company in the U.S. to sponsor one of them,” he says. “Or maybe I could come back for college, on a student visa.”
“Like your parents did.”
“Yeah. Look how well it turned out for them.”
We sit in silence for a few minutes.
“I feel so bad,” he says.
“Something could still work out,” I say. “Listen, maybe you can live with your older sister in Philadelphia. The two of you can stay.”
“No, I’m talking about us,” he says. He sort of slumps in the kitchen chair. “I feel so bad about not being up front with you. It’s like, once I didn’t say anything when we first met in the park, I got trapped—in the half-truth of just being this random guy who met you in the park.”
I squint at him. “The half-truth?”
I would call it a lie. I get up from the table to lean against the counter. A lie, not a half-truth. If that’s what he’s calling it, I can’t even sit at the table with him.
“The untruth,” Justin says. He reads my mind. “The lie. But it’s not like everything was a lie, which is why I have a hard time using that word. I didn’t know that you and Humphrey were going to turn out to be—who you turned out to be—when I saw you guys playing catch and dancing, and when I thought, Hey, that’s a cool girl. And then later, after, when you and I first met, I didn’t know for sure that you were the girl in the accident.”
“Oh, come on!” I say.
“No—I wasn’t sure. Not at first. There could have been other girls babysitting other little kids in your neighborhood.”
“But you had to have figured it out pretty quickly,” I say. “As in, as soon as we started talking.”
He looks away from me for a second. “Yeah,” he says. “I did.”
“And you said nothing.”
“You were cool. And funny. And pretty. I didn’t want to ruin it.”
There that is again. That—ruination thing.
And as quickly as I got angry, I get un-angry.
“And I ended up ruining it anyway,” he says.
“Yup,” I say.
“Is there anything I can say or do to make you not hate me?”
“Yup,” I say, while I’m thinking, You already called me cool and funny and pretty.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Yup.”
“And?”
“Don’t give up so easily. Don’t just surrender and decide you’re leaving, that you have no choices. Maybe you should go to one of those immigration law groups where they take cases for free. I heard about them at the US-2 meeting. And in the meantime, keep on being invisible to the ICE.”
“This is what will make you not hate me?” Justin asks.
“Yup,” I say.
“That’s what my parents want me to do, too.”
“I guess they’re smarter than your average parents, then,” I say.
“I hate being this scaredy-cat ‘illegal’ keeping my head down. I hate being too scared even to feel good about helping that referee on the ice. I hate having to be invisible.”
“The idea is to be selectively invisible,” I say. “Invisible to the government, at least for now. But not invisible to everyone.”
A small—tiny, tiny, but I see it—smile starts to play around Justin’s mouth.
“Kind of like a superhero,” he says.
“Let’s not get carried away,” I say.
“And it’s okay if I lie to the government by pretending I’m not here, but not okay to lie to you about being a random guy from the park?”
“Because a lie of omission is less bad than a lie of commission?” I offer. I don’t know. I can’t make it come out all tidy and consistent, even if I try.
Justin gets up from the kitchen table and comes over to the counter where I’m standing. He leans into me. I lean into him. He is definitely not invisible to me. His presence feels so strong, I am a little concerned that he can’t possibly be invisible to anyone.
“This is no lie,” he says.
“Neither is this,” I reply.
We kiss.
Pleasurably. Pleasingly. Un-platonically.