JUNE 30
“I wish I could go back in time, too,” Bea says. “I wouldn’t abandon you like I did. It makes me feel awful that you didn’t have anyone to talk to. I tell my mom everything, but I don’t know if I could tell her I was pregnant, either.”
“What’s your reason?”
She folds her Uno hand. “I feel like I have to be perfect for them, never make them worry. You know, I’ve only texted with my mom a few times since we’ve been gone? Usually, we’re, like, constantly texting.”
“I can’t imagine texting my mom that much. Our texts are strictly professional—where are you, what time are you coming home, take out the trash—that kind of thing. I don’t know. Maybe I should text her more.”
“I’ve never told you this before, but I always had this idea of my mom and me. I wanted us to be like the Gilmore Girls, constantly together, telling each other everything. Joking back and forth. I know that’s silly now.”
“I don’t think that’s silly. You’re lucky to be close to your mom. I’ve always been jealous of that.”
“What’s going to happen when I go off to college, though? I can’t keep calling my mom for stuff. It’s like you said before. I can’t expect my mom to wave a magic wand and make everything better.”
“I’m sorry I said that,” I say. “I was mad at you.”
“But you were right. I guess another reason I got upset before was because you and Annabelle know so many things. You can make decisions for yourselves. I’m like a little kid compared to you two.”
“Knowing things isn’t that big of a deal. You can google stuff, like you did with the condoms. You’re kind, Bea. Not many people are like that anymore.”
Bea drops her cards and leans over the table, throwing her arms around me.
“Hey, you’re messing up the discard pile,” I say, although I hug her back.
Bea sits back, brushes at her eyes. She tidies the pile and gathers her cards. After a second she looks at me, her expression serious. “Do you think you’ll ever tell them?”
“That all depends.”
“On what?”
“On how I feel after this is all over.” I play a wild card on top of Bea’s yellow. “Blue,” I say.
Bea wins again. And by then we’re both exhausted. We head back to the car and nudge Annabelle, but she swipes at us and goes back to sleep.
“Her disco nap is turning into a full-on sleep session,” I say.
“Let’s let her sleep until morning. Nothing will be open in Alamo anyway,” Bea points out.
We get in the car. Bea gives me her pillow, bunches her sweatshirt under her head, and goes to sleep.
But I stay awake. The seat is too uncomfortable, and the darkness and the silence scare me.
I play Candy Crush on my phone on mute, but I can’t concentrate on the game and I keep losing lives.
I wish I were home in my own bed. I wish this had never happened. But wishes are something you did when you were little when you blew out the candles on your cake, refusing to tell anyone because you knew the wish wouldn’t come true if you did. You didn’t know then how useless wishing was.
Maybe this is what being an adult is like—spending all your money on tires and gas and things like toilet paper and dish soap, and not depending on your parents to help you out. Having a budget to make sure you have enough money to get through the next shit storm. The thought of that depresses me. There has to be more to life than that.
My phone screen fades, the colorful candies shut off midcrush, my battery dead.
At least I’ll have Bea with me when crap like that happens. And Annabelle, too. I’m not alone.
I finally fall asleep.
As soon as the sky begins to turn orange, I nudge Annabelle awake. “What’s happening?”
“It’s okay. Remember we had to stop in the night?”
“Oh, that,” she says. “Sweet baby Jesus. I had the worst dream. I dreamed I slept in a car.” She rubs her eyes and starts the car. Bea wakes up as soon as we start moving.
She bounces upright. “Back in business, ladies.” One of the things I don’t like about Bea is her morning cheerfulness.
I’m loaded on anxiety and adrenaline, which pretty much renders me unable to be cheerful or grumpy. I actually think I’m in some weird dimension, where I’m watching my life unfold from a window.
We pull out of the parking lot and stop at a doughnut shop a few exits away to use the bathroom, brush our teeth, and get breakfast. When Annabelle comes out of the bathroom stall, she’s exchanged her Wendy Davis shirt for a plain black T-shirt. My braid got all messed up in the car, and I let it loose, not giving a crap that it’s springing all over my head like Medusa’s snakes. Bea changes into a sundress from her closet-on-the-go duffel bag, to which Annabelle gives the side-eye.
I’m craving sugar and grease like I never have in my life. I choose a chocolate cream doughnut coated in powdered sugar, a ham-and-cheese breakfast biscuit, and a large Sprite. Staying up all night makes me feel weird, like the world is tilting sideways and I’m sliding. Everything feels like a dream.
We eat our breakfast quickly, and I buy a dozen doughnuts and refill my Sprite.
I’m nearly there. I don’t have far to go now.
The Rio Grande Valley has a harsh kind of beauty. We drive past wind farms, the windmills’ huge white propellers slicing the sky. There are Mexican fruit stands everywhere. Big mesh bags of oranges and lemons are stacked in pyramids underneath ramshackle sheds. Billboards advertise in a mix of English and Spanish—a Dr Pepper sign says 23 SABORES BLENDED INTO ONE EXTRAORDINARY TASTE. INCONFUDIBLE! It’s like the US and Mexico got together and decided to merge into one.
The closer we get to Alamo, the harder it is for me to stave off the nervousness. It starts to ramp up when we exit off the highway for Alamo.
In the town, the streets are lined with palm trees and all the shops have matching Spanish tile roofs. We pass RV parks and golf courses and signs for the wildlife sanctuary. At least half of the traffic on the road is United States border patrol cars.
“Where the heck is this place?” Annabelle says, scanning the street.
“There,” Bea says. “I see a sign.”
I bunch my hands, gripping them into tight fists.
“It will be okay,” says Annabelle, her expression calm. “Try to breathe.”
We leave the town center and follow each sign leading to the Hidalgo flea market. We can hear the music before we reach the parking lot. The market is inside an enormous corrugated steel structure, open on all sides.
“I want to run inside, grab those pills, and jump back in the car,” I say.
“That’s what we’ll do, then,” Bea says.
A man in an orange vest and a straw cowboy hat directs us to park Buzzi in a spot in the middle of a dusty field. We trudge our way through car-flattened grass and weeds. Annabelle kicks an old beer bottle all the way to the building, where she picks it up and tosses it into a steel oil drum.
Inside the market, people sit at picnic tables eating tamales. A man stands next to a tacos al pastor truck, slicing pieces from a huge cone of meat topped with a pineapple. He flicks a piece of pineapple off with his knife and catches it with a tortilla, handing it to the next person in a long line of customers. Other people leave a stand clutching cups filled with icy raspa. A Mexican band plays Tejano music while a bunch of people dance, scuffing their western boots against the dirt floor. A man with an accordion sings a Spanish song into a microphone. It’s colorful and lively, and I wish I could enjoy it.
“This place is huge,” Bea says. “It’s going to take forever to find that pharmacy booth. Should we ask someone?”
I look down the line of booths selling cowboy boots and hats, jewelry, rugs, towels, furniture, cleaning supplies that line the inside of the building. It’s crammed with people who jostle us as they walk past us. “Let’s just go up and down the aisles.”
After a few minutes of wandering, we find a farmacia tucked next to a flower cart and a booth selling pan dulce and churros. A man wearing a cowboy hat, a plaid western shirt, and a bolo tie stands behind a table laid out with bottles and packages. We look through the table for the Cytotec, but all we find are boxes of cold medicine, Alka Seltzer, cough syrup, and aspirin. The man sees us looking and comes over.
“Can I help you find something?” he asks.
I clear my throat. “Cytotec? Cytoteca?”
“Don’t have it.” His eyes shift away from us. “Can’t sell that anymore.”
“It’s for an ulcer?” I say.
He shrugs. “Like I said, I don’t have it.”
“Seriously, you don’t have it?” Annabelle takes out a ten-dollar bill. “Can you look?” She holds out the money, and the man shifts his eyes from the money to Annabelle.
“Keep your money, mija. I don’t have it. Last week the police raided a farmacia at the market in McAllen and took it all away. It’s not worth going to jail, so I don’t get it anymore.”
“You’d go to jail?” I ask. Fear surges through me. “It is illegal?”
He shrugs again. His gaze shifts to a security guard standing near the doorway.
“Is there any other farmacia booth that sells it?” Annabelle asks.
“No sé.”
“Do you know any other place where we can buy it outside of the market?” I try again. “There must be somewhere. We’ve come a long way.”
But he’s done with us. A man in a denim shirt approaches and the booth owner shouts a greeting. He turns his back and starts in on a conversation in Spanish.
“Hey,” Annabelle says. But the booth owner ignores us, talking away as though we’re invisible.
“I knew it,” I say. “Why would the police raid that other flea market if it isn’t illegal?”
“It’s probably illegal to sell the drug, not to have it, which is some bullshit.”
“Maybe,” I say, but I’m not convinced.
Bea doesn’t add to the conversation. Her face is pale.
“Why don’t you wait for us by the taco truck, Bea?” I say.
“No, I want to help.” Her voice wavers, and I know she’s scared.
We keep looking. Embarrassment and shame follow me down aisle after aisle. We find two other pharmacies, but no one sells Cytotec. One person acts like she doesn’t know what we are talking about. She looks down at the floor and doesn’t respond to any of our questions. I feel like every single person in the whole market knows exactly what we’re up to—three dumb girls looking to get an over-the-counter abortion.
“So, it’s Mexico,” Annabelle says.
“Can we bring drugs across the border?” Bea whispers, darting a glance over her shoulder like a border patrol officer is listening in. “Maybe we’ll get caught for smuggling drugs when we try to cross back into the US?”
I picture the border patrol putting us in handcuffs, hauling us off, and calling my parents to tell them I am in jail, that I tried to buy drugs in Mexico to abort my pregnancy. I swallow and shift from foot to foot. Suddenly I don’t feel so good.
“Let’s get something to drink, and we’ll talk about it,” Annabelle says.
Annabelle parks me at a picnic table and gets in line at the drink stand. She comes back with three large horchata drinks. “I don’t see any option other than going to Mexico,” she says. “We’re, like, barely a mile to the border.”
“Are you sure?” Bea asks. “It doesn’t seem safe. I saw this thing on Vice about kidnapping and drug gangs there.”
Annabelle shakes her head. “Americans cross the border all the time and come back okay, don’t they?” But Annabelle says all this to the top of the picnic table. I don’t think she’s really any happier about going to Mexico than we are.
“What if we can’t bring the pills back with us?” I say.
“You can take the first pills in Mexico,” Annabelle says. “We can buy a bottle of aspirin and hide the rest of the Cytotec in the bottle. We’ll buy some dumb souvenir and act like tourists.”
I get out my phone. “There are three border crossings near us,” I say. “It looks like Brownsville is the easiest one. We can cross into Mexico to Matamoros.” I find a website with advice for traveling into Mexico. “If we leave Buzzi in a parking lot and walk in, we won’t have to buy special insurance. The town is right there, so maybe we will find a farmacia close by.”
Bea scrolls through her phone. “This website says to leave everything in the US apart from the money we need and to dress like we’re poor so we won’t be a target for kidnapping. To be honest, I don’t even understand how we ended up here, searching for some illegal drug.”
I close my eyes and try to remain calm. “The reason we’re here, Bea,” I say—and let’s be real, no one is buying the calm act—“is because a man following a law most certainly made up by another man—”
“Most definitely,” Annabelle throws in.
“—decided that I, a seventeen-year-old girl in the top ten percent of her class—”
“That’s a slight exaggeration,” Bea says.
“Whatever, he decided that I shouldn’t have the right to make choices about my own body. He prevented me from having an abortion at a real clinic. He ruled against me, Bea. He made the decision for me.”
“Tell her about the judge, Camille.”