I don’t say anything. Jorge has never talked to me about his gang years, and I’ve never felt the need to ask.

“I don’t know what your dad saw in me—why he went out of his way to make sure I stayed out of trouble. I don’t know why he cared, cause no one else did. But if he hadn’t, my life wouldn’t have turned out this way. I’d have none of what I have today. In a way, your ma and pa are my parents, too.” He turns away from me slightly, so that all I can see is the side of his face silhouetted against the light outside the windows. “I have this instinct deep inside me to go to your dad for help, to ask him what to do, and this time he can’t give me the answers.”

I catch a gleam in his eye as he turns back toward me. Jorge has never found it easy to talk about his feelings, but all of a sudden I can see all the things he’s struggling to say—that he, too, feels lost, that he’s not sure he’ll be able to keep the promises he made to Ma and Pa, that he’s terrified of what will happen if they’re not allowed to come home.

I’m not sure how to respond to that. I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would make Jorge feel any better, so we remain silent for what feels like a long time, breathing quietly in the darkness.

“I never thought this was gonna happen to us,” I say. “Even though we’d always had this fear in the back of our minds, I didn’t think it was actually going to come true. Deportation always seemed like something that happened to other people… not us.”

“No one ever likes to think that it’s gonna happen to them.”

Suddenly, I feel weak, powerless, which isn’t exactly a new feeling. In the weeks since Ma and Pa were detained, I’ve thought a lot about the things I wish were different—and the things I wish I’d done differently. I wish I’d never taken my parents for granted, not even for a second. I wish I’d told Ma I loved her before leaving home on the day they were detained, and that I’d said the same thing to my dad before going to bed the previous night.

Even though I’ve thought about these things to the point that they’re all I see in my dreams, there is one question I’ve tried hard not to think about—a question that I haven’t been brave enough to ask out loud until now.

“Do you think we could’ve prevented this? Is there anything we could’ve done to keep my parents from being detained?”