I pull my cell phone out of my pocket before we’re even done climbing the stairs up to the street. I wait for a second as my phone picks up a signal again, and then my heart stops. I have a missed call and a text from Uncle Jorge. Call me as soon as you can, the text says.

My legs freeze in that moment, and the woman that was going up the stairs behind me puffs angrily as she steps around me. I don’t care, though. It doesn’t even matter that Kimmie and Adam are ahead of me and haven’t realized I’ve fallen behind. All I can do right now is focus on steadying my shaking hands long enough to call Jorge’s number.

He answers right away. “Mateo?”

“Uncle Jorge?”

Hope swells up inside me. I’m waiting for him to tell me that everything’s okay, that the judge is gonna let Pa stay in the US, but he doesn’t say anything at all, and his silence tells me everything I need to know.

“No.” The word escapes my mouth without me even realizing it.

“I’m sorry, Mateo,” Uncle Jorge says. “We tried. We all tried—you, me, Mr. Wilkins, your dad. But it didn’t work. The judge said he has to go back to Mexico.”

I put a hand on my chest, clutching my shirt so hard that it might just rip. “No, no, no, no, no.”

“I’m sorry,” Uncle Jorge says again. I’ve never seen him cry in my life, but suddenly, he’s struggling to get the words out. “At least we did everything we could.”

“Did we really?” I ask. “Was there nothing we could’ve done differently?”

“Nothing, Mateo. Nothing at all.”

Despite the fact that I feel as though the whole world is spinning, I’m able to formulate a single clear thought inside my mind: Sophie. What am I supposed to tell her? How am I going to explain that our dad is getting kicked out of the country, and that it might be a really, really long time before we see him again? How can I tell her that all those nights she spent crying and praying for Pa to be able to come back home were for nothing? That there’s no hope left to hold on to?

There is desperation inside of me unlike any I’ve ever felt before. I can’t just stand here in the middle of the stairs. I need to move, or do something. I take a few clumsy steps up, and as soon as I reach the street, the light of the afternoon sun hits me right in the eyes, blinding me.