“If you get out of here, we’re gonna go to the beach.” It doesn’t matter that Jorge is still holding the phone. I know Pa can hear me. “We talked about it with Ma. If both of you come back home, we can all go to Coney Island, and everything will just go back to the way it used to be.”

Pa swallows hard, somehow managing to make the tears in his eyes disappear. “Sounds good, mijo.”

But for the rest of our visit, the image of Pa with teary eyes is all I can see. And no matter how many times I force myself to blink, I can’t make it go away.

13

ON THE DAY OF PA’S MASTER CALENDAR hearing, I skip my shift at the bodega. Even the guilt I feel about leaving Erika to manage the store on her own isn’t heavier than my anxiety to know what happened at the hearing, so I head straight to the apartment after school and sit with Amy and Sophie at the kitchen table while we wait for news.

“Anything?” Jorge asks when he gets home from work, but we all shake our heads. Even though we’ve been waiting for hours, the phone still hasn’t rung.

When Pa’s call finally comes, we all give small jumps in our chairs. He tells us that the hearing didn’t go as he expected. It lasted less than ten minutes, the judge barely even looked at him, and the only thing that came out of it was that another hearing was scheduled for the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, which is only three weeks from now.

“It’s called an individual merits hearing,” he says.

“What does that mean?”

“ICE will list out all the reasons why I should be deported… and my lawyer and I will have to tell the judge all the reasons why I shouldn’t.”

“So, what—it comes down to your word against ICE’s?”

“In a way, yes,” he says. “But I’ve been talking to the lawyer. We’re going to put up a fight. It’s not over yet, mijo. We can bring witnesses, and… and I was hoping you would come testify.”

“Me?” I’m all too aware that he’s on speakerphone. Sophie, Jorge, and Amy are all looking at me, and I wish I could hide away. I don’t want this responsibility—I don’t want my words to be a deciding factor in whether my father will be allowed to stay in the country or not.

“The lawyer thinks Sophie’s too young to come to the hearing. So it has to be you, mijo.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding my head slowly. “I’ll come.”