“Will you do everything I tell you to do if we go to Ayachero? Every last thing?”

“Yes.”

“It’s life or death, this promise you’re making. Your life or death. These aren’t just words. Don’t just say them to please me.”

“I’m not. I promise to do everything you tell me to do.”

He nodded, and I went to him; he held me like family. “We won’t stay there forever. I need to make sure everyone is safe,” he mumbled into my hair. “Then we can move on.” He took me by the hand and led me to his bed; we sat down side by side. He watched me for a long minute, then reached over and took my hand.

“Lily, what’s your biggest sorrow?”

No one had ever asked me anything like that before. The question felt so personal and painful I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let me. “Why don’t you tell me yours?”

He looked at me as if to ask, Do you really want to know? I put my hand over his to show I did. “The loss of my good feeling. The loss of my jungle life. Leaving my family, especially as the oldest son. Everything that I’ve killed inside myself to live here. This big, dirty city. There’s something else, I don’t have the words for what it is. Maybe the loss of Pachamama, what’s that in English? She’s a goddess of fertility, but it means Mother Earth, trees, water, animals, rain, plants. I thought I was done with that somehow, didn’t need it anymore. Crazy.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“Really? Do you?” His eyes glittered with tears. “It’s good to talk to you, Liliana.” We lay down on his creaking bed on our sides, facing each other. His small buzzy lamp bathed us in a warm orange glow.

“Omar, that first time we went out, how did you know I was lying about Boston and my parents being doctors and all that?”

He stroked my face with his rough hand. “I’ve never seen anyone eat like you before.”

Shame flooded me. “What’s wrong with the way I eat?”

“You don’t eat much, but you eat so fast, like you’ve never seen food before. No one has ever told you?”

“No.”

“And the way you wrap your arm around your plate, like someone’s going to take it from you. You’re not a regular spoiled American chica.”

I pouted a little. “Speaking of that, why not go with some rich American chica?”

He sputtered out a laugh. “To them I’m just a dirty bike mechanic. I don’t even speak English. They look down at me. You’ve never done that. Why should I care about them?”

“So you don’t wish I were like them?”

“Lily Bushwold, don’t you see your own loveliness?” He stroked my hair, my cheek. “And you loved that sloth, didn’t you? We’re more the same than you think. You in your jungle, me in mine.”