“Hey, Molly,” I called out. This was the signal that I was done, and they could step apart. The woman peered down at me as I picked through some dry goods. “You wanted cornmeal, right, Molls?” The absolute cheapest thing in the store, at twenty-five centavos a half kilo.

“Sure, yeah.”

I grabbed a small package and took it to the counter. A glass bowl of wrapped mints sat near the old-fashioned crank register. I took three and laid them next to the cornmeal. “How much?” I asked in Spanish, counting out a few coins.

“The mints?” she said with a gap-toothed smile. “Those are free.”

Molly burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. Britta fought to contain herself and was unsuccessful, turning crimson as she folded the map. The woman’s smile soured as she watched us, folding her arms across her sparrow chest. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “Show me what is in your backpack.”

“Why?”

Her face grew stone-hard. “My son is outside. He’s a big man. He’ll open it for me.”

Feigning offense, I counted out twenty-five centavos and stuffed the cornmeal in my bag. “Buenos días, señora.”

I took a big stride toward the door, but she cut me off and ran past us into the square, shouting, “Diego! Diego! They robbed me, Diego!” We sprinted past her toward the bus that had just fired up its engine, leaping aboard as it lurched into motion. In seconds, the square receded behind us and we were climbing the steep hills back to the city center.

Screaming and laughing, high from our theft, we burst into the Hostel Versailles Cochabamba—a hilariously named fleabag where we all worked for room and board—and raced down to the basement, our roach-infested “staff apartment,” which was just a moldy bunk room the size of a jail cell, complete with cold, always-damp cement walls. I dumped the contents of my backpack onto a broken-down couch squeezed between the cots.

All the stolen goodies tumbled out, along with a beat-up copy of a book I’d lifted from my last group home in Boston. Reddening, I reached for it, but Molly grabbed the book and turned it over, while Britta nabbed a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers and bolted up the stairs.

“Charlotte’s Web?” Molly said, examining me. “I remember this book from when I was a kid. Can’t remember reading much since, if you want to know the truth.”

At the time, I had no explanation for why this little pig’s life saved by the efforts of the spider who really loved him tore my guts out. I only knew that the story had gotten to me, made me cry, but also gave me hope that I could—someday—overcome my wordless sorrow.

“I keep some old photos in it.”

As Molly flipped the pages, one fell out, all dog-eared and scratched. “Is this your foster mom?”

I took the photo from her. “Yeah, that’s Tia.” As I gazed at the picture, I was struck by the resemblance between the proprietor of the store I’d just robbed and Tia, my Bolivian foster mom who had died of cancer when I was twelve. Same age, same tight expression of defensiveness against great odds. Ashamed tears backed up behind my eyes, but I held them off.