After her mother leaves, Jeanette and Ana walk to the park. Jeanette tapes another note to Ana’s door with her phone number in case someone shows up while they are out. Hand in hand they stroll to the tiny playground: two swings, slide, seesaw, water fountain, one bench. No other children are there, so Jeanette joins Ana at the other end of the seesaw.

All day the girl’s been asking questions. About her mother, where she is, when she can go home. Jeanette didn’t tell her mother she’d made up a lie, that she’d said Ana’s mother phoned and asked her to keep Ana for a while. Why? Ana wanted to know. Why not? Jeanette had answered. Each time Jeanette lifts her weight a little, the seesaw sends Ana floating down. Each time she sits, Jeanette hits the ground with a thud.

At night they eat take-out pizza straight out of the box, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room. Jeanette browses titles under Netflix’s children’s category. Ana wants to see none of them. Ana wants to see a “grown-up movie.”

“Your mom lets you see grown-up movies?”

“It depends.”

“Did you both always live here?”

“You mean next door?”

“Yeah. Or, like, in this country.”

“No.”

“Where did you live before?”

“El Salvador.”

“When did you come here?”

“I came here twice. Once when I was a baby and last year.”

“What do you mean?”

“That one.”

“What?”

“I’ll watch Madagascar even though it’s for littler kids.”

They watch Madagascar. They eat cheese sticks. Jeanette looks out the window every few hours. Jeanette waits and waits, and still nobody comes for Ana. She does the only thing that feels right: leaves the movie midway and curls up in bed, listens to the TV’s drone and Ana’s laugh from afar. Calls Mario. Explains nothing. Talks about the time they were both high and watched Fantasia in 3-D at the movie theater four times in one weekend. They laugh together. Grow sad together. Reminisce about grabbing for each other the night Mario’s father died in a car accident. Honor the pain in silence. The tender feeling in the smallest action. How empty each day. How hard to stay on track. Has he…? No. Has she…? No. Congratulations to each other.

A pause and Jeanette says: “We never talked about having children.”

“In the middle of getting high and fighting all the time? We were supposed to be like, ‘Oh yeah, let’s just bring another life into this and fuck that one up too’?”

“Maybe if we’d had a child. In the beginning. Maybe that would’ve kept us sober. Maybe that would’ve stopped the fighting.”

She thinks Mario is crying. She hears labored breathing, shaky shuddering. She knows this routine. Knows what comes next.