Corey didn’t blush, though she expected him to. He just said, “Yeah, I guess.”

On the weekend before they closed down Freedom House and headed back home for good, everyone agreed they should throw a party and trip as a group—no guides, no restrictions, no write-ups—just let the drug take them where it would. People dressed up for the occasion, but fancifully, almost as if it were Halloween, the girls in the bright flaring skirts, peasant blouses and silver necklaces they’d bought in the market stalls, the men in guayaberas and sombreros. Tim invited the mayor and his cohort and hired mariachis to provide music for the party, which started in the late afternoon with a lavish spread—pozole, carnitas, chilaquiles, flautas con pollo, shrimp, lobster, fish—for those who wanted it, though most of the inner circle wound up eating sparingly so as not to interfere with the sacrament, which they all took an hour before the guests arrived so as to be primed for the moment the festivities started in earnest. As for the kids, they would be on their own, which was just fine with them since the summer had set them free too and any sort of parental supervision wasn’t much more than an afterthought at this juncture.

She was in their room, sitting before the mirror and doing her face for the party—false lashes, eye shadow, Mexican lipstick in a shade of red so bright it could have brought the dead back to life, and why not vamp it up?—when Corey slammed through the door in his bleached-out shorts and started rummaging through the backpack he kept under the cot. “Mom,” he said, “have you seen my mask and snorkel?”

She lifted her eyes to him in the mirror and she asked, “Aren’t you going to change for the party?”

“Change what?”

“I don’t know, put on a shirt, for starters—and your other shorts, the ones you hardly ever wear? And wash your feet—when was the last time you washed your feet?”

Fitz was sitting on the bed in the pristine white guayabera she’d bought him in the market the day before and a pair of blue jeans she’d ironed so they’d have a nice crisp crease down the front of each leg. “Yeah,” he said, “spruce up a bit, champ, get in the spirit of things. There’s going to be dancing—don’t you want to dance?”

Corey was on his knees, bent over the backpack, his feet splayed behind him. “I don’t know.”

“What about Nancy—she’ll dance with you, won’t she?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, why don’t you ask her and find out? But first, go into the bathroom and wash your feet. And put on a shirt like your mother says.”