He didn’t tell jokes or laugh. He was as thin as the other driver was fat, with a pinched and sour face (so he became “Limón”), and sparse hair too small for his head. It looked painted on, badly colored like a child’s drawing. Juan Pablo made a joke about it, and although Chayo had tried hard not to laugh, he joined in with the others until the driver stared at them all, glaring, as if counting or memorizing their faces.

At the station, Limón got off his bus and spoke for a long time to a security guard. An hour passed, and no one seemed to look at the tires. Instead, Limón made calls from a small cell phone, one after another, pacing back and forth and smoking four or five cigarettes—taking so long it made Chayo nervous—until he finally returned.

That was the only time he smiled at them, as he stepped back up onto the bus. He grinned wide to reveal dirty yellow teeth, winking in slow motion in the last of the late-afternoon light, as if they were all just sharing another of Juan Pablo’s jokes.

But no one else knew what the joke was.

And then they were rolling down the dusty road to join Batista, who waited with the first bus.

—

NEVA WAS BATISTA’S YOUNGER COUSIN, and she was not a normalista.

She went to the Catholic school in Ojinaga, but proudly told Chayo the first time she saw him she didn’t believe in God, laughing out loud as she said it, twining her tiny wooden rosary around her fingers. She claimed she’d believe in God when He did something good for her, and He hadn’t done a damn thing yet. Chayo wasn’t sure if she meant that or not. She was small and dark, always in motion like a delicate bird, and everything made her laugh. She’d gotten an iPhone for her quince the year before and loved all other things americano: music and pop stars and bands that Chayo had never heard of. She talked endlessly about television shows and movies, and sometimes Chayo tried to find out about them so he could understand all the things that seemed so important to her, to truly understand her. Most afternoons after school she’d change into a small T-shirt and put on some bright makeup and then appear with a carload of other laughing and smoking girls outside Librado Rivera, supposedly to visit Batista and bring him food and other things, although she somehow always ended up talking to Chayo, too, who felt tall and strange and awkward around her in those moments, as if he were put together from mismatched wood and old nails. He wanted to be funny like her friends, or like Juan Pablo, but he didn’t know any jokes, and oftentimes said nothing at all.