The guard looks like she’s been doing this for hours, hearing the same thing. The couple move past her, their luggage twisting and banging on bumpy roots, until they are under the white tent.

Carlos is crouching in front of Kamal. We’ve told him that Carlos would have to go, without us. Now it hits him. Kamal is blinking, hard.

“Okay, mi amor. I won’t see you for a while.”

Kamal scrunches his face, tight with a frown. “No!”

“I’m so sorry.” Carlos’s voice is rough, low. He throws his arm around Kamal, rests his cheek on top of my brother’s head, as if breathing him in. I feel as if I’m splitting in two. Carlos is losing so much more. Kamal, me. He turns, and I’m seeing him as I don’t want to see him: all alone.

He pulls me, deep, into his arms. I smell and feel all of him. His fingers loosen my curls. “I always liked your hair,” he says with a quiet laugh. “It never stays where it’s supposed to be. Like you.”

“Very funny,” I reply, but my voice is muffled in his collar.

There’s just us two, our bodies fierce against each other.

“I better go,” he whispers.

When he pulls back, too much air swims between us.

He reaches down for the duffel, hikes his backpack onto his shoulder. He checks his wallet—inside are what’s left of his earnings and a little more, from the summer. Then he shifts toward the edge of the road, joining the stream of people who are inching their way to the path. That poor border guard is shouting the same thing all over again—Do you realize—Carlos takes his place behind the others. I think about how many times he’s done this: become a number, a thing, on a line. He’s turning himself hard, protected, to get across.

Be safe, I think.

The line edges forward. Carlos twists around and gives a big wave. Then he turns to the border guard, tells her yes, he completely understands what he’s doing, and moves past her. Last I see of Carlos is his beige sketch pad, sticking jauntily out of his backpack.

In the taxi area, as I’m settling Kamal into his booster seat, one of the drivers says to me, “You wanna make money? There’s a ton more waiting at the bus station.”

“No thanks.”

He flings his cigarette down on the ground. “Your loss.” Heaving the door shut, he climbs into the driver’s seat and rumbles away.

Kamal asks, “Where are we going?”

I feel him kicking the back of the front seat. But I’m crying so hard it’s all I can do to steer the car back down the road, as if through a blurred rainstorm.

“I don’t know,” I sob.

Part 6: The Road Back

Chapter Nineteen