Ammi gives her one of her charming smiles. “Can you wait just a moment?” She takes my arm and draws me into the foyer.

“Ammi!” I whisper. “My ID says I’m seventeen! Why did you—”

“Hush.” She sets her hands on my shoulders. Ammi is so short, she has to lift her chin to meet my gaze, but she can still terrify me with one firm look. “No time for panic or baby stuff.”

“I’m not a baby!”

Her eyes dart in a dozen directions. “There’s a plan—”

“What plan?” I yank up my sweatpants, worrying the string.

“I tried to call Maria Auntie but she’s not home. She’s on a shift.”

“Why did you say I was eighteen?”

“Rania!” She shakes me lightly. “You’re minors. You can’t be left on your own.”

On our own? My eyes swing around the foyer. Wait. Panic starts up in my chest. Ammi can’t go.

She’s fumbling inside a table drawer, taking out an envelope. Ammi once showed me the paper inside, explaining, “If anything happens, this is what you need. It’s a standby guardianship form. Maria Auntie will take care of you.”

Maria Auntie lives down the hall and is our surrogate aunt since we don’t have any family in this country. She brings us foil dishes of arepas and tamales and we keep our extra keys with her. Maria Auntie is a lot like Ammi—she’s got hustles and side hustles to keep her family going.

“Everything okay over there?” the officer calls over to us.

Ammi pulls me back to the doorway. “My mistake. My daughter is eighteen in a few months.”

The woman gives us a skeptical look. “So you’ve appointed a standby guardian?”

“Yes, yes.” She thrusts the folded paper at the officer, who reads it.

“And where is Maria Alvarez?”

My mother’s voice fades. “Working.”

The woman squints at the form. “And who is this—Lucia Alvarez?”

“Lucia!” my mother says brightly. “Yes, yes! She is home. Maria’s daughter.”

Oh great, I think. Lucia. The biggest mess-up around. She dropped out of LaGuardia College and got in trouble with some creepy boyfriend.

The officer goes down the hall and presses, hard, on Maria Auntie’s buzzer. A few other doors in the hall crack open, some still with the chain attached, worried faces peering out. I feel a humiliating burn around my ears. We have seen this before. Men and women in these same jackets swarming up the stairs. Calling through the door. Crying and pleading and then our neighbors were gone.

“Who is it?”

Before the officer can speak, Ammi calls out, “It’s us! Sadia and Rania!”

The door swings open. Lucia’s makeup is smeary, one side of her curly hair flattened. “Yeah?”