We drive and drive, new ideas of where we’ll go piling up, like fluffy clouds on the horizon. It’s the last week of June, so why not treat it like a vacation? The aquarium. Fenway Park. Carlos keeps checking his phone and looking up places to see. “There’s good pizza in Providence,” he’ll say, with a glance toward the back seat. Or “Maybe we should check out Legoland.”

“Legoland!” Kamal chimes.

I don’t know what I want to do, I just need to keep going. I don’t want to be reminded of who I was: that girl in her army jacket and black boots, so sure of herself, of her past and future. That’s the old Rania, like a deflated parade float, left on the pavement in a puddle of flattened rubber.

Everything a lie. This country a lie. Lidia’s right: In fifth grade we went to Ellis Island. I wore my hair in braided loops in those days. I was still only a year into this country and I was eager and everything excited me—the ferry we took, the nice teachers, the buttons we could press lighting up the big map where everyone came from, the echoing halls where they waited. I wrote a report about a girl like me who came with her parents and whose luggage with torn straps I saw on display. Now every house we skim past seems made of paper, transparent, ready to blow over. But I do have Kamal in the back, Carlos beside me.

Since we don’t have much in the way of clothes, we pull off when we see a mall and shop at TJ Maxx. I buy underwear, shorts, and a new pair of sneakers for Kamal, flip-flops and a straw hat for me. Carlos gets sunglasses and joggers, snapping off the labels as we walk back through the parking lot.

By late afternoon, we’re searching for a motel just outside Boston. At the first one I snap down my driver’s license, and the receptionist explains, “You can’t book a room because you’re under eighteen.”

I gulp. That again. We turn away when an elderly man, reading in a chair, gestures to us. “Up the road,” he says. “Pay cash.”

We drive a short way to find a low-slung, dirty-yellow motel, its sign missing letters, so it says, OTEL. ACANCIES.

“ ’Ello, you have ’ooms at the ’otel?” Carlos teases as we walk toward the front door.

Kamal giggles and they start a chiming game, leaving off the first letters.