They are mostly drawings, a few paintings. Some feel lonely—a drawing of a house all by itself on a street. When I say this to Carlos, he agrees. “That’s what I like about his work. He shows me how lonely it can be here.”

A painting catches my eye, since it’s so familiar: a wall of windows with faded-green blinds, looking over the tops of low, redbrick buildings. There’s a woman with her back to us, sitting in a rocking chair, and a vase of flowers. Room in Brooklyn, it’s called. “Hey, Kamal, look,” I say. “Home.”

But he’s pulled close to some paintings of boats and white clapboard houses against a horizon, and a lighthouse on a bluff. “I want to go there,” he says. “I want to see that.”

Carlos and I look at each other. “Why not?” we both say.

Carlos finds another lighthouse on the internet, from a painting he remembers. We stop at a big supermarket and buy ourselves a Styrofoam cooler and a bag of ice, and load up on food for the road—sliced meats and cheese, grapes and bananas. Carlos eats bananas like there’s no tomorrow. “I’m a growing boy,” he says, patting his stomach. I also get myself a phone card.

I realize I’ve got to do something fast about Lidia. So I sign the folded form with my uncle’s name, and fake the two witnesses—one of them Shaima, another a made-up person. I take a picture and text it to her along with: Pls send Ammi’s address PA. This buys me time, but not much. They’ll never know: Uncle is leaving soon enough. And I can feel Ammi egging me on, proud at how I’m outsmarting others. Run, she would say. Don’t let anyone hold you back.

Soon I get a message from Lidia. About time! OK for now. Uncle may need court appearance. A few minutes later she sends an address in Pennsylvania. Relief washes through me. We can keep going. For now.

While Carlos and Kamal go to the bathroom, I call Fatima with my phone card. She starts to cry and yell at me that her parents are furious, that her father doesn’t want her to have anything to do with me. “Where are you?”

I just listen. “I can’t tell you.”

“You don’t trust me.”

I consider this a moment. “It’s not that. What if Lidia or the shelter people call you and ask a lot of questions? All I can tell you is we’re traveling. On the road.”

“Like in the novel? With a boy? That should be me and you!”

“Fatima, this is different. It isn’t some joyride, okay? I don’t have a choice.”

“I just want to be with you.”

I sigh. “I miss you too, Fa-Fa. But this is serious. We’re running for real.”