I leap out of the car and come around the front of the hood. I see another officer approaching from the patrol car.

“Whose car is this?” the cop asks.

“My mother’s.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s…she’s in New York. Brooklyn. She’s working but she let us have the car—”

Frowning, the cop hands the license over to the other cop, who takes it inside their car. I can see he’s punching something into the dashboard. The interior light makes his face look gaunt and gray, serious. The first cop makes Carlos walk a straight line. While he does, I keep babbling, telling him how it was my fault, that usually I drive but I wasn’t feeling well because I got seasick on the whale boat.

“Where do you live?” the cop asks.

I stammer something about the motel. He looks skeptical, regards Carlos. Then the other cop comes back, hikes up his belt, and hands Carlos his license. “Nothing,” he says, though he sounds as if he doesn’t believe it.

“I’m not giving you a ticket,” the first cop says.

“Thank you!” I exclaim.

He glares at me. “But this is a warning. No more joyriding on these roads. You got it?”

Carlos nods. He takes the license, shoves it into his pocket. We tramp back to the car. Poor Kamal is staring through the window.

“And get that kid to bed!” the other cop calls. “It’s late!” They both laugh.

Their doors slam and then we get in the car, me in the driver’s seat, Carlos slumped against his side, hood drawn up over his head. We turn back onto Route 6 in silence. My queasiness is gone. The black sky is stabbed with tiny stars.

Back at the motel we put Kamal to bed and then sit out on the concrete patio. Fortunately, no one else is around. Carlos is holding his arms tight, rocking back and forth.

“What happened?” I whisper.

“I…I froze.” I hear him suck in his breath. “When they came for my aunt, I wasn’t home. But I knew they’d be back. Three times they came to the house. The cops knocked on the door. I hid out. But they got me the last time.”

“That’s how you came to the shelter?”

He nods. “When I was running back home, in Guanajuato, if we saw police, we just went the other way. We knew they were paid off.” He rubs his face. “I am so…tired.”