“She dropped out. She had me. And then she quit medicine.” He pauses. “I think because she was an addict. She had to have a C-section when I was born, because I was trying to come out backward, and then afterward she went downhill, like a lot, started talking about how she was fantasizing about throwing me in the pool at her apartment, so my dad came and got me. And then later she got caught stealing pills from the hospital, and she got kicked out of the program, and she just kind of left. Until this one night. When I was ten.” He drops his gaze to our feet. “She showed up at our house really late. I didn’t even know her. I wouldn’t have known she was my mom except she kept calling me ‘sweetie’ and touching my face. Her eyes were like black, black holes. I guess that means she was high or something.”

“Wow, that sounds like it sucked.”

He nods. “The worst part was, she wanted to come back. She asked my dad if they could try again. She said it just like that. ‘Please, let’s try again.’”

“Oh god. What did he say?”

“He said no. And then she left.”

“Wow. I’m sorry.”

“He was right to say no. I understood that, later. She was a mess. She’s still a mess.”

I grab his hand, and we intertwine our fingers.

He bows his head for a minute. Then he says, “It was two days after that that we went to Rio.”

“Oh. Ohhhh,” I say.

“I was with the group, shopping at the street market, the one with the word hippie in it.”

“I remember.” Afton and I were fascinated by the embalmed piñatas.

“And there was this lady selling bracelets—bahia bands, they’re called, made out of different colored ribbons. She explained that I could wrap the bracelet around my wrist and tie three knots, and I could make a wish for each knot, and then I had to wear the bracelet until it fell off on its own, and then my wish would come true.”

I see where he’s going with this.

“So I bought three bracelets, two white ones and a dark blue one—the colors had different meanings. I thought I would wear one myself, and give one to Dad, and then, if I ever saw my mom again, if she came back, I’d give one to her, and she could wish to get better and then maybe she really could come back and be my mother.”

“Oh, Nick.”

He clears his throat. “So, yeah. That’s what I was doing. I was buying wishes. And when I looked up, everybody was gone. I wandered around for a while calling for my dad, and then this man tried to help me, I think, but I got scared and I ran away from him, and then I was really lost.”