On the day a space pod crashes in Quito, its nose buried in a flowery explosion of cobble, its legs bent, swooping wing-fins and webs of chrome tubing scorched, scarlet handprints dripping down the inside of its bubbly window, Fermín is at home in Los Bancos, surrounded by toucan cries and cloud forest. He’s fidgeting with his lucky spaceship key chain as rain begins hissing on the house roof, soft at first, then vicious.
He is staring at the stranger outside.
Their shape is fragmented by patched screens and wooden shutters. Even though the gutter is spraying them, they’re motionless. Their blonde hair forms a thorny, scribbly flame around their head. Their silver suit glows. Far behind them, a smoking pod lays on its side, banana trees crushed beneath it. It’s far uglier and smaller than the one on the news.
As the stranger nears the door, their figure clarifies. Fermín feels their stare blazing on his skin before they bend. In the parentless silence punctured by downpour, he hears the door unlocking.
Once. Twice. Even the new dead bolt Dad installed.
The stranger has a key.
Fermín gawks as the stranger steps inside. Closes the door. Despite his long, confusing hair, the stranger is a man. A teenager. Rain drips from the tatters in his jumpsuit, brighter than diamonds and bird eyes. The stranger’s own eyes are hollow, his mouth hateful. That makes Fermín itch. He stands, dropping his spaceship key chain, as the teenager steps forward. It skitters under the coffee table.
《Is that your friend in Quito?》 Fermín says. 《On TV? What happened? Why did they crash? Did—》
《That’s not my friend.》The not-stranger cracks his knuckles.《You know who I am, don’t you?》
His blonde hair is the inverse of Fermín’s black hair. His brown eyes are Fermín’s eyes. The gash Fermín got on his temple last week when he fell off the school swing has settled into a squiggly J below the not-stranger’s hairline.
《I think so,》 Fermín says. His guts are knotting, his curiosity fleeing.
《No, you know,》 the not-stranger says, 《you ungrateful little freak.》
His eyelashes are long. Wispy. Mom hasn’t trimmed them with scissors to punish him for fidgeting. He looks like her.
A loop of twine hangs from the not-stranger’s fist.
《It’s mean of you,》 Fermín says, voice wavering, 《to call me that.》
He knows this tone. Inexplicably, he knows that twine. Its shape sickens him. The not-stranger walks behind the couch as Fermín edges around the coffee table. Downpour and heartbeat pulse in his ears. Older Fermín stinks of lightning. He’s pretty.
《Come here.》 Rage fractures Older Fermín’s words. 《Now. Don’t make me get you.》
If Fermín bolts, if he hides, won’t Older Him know? He has hidden from the same parents. Fermín licks his lips. He glances at the smoking pod in the garden. It’s a silvery bullet made of blinking lights, rockets, and another century’s minds. White-necked jacobins, emerald smears in the glass, are already pestering it.
Hummingbirds are never afraid.
《You’re grown-up me.》 Fermín’s sweaty hands stick to the table. 《Aren’t you supposed to protect me?》
Future Him has a choker made of scar tissue.
《You don’t need protection from shit,》 Older Fermín says. 《You’re awful.》
《I haven’t done anything wrong!》
《You ruined me.》
Fermín can see rain through the iron-barred windows flanking the front door. It’s far away. A portal to the chicken-roamed road and neighbors that might help this time. It’s market day in Los Bancos. People must be out. Fermín’s legs shake when Older Him winds the string around both hands. Yanks it taut. A foot of line quivers between his fists.
《If you kill me, you die,》 Fermín says, uncertain if Future Him remembers all those rules they’ve learned in library sanctuaries and pilfered comics. Maybe those rules will keep him safe now. 《Or you cause a paradox. Or—》
《I don’t care.》 Older Him has eyes wilder than a comet. 《If I die, I die. I hate you more than anything in the fucking world.》
Fermín sprints for the door. Older Fermín catches him long before the welcome mat. Even as twine garottes Fermín’s neck, as his scream flies back into the future’s face and he claws at the hands he’ll develop, he wonders how many times he’s felt this twine choking him. How many times he’s grown up to loop it in his fists.
Long after the spaceship is gone, long after his tears have dried, after Dad dismisses his story, after fifth grader Fermín fantasizes about his own blood on his teeth, after he begins condescending visits to a distant doctor’s office which didn’t help his mother either, he learns about what gifts the Traveler who crashed in that other pod brought. He learns about distant, twinkling galaxies, physics, spaceships, and loathing the boy who failed to protect himself. Who failed him.
While the world rushes forward post Contact Day, dreaming technicolor dreams of sky sailing and time unbinding, Fermín dreams of do-overs. He stares at the childhood enemy growing in his reflection. He brushes his hair aside, touches the scar circle growing around his neck, and repeats what he’s always known:
- He plans on making this right.
- The worst is coming.
- The worst is already here.
• • •
It’s almost one in the morning, there are ten hovercrafts left to service, and this oil cap won’t come off. Fermín clenches his teeth so he doesn’t scream. The burn on his collar throbs. He just knows that some anxious millionaire asshole who’s never owned a hovercraft before told the last service boy that if this craft lost a drop of aero-oil, he’d get his ass caned into the next millennium, so that boy probably air-ratcheted the cap’s nuts on. If he did, there’s no way it’s coming off.
Fermín wants to cry. He doesn’t. After the laser incident, he’s on probation. He’s glad no one has guessed what actually happened. Other service boys already talk shit about him after hearing his sobs echo around their vast, honeycombed bunks. Not that he wants their approval. Or them. Fuck those losers. Still, none of them, Fermín included, are paid outside of experience and preservative-pumped rations. Fermín may have begged, wheedled, worked, and flirted to get into this transit tower, but countless teenagers would love to replace him. Falling is much easier than climbing.
He inhales deeply. It doesn’t help. Exhaust and aero-oil fumes flood his lungs. Fermín squeezes the spaceship key chain clipped to his belt. It’s brought him luck before. It can do it again.
《Okay,》 he says. 《One more try. With a different wrench.》
Fermín feels around for the wrench kit. His brain churns. The cement floor bites his knees. Beneath it, transit tower engines rumble, ever present, ever malcontent. An occasional laugh from a rooftop restaurant whispers through the vents. Outside of the hovercraft’s shadow, tropical halogen lights slick the floor. The taped-off rectangle where crafts park is the sole clear space in this garage. Every millimeter of floor or pegboard wall is encrusted in tool kits, hoses, tables, calendars, and parts. After working in this nightmarish kaleidoscope of metal for two years, Fermín just now recalls where everything is. The hovercraft itself, a multi-finned chrome and azure seedpod—an echo from the ’60s inflated, pinched, and stretched into a flying call from the future—is more beautiful, but no more approachable.
Fermín knows from experience that if the foreigner dining on sea bass upstairs finds one scratch on the holographic atoms and flames foiling her car, he’ll have bigger problems than his queue.
He should’ve signed on for a cleaning shift. Their flimsy harnesses and vicious pressure washers are awful, but being outside is a mercy. From Los Bancos, the transit towers are shimmery inverse teardrops suspended in the heavens. Earth cries their steel into the sky. From the transit towers, Los Bancos is a colorful hodgepodge of squares nestled in fog. On afternoons when the cloud banks split, the canopy around the town sparkles with orchids, and fat black dots—tapirs—commute on sewing-string roads alongside microscopic motorcycles and pinhead-sized produce sellers.
When Fermín isn’t tempted to jump, or when he doesn’t wish Los Bancos would vanish into the cosmic green, he loves rappelling across his tower’s blinding veneer. Sneaking peeks at the skylight restaurant’s wealthy diners and atom-shaped chandeliers has gotten stale. Watching chaotic rainbows of hovercrafts, neon ad boards, and black-and-sunset colored aracaris wheel below keeps Fermín sane. Of course, instead of doing that today, he chose this prison of drain-pitted floors and suffocation. He’s made the wrong choice. Per fucking usual.
Dad insists on seeing him on Sunday. The last Sunday Fermín visited, it was before the laser. Fermín still isn’t sure if he said, 《Do you ever think about disappearing?》 because they sat there in silence until Dad said, 《You were such a sweet kid. I miss that.》
Fermín isn’t sure who’s more delusional at this point: him and his mother, or his dad. He’s unsure of anything that’s ever happened. He is sure that if the nightmare about him attacking himself was real, he understands why. He wants to obliterate the pathetic boy everyone suddenly loves and compares him to. For once, he deserves to punish. Who else does he have power over? Definitely not himself now, or the laser would’ve worked. Definitely not his parents. Not the world. Fermín’s own helplessness makes him so angry-sick he can’t breathe.
He tries not to think about that. He cranks on another oil cap nut, huffing, praying it’s coming loose. He’s descending for business. Maybe he’ll visit his father after he finishes a laundry washing shift, runs a couple letters, and sells weed. Anything for cash. Anything to avoid living in the rank penumbra of his childhood. Fermín’s gilded daydreams of the future died long before he saw the mountains of window-broken, rotting birds at the tower’s base, or learned how easy it was to steal a time travel pod. Unless they’re suffering, those of the future care little about the past. No wonder time pods are practically unguarded.
Then again, time pods tend to explode and kill whoever is inside them. One wrong spark, and they smear their passenger’s guts across the prismatic spiral of eternity. Maybe that frightens people. It doesn’t bother Fermín. He’s in pain and he deserves it; if he doesn’t work fast, he’ll hate living through this more than he already does. He’s cast aside his past without having a future. There’s only here. Only now.
The back door to his garage buzzes open. Fermín glimpses a neon-lined silhouette of legs approaching. How much time has passed? Shit.
《Hey!》 Fermín says, fumbling with his wrench. 《Stop hassling me! I’m working on finishing this one. I swear.》
The legs kneel. In the murk, it takes Fermín a second to recognize their owner. It isn’t his manager. It’s a young man with a bleached, shaved head, and a mechanic jumpsuit straining across his back. His breath is short, his boots laced tightly, his shoulders tensed.
A scar halo swims in the halogen blue around his neck.
He drags Fermín from beneath the hovercraft. He beats him. Fermín is screaming long before Older Him starts smashing him with a wrench. Because of who’s assaulting him, he knows he won’t die. That helps nothing. He curls into a ball, trying to protect himself. He’s stomped open again. He can’t breathe. He can’t think. What’s he being punished for? Adrenaline does nothing. He’s in pieces. He hears himself wheeze-crying the pathetic way he does when he’s alone and he’s punching his own head to feel something. The words trapped in his childhood throat on that one terrible day spill out now: 《Dad! Dad, help me! Stop, please stop, please, stop.》
An alarm is sounding. Older Fermín, cheekbones sharper, voice crueler and deeper, spits on him before saying,《That’s for hurting Little Fermín.》
Fermín’s vomit and tears are coming out of his nose. He doesn’t understand. 《I didn’t—》
《I know what you’ve done and what you’ll do. Shut up.》
Fermín cries into his puddled blood until someone finds him, alone, bereft of anything but ambition nightmares and blueprints for violence drying under his nails.
• • •
Even in orbit, his body hurts and men are a problem.
Fermín slouches over his drafting table, one hand wrapped around his communicator, one hand braced on his nape. The heating pad between his shoulders threatens to slip. As his communicator loads his latest boyfriend’s demand for medication or separation, the satellite groans, tilting. The gravity monitor in Fermín’s workroom beeps. His slew of gear-themed stationary, unwashed mugs, and terrarium-encased bromeliads float an inch above their resting places before falling. Thirty plus magnetized tool boxes on thirty identical drafting tables hop. The clatter of their simultaneous descent floods the room. An ammonic reek follows.
Supposedly, it’s pitahaya air freshener, periodically scheduled to mist the workspace for “ambience” and “morale.” It’s closer to bleach sprayed into an animal pen. Not that the Belgian billionaire who owns this satellite has ever smelled pitahaya anyway. Fermín’s stomach is already twisting before his mother sends him a pixelated image of a space-suit-clad Virgen with GOOD MORNING SON! plastered over it.
Interspace messages seldomly load on his communicator. This one made it.
《Jesus Christ,》 Fermín says. 《I can’t do this right now.》
His skull pounds. He swallows two aspirins. He can’t remember if he did that already. Outside of his porthole, Earth is a turquoise marble whorled in jade, woven in cloud lace, and netted in satellites. The portholes spiraling beyond it capture snapshots of the same view. Fermín kneads his temple. He’s grateful that other apprentices, his boyfriend included, are clustered in their transmission room for a soccer game.
Along with everything else, he needs to help two service brats find new shoes.
Not a month ago, he caught one of them stealing his plants in a fit of earthsickness. Since she called him several creative insults before she burst into tears, Fermín gifted her a bubbled air plant and his old lucky key chain. Somehow, she’s now the third teenager perpetually showing up for assistance. These seventeen-year-olds make Fermín feel mature. They’re hopeless, hungry, homeless, horny, and unwell. God knows all of them need luck. They don’t need advice from an insomniac disaster that runs through boyfriends and general goodwill like a meteor through glass, but no one else is stepping up.
Fermín wants to weep when they offer to help him carry ship parts or mail packages. He bets he’d become uncool to them if he did. That means nothing. Even the older ones are young and stupid. They sense they’re disposable; they don’t know what it means.
They’re kids.
That’s an unpleasant concept. Fermín, antsy, boots up his holopad. He debates how many freelance hovercraft repairs he must accept to make rent. He’s relieved to learn he can’t afford any traveling. That means he can tell Mom no about visiting her without it being an excuse, or needing to tell Dad. He imagines his boyfriend saying, 《Don’t you feel guilty? She’s getting old . . . 》and the fruitless ensuing quarrel. If he admitted to apathy, his boyfriend would explode. Fermín’s heart hurts. He wants to love someone. He’s unsure how. Whenever he’s honest, his partners look at him like he’s an inhospitable planet.
His communicator buzzes with another message, one from his own number:
《I’m almost here.》
When a hand grabs Fermín’s shoulder, he turns to pure electricity. He hurls a screwdriver kit backwards over his head. It explodes open. The gravity flickers again. Screwdrivers fly. Then an older version of him with bloody lashes is hovering over him, squeezing his shaking wrist, saying 《Hey! I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.》
Fermín doesn’t understand him until several minutes later, after they’ve settled, and after he’s shoved an adhesive bandage into Older Fermín’s palm. Before then, his blood is hot-cold, his nerves aflame, hearing swimming, throat swollen. All his old wounds scream.
《Why would you say that?》 Fermín gestures at his older self, still trembling. 《You know how this has gone every time before.》
He can’t tell how contrite Older Fermín is when he lowers his gaze, or when he winds his bleached hair around his pinkie. It’s gotten long. His roots show. The scarring on his neck is breaking into streaks—star trails of past agony.
《I wanted to scare you,》 Older Fermín admits. 《I’m sorry. That was cruel. I’d forgotten what that terror was like.》
He’s lying. They’ll never forget. Fermín struggles to process Older Fermín’s deepened crow’s feet, his placidity, and his belly button ring glowing within the decompressed space suit.
《It’s alright,》 he says. 《I never expected to grow out of being a mean, dumb motherfucker.》
Older Fermín laughs, resentful. Fermín’s chest tightens. It’s surreal to see himself in his thirties. It’s more surreal to see an older version of himself without brutality.
《What do you want?》 Fermín finally asks. Whenever he looks at the bandage on Older Fermín’s eyebrow, guilt coats the inside of his mouth. He’s always known his past self is worse. He always hopes the future is better. He’s disappointed that he can’t tell if it is.
《We need to talk about what happened in the garage.》
Fermín crosses his arms. His ribs twinge as he feels phantom flesh under his boot treads. The vindictive satisfaction. The terror.《What about it?》
It’s bold of Older Him to pretend they can talk. Even if Fermín wanted to, he knows Older Fermín is in pain: the past detests intruders. Every second he’s here, it’s chewing at his atoms, stripping lining from his guts, and wrenching stardust from his bones. Fermín didn’t notice that the first time he Traveled.
Now, he knows.
《You saw that attack as justice.》 Older Fermín’s brows furrow as if he’s doing calculations. He’s clearly working to sound neutral.《You were taking vengeance for Seven Fermín, and trying to protect him. But that attack was self-indulgent too, wasn’t it? On the one hand, you wanted to spare Seventeen Fermín more pain. We both remember what he tried with that laser. On the other, I . . . you resented that he hadn’t died. You hated that you made him worse. You half hoped you’d kill him. That would end this all.》
《You know how I felt better than I do. Seventeen Fermín was a monster. When I beat him never mattered. He always planned on hurting that innocent kid. Was it worth risking your life in a time pod to learn that?》
If this is the level of intelligence and understanding he’s at in his thirties, he’s fucked. So much for growth. Older Fermín gives him a long, long look before standing.
《Thanks for talking,》 he says. 《I wish you the best. I forgive you for what you don’t know.》
Before he can crumple, Fermín says,《Bullshit.》
《Fine. You’re right. I don’t forgive you. I’m hoping that if I say it enough, I will,》 Older Fermín says.
Long after he’s gone, Fermín sits at his drafting table, holding his head.
• • •
Fermín awakens to invisible nails being driven into his spine.
Until he can sit up, he lays there, gasping. It takes all his wherewithal not to vomit. His sheets entangle his legs. Nebulae of agonies spin through him. He claws at the medi-regulation patch on his hip, nails white. He curses his insurance for carrying the cheapest, least-stocked one; he curses his night terrors for returning; he curses the emptiness in his bed. Even with deep space yawning around him, that feels worse. This would be easier if his partner were here to massage his scars. It’s always easier with him.
Fermín cries until his gorge rises. All the while, Planet Nephrite-V watches through his reinforced window, luminous and seafoam green, her coterie of five billion stars glowing, her rings the texture of wave-swept sand.
Eventually, Fermín limps to the massive intracomm port next to his bathroom. The former dwarfs the latter. Though being an engine mechanic netted Fermín a room with a view, it doesn’t make the S.S. Starburst any less ancient. The intracomm’s plastic swivel chair is already killing his back. Fermín twists in his earpiece and punches in his partner’s comm code one painstaking digit at a time. As the staticky dial tone stretches on, he stares at the spaceship key chain pinned up alongside laminated prayer cards and postcards. Neither he nor Illayuq have bitten into a fresh produce peel or touched foliage in years. When his partner snagged the key chain at a lunar market for him, spacer life was sucking their sanity away.
《It reminded me of an orchid,》 Illayuq had explained. 《Out here, it’s the next best thing.》
Studying the key chain now summons Fermín’s nausea again. His headache spikes. He prowls over to the window. A swarm of chondrites bounce off the glass, marbled in gray scale, none bigger than a guava. Even with the Starburst’s many filters, Fermín smells the odor of outer space: gunpowder and burnt brake pads. Its subzero cold sucks at the ship’s hull. His earpiece’s static bleeds into his room’s wallpaper, a corroding, airbrushed mural of starbursts and ovaloids plastered over pipes. Utilitarian iron shows through broken holes in pastel skin.
With a click, Fermín’s call goes through.
《Hey, Fermí.》 Illayuq’s voice is grainy. 《Are you alright?》
《Now that I’m hearing you I am.》
It’s protocol to keep all frequencies clear while people are on shift. Emergencies out here turn fatal quickly. Since Illayuq promises he’s on break, Fermín is less nervous. He pictures his partner tucked into an ironclad nook of the Starburst, his immense graviboots buzzing, his sweeper fuzzy with stardust. Illayuq sucks on a tube of nutritional puree while they discuss buying telepasses to Earth. Funds and vacation time are tight, but they can afford it. Fermín intends on seeing his parents if it kills him. Age has broken all guardrails around their pride. It’s softened them. Fermín isn’t sure how these two elderly people with the defenses of bruised fruit hurt him as much as they did.
Maybe they didn’t do anything at all.
《As long as Older Me doesn’t show up while we’re heading earthward,》 he says to Illayuq, 《everything will be fine. I’m telling you, the itch to Travel shows up about every ten years. It’s like clockwork.》
《Older You is almost fifty. Maybe he doesn’t want to risk gathering an intergalactic felony or losing limbs in the time continuum anymore. He’s too old for that shit. You’re too old for that shit.》
《True.》
The spaceship key chain plows through Fermín’s thoughts like a planetary icebreaker, slicing through past, present, and future. Fermín’s knuckles whiten without his bidding. Illayuq gave him that key chain. If he had it earlier in life, it could’ve only come from one place. The catharsis this implies is inconceivable, even as he envies it and prays he’ll achieve it. Fermín aches.
《Illayuq—》
《What?》
He wants to ask the person he loves most, 《Do you think I can forgive?》 He wants to tell him about his childhood luck charm. The terror that Illayuq will say 《No》 ties his tongue.
Anyway, this doesn’t add up. He didn’t see his future self before he was seven. He would’ve remembered if he had. His childhood luck charm wasn’t purple or cream. What was it, white? Yellow? Fermín wonders how much he’s lost over decades of engine-room concussions, time traveling, and drifting further from home. So many of his recollections have vanished into wormholes or barricaded themselves in airlocks he doesn’t care to pry at. Self-recognition is the one attribute no one could take: he always, always knows Future Fermín when he sees him.
If he surrenders that, what does he have?
《Fermí?》
He’s incapable of total peace; he’d never find himself unrecognizable. The fact he’s had two spaceship charms is coincidence. Fermín’s nausea evaporates. His shoulders lighten. He sighs.
《I’m thinking,》 he says.
From their bedroom, he traces the patterns on Nephrite-V, remembering a cloud forest’s currents from a transit tower, remembering the organic swirls of Earth. He thinks of the half-manifested adult he spoke to on a satellite last week.
《I don’t know if I made the right call with twenty-seven-year-old me,》 he says. 《Maybe I should’ve hurt him. I considered it. Maybe that would’ve made me a better person now.》
《It’s never made you better, babe.》
《No. It hasn’t. I’m wiser than Twenty-Seven Fermín for even considering that it hasn’t.》 Fermín thumbs at the shrunken laser burn on his collar. 《But sometimes, I think about going back to that house in Los Bancos and ending it all, one way or another, so I didn’t survive any of this.》
《I’m glad you never have.》
Fermín drinks in the never-ending spread of molecular clouds, alien constellations, and verdant illumination. His own galaxy of scars reflects onto them. His partner’s distant, miniscule voice burns bright, a compass in an ever changing universe. Space affirms Fermín’s insignificance. He no longer minds.
《Me too,》 he says.
• • •
Fermín is crawling into the banana trees to hide before he realizes someone has beat him there. He halts, a palm buried in loam, a knee squishing into the fibers of a fallen branch.
《Hello?》 he says.
It’s hard to see past all the leaves. Dappled sunlight and downpour sting Fermín’s eyes. He squints. The shade makes bunches of its own. Bananaquits—resembling tiny, gray-vested bananas themselves—chatter overhead. They shake their soaked wings and study Fermín with their old-man faces. There aren’t any agoutis nosing around for fallen fruit today. All Fermín smells is nectar and rich damp; all he hears are forest sounds and the storm rattling its canopy. Sometimes, a far-off car honks.
This would normally be a relief. His parents are shouting again. He doesn’t want to hear them. If someone is in his banana fort, though, he needs to know.
《I’m warning you!》 Fermín says. 《I’ll hurt you!》
He starts looking for a stick before he spots an older man sitting in some ferns. The stranger has on stained car-fixer clothes. His long black hair is braided to one side, with some gray strands hanging out. It’s an auntie hairstyle. He’s leaning on a cluster of banana trees like every weary farmer whose back hurts. Fermín doesn’t know him. He seems peaceful. He’s the type of elder who puts on a straw hat and river fishes with just a worm and string. Maybe a wayward hook took that slice out of his eyebrow. Fermín squats just out of the stranger’s reach.
《Who are you?》 he says.
《Don’t mind me.》 The stranger closes his eyes. His scuffed Adam’s apple bobs. 《I’m resting. I’ll leave soon.》
《Okay.》
There’s a procession of leaf-cutter ants walking by. Fermín focuses on them. He doesn’t forget the stranger is there behind the ant parade. That wouldn’t be smart. Instead, he keeps the stranger in his periphery while imagining that the ants are carrying pieces of his unhappiness instead of leaves. He imagines they take it all away. The stranger is watching him peripherally too. At one point, he wipes his eyes. He doesn’t speak. Fermín tries to contain his scandal.
How can he cry at that age? He’s a man! An old man Dad’s age who looks so womanish and wise. Fermín can’t fathom being like him. It’d be nice. It’d be wrong. He’s wondering if he should depart when the stranger sits up.
《I have a gift for you,》 the stranger says.
He reaches into his pocket, then places a little faded spaceship on the ground. Fermín gawks. It’s straight out of his cousin’s comics. A braided key chain plumes from its top.
《It’s a good luck charm,》 the stranger says. 《It flew me through some terrible things. I hope it does that for you too. You’re a good kid. You deserve a good life.》
《Thank you.》 Fermín takes the miniscule ship.
《I’m so sorry.》
Fermín blinks.
《For what?》 he says.
The stranger slowly, slowly stands and leaves.
Fermín knows he should tell Mom about this. Mom is always tense about strangers, especially grown-ups. She’s convinced they’re out to get him. She’ll hurt him if he’s bad and quiet. By the time he’s started playing a game of interstellar travel with the leaf-cutter ants, though, Fermín has decided it doesn’t matter. The morning is beautiful. Dewy banana leaves wrap around him, enclosing him in a small world of green and space dreams, flecks of sunshine mimicking stars. He’s an astronaut. He doesn’t live in Los Bancos. He doesn’t need to return anywhere.
If Fermín doesn’t think about it, there’s no other world at all.
• • •