Ambassador by William Alexander Page B

forehead. She looked shocked for a moment and then laughed and laughed.
    â€œYou’re worth talking to,” she said, still laughing. “You might even be worth playing games with. Kaen, what do you think? Oh, she’s gone already.”
    Gabe looked. Ambassador Kaen no longer stood on her branch, though Gabe hadn’t noticed her leave.
    â€œYou seem to be leaving too,” Sapi said. “Bye.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” Gabe asked her. Then he felt a sudden, wrenching dizziness and woke up.

8
    Gabe woke from his accidental nap at noon. The phone was ringing. He stumbled downstairs.
    â€œHello?” he said to the phone once he had found it. He wasn’t fully awake yet. His only goal was to get the phone to stop ringing, and saying hello was how he got it to stop.
    â€œHello, my heart,” said his mother. For one strange moment Gabe thought it was the Envoy on the phone. But the two of them didn’t really sound the same, even though both used the same voice with the same accent. The rhythm was different. The Envoy’s words were clipped, separate, and specific. Everything Mom said moved like water, flowing downstream from wherever it started to wherever it needed to be.
    â€œHi, Mom,” said Gabe.
    â€œI need you to do something for me,” she said with ahitch and a stumble in her voice—or maybe that was just crackling on the phone connection. “I need you to get a few diapers and wipes together. And pajamas for the twins. Toss all that in a bag.”
    â€œOkay,” said Gabe. In his grogginess this sounded only slightly odd. “What’s going on?”
    â€œFrankie’s mother is coming by to pick you up and bring you here,” she told him, her voice careful and brittle.
    Gabe became fully and completely awake at this news. He hadn’t seen or spoken to Frankie’s mom since the destruction of her backyard and everything in it, and he had been hoping to avoid her for as long as possible.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” he asked again. “Where are you?”
    She told him.
    *  *  *  *
    The doorbell rang.
    Frankie’s mom was tall and always prickly cold. The two of them did not say much on the drive to the ICE detention center. This wasn’t surprising. Frankie’s mom never said much. ICE stood for “Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” apparently. They drove to this icy place in a pocket of icy silence.
    Gabe stared out the window. He wasn’t sure he could speak if he tried. His brain and the rest of him seemed disentangled from each other.
    The waiting room inside the detention center was a small place with a gray carpet, ten dingy-looking chairs, and a guard behind a counter. The guard was a woman who looked and sounded like old leather, the way serious cigarette smokers usually looked and sounded. She was polite enough. She didn’t ask for Gabe’s birth certificate, though he had brought it with him just in case he needed to prove where he was from.
    Once the guard called his name, Gabe went through a large metal door that looked like it wasn’t supposed to open, not ever. The door shut behind him with a sound that suggested it never would open again. You are not welcome here, the door said in its heaviness. But now you can’t leave.
    Gabe met his father in a small room. They sat down, facing each other, a thick glass barrier between them. Dad wore an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs on a long chain that connected to cuffs at his feet. He took very small steps to get to his chair.
    â€œI brought the diapers,” Gabe said first, and quickly, without saying hello. For some reason it seemed important to say that first and to say it in English. “I gave them to the guard in the waiting room.”
    His mouth and his brain still didn’t feel connected. He tried to ask what happened, but he wasn’t sure how.Mom hadn’t explained it all. Gabe wanted to know