Then she zipped her coat to her chin and started walking.

The rain found every gap in her clothes within the first quarter mile.

Cars threw sheets of cold water as they passed.

She kept her head down and her feet moving, and she did not cry, because crying would have felt like agreeing with them about something, and she had stopped agreeing with them about anything the moment that window rolled up.

Chapter 5 — First Lesson for the New Girl

Thirty minutes later, Xiomara uploaded the video to the extended family’s group chat, the one titled The Montero-Ibarra Family. She captioned it: First lesson for the new girl.