Before entering the house, Victor tried to wipe the blood and gravel off his palms the best he could. If his mother even glanced at the scratches, he knew he would get scorned for not wearing his gloves.

"I didn't bought you those gloves for you to leave them in your underwear drawer when you ride that bike, you know, young man?" she shouted at him, completely in Spanish, the last time he had come home with his palms vividly red from slighting off one of the ramps at the skate park. Whenever she shouted at him using her mother tongue, Victor knew he had royally messed up. "Does it look like money just falls from the sky around here? I could have bought a new pair of shoes for one of your sisters with that money!"

She was right, though, and that stung even more than the tender wounds in his palms. Money had been tight for the last few years, even with his mother working two shifts and Victor doing afternoons at the neighborhood's convenience store. With the rising prices of rent, food, utilities and other necessities, struggling to reach the end of the month was a fact of life by that point. How his mother had done it before he was old enough to help out, he had never quite been able to decipher.

Convinced that he wouldn't be able to clean the blood off his hands any better without staining his clothes, he pulled out his keys and opened the metallic mesh door, followed by the splintered, wooden one, to make his way into the house.

He was immediately struck by the sound of the TV in the living room and the scent of boiling, vegetable broth coming from the kitchen. This made him feel guilty again. His mother only cooked vegetable broth when she desperately needed to stretch out the contents of her bank account just a few days more.

"Leave the wood door open, mijo," his mother exclaimed from the kitchen. "Lets get some fresh air here for a change. Girls, turn off the ceiling fan."

Victor's three sisters, Gloria, Bianca and Ana, let out a collective moan. The three of them were sitting on the moth-eaten couch in the living room, wearing shorts, tank tops and fanning magazines in front of them, trying hopelessly to fight off the heat.

He did as he was told and then, ignoring their protests, turned off the living room's ceiling fan.

"Can I have a glass of orange juice?" asked Ana, the youngest, reaching forward and tugging at the leg of his jeans.

"Get it yourself," Victor replied. He had been hoping to head directly to his bedroom, where he could better wash off the blood and dirt.

"Who shove a stick up your ass?" said Gloria, the oldest of his sisters, sending a spiteful look his way.

"Hey, what kind of language is that, Gloria? No quiero volver a escucharte decir esas palabras, que así yo no te crié. If I hear you talk like that again, I'm going to wash your mouth until the bar of soap is gone, muchachita!" their mother shouted, looking reproachfully at her children and holding a wooden spoon, which caused some unpleasant memories to seeing into Victor's head. "Victor, please fetch a glass of juice for your sister. I don't want her spilling any. I just mopped the kitchen."

"Sorry, mom," Gloria exclaimed, half-heartedly.

In the kitchen, he gave his mother a kiss on the cheek before fetching the juice and giving it to Ana, who downed it gleefully. She then laid down the glass on the coffee table in front of her and called to Victor just as he was finally about to head into his bedroom.

"Are you working today?" she said, smiling at him. "If you're not, would you play dress up with us?"

"No, it's my day off. Benny and I are going to the skate park."

Once more, his mother peeked her head into the living room. "If you're not working today, I need you to stay here and watch the girls. Diana needs me to cover her afternoon shift."

"But mom, I already made plans!" he protested, darting into the kitchen so that his sisters wouldn't hear. "It's my only afternoon off in like a month."

"I know, mijo, I'm sorry," she said, stirring the pot of vegetable broth and not meeting his gaze. "But Mrs. Ramirez is out of town today," then, in a smaller voice so that the TV would drown it out, said, "and we could really use the extra money. I know you understand."

Victor sighed. He did understand that every dollar added into their household could mean the difference between keeping up their humble lifestyle or getting to go to bed instead of having dinner.

"Call Mr. Pratap and ask him for Friday off," she said.

"Why? What's happening on Friday?"

"Diego told me he can drive you to the outlet mall, so you can pick out your tuxedo for prom," she said, beaming. "He has to do a repair job there or something, so you can have all afternoon off there. Invite Benny and you two can make a day of it."

After realizing why his mother was so keen on earning some extra cash, Victor felt himself getting hot behind the ears. "I told you, I'm not going to prom, mom. I don't need a stupid tuxedo."

"You're going and I don't want to hear another word of it," she said scornfully. "You've worked too hard this year and you deserve to go to your senior prom. Besides, I want a photo of you in which your hair is combed and you're wearing some nice clothes, for a change."

In all fairness, he had grown fond of the idea of attending to his senior prom later that year. His friends had been hyping up the experience, talking about all the pictures they would take, the booze they would sneak into the school's gym where the party would be held and the after-party that was being organized in the woods by the city's outskirts. Still, he did his best to shut out any hopes of attending, as he knew that that money could be used on better things. Also, the idea of spending the thirty-minute-long ride to the outlet mall in company of his mother's new boyfriend was sickening to him.

"I don't even have a date," he said, unable to figure out how to decline his mother's gift to him without hurting her feeling.

"Ay, mijo! Ask that cute girl from across the street. The one you're always staring at. What's her name? Karla? Kayleen?"

"It's Kathie, mom. But keep it down, will you!" Victor said, his face turning gradually redder.

The three girls in the living room suddenly sang up in choir. "VICTOR AND KATHIE SITTING ON A TREE. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

He grunted at his snickering mother. "See what you did?"

"Settle down, girls," she called. "Come and help me set the table. Dinner is almost ready," then she added. "Ana, bring that empty glass. Don't leave it in the living room."

The three girls shuffled to their feet. Barely a second later, a high-pitched shriek erupted, followed by the sound of shattering glass.

"What?! What happened?" their mother called, running from the kitchen and into the cramped living room.

Ana, who had been the source of such nerve-racking sound, was standing stiffly, looking down at the pieces of glass scattered across the floor.

"There was blood in the glass," she said in a panicky tone. "I saw blood!"

"Did you cut yourself, baby?" their mother said, circling around the pieces of shattered glass and immediately examining Ana's hands.

"No, the blood was in the glass already," Gloria said, sounding as if she too was just about to burst into tears.

"Blood in the glass? Well, that doesn't make any-"

She stopped abruptly and turned hear gaze towards the kitchen, where her son stood, trying to fake innocence, after hastily stuffing his hands into his pockets.

"You scraped your hands again, didn't you?! I swear to Jesucristo, no puedo contar con que seas responsable!" she said, as she stepped over the broken glass and darted towards the kitchen. Knowing he had been busted (somehow, she always knew), Victor pulled his hands out of his pockets and showed them to his mother. "Will you look at these things? They're filthy and scratched all over! Do you want them to get infected and for the doctors to have to cut them off? Diosito Santo! Go to the bathroom right now. I'm washing them myself. ¡Este niño, enserio! One of these days, I'm going to throw that bike del demonio into the river!"

It didn't really matter that he had been on the way home from school or that his bike had been chained in the garage all morning, he still didn't try to explain how he had actually scraped his palms, because he knew that would only award him yet another scolding for not looking where he was going. Also, it wasn't like he could tell his mother that he was crossing the street when suddenly everything had vanished around him and a kid had materialized, to tell him we (whoever we were) were coming. Those events were playing over and over in his head, while his mother cleaned and patched the wound, all while at the same time reprehending him for not wearing his gloves.

When she finished, both with his wound and yelling her head off, she gave one kiss to each palm and returned to the kitchen, where Gloria, Bianca and Ana were already sitting, ready to eat.

Victor, we're coming, he thought again, picturing the kid's mouth, trying to find another interpretation. He thought about at the dinning table and then again, later that afternoon when, when he tried to make up for the scare he had given Ana, by allowing her to paint his face and put a cheap, plastic tiara in his messy, caramel-colored hair.

That night, he headed off to bed with that lingering question and aqua-blue nails. He was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, snoring loudly and resting on his stomach.

Most of the time, Victor never dreamed. The few timed he did, it was either something too embarrassing to share or too bizarre to make sense of, however that night, he found himself halfway in between both points.

Grazing the horizon, short hills of vividly green, tall grass spread as far as his eyes could see. The blades danced along with the blowing wind, and every few yards, mounts of dirt, like those from freshly dug tombs, sprouted from the ground, except these ones were already covered in a carpet of green.

The view was breath-taking, completely unlike the concrete jungle and dried, arid suburbs where Victor had grown up, but his appreciation for it was short-lived. As he glanced down, he found himself staring directly into the same pair of round, green eyes from that afternoon. The black-haired kid stared back, but this time, his expression looked nothing like it had earlier: this time, he looked as lost as Victor did, which in all honesty, came as a welcomed surprised, albeit an unsettling one.

"Who are you?" Victor found himself asking, trying to speak over the blowing wind.

The kid turned his head in every direction, as if he didn't know from where the question had come from. For a moment, Victor wondered if the kid could actually see him, but soon his doubts where waved away, when he stopped looking around and addressed Victor directly.

"What is this place?" the kid asked. His voice was young, soft. He was still far from reaching puberty.

"How should I know?" Victor replied. "You brought me here, didn't you?"

They stared at each other. Ever so slightly, the kid shook his head. The look on his face was gradually turning more preoccupying.

He was about to talk again, but couldn't find the words. His heart started thumping rapidly and when he finally thought to ask the kid who he was again, his questioned was drowned out by the roar of distant thunder.

Suddenly, the wind howled with unprecedented fury. It partially covered the kid's face with his own, long, obsidian-black hair. It was so cold that Victor felt as if needles were being pushed into his bare arms.

"What's going on?" he managed to ask, but the kid didn't seem to hear him.

Behind them, black clouds were rapidly advancing and the ground collapsed in a circle around them, falling into a black abyss.

"We're going to find you, Victor!" the kid shouted, right before the earth under his feet collapsed and swallowed him.

Victor reached out his arm just a mere second before the ground under his feet vanished, and the feeling of falling woke him up abruptly.

He found himself in his bed, the springs under his mattress squeaking, bouncing up and down as if he had actually just fell on them. His shirt was soaked in cold sweat and his arms and chest covered in goosebumps. The alarm clock on his bedside table marked three minutes past midnight.

It had all been a dream, a very lucid one, but a dream nevertheless. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves and fall back asleep, but sleep didn't took him again for the rest of the night.

Victor laid awake, his arms pinned to his sides, staring up at the ceiling and wondering who the kid was and why on earth would he, and whoever he was with, wanted to find him.