Clarissa Guzman typed the first line of her novel, then deleted it. She had done this nine times. The national young authors prize wanted the manuscript in six weeks. She wanted to win with a story about her Colombian heritage. But the cursor blinked on an empty page, and her chest felt tight. She was born in Colombia. She left as a baby. She remembered nothing real about it. She pushed back from her desk and hugged her purple plush unicorn. The upstairs window of her Bay Area home showed a gray afternoon. Below the screen sat a stack of library books about Colombia. Flags. Maps. Photos of a coast she had never walked. None of it felt like hers. She couldn't write a lie. The judges would smell it. Her phone buzzed. Nia, her best friend since middle school, had texted three times. "Open the door, baka. I brought snacks." Clarissa smiled despite the knot in her stomach. Nia understood her the way few people did. They were both autistic. They both loved pink and plushies and old Y2K everything. Nia rolled in on her skates, pink hoodie dusted with glitter. She dropped a bag of chips on the bed and studied Clarissa's face. "You're stuck," she said. Not a question. "I can tell. Your shoulders are up by your ears." "I can't write it," Clarissa said. "I want to write about where I'm from. But I don't know where I'm from. I was a baby when we left. Everything I put down feels fake." Nia sat on the floor and crossed her legs. She thought for a moment, tapping her skate wheel. "Then stop guessing," she said. "Ask someone who was actually there." Clarissa frowned. "Who? Nobody here remembers." "Your mom remembers," Nia said. "She was holding you on the plane." Clarissa went still. She had asked her mother about Colombia before, years ago. Her mother always changed the subject fast. It hurt her somehow. Clarissa had learned to stop asking. But a vague story would lose the prize. She needed real details or none at all. "She never wants to talk about it," Clarissa said quietly. "So make it easy for her," Nia said. "Don't interview her like a reporter. Just sit with her. Bring tea. Let her start." Clarissa stared at the empty page on her screen, then at the stack of borrowed books. Guessing had failed nine times. She stood up, legs shaking a little. She found her mother in the kitchen, trimming a bright bouquet of roses and orange blooms. Clarissa pulled out a chair. "Mami," she said. "Tell me about the day we left Colombia. I want to write it down. All of it." Her mother's hands stopped moving. The scissors rested on the counter. For a long moment she said nothing. Then she sat, folded her hands, and looked at Clarissa. "You should know," her mother said. "But some of it will hurt to hear."

Her mother spoke for a long time. Clarissa listened at the kitchen table. Men had come to their town. Her mother did not feel safe. She packed one bag in the dark and carried Clarissa onto a plane. She left her own mother behind. She left everything. That was why she never told the story. Clarissa nodded and said thank you. Then she climbed the stairs to write it down. She sat at her desk. The cursor blinked. Her hands stayed in her lap. Every word her mother said sat heavy in her chest. She could not pick one to type. She pulled her purple unicorn close and tried to talk through the scene out loud. Nothing came. She just stared at the gray window until her eyes stung. She texted Nia and Liz. "I can't make it move. It's too much." They came within the hour. Nia rolled through the front door of the Bay Area home on her skates, pink hoodie dusted with glitter. Liz came right behind her, gym bag still on her shoulder, no filler, straight to the point. Liz was the friend who never rested, who trained through pain, who docked judges got under her skin. She dropped the bag and looked at Clarissa's face. "You froze," Liz said. "I know that look." "My mom told me the whole thing," Clarissa said. "It's heavier than I thought. She left because she wasn't safe. I can't sit with it and write at the same time. My desk feels wrong." Nia knelt by the bed and pulled a doll off the shelf. Blonde hair, purple eyes, little orange dress and leg warmers. "Okay so," she said. "You don't write this one at a desk. A desk is for homework. This is your mom's actual life." Liz nodded. "Change the room. You can't think in a spot that's stuck." They moved her. Nia spread a blanket on the floor by the window. Liz carried down tea from the kitchen. Clarissa sat cross legged with the unicorn in her lap and the doll beside her. Nia sat on one side. Liz sat on the other, finally still for once. "Just tell us what she said," Nia said. "Like a story. Out loud. We'll shut up." Clarissa started talking. One bag. A dark room. A plane. A grandmother left at a gate. Her voice shook, but the words came. Liz pulled Clarissa's laptop onto the floor and started typing what she heard. Nia caught the parts Liz missed. An hour later Clarissa read the page back. It was real. It sounded like her mother. It sounded like her. "That's the opening," Liz said. "That's it." Clarissa saved the file. The scene that froze her was now the first page of her novel. She had her beginning. But her mother's story ended at a gate, with a grandmother she had never met and a town she still knew nothing about.