Heat started ascending from the ground as the tropical sun hit the border of the two Latin American countries. A golden solar glow set the Pan-American Road in color as the sleepy passengers coming from one side got off from their buses to have their passport stamped before going into the next country. A young man wearing a hoodie and shorts, the first in the line, leaned against the customs' office's wall, waiting for the migration controls in the Panamanian side to open. He glanced at the sun rising in the country where he had spent the last few days. Apparently thinking of trivialities, he was able to observe that, regardless of the point in which the sun rose in the horizon it would always hit the Panamanian side an hour later than Costa Rica. Time zones and invisible lines such as borders quenched the human thirst for order and categories; for him, these lines and time differences were more like walls and time warps, and he was content in keeping them that way. He looked back between the people moving lazily and the waking commerce in the different locals at the border and observed once more the path that had taken him into the city of the globally known canal, having to accept with bitterness that what he had once heard from the mouth of a man was inarguably true: the roads of Panama were paved.

He recognized the voice in his head but tried not to give it much importance. Still, the roads of Panama were perfect and were there, mockingly juxtaposed to the asphalt streets filled with potholes on the Costa Rican side of Paso Canoas. Hands down, everything in the country of the canal could be sold as better. Now that he was going north, he would not find a Punta Paitilla with its tall buildings and modern convention centers. Unlike the flat scenery of San José, the capital of Costa Rica, Panama City expanded into the sky with the verticality of the new buildings in Punta Pacífica and to the ocean with the new areas built on land filling. American tycoons were investing in Panama City, and Russians were buying real state no matter the price. The metropolis read development in every corner; or so the man had tried to make him believe.

To the naked eye, everything would have looked more promising going southwest, but the young man could not help wishing he could be done with the paperwork and back to sleep in the bus for the eight hours that still separated him from San José. He was coming home, and little of the luxury of the foreign country he had just been in could lure him to go back.

Still waiting for the migration office to open, he walked away from the rest of the impatient tourists and lit a cigarette. As the smoke filled his lungs and the stimulant effect of tobacco climbed to his head, he felt capable of muting the whispering voice of the man. A couple of drags later, the man did not exist. Once he got on the bus again, he decided, the man would be wiped out of his memories forever.

After 2 years of heart-freezing silence, the phone rang. Mom didn't bother to answer it quickly. She took her time to dry her hands with her apron first. Had she known who was calling, I'm not sure if she would've answered at all. Just that she did, and the world came to a stop. She spoke in some sort of private language I thought I recognized. There was despair in her eyes, but her voice hid it well. She said our bank account, though scant in savings, was the same. She said the kids were on school break in two weeks. She said it wouldn't quite work like that. She argued she wasn't sure we would agree. She said ok a couple of times. She finished with a "you too" and hung up. It took her a while to come back to this planet, and she looked at me and asked if I could take care of my sister in another country. I told her I didn't feel like babysitting a pubescent, pussy-craving lesbian. She sighed more disappointed than mad at me and my big mouth and walked away. Two weeks after the call, we packed and went on a trip south to Panama.

The teenager with the blue hoodie wasn't by himself. Although his companion did not bother in talking to him, a 16 year-old girl had been gravitating around him, second in line. She hadn't said a word this morning. Slumber probably still refused to leave her body, but she hadn't made any effort to shake it off entirely. The boy needed the sole presence of her sister, though, to recall some words and events that were just too fresh to erase from his memory.

"Why are we doing this?" She had asked.

"What do you mean? He's our dad."

"He knocked up mom. Twice. He tricked us into believing we were a perfect family. One day, he's gone and we have to figure out through our mom's eating disorder that he's never coming back. Tell me again, why are we doing this?"

"He called us. Maybe he's changed. Maybe he's accepted that his children are just different."

"Of course! Because having freak children has suddenly become the dream of every parent," it scared the boy how fluent in sharp sarcasm his sister was for a 16 year-old girl.

That conversation had taken place while sitting in the bus, coming down the sinuous roads from the top of Cerro de la Muerte to San Isidro, a good four hours away from the border. They had hardly spoken since.

"You know what I brought?" she had asked him, rather rhetorically. "Sleeping pills. As many as I could find. Imma sleep through this nonsense, and just wait for the man to give up on us again."

The man. This trip had been the man's idea alright. Little power could this ghost exercise over the two teenagers now that they were on their way back, but its presence still lingered around somehow. The boy took another drag hoping the cigarette would work as a much harder drug and make him dizzy and forgetful. Just that it did not happen.

The man had been waiting for them when the bus arrived to the main terminal of Panama City, next to the large Albrook Mall. He looked younger, though it was impossible that he was. He ran to help moving the luggage to the car. As means of saying hello, he just patted his boy in the back and kissed the head of his girl once. They were ready to get in the car and move to wherever he was going to take them. A younger woman was sitting in the front. She could have been their older sister had they had one, but the boy didn't think it was the case. "I want you to meet Sheryl," the father proclaimed; she then said a bunch of things that sounded both like an introduction and a rant in a marked Panamanian accent.

"Where did he get this slut?" said the daughter.

"What did you say?" asked the man naively.

"Loving it in here," said the daughter with no enthusiasm.

"Dad, you know I smoke now," said the boy. "Can you stop the car so that I could have a drag?"

"Sorry, young man. No smoking! I want you to enjoy this opportunity and I want you to behave. We have to catch up. We will work in making things right this time," the man said, though the boy had no idea of what he was referring to. It seemed to the young man that the only matter that needed mending was communication. He needed to get across that he needed a cigarette and that he needed it now. His demand went unattended.

In no time they had come to a luxurious building with an ample underground parking lot. The elevator came, Sheryl smiled, his sister yawned loudly, and the man started describing their activities for the next day while they were still trying to make the suitcases fit into the elevator. The boy wasn't sure if he should feel suspicious about his father's sudden interest in his abandoned children, but he started feeling comfortable with the idea of having a dad again. The elevator arrived, and Sheryl darted out of it, key card in hand, to the door labelled 15-2. She opened it and invited to take a look inside. The view left both the girl and the boy speechless for a while. The living room was a big open area with a huge glass window that showed a colorful and wavy reflection of many buildings in the ocean water in front. Smaller lights here and there expanded into the horizon; fishing and sailing ships, no doubt.

Their dad seemed pleased with their reaction and invited his children to come in pass the doorway. Once they did, he closed the door behind them and exclaimed "Don't you love that view? You will adore your stay in Panama City."

Surprisingly, both the boy and the girl, seduced by the charm of the ocean, were not able to contradict their father. It could even be that their skepticism was wearing off and that the chance of mending their family relationship actually existed.

Dawn came, always an hour later for some parts of Panama than for Costa Rica. The father was early to rise and everybody had breakfast together. He even made sure his abnormally sleepy daughter sat with them. He promised he would leave the office early so that he could spend more time with them later. In the meantime, Sheryl was going to drive them to Panama Viejo and other interesting sights. No one complained, so the father left, satisfied.

In general, Sheryl did a good job as a tour guide on the first day, the boy recalled objectively. She was extroverted and ready to elaborate on Panamanian history in every corner. She knew the name of the avenues and repeated constantly what kind of activities one could do in each of them. The boy had some questions that she answered. The girl asked Sheryl if her breasts were real, and she dismissed the topic rather awkwardly. Though the boy suggested walking around, the man's new woman said they would not stand the heat outside and kept on driving. At least the view of crystal buildings, the magic mixture of mirrors and palm trees, made hard to look away, and hence made the ride enjoyable.

The day would have been flawless, but the car had a problem, and they had to pull over in the closest station they found. Sheryl parked the car to get the oil checked. It was absurdly hot inside the car when the air conditioning was off. The man's daughter got off and sat in a bench comfortably positioned in the shade. The boy, however, loved the sunshine and decided to take a look at the surroundings. The gas station was located in a tiny plaza shared with a carwash and a colorful two floor building with external stairs. The first floor was shut and didn't appear to be more than a warehouse. The second floor, however, had color light bulbs in display. Even when they were off as they were at the moment, it felt impossible to ignore the line of pink, green, light blue, and yellow bulbs hanging on the wall. Some lights bordered frames with colorful posters inside. The boy took a few steps up the ladder and saw images of drag queens covered in feather boas. In the posters, the night creatures of the queer world had the most ludicrous faces, but he liked them. Before, he had only seen Costa Rican drag queens, but these in front of him were ethnically different: predominantly black with exotic sassiness, more like the ones parading in Rio. He would have stayed in his trance if a sudden shout hadn't interrupted him.

"Baja de ahí que es un bar de cuecos" yelled Sheryl in her marked accent. She seemed upset to even have to acknowledge the existence of the gay bar.

The men at the gas station laughed. Some of them even commented that maybe the boy liked it from behind. The boy felt ashamed, and moved quickly to his sister's side without saying anything.

"Why are you so stupid?" was his sister's welcoming remark.

In a matter of minutes after the incident, but not soon enough to make the shame bearable for the boy, the engines of the car were running perfectly again, and Sheryl paid her bill to leave the station. No one spoke in the car. It was a silent ride to a fancy Italian restaurant in one of the three islands connected by a highway, another sign of Panama's superiority. There, the teenager's father waited seated with a whisky on the rocks, and if there was any tension in the air, he did his best to ignore it. Objectively speaking once more, it turned out to be a delicious dinner and a pleasant night. The boy only seemed to find it hard to swallow at times for no apparent reason.

If the memories of the previous days ended there, the boy would not really mind looking back, but there was more unpleasantness to remember, and the migration office had not opened the stamp window yet. The boy tried to think of something else like the way his mom always smelled like clean and how their small house got cozier when the scent of freshly brewed coffee filled every corner of the living room attached to the kitchen. Instead, he went back to a recent event south from where he was, and a deep sadness shook him to the marrow.

On the next morning, his father disappeared quickly after breakfast, but he did so just to get the engine of the car going and to prepare better to take his kids around the city that had seen him thrive. The itinerary discussed over waffles and cereal included a visit to the Panama Canal, to Casco Antiguo and some other names that didn't really sound like anything the boy and the girl could associate with concepts. It didn't matter much. The route soon took them into a road in the middle of the rain forest and the man explained they were going to drive by the tombs of the French workers who first tried to dig the Canal. Not long after, they were in the Canal, properly speaking, and it was fun to go on top of a building, see how the different doors in the Canal opened, let the ships pass, and how they closed, raised or decreased the level of water, and then let the next ship pass either into the water parting the land or into the ocean. Once they were slightly sunburned and satisfied, they went back in the car to keep on exploring the man's favorite city in the whole world.

The two days hearing how superior Panama was in every aspect started to weigh heavily in the hearts of the teenagers, though. The man wouldn't stop pointing out how Costa Rica just didn't live up to a country "who knew how to embrace the future." With the Canal reverting to the Panamanian people, the local economy wouldn't but sky rocket! The city was so promising that Donald Trump was erecting a skyscraper that would amaze all. It did surprise the father that his daughter noted Panamanian people were right to call the edification "the vulva" since it was hard to picture the building's shape as anything other than a big fat glass vagina. The man loved that there weren't earthquakes in this country –as if it were Costa Rica's fault to be a highly seismic land. The man loved that you didn't see people driving Hyundais, but Ferraris instead. The man loved that lower taxation made Panama so much cheaper to live in than Costa Rica. He did not get much deep into the matter, but it was easy to tell the man wanted to boast how much better his own life was now that the family that used to drain his youth from him was on the other side of the border and that, instead of a rag of a woman, a dark skinned beauty warmed his bed. The man could have worked for the tourism chamber and convince every visitor Panama City was Latin America's Dubai.

They drove around a neighborhood that didn't look like the rest of the city on the way to Casco Antiguo, though. Many houses with tin roofs, prominent T.V. antennas, electricity wires crossing in a mess, and balconies with clothes hanging on them reminded the boy of some neighborhoods in the capital of Costa Rica.

"Dad, what's this place?" asked the boy

"Costa Rica," joked the sister, her words followed by a weak yawn.

"You never want to come here," that was all the father cared to say on the subject. Sheryl said she loved a song that was playing on the radio, and she turn up the volume.

The Panamanian dream kept on going. Casco Antiguo was a delight to the eyes with the colonial buildings untouched by progress, with the vivid flowers hanging from the balconies and with the coziness of the narrow streets full of coffee places and stores. The boy would have loved to get off the car and walk, but his father wouldn't allow it. The boy would have loved to remember the name of all the places they had been to, but it was just too much to take in.

"This is just a preview," his father had said. "You'll get your chance of knowing Panama by heart when you move here. Do you already know how to drive?"

The boy shook his head. His father caught the negative answer in the rear view mirror and said lightly that they would get him an automatic car for starters.

"That's another marvel of this country. You can enjoy driving. Unlike Costa Rica, you can get your driver's permit driving an automatic car, and since the roads have no potholes..." the boy knew exactly where the conversation was heading, and he allowed himself to disconnect from his father's words and to mute all the voices around him. It had started to really annoy him.

He knew Costa Rica was not perfect, but for him, hardships and all, Costa Rica meant freedom. He had tried to get the same feeling around his father, but it was just not working. He had everything in these two days but a minute for himself. He felt oppressed.

"Can you stop the car? I need to smoke"

The man ignored his plea.

"Can we go home? I'm getting tired"

The man seemed upset, but he turned the wheel of his car in the next intersection and started heading in the opposite direction. Suddenly, he had left the Pan-American Highway and the streets were busier and narrower. A line of skyscrapers appeared before their eyes and soon enough, the car was parked in the underground parking lot of the tall building and they were heading upstairs, tension floating all around the thick air of the elevator.

Sheryl tried to say something, but the man said it was not the time. Some long buried memory reminded the teenagers simultaneously that the man, when he was not pleased, would never burst into anger in public but rather take things somewhere private. It felt like that exact scenario was happening right now. The door of the apartment opened, but the striking ocean view in the background did not contribute to dissipate the dark aura everyone seemed to be emanating. Going from frustration to pure annoyance, Sheryl said she would go run some errands, the girl said she'd be taking a nap in the guest room, and the father and his son stayed seated facing each other in the living room, unable to say a word until everyone else was out of their sight.

"What's wrong, son?" asked the father with some concern. He took a deep breath before actually talking.

"I need a cigarette," said the boy with obvious uneasiness.

"I told you. You can't smoke while you are with me. You didn't learn that nasty habit from me."

"Why won't you let me smoke? How does that affect you?" rather than upset, the boy was anxious.

"No son of mine will smoke. Not at least while I am around. You've got to put your mind on higher thoughts. Tell me, don't you love Panama? Wouldn't you like to study some languages, become a realtor for foreign investment in here and make loads of money?"

"I'm not comfortable, dad. I feel like I need to follow a script all the time while I'm in here. Sheryl didn't let me wear a vest this morning because she said people would stare at me. You won't let me smoke a goddamn cigarette. I want to walk. I want to take the bus. I don't want to be driven everywhere and fed like I'm ten. I need my space, and my freedom, and I need a cigarette."

"Kiddo, you're not being rational. You're on vacation. Relax. Things will be a little different once you settle here, for sure. Not too different, though. You've got to make a few sacrifices yourself." Here it felt like the father's friendliness disappeared for a moment. "The deal is simple. You're welcome back in my life but you can't make it difficult like the way it was in Costa Rica. You've got to do your share and start all over too."

"Wait!" said the boy, rage from hell coming out of his eyes. "Are you trying to buy my behavior?"

"I'm trying to pave all the roads I left with potholes. My god! It's not only the streets in Costa Rica that are full of holes. You have downgraded yourself to one! I don't want to see you and picture someone lusting over you as a simple hole," and he looked back at his son, lowering his gaze where the boy's buttocks were, extending his hand as to explain whatever was unexplained of his trope. That was a provocation! Thought the teenager, immerse in disbelief that his father could have, for a split second, tried to come up with an allegory of the potholes and his son's asshole.

"I'm leaving! Buy me a ticket to go home tonight!"

"Can't I try to reason with you? Do you have to see me as a monster? I am giving you a chance, an incredible one considering the social pressure I'm under. "

"You want me to become someone I'm not!"

"I want you to go back to the son you were! This whole nonsense of you thinking you are a woman and your sister thinking she's a man ...!"

"Dad, I don't think I'm a woman. I'm just attracted to people of my same sex. It is the same for my sister," said the boy softly and patiently, almost as if he were instructing his father into a fact that one can't but accept.

"I'm giving you the opportunity to start all over," said the man desperately. "Don't make me change my mind."

"Don't ask us to change who we are, then. We can't. We won't."

"Why do we keep talking about this? Your mother might have allowed it, but I won't! This whole nonsense ..." the man said while he was holding his head as if it ached.

"It's nothing!" The boy yelled just when his father was finishing his sentence: "This whole nonsense . . . is why I left you!" The words took a while to acquire meaning. The young man had certainly heard them right. His father left them because they were queer. He didn't know his father was such a skilled wound opener, but the remarks felt like cold iron piercing the boy's beating heart, warm liquid life slowly and melancholically started slipping away right after.

The teenager froze as if emotionally spent. The lights coming through the big windows of the tower with ocean view blurred. The distant sound of the traffic below went mute. The next thing he knew the world moved, people passed in front of him gesturing, but it was not like he could make any of it. Some forces moved him around, sat him in a couch, came later and hugged him, shook his hands, grabbed his passport and put it back, along with someone he thought he knew, in an overnight bus to San José.

It came back to where he was sitting now, stepping mindlessly on the cigarette butt he had thrown on the floor. To the right, and many miles away, Panama City emerged with its Miami resemblance, with its restaurants in skyscrapers, and its pleasant humidity from the Pacific. The roads were perfectly paved to get there, but he only looked in that direction because he knew he wouldn't see the roads to Panama ever again.

His life had never been like the streets of Panama, picture perfect. His life had had many potholes, and he was not going to trade it for something it was not. Suddenly he was happy to be at the border. He was coming back to San José, and he wouldn't have to talk to the man if he decided to. He heard the rumor of the people around him talking that hinted that the border had already opened, and he moved there to claim his position as first in the line.

"Time to go home," he told his sister. "Let's tell mom that we came back because we missed her."

His sister nodded.