They hitchhiked south. A fisherman took them to Chiloé. A nun driving a tractor took them to the lake district. In a small town called Futaleufú, they found an abandoned schoolhouse with a red door and a garden overgrown with fuchsia. Juan said, "We could stay." Agnessa felt her chest crack open like a geode.
"For how long?" she asked.
But the go-bag is still by the door. And the mango pits keep appearing on the windowsill. agnessa and juan
It was cold. She drank it anyway.
The first time Agnessa saw Juan, she was fixing a fuel pump in a dust storm in the Atacama. He was not fixing anything. He was sitting on the roof of a rusted Chevrolet, eating a mango with a knife, letting the juice run down his arm like he had nowhere to be and no one to impress. They hitchhiked south