“The day we took down Nestor was the best thing that ever happened to Chico and me. It was also one of the biggest mistakes we ever made.” 

Pulga reflects on the moment that began his and Chico’s antagonistic relationship with Rey and Nestor. Although the incident gave the boys a sense of pride at overcoming the bully, Pulga also understands how it increased their danger in Puerto Barrios. Throughout the novel, Pulga struggles to reconcile risk and the possibility of a better life.

“She turns her gaze back toward the streets and lets out a loud painful wail, as if she had been on the shores of grief for just a moment, and now the ocean has come to take her back to the deep again. Sometimes it feels like the ocean won’t rest until it takes every last one of us.” 

Pulga hears Doña Agostina’s expression of grief as she sits outside her house, where women make tamales for the wake of her husband Don Felicio. Doña tells Pulga the vision she had the night before in which her dead husband says he, Chico, and Pequeña must run. This news surprises and worries Pulga, and he wonders what his mother would say if she knew. An oppressive and almost claustrophobic feeling of hopelessness is conveyed by Doña Agostina’s wail.

“We should run.” 

Pequeña says little else to Pulga and Chico after the wake of Don Felicio, except a cryptic statement that something very bad will happen to them soon. She does not tell them about her vision in which they bleed from the throat like Don Felicio; as Pulga does not tell her about Doña Agostina’s vision of Don Felicio telling them to run.