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could get shipped back. I couldn’t let that happen. Besides, they’re a lot like us.”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œI mean they’ve lost something big in their lives, something important. They’re in a new place and cut off from the past. We’re refugees too, Mom. We’re a lot like they are.”
    She didn’t say anything. The back door opened and Tamara’s father came out with anaxe. We both watched as he set a chunk of wood on the cutting block and smashed it in half with a crack of the axe blade.
    In the middle of summer, Newfoundland could be a surprising place. From the tops of the hills you could still see a few icebergs offshore. But it was warm outside and the air was full of the sweet smells of bayberry and wintergreen. I had stopped thinking about pushing myself to the limit sailing at the speed of light. Instead, I found that I was quite content to go hiking up into the hills and to pick raspberries, strawberries and bake apples with a beautiful Asian girl.
    I had forgotten about Toronto, about school, about how much it had hurt to lose my father.
    At Tamara’s prompting, I took her parents along one morning for a trek to a far-off berry field. Harold had told me about the place. “I promise you, Greg. This is the raspberrymother-lode.” He drew me a map.
    Tamara’s parents loved the hike through the craggy countryside. They had picked up a little English and we could all communicate better. We were on a first-name basis now. Her father’s name was Ravi and her mother’s name was Indra.
    As we were returning home that day, I felt like I had grown to understand them all much better. And I had come to believe what I had first considered impossible. They
had
just arrived on this remote coast and settled in. They were doing great and nobody seemed to mind at all.
    But as we came to the top of the hill behind the house, the bad news hit us all at the same time.
    There was a police car in our driveway. Two cops and a man in a suit were talking to my mother. I swallowed hard and stared at the scene below. I turned around to assure Tamara’s family that they shouldn’t worry, that we would help them see it through. They were already scrambling away down the backside of the hill, stumbling over stones and running for their lives.
    I sprinted after them. I grabbed Tamara by the arm, spinning her around.
    â€œYou betrayed us,” she said.
    â€œNo. I didn’t. I couldn’t. And neither could my mother.”
    Her father was tugging at her to continue. “Leave us,” he said to me in English.
    â€œI can’t. Please, stay here. You can come back down when they leave.”
    Ravi put his hands on my shoulders. “You go. Find out. Come back to us. Please.”
    â€œYou’ll stay here?” I asked him. “Promise?”
    â€œPromise,” he said.

Chapter Eight
    I waited until the cops got back into their car and drove off. Then I skidded down the steep slope and went inside.
    My mom was sitting on the sofa wringing her hands.
    â€œThey were looking for Tamara’s family, weren’t they?”
    â€œYes,” she said, not wanting to look at me.
    â€œWell, what did you tell them?”
    â€œI’m not a very convincing liar,” she said. “I told them I had never seen any refugees. I don’t know if they believed me. Where are they?”
    â€œUp in the fields near the bog. I think they’re scared again.”
    â€œSo am I,” she said. “I don’t think we can keep this up. That man was from immigration. He’s suspicious. We don’t know what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
    â€œBut Tamara and her parents are happy here. They are good people. You can see that yourself.”
    â€œI know. But we can’t hide them from the rest of the world forever.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œBecause I’m a bad liar. And I don’t like having to lie.