A top smuggler will bring a child by commercial flight for $10,000. But never has it had such a vast and motley audience, as young kids’ emotional literacy is tested by COVID-19 and virtual class. He puts Enrique with four migrant men being routed to Orlando, Fla. He has played this out in his mind a thousand times. A gray album holds treasures: pictures of Belky, her daughter back home. He has a big smile and perfect teeth. He replies that he will do what he wants. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is 7. His mouth is sweaty and sticky. El Tirindaro holds an inner tube. Luis Enrique Motiño Pineda. His temper is quick.

He will simply have to do it himself. It would melt her resolve.

He lives under a bridge in central Tegucigalpa with other runaway children.

Lourdes feeds her breakfast and thinks of Enrique and Belky. It’s a miracle he’s here.”. Enrique says he does not drink Coke--only Sprite. Then they turn north, parallel to it. Look at him! Do you know where we are going?”. Enrique works as a painter during the week. She feels a moment of pure happiness. He sees a cartoon-like Winnie the Pooh soaring in front of him. They cannot do this to her. She has hopes for him: graduation from high school, a white-collar job, maybe as an engineer. It is enough for food, but not for school clothes, fees, notebooks or pencils, which are expensive in Honduras. Some are killed. Now Enrique can do whatever he wants. If she were here, he knows where he might well be: scavenging in the trash dump across town. They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun. Their weight sinks it almost out of sight. Enrique’s Journey. It has no electricity.

Both die. Enrique sinks back into the pillows. Enrique’s Journey invites readers to empathize with Enrique. Then Lourdes turns to her own sister. “Are you Lourdes’ son?” the boyfriend asks. Quietly, Enrique, the slight kid with a boyish grin, fond of kites, spaghetti, soccer and break dancing, who likes to play in the mud and watch Mickey Mouse cartoons with his 4-year-old cousin, packs up his belongings: corduroy pants, a T-shirt, a cap, gloves, a toothbrush and toothpaste. Enrique’s journey is not fiction, and its conclusion is more complex and less dramatic.

Young Honduran migrants rest on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande. When he comes down, he becomes hysterical and insulting. He gives her a hug. Lourdes walks up behind him and spanks him hard on his buttocks, several times. Now he runs faster. Enrique recognizes him from a video that his Uncle Carlos had brought back from a visit. His grandmother runs out of the house. Counselors and immigration lawyers say only half of them get help from smugglers. “Please bury me,” she says. They took buses through Guatemala to Mexico, then hopped a freight in Tapachula. On Nov. 2, 2000, she gives birth to their daughter. He finds him a $15-a-week job at a tire store.

A boyfriend from Honduras had joined her in Long Beach. Two cars pass. Get all the day's most vital news with our Today's Headlines newsletter, sent every weekday morning.

It is Enrique.

Lourdes knows. She cannot carry his picture. “Donde esta mi mami?” Enrique cries, over and over.

When the agents notice, they pull alongside and shine a flashlight into the eyes of the passengers. They take buses across Guatemala to the Mexican border. They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits and gang members deported from the United States.