Chapter One We drive as if in a dream. Up I-95, past the Triborough Bridge, chunks of black ice floating in the East River. Me and Aisha hunched in the back, a green airline bag wedged between us filled with Ma'sluchisand spiced potatoes. Abba in the front, clutching the steering wheel, Ma hunched against the rattling door. We keep driving even as snowflakes clump on the wipers, and poor Abba can barely see.Coconut flakes,Ma jokes.We'll go outside and scoop them up, and I'll make you somepolao. But the jokes lie still in our throats.

Up the East Coast, past all these places I've seen only in maps: Greenwich, New Haven, Providence, Rhode Island. Hour after hour, snow slanting down. And in my head, words keep drumming:Special Registration. Deportation. Green card. Residency. Asylum.We live our lives by these words, but I don't understand them.

All I know is we're driving straight through to that squiggle of a line on the map, the Canadian border, to apply for asylum. Unspoken questions also thud in our minds.What happens if we get stopped and they see Abba's expired license? Should Ma wear slacks and a sweater so she doesn't stand out so much? Should Aisha drive, even though it's supposed to be a secret that she knows how?We ask some of these questions out loud, and others we signal through our eyes. When we reach Boston, Aisha wakes up and starts to cry. That's where she hoped she'd live one day. Aisha always knew that she wanted to be a doctor going to Harvard Medical School. Even back in Dhaka she could ace her science and math exams, and when Abba was in Saudi Arabia working as a driver, he used to tape her reports to his windshield and boast about his daughter back home who could outdo all the boys. In those days Abba wasn't afraid, not of anything, not even the men who clucked and said Aisha would be too educated to find a husband, or the friends who worried that he'd be stuck with me, his fat and dreamy second daughter.

Sometimes I hate being the one who always has to trail after Aisha. But sometimes it feels safe. I'm nestled in the back, not seen. Ma pats Aisha on the hand. "Don't worry," she whispers. "All this, it's just for a while. We'll get you in to a university in Canada." "McGill!" Abba booms from the front seat.

"A top-rate school!" "It's too cold!" I complain. Aisha kicks me. "Shut up," she hisses, then speaks softly to my father's back. "Whatever you say, Abba." Aisha and I, we never hit it off, really. She's the quick one, the one with a flashing temper whom Abba treats like a firstborn son, while I'm the slow-wit second-born who just follows along. Sometimes I think Abba is a little afraid of Aisha. It's like she always knew what she wanted, and he was put on this earth to answer her commands.

Back in Dhaka when Abba wasn't sure about going to America, she cut out an article and put it in his lap: a story about a Bangladeshi girl who'd graduated top of her class in economics and now worked for the World Bank. "We may be one of the poorest countries in the world," she told Abba. "But we're the richest in brains." Abba laughed then. Where did an eight-year-old learn to say such things? That's the way it always was. Oh, did you hear what the teacher said about Aisha today? "Your sister!" The other girls would whisper to me. "She's different." But what kills me is that Aisha always says the right thing.

She asks Ma if she's low on mustard oil for cooking, or Abba if he asked the doctor about the better ointment for his joints. It's hard to have a sister who is perfect. In Portland, Maine, Abba pulls into a gas station. He looks terrible: Dark circles bag around his eyes. He's wearing one of his favorite sweater vests, but after ten hours on the road it looks lumpy and pulled. Ma scrambles out of the car to use the bathroom. As she pushes across the station, I n.