A Song, a Slice, and the Silence After.

It was the hottest day of the year.

That Saturday, I felt like I was glowing from the inside out, standing under a blue and white balloon arch at Jensen Park, trying desperately not to drop the platter of cookies my mom had made. My arms were already sticky with sweat, but I didn’t care. I was buzzing with excitement.

The sun hung like a spotlight in the cloudless sky, blazing so intensely it felt like the whole world had been turned into a giant oven. Even the breeze, when it came, offered no relief. Just a warm, lazy whisper that swept across the grass and made the balloons above wobble and sway.

My sandals stuck a little to the asphalt of the path, and I could feel the heat rising in shimmering waves from the pavement. But it was happy heat, the kind that wrapped around your shoulders like a sun drenched towel after a swim.

My best friend Valeria's family had gone all out.

There was a massive bounce house at the far end of the park, glowing red and yellow in the sun. Music thumped from speakers set up by her tío’s pickup truck, cumbias and reggaetón so loud they made the air vibrate in my chest. The scent of grilled carne asada and fresh cilantro floated through the thick, golden air, mixing with the sugary smell of melting paletas.

Thirty people, maybe more, packed the space with laughter and conversation.

The heat didn’t stop anyone. It made us giddy, like we were all baking together in some joyful communal oven. Folding tables sagged under the weight of aluminum trays: frijoles charros, arroz con pollo, chicharrones, and something her abuelita called pozole rojo that had red sauce so rich it tasted like magic.

Kids from our seventh-grade class were bouncing between snacks and the play ground, their cheeks flushed and hair plastered to their foreheads. Adults gathered near a set of grills with plastic cups full of aguas frescas, ice cubes melting faster than anyone could drink.

Someone handed me one that tasted like watermelon heaven. A cold, sweet, and bright pink miracle in the heat.

I was one of the only white girls there, but it didn’t matter.

Not to me.

Not to them.

“Mi casa es tu casa,” Valeria’s mom had said when I arrived. She hugged me tight and kissed my cheek like I was family. That made my face burn in the best way.

My parents never did stuff like that.

“Get ready!” Valeria shouted from the middle of the grass, holding a blindfold in one hand and a ribbon-wrapped stick in the other. “We’re doing the piñata!”

I set down the cookies and ran over to join the cluster of kids. Someone put on “La Chona” and the bass shook the ground beneath us. I couldn’t stop laughing. Not because anything was funny, but because joy was bubbling up so hard it had to spill out somehow.

We took turns blindfolding each other, spinning around, and swinging at the piñata shaped like a giant unicorn. When it finally burst open in a spray of candy and confetti, I threw myself into the pile with everyone else, squealing and stuffing as much as I could into my drawstring backpack.

My cheeks hurt from smiling.

Valeria grabbed my hand and yanked me toward the cake table. “You’re getting the first slice!” she said.

“No way! It’s your birthday.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And I say you’re getting the first one. Deal with it.”

The cake was three layers tall, decorated in bright pink icing with edible flowers and a glittery number thirteen on top. The moment I bit into it, I had no words. Just frosting, vanilla, and warmth.

That was the exact second it all fell apart.

A bang cracked through the park. Sharp and metallic, like a firework laced with violence.

The sound echoed off the trees, off the metal slide, off the very bones in my body. Then came a hiss, shrill and unnatural, and thick white smoke burst into the air near the parking lot. I thought a bomb had gone off.

Kids started shrieking so high-pitched and raw that the sound scraped at my ears. Adults shouted in Spanish, their voices rising in panic, breaking apart in fear. I dropped my paper plate, the treats scattered like forgotten debris in a war-zone.

More bangs.

More smoke.

More chaos.

Black vans, matte and unmarked, roared up to the curb like beasts out of Hell.

No sirens. No flashing lights. Just silence, surgical and calculated, until the doors flew open.

Then the shadows came.

Dark figures poured out, faceless in helmets and balaclavas. Their eyes hidden behind mirrored lenses. The weapons they carried weren’t holstered or cautious, they were ready.

Muzzles pointed. Boots pounded. Voices barked.

“Hands up!”

“Down on the ground!”

“Do not run!”

But people did run.

Mothers with toddlers in tow. Fathers gripped folding chairs like shields. Teens vaulted over picnic tables.

I stood there frozen, my legs jelly, my lungs a locked cage. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard it felt like it might bruise from the inside. Smoke stung my eyes and throat. Thick, chemical, choking.

Valeria grabbed my arm, and screamed my name, pulling me toward the playground like she could drag us back into childhood, where monsters weren’t real.

I couldn’t move.

All I could do was watch.

A man was tackled to the grass so hard I swear I could I hear the wind knock out of him.

A woman clutched a baby and screamed, over and over, “Mi hijo! ¡Mi hijo!” Her desperation shattered me.

Then something yanked me from behind.

A gloved hand twisted in the back of my shirt, pulling me off my feet.

“Don’t move.”

“I’m a citizen,” I pleaded, like that meant something. “I-I’m white!”

They didn’t care.

Another agent grabbed Valeria. She hit the ground hard, her cheek smacking the dirt. I screamed her name. She screamed mine. Her face was red, streaked with tears and sweat and dust.

“Stop! She didn’t do anything! We didn’t do anything!” I shouted until my throat was raw.

It didn’t matter.

Thick zip ties bound our wrists. My arms went numb. We were marched like cattle toward a van. Valeria was sobbing now. Gut-wrenching, choking sobs, and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t even wipe the sweat from my own face.

Inside the van, it was pitch-black. Hot. Suffocating. The doors slammed shut behind us with a thunderous finality.

Two other kids sat across from us, wide-eyed and silent, their lips trembling. They looked like we did. Confused, terrified, just kids.

I could still hear the chaos outside, muffled through the metal. More screams. More shouting. Then nothing but the engine starting, and the cold, mechanical click of the lock sliding into place.

*****

The detention center was colder than anything I’d ever felt in my life, but it smelled like heat.

The room they put us in was a holding cell with cinderblock walls stained yellow near the baseboards, flickering fluorescent lights that buzzed like angry bees, and a steel toilet in the corner with no seat, no privacy, and no dignity. The whole place reeked. Sour sweat, metal, mildew, and something sharper underneath. Like fear had a scent and it was rotting in the air.

There were maybe fifteen of us, all kids, all zip-tied or cuffed, hunched together on the cold concrete like a pile of discarded laundry. The majority of us were Hispanic. Dark-haired, brown eyed, and small shouldered. Some cried softly into their sleeves. Others were too scared to make a sound. One boy sat with his face pressed to the wall, whispering something over and over in Spanish, maybe a prayer.

I sat with my knees pulled to my chest, the rough floor biting through the thin fabric of my leggings. My fingers went numb. My teeth chattered so hard I thought I might chip one.

The air was thick with the smell of unwashed skin and teenage fear. With every breath, I tasted someone else’s panic.

The guards moved through the halls like shadows. Silent, stiff, and watching. One walked by our door every fifteen minutes or so. Never looking inside, never speaking. When I asked for water, he stared straight ahead like I didn’t exist.

We weren’t allowed to talk.

We weren’t allowed to ask questions.

Valeria was in another room. I saw her once, through a narrow window in a locked door. Her hair was matted to her forehead, her lips chapped, her eyes blank.

That first night, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I curled into myself and listened to someone throwing up in the next cell over. The air was too foul to breathe deeply. I kept thinking, My parents must be looking for me. They’re going to come get me. Any minute now.

But the minutes dragged into hours. The hours into a day.

When I was taken for questioning, the room was colder, smaller.

A metal table. Steel chairs bolted to the ground. A camera in the ceiling. A man in a sharp black suit. A woman who matched his cold fashion. The woman’s perfume barely masked the stink on my clothes.

They asked for my name, my school, my friends, my connection to the people at the party.

I said it was my best friend’s birthday. I said I didn’t know anything. I said I was just there to have fun with my friends.

“Were you aware that many of the attendees were undocumented?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I-I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

They looked at each other.

“Do your parents know you associate with families like this?”

“Families like what?” I shot back, heart pounding, but she just smiled like she’d already made up her mind.

The woman leaned forward. “You should be more careful who you spend time with.”

They led me back to the cell.

The door clanged shut behind me, louder than it had before. The stink of sweat and fear and hopelessness rushed back into my lungs like a slap.

I didn’t cry. Not yet. I just sat down on the filthy floor and waited.

*****

I don’t know how much time passed before they told me I was being released.

Just like that.

No warning. No apology.

A guard brought me into a soulless lobby that felt colder than the cell somehow. Too clean, too bright, too hollow. The walls were gray. The light buzzed overhead. The silence pressed in around me like a vacuum.

He shoved a crumpled paper bag into my hands without looking me in the eye. Inside was my hoodie, now stiff and sour with the smell of that place. My drawstring bag, the one full of piñata candy, little notes from Valeria, my phone, all gone.

Then I saw her.

My mom.

She was standing near the door like a statue, but the second her eyes found mine, she broke. Her purse slipped from her shoulder. Her hand flew to her mouth. She let out this strangled sound, half gasp, half sob, and ran to me so fast I thought she might fall.

She collapsed around me, clutching me like she thought I might disappear again. Her arms were shaking. Her breath hitched in my ear.

“Oh my God, oh my God, I have you, I have you, I have you,” she kept saying over and over, like a prayer she didn’t know she’d been chanting. “I didn’t know where you were. They wouldn’t tell us. I called every number. I screamed at them. No one told me anything.”

I stood stiffly at first, body still tense, eyes still scanning for uniforms. But when her hand cupped the back of my head, I broke. I clung to her like a child, sobbed into her coat, letting the tears I’d buried deep finally rip through me.

We rode home in silence.

I couldn’t speak. I just stared out the window, watching everything, the trees, the passing cars, the normalcy, float past me like a dream I couldn’t wake up from. I didn’t feel safe. I felt like I’d been carved out and left hollow.

That night, I picked at my dinner, barely tasting anything. The lights were too bright. The silence too loud. I finally found my voice and whispered, “Is Valeria okay?”

My mom stopped mid-chew. Slowly, she set her fork down. Her eyes met mine, full of something worse than sadness. “Her family isn’t at their house anymore,” she said gently. “The neighbors said… ICE took them all.”

The room spun. I grabbed the edge of the table to steady myself.

Valeria. Her little brothers. Her abuelita.

Still in there. Or somewhere worse.

Still waiting.

Still scared.

And I was home. Safe. Warm. Free.

It didn’t feel fair.

*****

Ten Years Later

I don’t go to parks anymore.

Not the way I used to.

Whenever I hear kids shouting or someone popping balloons or fireworks, my chest tightens like I’m still thirteen and zip-tied in the back of a black van. I flinch before I can think. I scan for exits. I forget how to breathe.

But I do go to protests.

It’s the least I can do.

I’m older now. Twenty-three. Still white. Still safe. But never again silent.

Today, I’m standing with hundreds of others outside a courthouse down town, holding a cardboard sign that says No Human Is Illegal. The summer sun beats down on us, and the pavement radiates heat through my shoes, but I don’t move. I won’t move.

Next to me, a man with a bullhorn leads chants, voice hoarse but steady. All around us are signs painted with hope: Keep Families Together, Abolish ICE, Freedom Has No Border. Grandmothers, college kids, parents with strollers, we’re all here. Shouting for those who can’t.

Across the street, the counter-protesters snarl from behind metal barricades. They wave over-sized American flags like weapons. Some of their shirts say “Deport ‘Em All,” others say “Build the Wall.” They scream things I don’t dare repeat. Their faces are tight, sunburned, twisted with anger.

I never saw Valeria again.

I’ve looked. Believe me, I searched every social media platform, school record, church bulletin, and news archive I could find. I don’t know if she was deported with her family, or if she got stuck in the system, or if she made it out somehow, changed her name, and started over.

I just hope she’s alive.

That’s the baseline prayer I whisper when I can’t sleep.

Sometimes I remember her handing me a slice of birthday cake, eyes sparkling, like it was the most important thing she could give. I think about the laughter that day, the warmth, the love I didn’t yet know how to name. I think about how safe I felt in her world.

I hope she remembers that part too.

I hope she knows I never stopped looking.

I hope she knows I never stopped fighting.

Because we deserved that day.

And we deserved to keep it.

And someday, I believe we’ll build a world where no one can rip away something so sacred ever again.