Ten of them in all, like salted fish in a tin can, or caramelized fruit, the kind of things picked ripe and lifelike from the native Salvadoran trees before they were skinned and skewered and shipped in minuscule containers all over the world. The neat rows of shanty houses differed in their degree of deterioration, but were otherwise the same, the ugly metal and clay made up for by the frame of bright sky and waxy trees and thick sweet air. Theirs had a lopsided roof like a tilted silver cap, under the shadows of a lazy palm. The place was small, unsuspecting, as forgettable to the rest of the world as its occupants.

There was Ramona, their grandmother, Ramona who cured all ailments with prayer and cilantro, Ramona who made the best horchata in Central America, Ramona who even the gang members were afraid of because she carried a rifle when she walked down the street and made you feel like you’d forgotten to wear pants when she made eye contact with you.

Mama and Daddy, Selina Diaz, the prettiest gangster in El Salvador, Selina who sang lullabies and combed her children’s hair before they went to bed, and their father, strong and silent, keeping them together while he stayed apart, keeping a handgun hidden in every one of their three rooms.

The youngest, Cesar, called Pequeño by virtually everyone, because along with being the baby of the family he was, in fact, unnaturally small. He was still just a toddler, but the bobblehead quality of being born nearly a month prematurely had not decreased with his young age. The only quiet one, while all the other Diaz babies were bawlers.

The twins, Jose and Carlos, indistinguishable and inseparable, at seven years old already the spitting image of their father, already cutting school in favor of playing gangsters the way kids in another city might play cowboys or pirates, Jose and Carlos, Carlos and Jose.

Anita, who could eat more chili peppers than any of the boys in her school and was famous for it, Anita who smoked her third-grade teacher’s cigar on a dare, Anita who got into a fight with a fifteen-year-old and won, Anita with her hands on her hips and wearing her older brother’s tattered T-shirt like the cape of a superhero.
Enrique, fidgety and restless, Enrique who always seemed to have the right advice to give, Enrique with unruly hair and terrible posture, Enrique the teacher’s pet and best in his class, Enrique, the expert pickpocket and alleged car thief of a particularly corrupt policeman.

Maria Magdalena, beautiful Maria, Maria whose beauty and grace was rivaled only by her mother, Maria, the only one of them flawless with English, Maria desperate to go to the United States, the place that dreams were made of, Maria who talked and dressed and looked like one of those Miami girls, Maria the lady that the boys in fifth grade were mad over.

Finally, Evita, Evita loca, the wild one, the Queen of the Jungle, barefoot and hungry-eyed, the sergeant of an army of misfit beggars and orphans, Evita with scabby knees and tangled hair who convinced everyone she was raised by tigers and was daring enough to try and find one in the jungle to prove her skeptics.

At age nine, Evita Diaz snuck into the backseat of the mayor’s car. He, and his two expressionless bodyguards, had exited the vehicle, leaving only his young son behind. When she got in the car, the boy put his hands up, flinching.

Evita laughed for a good full minute.

He blushed. “Don’t laugh at me,” he said, crossing his arms. “What was I supposed to think, you coming in here like that--what are you doing here, anyway?”

“Breaking you out.”

“I’m not imprisoned,” the boy said, looking at her like she were strange. There was sand in her hair, and streaks of mud up to her thighs, her feet completely blackened with dirt and sand. He had never seen someone so filthy so close. She was grinning at him crazy. She was getting mud the consistency of melted chocolate on his father’s leather seats. “This is my father’s car.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s the mayor.” She was definitely crazy.

“Oh yeah, ha, that guy with the funny mustache.” Definitely. “So, you coming or not, rich boy?”

Another crazy grin, and she tugged him out her side of the car without waiting for reply.

“Who are you?” he asked, as he was jostled behind thick clusters of bent palm trees, Evita shaking one heavily to catch a coconut in one hand before dragging him off again. She stopped, cracked the coconut on a rock and handed him half.

“I’m Evita Diaz, Queen of the Jungle,” she said. “And don’t you forget it.”

“I’m Leon,” he said, and didn’t get a chance to say anything else as he was tugged along again.

Two years past, nothing much had changed, except once in a while Leon did the running and Evita would do the catching up. She knew every back alley, every tiny village, every rainforest, every white sand beach, and he knew everything else, the city San Salvador, like the back of his hand.

She was sitting on the tin roof of a shack, on the outskirts of town, in the light shade of a fruit tree, eating a passionfruit, the juice running down her chin.

“Queen Evita,” he said, bowing.
“Leon.” She grinned.
“Don’t I ever get to be the king?”

She laughed at him, hard. She had a contagious laugh, where you couldn’t help but smile even if you were the one she was laughing at. “You can be one of them boys like your daddy’s got, you can stand beside me and make sure I don’t get shot at.”

“You want a bodyguard.”
“You don’t gotta wear that silly uniform, though, or look tough.”
“I already look tough.”
She grinned at him. “You’re too pretty to look tough.”
“You’re too tough to look pretty.”

She stood on the tin roof, tossing aside the fruit rind. She looked pleased with this statement, but she put her hands on her hips. “Enough talk. I have another jungle to conquer.” She made an elaborate birdcall sound and slid down the trunk of a winding palm like it was a fire escape.

She didn’t wait for anyone, as she ran away, and even now he had to sprint to catch up, tripping occasionally (“if you’d take off your pretty shoes, you’d run faster,” she told him chidingly), easy to spot with her wild dark mane in a sea of vibrant color, but Evita managed to make black eyes look bright.

“Evita!” he called after her, laughing as she did, as she zigzagged through trees to make the chase harder. He’d long since learned not to ask her to wait up, calling her name was the one way to get her attention. He was the only one who called her by name. At home she was Eva, to her admirers the Queen, to Leon’s family a disdainful barefoot girl whose name would never grace their by-comparison mansion.

He was quicker, but the jungle was Evita’s lifeblood, one minute she was squeezing through knotted tangles of vines, the next she was dangling off the highest branch of a treetop. He finally caught her, pulling her into some mud, where they rolled around like the starving San Salvador alley cats, all skin and bones and teeth. The mud smelled like the jungle, the air was wet, and there was a yellow beetle caught in Evita’s hair.

“I win,” Evita said, pinning him down.
“You always do.”
“You always let me.”
He smeared mud out of his eyes. “You’re a girl,” he said. “It feels weird wrestling a girl.”
“You didn’t mind wrestling me when we were kids.”
“We still are kids.”
“I’m eleven and you’re twelve. We are not kids.”
“We are so!”
“Not!”

They started laughing again. Evita flopped down onto the ground so she was looking at the thick shade of treetops, birds flitting around, wailing and chirping their strange calls. Leon watched her instead.

“Why do you want to grow up, anyway,” he said.

“I don’t know,” Evita said. “Mari says if you grow up you get to do whatever you want.”

“We already do whatever we want.”
Evita grinned. “True.”

“And maybe we can’t,” Leon said. “If we grow up. My parents can’t. Do whatever they want. They always have to do things.” He looked up at a bird with a beak the size of a pitcher anxiously.

“Let’s never grow up, then,” Evita said furtively, watching his expression.

“You mean it?” He smiled at her.

“Course I mean it, do I ever lie to you?” She elbowed him, and he rubbed the spot, still grinning at her. “We stay kids forever and you can always let me win.”

“Viva Evita.”

They shook hands, a little awkward lying down, but they did it anyway, solemnly, like a bargain.

They didn’t return home until nightfall. Evita deposited Leon at his house first. He came in through the door, she shimmied up a tree and climbed in through the window, solemnly bade him adieu, and disappeared into the twilight, a thousand evening bugs humming to rival an orchestra, the humidity cooling into something slightly more bearable, a fat yellow harvest moon providing the only source of light. The people of El Salvador went inside and locked their doors and windows, as the night life emerged, darkness calling, the gangsters and the hoodlums and the prostitutes, and through them all a skinny eleven-year-old girl who showed up just as her worried mother put dinner on the table.

“Eva, my wild one,” she said, enveloping her daughter in a hug. “You want to kill me? I will have a heart attack, I told you not to be out past nightfall.”

Evita rolled her eyes but returned the stifling affection. “Sorry, mama.”

“What are you doing, out so late? Rique was home before you and he has a job. It’s irresponsible, Eva.”
“I got lost, mama, it won’t happen again.”
Enrique and Maria exchanged looks. Anita snorted. “Got lost in that rich boy’s eyes, I bet.”
“Shut it,” Evita hissed through her mother’s arms.
Anita smirked.
“I’ll tell mama how you got that split lip if you don’t, Ani,” Evita threatened.
“I think she’d be more interested to know her daughter’s friendly with the man who wants us all arreste--”
“What are my babies all whispering about?” their mother interrupted, sweeping Evita out of the hug. “All this talk, whispers, not in my house. No secrets in my house.” Anita snorted again. “I mean it, Ani. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing,” Evita said, simultaneously as Anita said triumphantly, “Eva’s been out with the mayor’s boy again.”
“The mayor’s boy?” She looked to Evita for confirmation. Her mother was the only person Evita couldn’t lie to.
“Yes, mama,” Evita said, shifting on her heels.
“Eva,” her mother said disappointedly. “I told you not to fool around with the mayor’s boy-”
“We’re kids, mama-”
“Because he may like you now, but one day he’s going to grow up just like his daddy and he’s going to treat you just like the mayor treats the rest of us.”

Evita looked and felt stung. She crossed her arms around her chest protectively. “So am I going to grow up like my daddy, then?” she asked hotly. “Am I going to be in Mara Salvatrucha too?” Mara Salvatrucha was the gang her mother and father were in. It was a dirty word in the Diaz household, and Evita said it like she were twisting a knife.

“Eva.”
“Am I going to shoot people?” Her mother interjected again, but Evita was on fire. “Am I going to shoot someone because they paid me on Sunday instead of Thursday? Or will I be like you, will I kill a boy for an initiation ritual?”
“Evita, enough!”
Evita stopped. She was finished. Her mother looked angry and humiliated. Her siblings, lined up in a row, Maria and Enrique looking away like they were ashamed, Anita disgusted, how dare you hurt mama, and worst of all, the twins, peering out from the bedroom, eyes wide and frightened.
There was a sharp silence, cutting through the warm air that smelled like mama’s cooking.
“Did the mayor’s boy tell you all that?”

“Leon told me all about M-the gangs,” Evita said, the sight of her brothers ripping her heat from her. “Like you never did.”

“Are you through?” Her mother’s mouth was a line. The twins had buried their face in Maria’s skirt. The baby was crying in the other room.

Evita felt tears in her eyelids so she turned and ran, leaving the crooked door with the peeling red paint halfway open, ran past tall shadows and bodies showing too much and not enough all the way to the warehouse, a place that used to sell clothes but now sold deals to the desperate.

She had been told never to go there but then Evita had never had a penchant for following the rules.
“Daddy?” she called through the door. He might be working. She couldn’t hear footsteps, though, or any sound at all, but the scurrying of rats and the breeze through broken windows. “Daddy, are you there?”

The door opened, announcing her presence loudly. The warehouse was dark, a lone lightbulb flickering, humming in tune with the crickets. The concrete of the floor made her toes curl, used to the hard, hot earth. She stepped in something sticky and warm that stopped her in her tracks.

“Daddy.” She couldn’t see but her eyes were closed now, she forced them open. She didn’t feel queen of anything, she felt as young as Anita or the twins, the baby, even, as the flickering light shone like a spotlight over a long lump covered with a white sheet, bleeding red, blossoming like some strange flower. She turned to run again, the ground slick underneath her and she ran the only other place she knew she could go, in a limitless land that only now seemed strange and unfamiliar to what had once been the undisputed queen of it.

She went up the tree and through the window like she’d done just at twilight, a life ago, numbly. It was nine at night, and Leon was reading by candlelight. Evita blew out the candle as she hopped lightly inside, and she heard the book drop.

“You frightened me.”
He moved to relight the candle, but she stopped him. In the light, he could see her cry.
“What happened?”
“Nothing, I...” she stepped backward. In the morning, he could see blood in the usual dirty footprints she left. “I got into a fight with my mama.”
Neither of them said anything. Evita sat on the foot of the bed, he leaned against the headboard. They were no more than silhouettes to each other in the dimness of light.
“Tell me more about the gangs.”
“Evita.”
“Please.”
She fell asleep that way, with Leon reciting her birthright like a history lesson he’d been taught by his father, a bedtime story for frail adults who refused to grow up.

“Evita, I have to go to school.”
She felt light. The bed was the softest thing she’d ever slept on. Usually, it was a thin blanket separating her from ground, with Maria’s hair tickling her nose and Anita’s elbow in her back.
She opened her eyes, and met Leon’s. The heaviness came down on her again. She felt like a blemish in this white, clean room. Her mother was angry. Her siblings were hurt. Her father was dead.
“Do you want to stay?”
She was swimming in sheets. “No, I have to go.”
“Okay.”
She wished he’d stop looking at her like that. It made her want to look away, it made her want to say things she couldn’t say.
“I’ll see you later today?” He was wearing a school uniform, stiff and a colorless dark blue.
“We shouldn’t,” Evita said. “My mama got mad at me.”
“Mine too.” Like he could see right through her, those eyes. “Later this week, then. We’ll bide our time.”
“Yeah,” she stood, slowly, sensing he was waiting for something. “Yeah, okay.”
“There’s always a place here for royalty.”
“What?”
“You can come back.” He fidgeted with the cuff of his shirt. “Any time, ever. The window will be open.”
“I know.”

They offered each other pitiful smiles before Evita crawled out the window again, not running but walking home, El Salvador starting to emerge from its nighttime hibernation. Her siblings were already at school when she returned home.

She hugged her mother, and they both started crying, neither one of them could tell who started. Evita’s father always chided his wife for being too forgiving, but the safety of their loved ones was in such great a risk all was forgotten with the exception of, “Don’t talk about the gangs again, Eva.”
“I won’t, I’m sorry, mama.”
“I know you are.”

Selina Diaz could pick truth from lies as flawlessly as a polygraph.

“And you’ll never run away again, not even with that mayor’s boy?”
“I promise, mama.” They shared the quiet.
“It was hard to sleep,” Evita said. “Without you singing.”
“My wild girl.” Evita felt her mother’s brush pull though her tangles. “Still just a girl.”
There was a pause as they wiped the tears from their eyes and Evita’s hair was brushed, something that should have been painful but was somehow relaxing, a mother’s ritual.
“Daddy didn’t come home last night.” It wasn’t a question, or if it was, it was not the one presented.
“He will come back.”
“Mama, I saw him-”
“He will come back.”
Selina Diaz was a liar when she tried to be.
Don’t tell your siblings, it meant.
Evita understood. She remembered her mother and father having these conversations where secrets were withheld and things left unsaid and wondered it that was what it meant to be a grown-up. If that was what she was now.
“Eva,” her mother said. “You have to take care of them more now. One day I won’t be around and-”
“You’re not going to get killed.”
“That’s--that’s not what I meant, Eva, love--” She paused, resumed brushing, soothing. “I might go away. Far away. So we can have some extra money, things have always been a little tight-”
“Where are you going?”
“Eva, listen, love-”
“Where are you going?”
“America.”
Evita froze, thinking back to everything she knew about the place that seemed like another planet. Her knowledge of America was only what she’d heard from Maria in her wistful descriptions. There were houses that could pierce the clouds, everyone was rich and fair-skinned and beautiful. Anyone could go there and become a millionaire.
“You’re leaving us?” Evita wished she didn’t sound so young.
“I got an offer from an old friend,” her mother said softly, the voice she used when she sang lullabies. “It was very sudden. I’m leaving at the end of the week.”

There was a sharp rap at the door. Neither of them jumped.
The man at the door was tall and broad and said a few quick things to Evita’s mother before both of them left.
She glanced back once at Evita. She smiled, but Evita could see the worry in her eyes.
The door closed, and Evita was left alone. She felt numb. She was waiting, she supposed, for her mother to return, but some feeling in her stomach and the darkening skies told her otherwise.
She was startled out of a reverie when Maria came in through the front door, herding Anita and the twins. Pleasure at seeing Evita returned quickly faded into anxiety at the lack of their mother.
“Where’s mama?” asked Jose. “Is she okay?” asked Carlos. They bounded up to Evita, tugging each of her arms.
“She went to work.”

Their eyes were wide, worried. Mama was always home when they were.
“Did the bad guys get her?” “Is she getting the bad guys?”
“She’s coming back.”
“Is she-” Anita cut in.

“She’s coming back.” Evita stood suddenly, knocking the stool to the ground. The twins stepped away from her, eyes the size of saucers. Maria hoisted them up onto either side of her, giving Evita a sidelong glance as she carried them to the bedroom where they flopped onto the blankets and worked on their lessons.
Enrique still at work, Anita and Evita were left alone.

“One of the boys at school has an uncle who’s a boss,” Anita said. The cut on her lip had turned black with clotted blood, and she was scowling. “He said he heard daddy got in trouble, disobeyed the boss.” Evita didn’t meet her eyes, but Anita stared at her straight-on. “For some reason or other. Said he heard daddy got shot.”
Evita said nothing, stared stubbornly away from her.

“Well?” Anita crossed her arms in the same sharp way as Evita, unravelling them briefly to snap in Evita’s face. “You got something to fucking say? I said, you got something to fucking say?”

“Mama wouldn’t have liked you talking like that.”
Anita, getting in Evita’s face, her face contorting so the scab reopened again and a thin stream of blood dripped onto her chin, retracted, face relaxing. “Wouldn’t have.”

Evita looked at her, face blank. “I didn’t mean it,” she muttered softly, but Anita interrupted her with a harsh, biting, “You’re a liar. A filthy, dirty liar, and I hate you, I hate you, Evita.” She was pounding her small fists into Evita, her knuckles calloused and hard, and she was crying angrily. Evita stood there stoically until her sister collapsed into silent sobs, hugging Evita’s knees. Hesitantly, Evita stooped to embrace her in a hug, as Anita bit on her fist so the twins and the baby wouldn’t hear her. Bruises were already blossoming on Evita’s arms, but she didn’t mind.

Anita calmed down enough to breathe, scrub away her tears, and the two of them wordlessly began to work on cooking dinner. They didn’t make it as good as mama (Anita did the cooking, and she was good at it, but Evita was in charge of heating things up, as the oldest, and overcooked everything just a bit), but there was food on the circle of stools and pillows that made up a table by the time Maria had finished helping the twins with their schoolwork. They ate in silence, the twins shoving each other good-naturedly, Maria uttering prayer while everyone else attacked their food like hungry animals.
“Everyone goes to bed after they’ve finished their homework,” Maria said finally, washing the dishes, eying Evita as though she expected her to be ordaining the commands. There was grumbling agreement. Maria spoon-fed the baby and brushed the twins’ teeth. Anita flew through a mathematics worksheet. Evita sat on the couch and did and said nothing, but Maria didn’t chide her. There was the natural assumption Evita should be in charge. Their grandmother, half-senile and either in the bedroom or with her group of old ladies, couldn’t control them. Maria was too soft-spoken, Anita too harsh, and Enrique always at work. Evita was oldest, anyway, and usually authoritative. It wasn’t like her to be so quiet and motionless.

She didn’t move until the twins peeked their head out of the doorframe and one asked a little nervously, “Evita? Will you sing to us?” “We can’t sleep,” finished the other.

Evita looked at them, dimmed the lights and went into the bedroom. She sang softly until her voice was hoarse, brushed hair until it was smooth and silky. Anita sat for her first, her hair short and choppy at the back from when she’d decided to cut it herself several years ago and it had grown back uneven. No one questioned anything. She sang until even Maria was asleep, her long hair fanned out on the pillow like Sleeping Beauty. She sang and when she stopped the house was eerily quiet, until Evita bolted suddenly, quietly, as lithe and quick as a jaguar. She closed the front door and slid down the outside of it. She realized she was still holding the hairbrush and threw it as far as she could, like she were holding something contaminated with a contagious illness. She was breathing hard, hugging her knees. The metal of the door was cold against her bare skin, the breeze was cool and pleasant, shuddering the plantlife gently. She caught her breath and she ran again, with her eyes closed sometimes. Her feet knew the way. Her breaths and her feet and her heart beat in sync, a heavy pounding so loud it blocked out everything else, the noises of the jungle and the city and of Evita’s thoughts, so when she climbed up the tree outside Leon’s window and the rhythm broke, she found herself momentarily disoriented. There were tears on her face she weren’t sure how they’d gotten there or when she’d started crying, during her mama’s song, maybe, or when she was running and had forgotten she was not supposed to cry. She crouched on the branch but didn’t enter for a moment, but he noticed her, sitting on his bed again, reading a book with a single candle. The window was cracked half-open, as promised, and every gentle breeze was a threat of death to the candlelight.

“Evita.” He put down the book and came to her at the window, leaning out on the sill, close enough the skinny end of another branch was brushing against his face. “I thought you weren’t--are you crying?” The final word was cut off as she leaned forward just slightly, just enough so they kissed, their teeth colliding, a hard kiss.
“Run away with me.” Her eyes had never looked brighter.

“Evita?”
“I’m serious, Leon,” she was grinning a little manically, nothing unusual, but there was something different in her voice. It was hungry and desperate. That, and everything, the crying, the kiss -- it made her seem dangerous. “Let’s run away together.” His parents had always warned him, those gang members, they’re dangerous. Evita had never seemed dangerous before.

“Evita...” She knew his answer. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said, “Nothing we can’t leave behind. Let’s go. We never have to--”
He caught her by the wrist. “Tell me.”
The smile faded. He watched her face, a truly inspiring transformation, as it hardened, incomprehensible, but her eyes betrayed her, or maybe he just knew her too well, and they were afraid. “Everything’s fine.”
“You said you’d never lie to me.”
“Good-bye, Leon.”
“Evita, wait--”
“Good-bye.”
He went after her, but it was dark, and Evita was good at losing people.

Maria woke everyone up early and by the time Evita awoke, they were off at school. There were dried tears on her cheeks and leaves in her hair. A cut fruit was waiting for her on the stool, as was a tired Maria.
“You didn’t go to school today.”
“We’re out of food and the twins have worn the same shirt the whole week,” Maria said flatly. She was hand-washing clothing in a large bucket.
“I could have--”

“It’s fine.” Maria was not so good at concealing her emotions, but she sounded more tired than angry.
It was nothing for Evita to miss school, she did so all the time, but Maria was the smartest girl in her class, learned English from reading the newspapers, could do math better than the eighth-graders. She was never late, much less absent.

“Why did you let me sleep in?”

“You needed it.” Maria wiped off her hands, took a clean washcloth and wiped Evita’s cheeks, plucking the leaves out of her hair. She was wearing their mama’s apron. She pulled a small orange notebook out of it. “You know anything about this?”
Evita flipped through it. Mama’s quick grocery list scrawl, dates and times, a cargo plane with produce on it flying to San Francisco.
“She was going to go to America, before she...”
Maria nodded. She’d gathered, from the notebook. “She told you.”
“Yeah,” Evita said. “Just before.”
An idea came to Evita just before Maria vocalized one she’d clearly been sitting on. “You should go.” At the same time, in the same pitch. They looked at each other funnily.

“You’ve been wanting to go to America since you were the twins’ age. You work hard, you deserve it, this is it. This is your opportunity, Mari. Walk those streets paved of gold.”

She shook her head. “I’m not brave enough,” she whispered. “They’ll eat me alive, Evita. I couldn’t stand living in hiding, grifting, pretending I belong. I couldn’t stand to be alone. You’re tough, Evita. You’re brave.”
“You don’t want this life.” Evita gestured to the foamy washbin.

“Neither do you.”
Evita was expressionless.
“Mama knew you could do it,” Maria said. “That’s why she told you.”
“She told me to protect the family!”
“Then protect us.”
Evita found it infuriating how calm Maria managed to stay. Then she felt like crying again, because mama had the exact same trait.
“I don’t know if I can say good-bye.”
Maria tucked a strand of Evita’s hair behind her ear. “Then slip away after we’ve gone to sleep,” she said lightly. “You’re very good at it.”

She kissed Evita on the cheek and resumed her washing. Evita sat by her and asked questions about America, mostly to hear her voice, because when she closed her eyes, Maria sounded just like mama.

On Sunday night, a cargo plane carrying mostly coffee, sugar, and an assortment of fresh fruit, owned by a grocery conglomerate in the United States, took off. Its pilot was a man who had once been infatuated with his neighbor, a pretty young woman named Selina who had gotten caught up with a gang, and who, as far as he knew, had been the thin silhouette that darted into the plane and settled in between two crates of sugarcane. All was quiet as the plane took to the skies and Evita Diaz got her first glimpse of the stars, like holes in the stifling blanket of night.

Maria Magdalena looked up at the moon and whispered a prayer, before turning to her siblings to tell them the news: their mother was alive, in America, to send some extra money home, and Evita, the wild one, had run off with the mayor’s son.

For one thing the Diaz family all shared was the ability to be an excellent liar.