Chapters 18-20

I read 24 pages.

"Some people are like that, mi vida. First they get older and older, and then they stop and get younger and younger. El Patron believes he's about thirty-five years old now, so he thinks you're his son, Felipe. He can't possibly know who you really are." (page 201)

I think Celia is trying to explain to Matt how when some people get older, they begin forgetting things and going a bit out of their normal state of mind. I'm not sure if Matt gets her drift, but it seems as if she may be trying to tell Matt that El Patron won't be around for as long as he may think.

Chapter 18 Summary: Matt gets woken up by Celia, and they rush to the hospital. He thinks that Celia has brought him to the hospital because she thinks he's sick. She tells him that El Patron has had a heart attack, and he vomits from shock. He gets put on a hospital bed because, "His heartbeat's all over the place!" (Page 180) Tam Lin goes in to see him, and Matt asks about El Patron. Tam Lin tells him that they had to do a piggyback transplant on him. After the transplant, El Patron didn't act as lively as he once was previously. It was obvious that he was slowly beginning to get to the point where he wouldn't be around much longer.

Chapter 19 Summary: One day when Matt was singing a Spanish ballad for El Patron, his voice cracked, then dropped an octave. Matt was a bit confused at this, as he didn't exactly know what was going on. He thought he was just losing his voice, and El Patron just laughed at him and told him to ask Celia or Tam Lin. Later when Matt asked Celia about it, she burst into tears, as she knew he was getting older. It made me laugh at how emotional she was being. Celia and Tam Lin throw him a little coming-of-age celebration out in the courtyard. After Matt goes to bed, Matt wonders if he'll end up like the other clones, being used to transplant organs whenever El Patron needed them. He insists that he's different, and wasn't created to provide spare parts to El Patron.

Chapter 20 Summary: Matt wakes up feeling as if a boulder was resting on his chest, and the only way he could roll it off would be to learn that his fears weren't real. He decides to go to the oasis. Ignoring Tam Lin's warnings about how he doesn't need to go into the water because "the bottom was murky with unexpected depths," he goes for a swim anyways. He thinks about running away but decides not to yet. Matt decides to continue reading The History of Opium. He reads about how El Patron came up with eejits, and how they are used for fertilizer for the poppy fields when they die. I thought that was a bit strange, but understandable since it's El Patron we're talking about here. Matt stops reading, and looks through the book for a photo of Esperanza. He thinks that she looks a lot like Maria, and upon reading the description, finds that she is the ex-wife of Senator Mendoza. Matt now feels anger and hate towards Esperanza, because she left Maria to think that she was dead. He decides that he'll show Maria the photo in the book the next time she visits. El Patron begins calling Matt Felipe, which confuses Matt. Celia tells him that Felipe is El Patron's son, who died eighty years ago. Matt asks her what he should do, and she tells him to be Felipe for El Patron. Matt has a bigger desire to run away from Opium, and Tam Lin had already provided him with supplies. He knew he couldn't leave before Steven and Emilia's wedding though, because he couldn't go without seeing with Maria, which I thought was sweet.