Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“Those are my things,” she says. “They're private property. They shouldn't be there. If you give them back, I'm willing to forget all about this,” she says, remembering the phrase from some movie she saw recently.

Marcia Parini pauses in her sobbing. For a moment it seems that the pause is some sort of reaction to what her daughter just said. However, a second later it becomes clear that she was just taking in air to cry even harder. From the place where Marcia is sitting comes a torrent of hiccups, sobs and something similar to mooing. Valentina notices that her mother's wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Which means that she left the house in a terrible rush. Marcia Parini is not a person who under normal circumstances would be seen in public dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Actually, thinks Valentina, her mother is a person who would probably rather die than be seen by certain people in jeans and a T-shirt.

“This is all my fault,” Marcia Parini manages to say between sobs.

Then she lets out a hiccup and says something that sounds like “thithewit.” The homeroom teacher continues stroking her back and hair comfortingly, passing her clean tissues from a box that can't have many tissues left in it and every once in a while shooting Valentina murderous glances.

Valentina thinks. She hates to admit it, but maybe Adelfi the retard was right. This time she's gotten into a mess that she can't see her way out of.

“Valentina.” The school psychologist bathes all those present in a gigantic wave of professional consternation. Her face is gathered in an expression of worry that reminds Valentina of her own face when she really has to go to the bathroom and her mother is in the middle of one of her long makeup sessions. “I suppose you're aware that with these two things there's enough to call the police.” She gestures with her head toward the two objects on the table.

To Valentina's right, her mother threatens to choke between hiccups. Her face is turning a vaguely bluish color. At some point a piece of tissue has gotten stuck to one side of her nose.

“What you've written here,” the psychologist continues, “is — is too horrible to paraphrase. It would be horrible if an adult had written it, much less a twelve-year-old girl. Do you really want to do these things to your classmates? And to your basketball coach? Or to me, or to your homeroom teacher?” The string of questions hangs in the air of the school office. Like some sort of foul-smelling gas that no one wants to breathe in. Valentina is aware that three pairs of adult eyes are now watching her expectantly. Even her mother is looking at her above the semi-disintegrated pieces of a tissue. “I can't believe that these atrocities came out of your head. Has someone been giving you ideas, Valentina?” She makes a final theatrical pause. “Has someone told you those things or told you to write them?”

Valentina crosses her arms in the chair that's too big and makes the tips of her feet hang an inch off the ground. The walls of her homeroom teacher's office at the Italian Academy of Barcelona are covered with symbols of national identity. A tricolor flag with a golden flagpole that ends in some sort of a spear point. A framed portrait of Silvio Berlusconi in a place of honor on the wall, right behind her homeroom teacher's desk. Photographs of stupid places in Italy like the Roman Colosseum and Florence's Ponte Vecchio and that place where supposedly they had chariot races but now all that's left is a big hole. Valentina hates Italians. She thinks they're the stupidest people in the world. Ever since her father went back to Italy, Valentina has often gotten into bed and covered her head with a pillow and spent hours imagining natural disasters that destroy Italy and decimate its population. Giant waves sweeping through narrow streets filled with motorcycles. A river of lava coming down the stupid Scala di Spagna.

“It's not your fault,” her homeroom teacher is saying to Marcia Parini. In a comforting tone. “It's not anyone's fault. We do what we can to instill respect and human values in our children. Here, too, in ethics class. Valentina is sick.” She shakes her head sadly. “And we all have to help her.”

“You admit that you wrote this?”

The school psychologist brandishes the manuscript pages the way district attorneys in the movies brandish incriminating evidence. The way she rolled them up and now is shaking them in front of her face makes some of the pages come loose from the manuscript.

“It's not finished,” says Valentina in an apologetic tone.

“And what do you have to say about the knife?” whimpers Marcia Parini. Her face has become a stiff mask in a color close to burgundy. The swelling brought on by her crying has made it impossible for her to open her eyes more than half an inch. Valentina has trouble believing she can really see through those tiny slits. Now that the box of tissues is empty a shiny glow of snot begins to condense under her nostrils. “Were you planning on using it? On someone at school?”

The three adult women stare at the girl. The sudden silence causes the normal school noises to come floating in through the windows. The screams of the girls in the school yard. The squeal of sneakers on the basketball court. The engines of passing cars. Even the far-off hum of the guard's television, two floors below. For some reason, the fact that life continues its normal course on the other side of the closed office doors astonishes Valentina. For a moment, it seems that nothing that is happening to her is real. That she's not in her homeroom teacher's office, and if she closes her eyes everything will disappear. And she'll be back in her bed, beneath the blankets, or maybe locked in a bathroom stall at school.

“I joined Stephen King's Spanish Fan Club,” says Valentina finally. Avoiding the three women's eyes. “They're all idiots. I only did it so they would send me the Publisher's Advance Excerpt….”

Marcia Parini's reaction is surprisingly quick and dead-on, considering her crisis state complete with sobbing and partial hyperventilation. Her arm flies out and grabs her daughter's closest ear. Valentina doesn't have time to duck. The homeroom teacher doesn't have time to stop her. On the other side of the desk, the school psychologist in charge of Valentina's case is too far away to stop her.

With her face transformed into a toothy mask of rage, Marcia twists her daughter's ear furiously. Making her green eyeglasses fall to the floor. Valentina lets out a scream that reverberates throughout the entire school.

Seen from the high window of the hotel where Juan de la Cruz Saudade and Hannah Linus are staying, the storm looks like a living thing. Some sort of living turbulence that advances along the streets, blinded by rage and crashing into buildings. Seven floors below, the street has become a quick, shallow river that drags tons of twisted Christmas decorations and garbage bags. The entire world has turned a dark gray color except for the infinitesimal moments when lightning strikes. In those moments it turns a bluish white color. The few pedestrians that venture onto the street don't so much carry their umbrellas as they get dragged by them.

Juan de la Cruz Saudade is standing on the king-size bed of his hotel suite. Naked and posing in a way that makes you think of bodybuilders posing for bodybuilding magazines. Looking at his perfectly muscular and abundantly tattooed reflection in the room's full-length standing mirror. There is genuine admiration in his face as he looks at himself. There's admiration and there's something more. A blend of sexual desire and that hypnotic fascination with which we watch traffic accidents from car windows or pornographic films broadcast in the middle of the night. Bolts of lightning illuminate his perfect system of muscles and tattoos. The way the storm's electrical flashes illuminate his postures suggests camera flashes. Hanging between his legs, his penis also appears to be posing for a battery of invisible photographers. Partially erect and with something similar to a lazy smile on the glans.