Ways of Going Home: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

next to her, I wanted to say something but my voice wouldn’t come.
    The bus pulled up and I had to decide, in a matter of seconds, whether I would follow her onto it. At that time I already rode the bus alone, but only on the short, ten-minute ride to school. I got on and rode for a long time, a bold hour-and-a-half foray I spent rooted to the seat right behind hers.
    I had never traveled so far from home on my own, and the powerful impression the city left on me is, in some way, the one that still rears up now and then: a formless space, open but also closed, with imprecise plazas that are almost always empty, and people walking along narrow sidewalks, gazing at the ground with a kind of deaf fervor, as if they could only move forward along a forced anonymity.
    Night fell over that forbidden neck as I looked at it ever more fixedly, as if staring would free me from that flight, as if watching her intensely would protect me. By that point the bus was starting to fill up and one woman looked at me, expecting me to give her my seat, but I couldn’t risk losing my place. I decided to act like I was mentally retarded, or the way I thought a mentally retarded boy would act—a boy who looked straight ahead, entranced and completely absorbed by an imaginary world.
    Raúl’s supposed girlfriend got off the bus suddenly and almost left me behind. I barely made it to the door, elbowing my way out. She waited for me and helped me down. I kept moving like a retarded child, though she knew full well that I wasn’t a retarded child but rather Raúl’s neighbor who had followed her, who seemed resolved to follow her all night long. There was no reproach in her gaze, though—only an absolute serenity.
    I ventured with pointless discretion into a maze of streets that seemed big and old. Every once in a while she would turn around, smile at me, and speed up, as if it were a game and not an extremely serious matter. Suddenly she started to trot and then took off running, just like that, and I almost lost her; then I saw her go into a shop far ahead. I climbed a tree and waited several minutes for her to finally come out, assuming I would be gone. Then she walked just half a block farther, to what had to be her house. I waited until she had gone in and I went closer. The fence was green and the facade was blue, and that caught my attention, because I had never seen that color combination before. I wrote the address in my notebook, happy to have gotten such exact information.
    I had a hard time getting back to the street where I had to catch the return bus. But I remembered the name clearly: Tobalaba. I got home at one in the morning, and I was so frightened that I couldn’t even outline a convincing explanation. My parents had gone to the police, and the affair had leaked to the neighbors. I finally told them I had fallen asleep in a plaza and had only just woken up. They believed me, and later they even made me see a doctor who checked me for sleep disorders.
    Emboldened by my discoveries, I arrived at our Thursday date firmly intending to tell Claudia everything I knew about Raúl’s supposed girlfriend.

 
     
    But things didn’t turn out that way. Claudia arrived late to the meeting, and she wasn’t alone. With a friendly gesture she introduced me to Esteban, a guy with long blond hair. She told me I could trust him and that he knew the whole story. I tensed up, disconcerted, not daring to ask if he was her boyfriend or cousin or what. He must have been seventeen or eighteen years old: a little older than Claudia, a lot older than me.
    Esteban bought three marraquetas and a quarter of a kilo of mortadella at the supermarket. We didn’t go to the temple. We stayed in the plaza to eat. The guy didn’t talk much, but that afternoon I spoke even less. I didn’t tell Claudia what I had discovered, maybe as a form of revenge, since I wasn’t prepared for what was happening; I couldn’t understand why someone else was allowed to