“Yeah, that’s enough for today,” I declared. “The waves are lame.”

I quickly got out of the water, taking long strides against the current, overcoming it. I didn’t say goodbye, and there were no plans to meet up again.

“Where’s your friend?” Javiera asked when I went over to dry off.

“I got bored,” I said. “He’s so dumb . . .”

“It’s just that no one is as brilliant as you, my dear Nicolai,” she said, smiling, and she tickled my wet stomach.

“The only good thing he had was the four-wheeler,” I confessed, and I felt a little lighter.

But then I saw my friend’s orange head appear, and I felt a hammer come down on my chest. Lucas ambled over with a foolish and threatening smile.

“Hey, Nico,” and he stopped to stand in front of us. “Ask your mom if you can come to my house today.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I replied. “Bye.”

I started to nervously play with the sand. All my concentration on the sand, picking it up with one hand and letting it fall into the other. The sky was cloudy like every morning, but Javiera’s eyes burned me like the desert sun. Lucas turned around, and after running off he shouted awkwardly:

“And tell her she’s really pretty . . . and your sister, too.”

We watched him run over the sand, trip, get up, and keep running toward his beach house. It was very funny to see the fat redhead fall, but there was no laughter. Javiera didn’t say anything for a time that seemed endless to me. We looked out at the ocean, and I pretended nothing was happening. But I knew that Javiera had realized everything, and she knew it wasn’t just a simple misunderstanding. It was also clear that she wouldn’t ask me anything, much less scold me. She would keep to a perplexed silence, and that was even worse.

At a certain moment our eyes met. Mine distraught, hers intense. Behind that intensity I thought I saw disappointment, and beneath the disappointment something even worse: pity. Poor abandoned child, it’s not his fault. My whole body tensed and I gave her a defiant look. I wasn’t about to let people pity me, but then she smiled. “My Nicolai,” she said, “my darling Nicolai . . .” and she lunged at me, pressing her whole weight on me, spreading her black hair that smelled like conditioner over my face to cover my eyes. And she planted kisses on my neck and head. “Nicolai . . . my dear Nicolai,” she repeated, collapsing onto me again and again, like the languid heroines of the stories she was reading, and I played along, laughing and tickling her to get her off me.