During the investigation into Don Osvaldo’s rapes, the school had filled up with journalists. There were lurid articles about the case every day. Features about how he had carried out his crimes: the palm branches he swept the sidewalk with and that the children jumped over as he spun them around, pretending they were the hands of a clock. The workshop where he repaired the students’ desks and chairs, and where they found underpants and blood.

One day, at the front door of the school, while she was eating potato chips and playing with friends, some men called her over. Today, she is sure that they chose her because at that age she’d had lighter hair, the closest to blond in the catalog of her class. A color that she lost over time. Your hair got darker, everyone said, as though accusing her.

“Do you want to be on TV?”

They put her in front of the camera and asked her to make a sad face, with her head down, and to repeat “No, no.” She would be on the evening news.

The little girl can’t believe it—the nine o’clock news! She runs down the street, her heart bursting with joy. The distance to her house seems interminable and she almost can’t breathe from the excitement. She bursts into the house, jumping, slamming doors, and hitting walls. She shrieks with happiness. “Mom! Mom! I’m gonna be on TV!” She is so eager that she can barely explain the great event. Her mother looks at her with mouth and eyes open wide. She takes her by the shoulders and starts to shake her. She seems deranged, she’s never been like this before. “What have you done?” her mother screams, spraying her with drops of saliva. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you get it? What have you done?” she repeats, and she covers her face with her hands. “Now everyone will think you were raped, they’ll all think it was you.” The daughter bursts into tears. The mother gives her one last shake, then turns and paces nervously from one end of the room to the other. “Everyone will see you. They’re all going to think it’s you.”

The report comes on at 9:15, the first story. While they watch, the daughter eats a plate of lentils, because she’s very thin and the doctor recommended she eat large meals at night. There she is, spoon in hand, and also there, on the screen. One in front of the other, like twins playing at burning each other’s eyes. Because it is her. The image is blurry, pixelated, but it’s her, undeniably. The scene lasts some ten seconds, and right away the phone starts to ring.