That night, I couldn’t sleep. My mother’s visit left me nervous, though I didn’t really know why. I’d had trouble sleeping in the past, before school or vacation started, but this time the feeling was different. I felt suffocated, as if the covers on the bed were weighing me down. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but the feeling of emptiness only grew. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother as a little girl, small and scared at night. Was that why she went downstairs barefoot in the early morning? Did she also get scared as an adult? I think it was the first time I stayed awake all night; I couldn’t stop thinking about those things. I heard my father come home in the early morning hours. I heard the sound of his key chain as he locked all the doors. Then, more silence in the street and the murmur of the bulbs in the streetlamps, the creaking of furniture. The sound returned with the cars and the first rays of sunlight.

The room was flooded with a glacial blue by the time I finally managed to close my eyes.

I got up past ten and went half asleep to my parents’ room; the bed was already empty and made. It was Saturday, and silence reigned in the house. I remembered the night before, the conversation with my mother, and I went running to Aunt Nana’s room. I needed to apologize for yelling at her. I went through the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen. There was no one there, either. I hadn’t entered that room since Sonia had left, and when I did I was surprised; the same white walls looked totally different, as if they were now truly inhabited. There was a lot of furniture, and everything was covered with photos and knickknacks. Old things. One black-and-white photograph caught my attention. The plastic frame was made to look like chrome molding. In the photo, a woman and two little girls were sitting on wooden stools. The adult was without a doubt Aunt Nana. There was her rounded back, her same affable smile and patient expression. Her hair was short and she was wearing a flowered apron. I went closer to try to recognize the other two girls, and then my own face was reflected in the glass. I looked at myself as though in a mirror, but the reflected image didn’t look like me, it was like another girl entirely. I looked at her. Her face was gray, ghostly. She didn’t even look like a child, more like she was ageless. I felt my chest constrict, and, frightened, I ran to my hideout.