On the trip there, during the few hours I’d been awake—my aunt liked to get the jump on the day, so we started off around five in the morning—I’d entertained them with the novelty of me. My aunt drove, Camila was in the passenger seat, and Javiera and I rode in back. My head between the seats, I said some words in the Creole I’d learned from my Haitian neighbors. They complimented my skill, which was what I was after, but a little while later my aunt asked me if there were many foreigners living in our building and, a few minutes later, if it was dangerous. She said she’d read an article that mentioned Parinacota as drug dealer territory. “Quilicura, dangerous?” I asked, laughing. Wanting to go on dazzling them, I told them how no one messed with us, how in the projects we were “respected,” and my punch line was about how when we went to the mall—me, Mama, and Mauri—the guards would follow us around. My aunt turned serious. She slowed the car and turned down the radio. She told me it wasn’t good to brag about that, a person had to try to be decent, as decent as possible, and that she and her daughters were decent people. I didn’t know what to say, and there was an uncomfortable silence that Javiera dissolved by asking me what I wanted to listen to on the radio. “Reggaeton!” I shouted with willful enthusiasm, to make them see I hadn’t lost a drop of my joy, or the confidence that went with it.