The bag holding the box was in a corner beside the table. Gaspar picked it up and brought it to Adela, but told her: “I have to show it to you alone, I can’t give it to you in front of anyone.”

“Why not?” she asked, and she wiped her mouth and fixed her dark, short-lashed eyes on him.

“Because I don’t know if it works.”

“Such secrecy,” Betty said with a smile, but her eyes were serious. Adela moved fast, grabbing Gaspar’s hand and half-dragging him to her room. Once they were inside, she shut the door.

“So? Show me.”

Gaspar went to Adela’s bed and set the box on the turquoise bedspread.

“Come here,” he said.

Wary, she went closer.

“What is this?”

Gaspar scratched his nose; he was a little nervous.

“It’s called a mirror box.”

“Is it magic?”

“No. More or less. It sounds like it, right? Let’s hope it is, I guess. Stick your arm in here,” he said, pointing to one of the holes. Adela bent down obediently. “Now stick your other arm in the other hole.”

Adela looked at him with annoyance, with incipient anger.

“You know what I mean. You told me you can feel your arm, right? So put it in.”

Now she was looking at him with eyes full of tears. Gaspar felt sorry for Adela as he looked at her there, kneeling on her bedroom floor in a pink dress, her hair in two braids, a girl who never wanted to be different. He felt older than her.

“Ade, I don’t know if it’s going to work,” he said, and he had to clear his throat. “I got it from a book. But I swear it’s not a joke. I would never pull a prank on you like that. Never. Let’s try.”

She hesitated a moment, then said okay, and with her eyes closed, she made a small movement with her stump.

“Done,” she said.

“Great.” Gaspar knelt down beside her. “Now look at the mirror. See? It’s like you had two arms. Tell me where it hurts.”

“It doesn’t hurt. It itches.”

“Okay. Where? But don’t look at me, don’t look at your real arm, just look at the reflection. Tell me.”

The box was open on top, with no lid, so Gaspar was able to put his own hand in and follow Adela’s instructions: the side of the elbow. No, down a little. No, up a little.

“Sometimes it takes a while,” said Gaspar, and instead of continuing to look for the place that itched, he caressed Adela’s hand, her fingers, her arm, and moved her bracelets, for a long time, in silence, until she said, I can feel my arm! And Gaspar then followed her instructions again and found the place that itched, the phantom itch that had been impossible to forget until that moment, until that twelfth birthday on a turquoise bed.