“There!” Adela said in a low voice, and Gaspar scratched softly with his short nails while she stared disconcertedly at the reflected arm. He kept going until Adela said that’s it and took her arm out of the box. Sitting on the floor, she covered her face with her hand. She wasn’t crying. Gaspar didn’t know what was going on. He wanted to ask her if she wasn’t happy, and why wasn’t she happy, and had it had worked or not, but he knew he had to keep his mouth shut for a while. They could hear Vicky and Pablo’s conversation coming from the kitchen, and also the noise of dishes: Betty was cleaning up from the party. Adela broke the silence.

“Why?” Adela asked, and Gaspar realized she was angry. Then he tried to explain that he’d had the idea after a conversation about phantom limbs with his father, who had told him there was a diagram in a book in their library, but she interrupted him.

“No, stop, I’m not asking you. What I mean is: why did the doctor never do this? Or my mom? Why didn’t they ever tell me there’s a cure for when my arm hurts or itches?”

Gaspar opened his mouth, but he didn’t say anything, only shrugged.

“Didn’t they know? Are they that dumb? I’m gonna kill them.”

Now she was crying, from pure rage, her lower lip trembling. Gaspar knelt down in front of her.

“They might not have known.”

She was still mad, and Gaspar let her be. He let her stand up, didn’t insist on asking if she’d liked his gift, let her yank open the door and run to the kitchen, and when he heard the noise of dishes crashing to the floor, Gaspar told his surprised friends we’d better leave, and he pushed Vicky and Pablo through the open door and into the passageway. They heard shouting from Adela and from her mother, but it was impossible to make out what they were saying because one shouted over the other and they were both crying.

“What the hell did you do?” Vicky asked, half running down the hall, while Pablo sighed in relief on finding the gate to the street unlocked. Gaspar didn’t know how to answer. He needed to talk to them to figure out what he’d done wrong.

“Let’s go to the kiosk,” he said, and he checked his back pocket to be sure he had enough money for a Coke.

Gaspar didn’t want to go back to Adela’s house, as Vicky and Pablo suggested, and after finishing his soda he put on his jacket and said goodbye. She’ll get over it, Vicky told him, and Gaspar didn’t answer. He went home. When he closed the door, before he could take a step toward his room, he heard his father’s voice calling him from upstairs.