It had happened again a few nights later. He’d wanted to hold it until morning, but the moment came when he just couldn’t and he had to get up. He decided to turn on the light. The hand had grabbed him while he was fumbling in the darkness, walking with his arms stretched out to keep from running into something. This second time, the hand had grabbed him by the shoulder: it was behind him, in the darkness of the living room. And it had thrown him to the floor. He couldn’t see a thing. There was nothing there, or the hand had escaped quickly. Pablo ran, too, back to his room, and from then on, he never left it at night. He had the bucket if he needed it. He wanted to move.

“I’ll kill you if you leave,” Victoria told him. “You didn’t tell your dad?”

“No. It’s the same hand as when we lost Adela. When we were in the house, it touched me from behind.”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“It’s the same, it feels exactly the same. I’m not gonna say anything to my dad. Every time I tell him I’m scared he calls me a fag. He’s right, anyway. Not about being scared.”

Victoria was quiet. It was the first time Pablo had said it out loud.

“Have you told anyone else?”

“Are you crazy? Gaspar knows, he realized. Anyway, he doesn’t care.”

“It’s normal to him,” said Victoria.

“I miss him so much, I’m afraid something bad’s happening to him.”

“Do you like him?”

“Obviously, Vicky.”

Vicky sighed and said: “Listen to me. We have to make a plan so they won’t call you a fag at school, because they’re going to make fun of you and you don’t know how to fight. We’ll come up with it later.”

That night they slept together in Victoria’s single bed, their arms around each other, and before going to sleep they pricked their fingers with needles and mixed their blood together and promised they would never separate. Then, so that their sleep would be dreamless, they took the pills that Victoria stole every week from her dad’s pharmacy.

Gaspar went punctually to his appointments and almost never seemed angry with Isabel. She was Isabel now, not “the doctor” or “the shrink,” just Isabel. She had gradually cut out the antipsychotic medication and left him only on antianxiety and antidepressant drugs that helped him eat. But he still had those blackouts when he lay paralyzed, sprawled in bed with his pupils dilated, unresponsive to touch.

Luis had had a meeting with Isabel, and she’d told him she thought Gaspar had been misdiagnosed. Luis felt his forehead relax in relief. Those blackouts Gaspar suffers, she told him, are flashbacks, he experiences the trauma all over again, with all the same sensations and emotions. It’s post-traumatic stress disorder, the flashbacks and anxiety attacks are clear symptoms. I want him to see a neurologist again to see whether it’s also a case of epilepsy.