While Pablo was washing his hands in the bathroom—Luis still paid for the water and electricity—he admitted to Gaspar that he’d tried to get into the house a few times. He didn’t have a key, but raising the shutters didn’t seem so hard, nor did climbing over the flat garage roof. But he never could. It was as if the house didn’t want me, wouldn’t let me in. It ended up scaring me. Plus, the last time I tried to get in, it was later that night I felt the hand, it grabbed my shoulder in the bathroom at my house. And that was the end of that.

Gaspar handed him the towel and leaned against the bathroom wall with his arms crossed.

“I’m sure the house kept you out.”

He said this and felt his scar burn. He rubbed it: he wasn’t worried about hiding it in front of Pablo.

“It’s been months since I felt the hand grab me. Almost a year.”

“It’s not gone. Or do you think it is?”

Pablo shook his head. “I think it’s waiting. I was afraid of seeing you again, too, I told you that. I thought if I saw you, the hand would immediately come and find me again, and it wouldn’t let go. But it was the opposite.”

“Let’s go,” said Gaspar. He had started to feel a slight twinge in his eye, the sign of a migraine; he had to take something before it got worse, and his pills were in his backpack. Pablo followed him down the bare corridor. They passed the empty room that had once served as a place of punishment; they looked at the hall, which seemed to be waiting for a party, guests, laughing people, everything that had never happened in that house. When they went down the stairs, Gaspar saw that the glass in the window that had wounded him had been repaired; he hadn’t noticed before. Who had replaced it? Pablo put his arm around his waist just when he started to shake. Let’s go down together, he said into his ear, it’s okay.

The care, the constant care; Gaspar was sick of all the protection, which seemed excessive, and now he understood his father and his refusal, the confrontations with his doctors and sometimes with him or Esteban. Still, he could let himself be cared for by Pablo. They understood each other, he trusted Pablo, though he had changed a lot. All three of them had changed, but Pablo’s change was more significant because he was homosexual (Pablo preferred to call himself gay, and they were all getting used to that much nicer word), he didn’t hide it now, and he had his group of girlfriends from school who went out with him, called him, acted as his companions and his shield against cruel boys. Plus, he wanted to study art, and he painted graffiti. He had slept with several classmates, he said. Watch out, warned Vicky, be careful, you can’t imagine how many patients my mom sees at the hospital. Oh, don’t be dumb, I’m careful, he replied, plus, it’s older people who get infected.