and beatings from her stepfather, Sarah was a compulsive shoplifter, while Debbie and I were always on the lookout, covering for her and protecting her. The truth is that Sarah lived with her single mom and had never had a stepfather, but that imaginary psychopath was as present in our conversations as if he’d been flesh and blood. My friend looked like a grasshopper, all elbows, knees, ribs, and other protruding bones, and she always had bags of candy, which she devoured in one go and then ran to the bathroom to stick her fingers down her throat. She was so malnourished that she fainted and smelled like death. She weighed eighty pounds, just fifteen or twenty more than my backpack full of books, and her goal was to get down to fifty and disappear completely. Debbie, who really did get beaten up at home and had been raped by one of her uncles, was a horror film fanatic and had a morbid attraction to things from beyond the grave: zombies, voodoo, Dracula, and demonic possessions. She bought a copy of The Exorcist, a really old movie, and made us watch it all the time, because it scared her to watch it alone. Sarah and I copied her goth style, always wearing only black, including nail polish, our skin deathly pale, necklaces of keys, crosses, and skulls, and the languid cynicism of Hollywood blood-suckers, which gave us our nickname: the vampires.
The three of us competed in a bad behavior contest. We’d established a system of points for offenses we got away with, consisting basically of destroying other people’s property, selling marijuana, ecstasy, LSD, and stolen prescription drugs, spray-painting the school walls, paying with forged checks, and shoplifting. We kept our scores in a notebook, counted them up at the end of the month, and whoever had the most got the prize of a bottle of the strongest and cheapest vodka on the market, KU:L, a Polish vodka that could also be used as paint thinner. My friends boasted of their promiscuity, venereal infections, and abortions, as if they were badges of honor, although in the time we spent together I didn’t see any of that. By comparison, my prudishness was embarrassing, so I hurried to lose my virginity, and did it with Rick Laredo, the dumbest dumbass on the planet.
I’ve gotten used to Manuel Arias’s habits with a flexibility and courtesy that would surprise my grandma. She still considers me a little shit, a term of reproach or affection, depending on her tone of voice, but it’s almost always the former. She doesn’t know how much I’ve changed, how I’ve turned into a real charmer. “We learn the hard way, and life’s the best teacher,” is another of her sayings, which in my case has turned out to be true.
At seven in the morning Manuel stokes up the fire in the stove to heat the water for the shower and the towels, then Eduvigis or her daughter Azucena arrives to make us a splendid breakfast of eggs laid by her hens, bread fresh out of her oven, and foamy, warm milk from her cow. The milk has a peculiar odor, which I found a bit gross at first but now love; it smells of stables, of pasture, of fresh dung. Eduvigis wants me to have breakfast in bed “like a señorita”—they still do things like that in Chile in some houses, where they have nanas, as they call domestic servants—but I only do that on Sundays, when I sleep in, because Juanito, her grandson, comes and we read in bed with Fahkeen at our feet. We’re halfway through the first Harry Potter book.
In the afternoon, once I’ve finished my work with Manuel, I jog into town; people give me strange looks and more than one has asked me where I’m going in such a hurry. I need exercise, or I’ll be a blimp, since I’m eating like I’m making up for all the meals I skipped last year. The Chilota diet has too many carbs, but you don’t see anyone obese around here, probably because of the physical effort everybody’s always expending. You really have to move here. Azucena Corrales is a little overweight for thirteen, but I haven’t managed to convince her to come running with me. She’s too embarrassed—“What will people think?” she says. She leads a very solitary life, because there aren’t many young people in the village, only a few fishermen, half a dozen idle teenagers high on marijuana, and the guy at the Internet café, where the coffee is instant and the Internet is capricious, and where I try to go as little as possible to avoid the temptation of e-mail. The only people on this island who are incommunicado are Doña Lucinda and me: in her case because she’s really old and in mine because I’m a fugitive. The rest of the villagers have cell phones and access to computers at the Internet café.
I don’t get bored. This surprises me, because I used to get bored so easily I’d even yawn during action movies. I’ve gotten used to empty hours, long days, and spare time. I amuse myself with very little—my work routine with Manuel, Auntie Blanca’s terrible novels, my neighbors on the island, and the kids, who travel in a pack, unsupervised. Juanito Corrales is my favorite. He’s like a doll, with his skinny little body, his big head and black eyes that seem to see everything. People think he’s slow because he never says more than he needs to, but he’s really smart: he realized early on that nobody cares what anyone else says, that’s why he doesn’t bother to speak. I play soccer with the boys, but I haven’t been able to interest the girls, partly because the boys refuse to play with them and partly because they’ve never seen a women’s soccer team here. Auntie Blanca and I have decided this should change; as soon as classes begin in March and we have all the kids captive, we’ll take care of that.
The people in the village have opened their doors to me, though only in a manner of speaking, since no doors are ever locked. My Spanish has improved quite a bit, so we can have sort of awkward conversations. Chilotes have a strong accent and use words and expressions you don’t find in any grammar textbooks that, according to Manuel, come from old Castilian, because Chiloé was isolated from the rest of the country for a long time. Chile gained independence from Spain in 1810, but Chiloé waited to join the republic until 1826, making it the last Spanish territory in the southern cone of the Americas.
Manuel had warned me that Chilotes are distrustful, but that hasn’t been my experience; they’ve been really nice to me. They invite me into their homes, we sit by the stove to chat and drink maté, a bitter green herbal tea served in a gourd, which they pass around, everyone sipping through the same bombilla, a silver straw with a filter on the bottom. They tell me about their illnesses and the plants’ illnesses, which might be caused by a neighbor’s envy. Several families have fallen out with each other due to gossip or suspicions of witchcraft. I don’t understand how they manage to stay enemies, since there are only about three hundred of us living here in a pretty small area, like hens in a chicken run. No secret can be kept in this community, which is like one big family, divided, resentful, and forced to live together and help each other out when necessary.
We talk about potatoes—there are a hundred varieties or “qualities,” as they call them: red potatoes, purple potatoes, black, white, and yellow ones, round potatoes, long ones, potatoes, potatoes, and more potatoes—how you have to plant them when the moon is waning and never on a Sunday, how you have to give thanks to God as you plant and harvest the first one, and how you have to sing to them while they’re sleeping under the earth. Doña Lucinda, who’s 109 years old, as far as anyone can tell, is one of the singers who entices up the crop: “Chilote, take care of your potato / care for your potato, Chilote / don’t let anyone from away come and take it, Chilote.” They complain about the salmon farms, responsible for lots of damage, and the failings of the government, which makes a lot of promises and hardly ever keeps any of them, but they all agree that Michelle Bachelet is the best president they’ve ever had, even if she is a woman. Nobody’s perfect.
Manuel is far from perfect: he’s gruff, austere, lacks a cozy belly or a poetic vision of the universe and the human heart, like my Popo, but I’ve grown fond of him, I can’t deny it. I like him as much as Fahkeen, even though Manuel never makes the slightest effort to win anyone over. His biggest fault is his obsession with order. This house looks like a military barracks; sometimes I leave my stuff lying around on the floor or dirty dishes in the sink on purpose, to teach him to relax a bit. We don’t fight, at least not literally, but we do have our run-ins. Today, for example, I didn’t have anything to wear, because I forgot to do my laundry, and I grabbed a couple of his things that were drying by the stove. I assumed that since other people can take whatever they feel like from this house, I could borrow something