"The procession on the 24th of November. I know it. Go on."
"The medium, Madame Geneve, as she called herself, closed the heavy velvet curtains. The room plunged into darkness. I sat with my hands resting on a dark wooden table. She was on the other side of the table. She began to call out my son's name. I felt stupid and petty at that point. How could I put my pain in that woman's hands? I knew she'd been in jail for fraud, but she lived in my neighbourhood, she was a stone's throw from my house, and the death of a child doesn't make you lucid. Yes, I was confused…"
(pause. Start sobbing)
"Please, you don't have to justify yourself. I'm not here to judge you."
"Y… yes, of course. I wanted to leave, when suddenly I heard blows in the window. You know that noise that glass makes when it's hit by big hailstones?"
"Yes, I do. Only it wasn't hail, was it? Tell me, didn't you think of a trick?"
"I don't know what I thought. It just happened out of the blue. And then, no. It wasn't a trick. I know because when Madame Geneve moved the curtains, she screamed. She was frightened. I say, if it was a trick, what was the point of screaming in fear?"
(nodding)
"The ticking became louder, you could hear the noise even over the rooftops. The medium was at the window to check what was going on. The fog had lifted outside. But we still saw the coal hit the building."
"Coal? Coal falling from the sky?"
"That's right. Pieces of burning coal. It was banging on the tiles, on the wall. "Big and hard enough to dent the gutters."
"How did you react? Did you get scared?"
"Look, it's funny to say, but I was calm. An unusual calm. In fact, I was almost happy. I had deluded myself that it was a signal from my son. I was certain of it. But the psychic was terrified. I found myself calming her because Luca was there. He was there with me. And it was because of her. But she said it had nothing to do with what was happening. All she had to do was read me the papers, or something, she said.
Like all the other bums, she was shuffling holy with the layman. Then the window suddenly opened wide. Pieces of coal fell into the room and hit the medium. The poor thing fell to the floor and lost a slipper.
I don't know why the slipper stuck me. But it was all a blur at that point. Everything else, except the slipper that stuck to the carpet, is vague. I remember the table hit by the burning coal, the carpet that started to catch fire. It almost seemed as if that rain was hitting us as if to get us out of that place.
A sort of warning coming from the sky. I tried to escape but the door was closed and wouldn't open. I was hit by some kind of fire. I got scalded and bruised. The blows hurt. Well, I don't know if what I saw was real. I just know that I wasn't calm or happy anymore. At that moment, I felt a dark and evil presence. I was terrified. I screamed. I realized no, it couldn't be my son. The last thing I remember was the statue of the patron saint. It was made of marble, very heavy, at least that's what it looked like to me. Before I fainted, I saw the statue fall. Madame Geneve was on her knees, hit on her back by large pieces of coal, but unable to find her slipper.With all that was going on, she was thinking about that shoe. I understood that she was trying to escape from that malignant reality by diverting it to simple, banal thoughts. What would be the point of fixing on a stupid wool slipper? That's when the statue fell on her and hit her on the back of the head. The poor woman's eyes turned to stare at the ceiling, the white of the sclera glittering in the light of the
fire. A bloodstain came out of her head, spreading across the carpet. Then darkness. They found me an hour later at the bus stop. I don't know how I got there. I hoped I'd imagined it all. I thought the stress of losing my son, the medication I was taking to withstand pain that can't be explained, was causing the hallucinations. I held on unnecessarily to that hope. The night the police arrived in the neighbourhood. Madame Geneve had been found dead. Everyone thinks it was a murder. But I know what happened. It was something bad that killed her. The same thing that killed my son."
(witness begins crying again)
"Why didn't you go straight to the police?"
"Because I was afraid! I couldn't tell them what I saw. They'd think I was crazy. Above all, I didn't want to be accused of murder."
"You are aware that when the medium was found on the ground with a broken skull, there was an inscription on the wall marked with a piece of coal: 'Decus et Damnationisʹ. Beauty and Damnation. What do you think that means?"
"I… I don't know. I swear I don't know."
(Crying)
"Thank you for your testimony. I have no further questions."
"Just one last thing: the coal… the house was full of coal. Has anyone seen it?"
"No. They didn't find anything."
End of recording.
3
Professor Marzioli was a stiff and dusty guy, with his goggles hovering on the tip of his aquiline nose, with his jacket and a bow tie worn to give him the appearance of an intellectual.
Torquato Tasso had a Catholic upbringing. The influence of Petrarch's poetry can be recognized in the Rhymes of Love…'.
As usual, Marzioli would explain the lesson with the enthusiasm of a gravedigger who was measuring a deceased. Guido noticed that Daisy was not taking notes. She was nervously drumming her pen on the counter, the air of those chasing distant thoughts.
When the badger lesson was over, a collective sigh of relief rose up. The professor had managed to make even the scholar's restless life surprisingly boring. Lorena said goodbye to Daisy and left in a hurry. Her father waited for her at the entrance in overalls, sitting in the van loaded with boiler tubes. He was supposed to take her to the Leopardians' high school team match. Lorraine didn't like football, but she had a crush on Christian Skendery, a full-back with solid shoulders and a fiery gaze.
Daisy greeted her friend and crossed the dark avenue in the face. Guido hurried to catch up with her.
"Daisy, can I talk to you?" he asked nervously, hoping she would not tell him to go to hell. She stopped. She looked at the boy arching her eyebrows, abandoning her thoughts and concentrating on his contrite face.
"I'm sorry about the picture" he exclaimed with a shrug of his shoulders, as if to say that the damage was done and could no longer be repaired.
"It's not that important" Daisy dismissed, noting how nervous the boy was. She, the grumpy air of those she hadn't completely forgiven, walked down the avenue, assuming he would follow her.
Guido took courage and hastened to catch up with her. They walked side by side through the row of plane trees that led to the exit. Autumn spread the first leaves on the pavement. Two boys would pass each other a joint sitting under a sycamore tree with an imposing bark, the sunlight slipping through the branches and breaking into many small, glistening rays. ‘Apart from that, it's a very romantic picture’ Daisy thought. Guido tried to have a little conversation. She replied in monosyllable, single-syllable fashion, because she was thinking about the comment posted on You Tube again.
Adriano must stop looking for me. Or he'll come to a bad end.
She found it a horrible joke. All his friends knew he was sick. What was the point of hurting a disabled person?
"Daisy, are you all right? You've got a strange face" Guido worried.
"No, it's nothing. It's just that I'm lost behind certain thoughts” she replied by having her lower lip sticking out to blow on her bangs. Sandra waited for her in the car while a traffic policeman watched the four lighted arrows without patience.
Guido watched Daisy turn the corner. Although he didn't see him raise his hand to greet her, his gaze was captivated by her curves moving seductively under her grey coat. She walked with the certainty that her eyes were on her.
ʺShit. Guido Gobbi… Shitʺ thought, but she could no longer deceive herself, or deny that her feelings could change just because she tried so hard to avoid it. She realized it was time to face reality. She turned to Guido with a careless
expression. "Ah… I forgot” she said. She hadn't really forgotten anything.
She had imagined an infinity of times.
ʺOk. I'll have to pretend it's nothing. It has to give me an idea that it's not that important to me. It's nothing… Be brave and keep calm… ʺ.
Daisy told him at the drop of a hat.
Guido faded from surprise. He thought he didn't quite understand.
"S… Sorry, can you repeat that?" he asked.
She huffed and puffed. "But if you don't want to, I can't make you."
"Of course I want to. Saturday's perfect” he said, his ears lit up with a red steal.
Guido couldn't focus on the magnitude of it.
Daisy had invited him to go out with her.
"So I'll see you Saturday” said the girl with a pout, as if she had a hard time with fate, guilty of setting her on the path she had tried so hard to avoid.
He saw her get into her mother's Cherokee. She did not turn around to greet him.
Guido walked down the road without really knowing where he was going.
ʺI have an appointmentʺ repeatedʺ. The grey patina of his life was as if it had been blown away suddenly, and now everything around him shone with colour. A rainbow of emotions that he could grasp without feeling it slipping through his fingers. He felt so happy and so in tune with the world that he wanted to embrace everyone he met on the way home: a mother pushing a stroller, a child enchanted by a balloon vendor, an old man sitting on a bench, a gentleman in a suit looking for a taxi, a tramp lying on the sidewalk resting between the folds of a cardboard box…
Yes, he would have wanted to embrace the whole world.
He and Daisy would have seen each other on the weekend.
He began counting the hours that separated him from her, the clock hands that suddenly became unbearably large, heavy, and slow.
The low pressure weighed down the sky with grey, threatening clouds. Leponex's tablet was on the medicine drawer, put there to remind Daisy's mother how tragic and complicated her life still was.
Adriano, with his face emaciated and tired, his black hair crushed on his forehead, his gaze wandering about without ever deciding where to settle, had not attended school since the age of twelve. The disease was cruel, the support teachers non-existent, beheaded by linear government cuts.
Adriano was followed by a teacher who constantly visited him once a week. Forty-five thousand euros spent in four years. The doctors said that his father's suicide had awakened an evil already written in his genes.
The first symptoms appeared when he was twelve, a surprisingly early age for the disease. Sandra began to suspect that something was wrong when Adriano, who was round and rosy, suddenly began to lose weight. She washed lightly, refused to study, slept on the carpet, and when she went to the bathroom she got dirty everywhere.
One day he started lowering the shutters on all the windows in the house.
He said he was being spied on by someone. Evidence of a dark evil that had begun to seriously worry his mother. The psychologist deduced that Adriano had failed to process the trauma of the suicide. The tragedy occupied all his thoughts and left no room for anything else. As for feeling spied on, it could be interpreted as an indication of a persecution mania.
Then the hallucinations began: Adriano watched the inhabitants of Castelmuso die one by one. He gave names and surnames, even writing down the date of their death.
One day he took a can of gasoline from the garage and dragged it to the entrance of the cathedral. He was stopped firmly by the chaplain.
Adriano insisted that he had seen a face all black beyond the iron grille of the confessional. He thought it was a demon, which is why he wanted to purify the cathedral with fire. That same afternoon, Sandra accompanied him to the Umberto II hygiene and mental health centre, where the boy was kept under observation for seventeen days. That was the first of four hospitalizations.
It had been three years since he was diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia. Since then, Sandra Magnoli had visited the office of Professor Roberto Salieri, the psychiatrist who followed Adriano, every week.
Sandra parked on the white lines reserved for a modest restaurant, a few steps from the study.
Adriano got out of the car with the slowness of an old man. The active ingredient of clozapine prevented hallucinations, but the side effects caused him drowsiness, obesity, muscle spasms, speech and walking problems. Medication was a necessary evil. Without them, a dog could become a monster covered in scales. With medication, a dog remained a dog.
Sandra took her son under her arm. They turned the corner and were greeted by the waiter at the restaurant, who was hastening to put up the chairs and take the tables off the sidewalk because the sky was threatening to rain.
The study was on the second floor of an austere mansion, with the entrance door surmounted by an important travertine arch. The windows overlooked the boulevard that cut through the old town, just a stone's throw from the old water tower that still supplied the country today.
Sandra and Adriano slipped into the elevator, an elegant wrought-iron cage with wooden doors, purple-red interior and Art Nouveau mirror. Adriano, who suffered from
claustrophobia, gasped until the elevator opened onto the second-floor corridor.
The name of the psychiatrist Roberto Salieri was clearly engraved on the front door. Greta, the doctor's assistant, had them sit in the waiting room, a room with high, frescoed ceilings, furnished with two large damask velvet sofas with smooth, worn-out pillows, as if they had succumbed over the years under the weight of patients' neurosis.
Although they scheduled the appointment for 10:00 a.m., one patient took longer than she should have, and Sandra took the opportunity to read a two-month-old supplement. The sky reflected a dark colour over the country. The rain began ticking on the windows. Adriano observed the drops set one by one on the window. First they appeared sparse, then they started pounding insistently, becoming a rough downpour of water. The roar of thunder made Sandra jerk.
The professor's assistant entered the waiting room, his hand pressed his chest, and the air was a little frightened by the roar.
"Come, Adriano. Dr. Salieri is waiting for you."
The doctor's office was furnished in an unusual and refined manner.
Some people thought it was a whim that underscored a certain megalomaniac in Salieri. In reality the psychiatrist simply wanted to respect the dignity of the patients by surrounding them with objects of good taste.
The desk was the last purchase of a certain value: a mahogany table with a magnificent mother-of-pearl inlay in the centre. Adriano noticed that the sofa filled with fluffy Chinese silk cushions had been moved to the wall, the silver service and the majolica vases removed from the old desk and resting on the Victorian-style septet. The ruby Persian rug was laid proudly in the centre of the room. The office, as always, was pervaded by the scent of orchids in tall, thin crystal vases.
The psychiatrist placed the mobile phone on the table, to use it as a tape recorder. The professor, with the consent of Adriano's mother, always recorded the sessions, and then attached the audio files to the boy's medical records.
"So, Adriano, how are you?" the doctor asked, looking at the notebook to review the notes taken during the last session.
Adriano did not answer. He reached the window. He wanted to see the rain, which now fell less insistent. The doctor, his forehead furrowed with thick horizontal wrinkles, lifted his deep, black eyes toward the window. The mist was turning the sloping roofs of the buildings grey.
"It's not raining anymore. But there is fog…" he said with a thickly voice.
Adriano moved the heavy velvet curtains away. The storm was moving north, thunder farther and thinner.
"It is like the mist of I’m Rose."
"How many times have you watched this video in the last month?"
Adriano muttered something the doctor didn't quite understand.
"Come on, Adriano, make an effort and be clear. Don't you have anything to tell me about the video?"
"There's fog… on the video… but I didn't put it there…" Adriano muttered.
"You're repeating yourself, boy."
Adriano replied with an anxious moan. As always, he was impatient with the idea of taking the session.
"Let's watch the film together, shall we?" proposed Salieri.
"I… no… I…"
"Are you always afraid of what's inside?"
Adriano nervously smoothed his pale hands. After a long silence, he painstakingly said, "He knows. He knows that I have seen him. The fog has put him there…"
"Go on” the psychiatrist encouraged him, focused on writing in his notebook.
"I get it. I understand that he's putting down roots…" said the boy, while outside the mist covered the whole course in grey. The tower of the old aqueduct disappeared from the horizon. Adriano stared at the fog as if he were watching an unbearable threat.
"He will rain down on the wicked burning coals. Fire and sulphur and fiery wind will be their portion" he said, reciting a passage from the Bible with anguished reluctance.
Salieri deduced that Adriano had become accustomed to Marxotal, an antipsychotropic that he had been taking for two months, and delirium was the first sign that the drug was ceasing its effect.
"So now read the Old Testament. You quoted Psalm number eleven, if I'm not mistaken. A psalm by David. I know it. I recited it during my bar mitzvah."
As the doctor pondered the drug to be discontinued, Adriano babbled in monosyllables, "I only hear his voice… in here… and I must pray."
Dr. Salieri continued to take notes regardless of Adriano's delirium. Schizophrenics often became obsessed with mysticism or religion in general. And Adriano's case could not even be considered among the most serious. In the past he had treated a hysterical nun who stabbed her palms with the irons she used to embroider.
Fortunately, the hallucinations did not induce the boy to behave dangerously. The only exception was at the onset of the disease, when Adriano wanted to set fire to the cathedral's confessional.
The boy began to walk around the studio, breaking his steps to avoid stepping on certain red lilies drawn on the carpet.
"He puts down roots. I can hear them in my head. The spikes are sinking in here” he said, tapping a finger on the forehead. "And they hurt. They hurt a lot."
"I can prescribe you something for your headache and… not now, Greta!" said annoyed Salieri as he turned to the
attendant who came to the door without knocking. Greta apologized. She took a folder and disappeared into her office.
The session went on for 48 minutes. Adriano's condition had clearly deteriorated in the last month. Roberto Salieri noted in his notebook the suspension of the Marxotal. It was time for a change of treatment. There weren’t significant changes, his patient would have been at risk of being re-installed in a psychiatric clinic.
Adriano, accompanied by Greta, walked out the door without saying goodbye. Salieri lit a cigarette. He pressed the button on his mobile phone to listen to some parts of the conversation.
‘The parasite clung to the inside of my head with its spider's paws, Doctor. A spider that will never weave random webs. He's weaving one with thick, neat weaves. A spider's web that will trap her, too.'
The psychiatrist scratched the back of his head. He couldn't remember that passage.
Above all, his voice didn't sound like Adriano's.
4
A heavy steam hood had set down on the gym locker room. The girls groomed their naked, slender bodies after volleyball time. Lorraine, her nipples numbed by the hot water running down her chest cavity, made a single braid of her thick hair and squeezed it tightly.
Daisy washed off the foam, which slid down her long, tapered legs, revealing her maliciously shaved tongue.
"Wow! The shaving on the precious little hole you gave me wouldn't have expected" Lorena laughed. "I bet you did it for Guido."
"But no. I'm rehearsing the dance for the show. The sweat sticks to the bloody pants and causes me a lot of irritation” Daisy excused herself.
"Cute as an excuse. I'll write it down."
"It's the truth. Guido has nothing to do with it at the moment" Daisy said as she came out of the shower.
"By the way, how did he react when you asked him out? Did he drop dead on the floor?"
Daisy looked at her with a veil of reproach.
"Do I ever ask you about your full-back muscles?"
"No. But you should. Then I'd tell you about his biggest muscle…"
"Lorena, come on. Is he really good between the legs?" Daisy giggled in a fluffy cream-colored bathrobe, which she closed with two laps around her waist.
"Seriously. Have you slept with him yet?"
"No, I haven't. Just kidding. You know we've only just met" Lorena specified, wrapping herself in a large towel that she knotted over her lower back. The girl reached the wardrobe with her breasts swaying, proud of their prosperity. Half the schoolgirls were still underneath the showers wrapped in
clouds of steam, and the girls' bodies were flexuous, shiny with soap and water.
The more vain ones lingered to flaunt the splendour of their physicists. Daisy herself took off her bathrobe with a thread of exhibitionism, bowing forward to take her panties out of her purse, showing off her perfect round back.
While the girls who considered themselves less attractive washed quickly.
Only Filippa Villa walked around naked without any problem. Filippa was a tall, sturdy, completely clumsy girl, with a prominent belly, a wild skein of untrained combed black hair, dark, mobile and restless eyes. Filippa was a young civil rights activist, and Daisy sympathized with liberation struggles of all kinds.
The first barricades against the systems established by others had been erected in early childhood. The first to challenge were the dogmas of her parents.
As a child, they told her many fairy tales about princesses, and this often included the presence of a charming prince. The same one to marry once they grew up. It was the recurring nightmare of little Daisy, and of all the lesbians in the world. And Filippa was openly lesbian.
One day, hiding in the clouds of steam, she tried to kiss Daisy in the shower. Daisy, out of curiosity, accepted the kiss. She didn't find anything particularly scandalous about it, except that a moment later she found herself wearing Filippa's body, who seemed to have gone out of her mind with desire. She brutally put his hand between her thighs to touch her.
Daisy pushed her away. Filippa, panting, her hair clinging to her face, sketched out an excuse, and from that moment on stopped bothering her.
Daisy was helping Lorena to fasten her bra when Filippa said something, and then one of the girls started screaming.
The high school girl, a small, chubby blonde girl, was running naked with a cloud of foam stuck to her, shouting at all her mates to get dressed. Other girls started screaming, and they all ran out of the showers. One of them slipped on the wet floor and fell to the floor.
"Barbara, what's going on?" Daisy asked the girl, a shy, skinny teenager, bordering on hyanoresis.
Barbara replied that she had run away because she was frightened of the screams. Daisy realised that most of her friends didn't know what was really going on, but they all screamed anyway, influenced by the reactions of the more exaggerated.
Filippa Villa, who remained calm and lucid, looked out beyond the row of clothes hangers.
"Look up there!" she exclaimed, angrily pointing her finger at one of the air intakes.
"Do you see? There's something…"
"Pulitzer expression, Guido. Big stuff on the hands?"
"Come on, am I that predictable?" Guido replied as he passed Manuel along the east wing corridor of the high school.
"They all saw him. Not just you. It's a freak show. I took a few pictures if you need them."
"Who hasn't? Sorry, but I really have to run."
Guido had to write the piece fast. In front of the school, someone had crashed a pickup into a rusty-coloured Austin and rolled it over on its side. The driver of the car was stuck between the plates. He had been deliberately thrown off the road, and from what little was known, it was a passionate affair. There was a betrayed husband involved, full of anger, threats, insults, and tears of despair.
It was the kind of news that in Cronache Cittadine could have ten thousand views in a day, and for Guido it meant a bonus of thirty euros if he managed not to get the piece
burned. He ran to the literature classroom to get the computer from the cabinet.
Guido had been delegated by the headmaster to stay beyond the canonical time of the lessons. Cronache Cittadine was in fact the most trusted voice on high school performance.
The school headmaster had donated three thousand Euros to the newspaper, just to keep the cultural page alive. No sponsor was in fact interested in culture, but since the school bore an illustrious name, that of Giacomo Leopardi, it was almost a moral duty. And the funding was a breath of fresh air for the online newspaper.
Guido had to warn his mother that he was going to be late. He put his hand in his pocket to get his mobile phone, but all he could hear was the hard bottoms of the fabric. He tried to find it in his locker, even though he was sure he hadn't left it there. He opened the door, moved books and notebooks, went through the drawers. Nothing. It was the second phone he'd lost in a year. That's quite gratifying. The money he earned from it would have been used as a down payment on a new cell phone.
Dark in the face, closed the cabinet and went back to the computer.
He was ready to write about the incident when a link opened without him touching anything.
He started streaming what appeared to be a pornographic chat. On the screen appeared the soft shapes of a girl soaping her tongue, her small, white hand exploring her thighs, her face cut out of the frame.
Like all teenagers, Guido was particularly attracted to pornographic sites. But he was worried about the chat because it started automatically, as if it were the work of a hacker ready to infect his computer.
He was about to close the link, but that soapy girl had something familiar to him. He focused his gaze on that image: the foam covered the young woman's face, and she
reclined her head back to rinse her face and hair in the shower.
ʺNo. It can't be.ʺ
His heart began beating fast in the centre of her chest.
ʺNo, it can be her.ʺ
The girl was exactly her.
It was Daisy Magnoli.
She watched her classmate wipe the sponge on her slender, perfect hips. She noticed that her pubic hair had been shaved, and that she had mischievously tattooed a butterfly on the left side of her tongue.
He saw the hidden slit, the one that disturbed his nights, glabrous and shiny with water. The bald version of Coulbert's world was right there in front of him.
Guido, excited and confused, had an erection. The situation was absurd, almost unreal. He tried to regain control by trying to stay calm. He wondered who might be the author of that film.
He adjusted his glasses on his nose and clicked the ESC button to reduce the screen. Graphics appeared around the video. He realized it wasn't a pirate link.
"Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, discolouring his face.
The video was broadcast live from a smartphone.
He recognized the number at the bottom of the screen.
It was his cell phone number.
In the locker room, the girls crowded to the far side of the air.
Filippa noticed a small, compact object behind the slits in the aluminium grille.
She would never have noticed it if the vapour condensation on the object hadn't started dripping onto the bench where she had put her things. Filippa never deviated from her habits. That's why he always put his suit, shorts, and volleyball shirt in the same place, folded the same way,
under one of the four air vents in the locker room. She was taking tampons out of her bag when the drip dampened the back of her hand.
She looked up and saw the phone behind the grille, the camera's pitiless eye on the showers.
Daisy grabbed the stool and placed it under the air intake, climbed on it and grabbed the edges of the grille, which came off effortlessly.
Someone had removed the four screws that secured it to the wall. She grabbed the cell phone, version 5 of the Galactic P6. She owned that same model. Her familiarity with the phone's functions helped Daisy to turn the camera off. "Who's the asshole who had fun filming us?" exclaimed Lorena, quickly tucking her blouse in.
"Surely a big bastard or a big son of a bitch” said Filippa who, along with the other girls, had gone behind Daisy's back to get a better look at the phone. The girls were all furious, and they were all consumed with that animosity that comes every time something happens that makes them feel ashamed and embarrassed through no fault of their own.
"Imagine if that bastard had retrieved the cell phone and put it on the net" Lorraine said, imagining disturbing scenarios like ending up in some porn chat room, or in high school kids' cell phones.
"Us walking around naked in the showers… can you believe it? "Tits and asses in the wind for everyone to see. Can you imagine that shit?"
Daisy sat on the bench, grimacing her phone with a grimace of contempt, as if just having it in her hands disgusts her. She looked at the footage with disgust and said, "This is no joke, I'm sure. It looks more like the work of some perverted maniac" she added, "I've got bad news: we were being filmed live.
The panic began to creep up on the girls, even though some of them, underneath it all, got excited at the idea of being
secretly watched. But the more demure ones, and they were the majority, were terrified that the video might go viral. None of them would have the courage to stick their noses out of the house. Daisy reassured them, "If you look closely, you haven't been filmed, so you don't have to worry.
Daisy discoloured her face when she saw who the only girl on film was naked. She hesitated and picked up her cell phone to show her companions the images that were scrolling across the screen.
"See? You're not in any frame. Only… only I'm being filmed. So the fuckin' shit's only on me."
The girls kept quiet. The news lifted them up and they stopped despairing. Their reputation was safe. Some of them kept pretending to care because, anyway, they thought it was right to show sympathy for Daisy. The girl went through the phone menu to find out who it belonged to, assuming it was impossible to trace it back to the owner. No one could be so clueless as to use their phone to perform such an action. Violating privacy was illegal, and in the worst cases, you could even go to jail. Daisy ran her thumb across the screen and read the alphabetically sorted apps: Apps, Calendar, Cinetrailer, Facebook, Games, Weather, Messages…
"Messages. There you go! Now let's see this bastard's texts."
The girls raised the bar.
"Can you tell whose it is?" exclaimed Lorena.
"Wait a second. Here we go. Yeah. I got it." Daisy said, noting that under ʺmessagesʺ there were dozens of texts. She read the most recent ones feverishly.
Hello beast! I'll expect you tonight at nine. I'll bring the beer, you bring the girls! Oh, sorry. I always forget you're a queer. That means I'll settle for beer. Don't be late!
Good morning, Mr. Director. I hope the article it's fine. Otherwise, I'll replace it with a piece of news.
Manuel, I have a review tomorrow. Could I borrow your French dictionary?
Daisy read more messages. With each line, she felt the tears in her eyes rise.
"Well? Did you find something?"
Daisy couldn't respond quickly enough.
