Vicky protested and went into her room with Gaspar and the phone, which had a very long cord so it could be moved around. She called Adela, who was also watching Omaira die. Pablo was with her because they hadn’t let him watch at home. Why does your mom let you? Vicky wanted to know, and Adela replied from the other end of the line: She’s not here, she went out for a while. Maybe she wouldn’t let me. You guys want to come over?
“Do you want to?” Vicky asked Gaspar, and, after thinking about it, he said no.
“You go if you want.”
“I’m going, of course. Why don’t you want to?”
Gaspar was silent a moment and then said:
“Did you see the part when she said, like, she asked the people to go and rest and then come back and get her out? She was already pretty out of it, hallucinating, I think, but it was like she was asking them to leave her alone, right?”
“But she can’t see us, we’re far away, we’re not bothering her.”
“How do you know we’re not bothering her?”
“You’re so weird.”
And Vicky went running to Adela’s, despite her mother’s threats, to watch Omaira’s last gasps in high definition and full detail. She, Pablo, and Adela cried together, holding hands in front of the TV. Betty never came home to stop them. Adela said later that the worst part had been the noises at the end, that painful gurgling, like a whining dog. Is that how people die? she asked, and the others didn’t know how to answer. Pablo said he was never, ever going to forget those hands, which were gray and looked like a bird’s claws; he’d also been afraid of her eyes full of blood. For Vicky it was the feet, her dying feet touching a lifeless head in the mud, losing feeling in her feet but knowing they were still resting on a rotting thing. Never again was she able to sleep with her feet hanging off the bed, never again could she sleep without wearing socks, and the nights when she collapsed exhausted into bed after a lot of studying or stress, she tended to dream of Omaira in the water, clutching a branch, sticking out her tongue at Vicky, a tongue that was as black as her eyes while she died there in the mud.
Hugo Peirano managed to finish the pool he’d promised his daughters just before Christmas. They couldn’t use it on Christmas Eve because they had to wait until its paint was dry and it was filled and they were sure the filter worked, but they got to celebrate New Year’s in the water: Hugo carried a glass of champagne out to the pool while the girls did cannonballs, ate nuts, and waited for the fireworks. Vicky didn’t want to get in the water barefoot: she had bought some plastic sandals because the floor of the pool could be slippery and it reminded her of Omaira standing on her aunt’s head and all that deathly mud in Colombia.
At the pool’s debut on New Year’s Eve, after the midnight toast, Gaspar, Pablo, and Adela came over. Gaspar and Pablo swam, Adela only ventured into the shallow end, and Vicky floated on her back. After everyone else went to set off bottle rockets in the street, Gaspar and Pablo remained in the water, dunking each other, holding their breath underwater, and, especially, play-fighting until they set the dogs barking （a new puppy had arrived since Diana’s death）。 Vicky didn’t understand why they’d started horsing around all the time, especially in this heat. With Gaspar she could understand it a little more—he was strong and tough and almost always won, and by then she knew boys liked to win at anything. But Pablo, who was as tall and thin as Gaspar, was not as strong, and sometimes she could tell he was suffering when Gaspar sat on his back on the floor or twisted his arm. In sum: she didn’t understand why they hit each other if they weren’t mad, and they clearly weren’t mad; on the contrary, they got along better than ever.
That summer was strange for her. She was afraid, and didn’t know why. She had told her mother: sometimes she was so scared that when she took a deep breath, she felt like her lungs wouldn’t fill up all the way. It had been a mistake to say that to her mom, who had listened to her chest and then taken her to the hospital so she could breathe into a kind of whistle—they called it a “spirometer”—and when everything came back normal, there was a long conversation about whether she should go to a psychologist or not, which was resolved, for the moment, with “wait and see” and “it’s her age.” Vicky knew her age had nothing to do with it. She couldn’t explain what it was that seemed so threatening and that at the same time obsessed her. It was Omaira, a little, but not just Omaira. Vicky was scared of seeing her in the dark, but it went beyond the black-eyed girl. If she had to pee at night she didn’t dare get out of bed, but at the same time she could spend hours listening to every sound in the house and waiting for that one different noise, the one that was going to finally prove there was a presence, a hand that intentionally messed up the books and dishes, something black that floated up by the ceiling and could come down at any minute to show its face.
And then there was the buzzing, so loud on some nights. At first, she’d thought it was flickering streetlights, or maybe the fluorescent tube in the garage or some new electric wires in the neighborhood, but it grew deeper and more intense with the heat and it seemed to come from the ground. She’d asked her dad if the subway passed nearby, but he said no, that although there was a station six blocks away, the train turned in the opposite direction when it reached the park, it didn’t even come close to them, and it would be impossible or very strange for them to feel any vibration. Plus, how dumb of me, thought Vicky, the subway doesn’t run at night. One hot evening, to check if the buzzing really did come from the ground, as it seemed to, Vicky went outside to touch the asphalt. Her parents and grandmother were sitting in the garage after dinner; the house was almost cool there, maybe because the ceiling was higher, or maybe because for half the day it didn’t get any sun. They were sitting on chairs around a standing fan—the opposite of a bonfire—and chatting apathetically. It wasn’t coming from the ground. She had mentioned the matter again to her father after the subway theory was ruled out; he told her it must be the racetrack. You’re so sensitive, honey! Victoria was familiar with the hum of the racetrack; it only happened on Sunday mornings, and it was distant and came in waves. The nocturnal buzzing had nothing to do with car races. And anyway, there were no races at night. She didn’t talk about it again with her family. When they saw her go out to the sidewalk and crouch down in the middle of the street, they peered at her with lazy curiosity; at some point her grandma called out: careful of cars.
Once, Adela found her there in the street when she and Betty were on their way home from the pizzeria. Vicky hadn’t told her friends about the buzzing, not yet: she was afraid to name it, because that was like admitting it really existed. Now she told Adela, and Adela started looking all around as if the buzzing could be seen, as if it were a shadow in the air. Betty made Adela go home with her so they could eat the pizza, but afterward she let her meet back up with Vicky. It was summer. In those months, Betty was more permissive.
“I think it comes from the house,” said Adela. “The house around the block, on Villarreal.”
Vicky saw herself reflected in Adela’s pupils, and the fear she already felt, the fear that never left her, intensified as if it were being injected straight into her veins.