A door slamming is heard from outside. Valentina Parini furrows her brow and listens. For a moment she thinks that Adelfi the retard might have left, but she soon hears the sound of more steps and several prepubescent voices talking.
“Did you find her?” says one of the voices.
“She's hiding in there,” says Adelfi.
Valentina Parini feels the sudden attention of several stares, almost like a physical force that pushes the door inward and tries to destroy her.
“Hey, freak!” shouts the first voice. “You don't have to hide! It's all over! This time they say they're finally gonna put you in the loony bin!”
“There you can hang out with other freaks like you,” says Adelfi. And she laughs one of those typically teenage laughs. One of those laughs that aren't about happiness or hilarity, but are simply invocations of group complicity. “You'll finally have friends.”
Valentina Parini snorts, irritated.
“I'm not hiding!” she shouts.
The insinuations by her school psychologist that Valentina hides in the school bathroom always manage to infuriate her. Valentina isn't afraid of anyone at school, and she has nothing to hide from. It's just that the bathroom stalls are the only place she can lock herself in from the inside and not have to see anyone. Making them considerably more pleasant than any other place at school.
More laughter devoid of happiness is heard. More invocations of group complicity that make you think of gregarious carrion eaters in the hyena family. Then an abrupt door slam and a deep silence. Too deep to mean anything but the arrival of an adult to the bathroom.
“Signora direttora!” shouts Adelfi the retard with renewed enthusiasm. “The freak is in here! I mean Parini! And I'm the one who found her!”
The soft, dry echo of a slap resounds throughout the entire bathroom.
Ten minutes later, Valentina Parini is in her homeroom teacher's office, sitting in a chair for adults that makes the tips of her feet hang an inch off the floor. The school psychologist is staring at her with one of her classic severe expressions she saves for those moments when Valentina has committed a serious offense or has exhibited behavior that goes against the spirit of their therapy. To one side of where Valentina is sitting, her homeroom teacher is passing tissues to Marcia Parini and stroking her back comfortingly. Marcia Parini is crying uncontrollably. On a couple of occasions during the last few minutes she's suffered hyperventilation fits, which the psychologist had to help her get through using controlled breathing exercises.
Valentina frowns behind her green frames, the way you frown when you've just realized that something is going wrong. How did her mother get to school so quickly? It occurs to her that maybe it really has been more than a half hour since she left class to go read in the bathroom. Now that she thinks about it, she is vaguely aware of having read the four chapters of the Publisher's Advance Excerpt more than once. Maybe a few times in a row. Sometimes that happens to her. She has misleading perceptions of time. Especially when she's locked in peaceful, pleasant places like the bathroom.
“Valentina,” says the school psychologist. Still staring at her, like she's trying to hypnotize her or something like that. “Do you understand why you're here? Do you understand why we had to call your mother?”
Valentina hates the slow, deliberate way the woman says it. As if Valentina had problems understanding the language she was speaking. Then she gestures with her head to two objects on top of the homeroom teacher's desk. They are the manuscript of Blood on the Basketball Court and the bread knife she used that very morning to get her package out of the mailbox at home. Both from her school backpack.
“Those are my things,” she says. “They're private property. They shouldn't be there. If you give them back, I'm willing to forget all about this,” she says, remembering the phrase from some movie she saw recently.
Marcia Parini pauses in her sobbing. For a moment it seems that the pause is some sort of reaction to what her daughter just said. However, a second later it becomes clear that she was just taking in air to cry even harder. From the place where Marcia is sitting comes a torrent of hiccups, sobs and something similar to mooing. Valentina notices that her mother's wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Which means that she left the house in a terrible rush. Marcia Parini is not a person who under normal circumstances would be seen in public dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Actually, thinks Valentina, her mother is a person who would probably rather die than be seen by certain people in jeans and a T-shirt.
“This is all my fault,” Marcia Parini manages to say between sobs.
Then she lets out a hiccup and says something that sounds like “thithewit.” The homeroom teacher continues stroking her back and hair comfortingly, passing her clean tissues from a box that can't have many tissues left in it and every once in a while shooting Valentina murderous glances.
Valentina thinks. She hates to admit it, but maybe Adelfi the retard was right. This time she's gotten into a mess that she can't see her way out of.
“Valentina.” The school psychologist bathes all those present in a gigantic wave of professional consternation. Her face is gathered in an expression of worry that reminds Valentina of her own face when she really has to go to the bathroom and her mother is in the middle of one of her long makeup sessions. “I suppose you're aware that with these two things there's enough to call the police.” She gestures with her head toward the two objects on the table.
To Valentina's right, her mother threatens to choke between hiccups. Her face is turning a vaguely bluish color. At some point a piece of tissue has gotten stuck to one side of her nose.
“What you've written here,” the psychologist continues, “is — is too horrible to paraphrase. It would be horrible if an adult had written it, much less a twelve-year-old girl. Do you really want to do these things to your classmates? And to your basketball coach? Or to me, or to your homeroom teacher?” The string of questions hangs in the air of the school office. Like some sort of foul-smelling gas that no one wants to breathe in. Valentina is aware that three pairs of adult eyes are now watching her expectantly. Even her mother is looking at her above the semi-disintegrated pieces of a tissue. “I can't believe that these atrocities came out of your head. Has someone been giving you ideas, Valentina?” She makes a final theatrical pause. “Has someone told you those things or told you to write them?”
Valentina crosses her arms in the chair that's too big and makes the tips of her feet hang an inch off the ground. The walls of her homeroom teacher's office at the Italian Academy of Barcelona are covered with symbols of national identity. A tricolor flag with a golden flagpole that ends in some sort of a spear point. A framed portrait of Silvio Berlusconi in a place of honor on the wall, right behind her homeroom teacher's desk. Photographs of stupid places in Italy like the Roman Colosseum and Florence's Ponte Vecchio and that place where supposedly they had chariot races but now all that's left is a big hole. Valentina hates Italians. She thinks they're the stupidest people in the world. Ever since her father went back to Italy, Valentina has often gotten into bed and covered her head with a pillow and spent hours imagining natural disasters that destroy Italy and decimate its population. Giant waves sweeping through narrow streets filled with motorcycles. A river of lava coming down the stupid Scala di Spagna.