Hey now, I don’t know if they were Chinese. You bet, they were Oriental, of course they were … But I’m not at all sure whether they were Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Thai or Japanese. For fuck’s sake, I didn’t pay that much attention. I was shitting my pants at the sight of that pistol! In any case, it was my bad luck that thieves had decided to attack the place I’d gone to buy condoms. As if there weren’t half a dozen other pharmacies in Sarrià …! And luckily I hadn’t got around to asking for the condoms, so when Daddy asked me what I was doing in that particular pharmacy (it wasn’t where we usually go to buy our medicines), I was able to cover up by saying I needed some ibuprofen because my period was due and I’d got stomach cramps. (Daddy likes to think he’s cool, but when he hears the word “period” he goes all funny.)
It really was a stroke of luck that they called Daddy, because if it had been Mummy she would have remembered my period was a week away and given me the third degree. And not because buying condoms is a problem – quite the contrary, though I’m shy of mentioning the subject to Daddy, and poor Mummy is such a bore. To start with, she’d have congratulated me for being such a responsible young woman (well, we’ve been talking about them ever since I was twelve!), and you bet she’d have taken the opportunity to lecture me about not letting any boy bully or mistreat me, that I mustn’t do anything I don’t want to, etc. etc. Fuck, as if I was going to let any bastard lay his hands on me or tell me who I can go out with or what I should wear! What the hell does she think? That because I’m sixteen I don’t have a mind of my own? And, wait for it, then she’d have segued to the boyfriend question and wanted to know what I was intending to do with the condoms (as if that wasn’t obvious) and we’d have been at it all day. And, quite frankly, I don’t want to tell her I fancy Biel and was planning how I’d lay him tonight after the Beyoncé concert. (You talk about this kind of thing with your mates, not with your mother, for heaven’s sake. Why doesn’t she ever get that?)
In any case, after what happened in the pharmacy, I might as well forget the concert. Shit, after all the effort it took to squeeze the cash out of the parents for my ticket, and now it looks like I won’t be able to go … Why can’t the mossos wait until tomorrow to take a statement and show me the photos? But obviously, as I wasn’t injured and they say I’m psychologically unharmed, they asked Daddy’s permission to take me to the police station … and who knows when we’ll finish! The pharmacist was lucky; she was so hysterical the ambulance guys gave her a pill to calm her down and in the end sent her home. I reckon at the very least she’d had an anxiety attack, because the poor dear couldn’t stop crying and shaking … On the other hand, yours truly didn’t shed a tear, even though I’m the kind that sobs her heart out at any romantic, Titanic kind of film. Who’d have thought it! One of the policewomen noticed how I was upset because I hadn’t cried, and told me not to worry, that if I didn’t react it didn’t mean I was an unfeeling psychopath (well, she didn’t exactly say that, but I understood what she was hinting at), but that I was simply still in a state of shock. Hell, you’re not kidding! I’d never been held up at gunpoint before or seen anyone die (in real life, that is), let alone like that. Bang-bang, a couple of shots and you’re on your way to the other side. You’ll soon see when I put the photos on Instagram that I took before the police arrived (of the dead man, I mean, not the thieves). Oh, now I really regret not daring to take a selfie … (I don’t suppose it’s a crime to put photos of a dead man out there?) Or perhaps it is? Anyway, I’d better ask around. I don’t want to get into some other pile of shit.
The policeman who’s busy showing me photos of criminals from their files tries to act nice and offers me a Coca-Cola. Will it look bad if I take out my mobile and take a quick peek? What with one thing and another, I’ve not checked my messages for some time, and, besides, I really ought to tell Claudia and Martina that most likely I won’t be able to go to the concert because a guy’s been killed at a chemist’s and now I’m in a police station trying to identify the thieves. I reckon it’s a waste of time and that the mossos shouldn’t have any high hopes because it all happened so quickly and I registered fuck all. When I saw that they were about to shoot that guy, my legs caved and I shut my eyes; I was sure they’d do me and the chemist in so as not to leave any witnesses. That makes sense, doesn’t it? As you see, despite all my worst fears, the thieves didn’t kill us. After shooting, they turned tail and not only didn’t take any drugs from the shelves, but didn’t even look to see if there was cash in the till. I don’t get it. The poor fellow they shot didn’t even open his mouth! He looked like a foreigner (I’d say he was English, because I heard the “Oh my God!” he let out when he fell to the ground), but he didn’t try to act the hero or anything like that. In fact, the thieves started shooting at him before they asked us for our money, as if they’d only come for him. Who knows, perhaps they got scared. But it all seems very strange, I mean the fact that they didn’t steal anything from the pharmacy and spared our lives. Don’t those guys watch any films or TV or anything? Everyone knows that when you charge into a shop to commit a robbery, you cover your faces so eyewitnesses can’t identify you, especially if you shoot one of them. (If the bastards had thought to wear masks, I wouldn’t be here now looking at photos and would still have time to go home and change and get to the concert on time.)
Obviously, if it depends on me, the mossos will be hard-pressed to identify those killers. OK, so I am Chinese and was born in Beijing, but, you know, all Chinese look the same to me. As I was brought up in Sarrià, the only Orientals I’m used to seeing (apart from tourists) are the ones who run the bazaar near my secondary school, the one that used to be called the One-Euro Shop, and the family that now runs Manel’s bar (I’m not sure whether they are Chinese or Korean). What I’m saying is that I may look as Oriental as you like, but my name is Eulàlia Gasull i Balasch and I’ve lived here almost all my life – in other words, the fact that the criminals and I belong to the same race is no help at all in this case. (Come to think of it, Mummy told me it’s racist to talk about “race”. Hell, what did she tell me you ought to say? Ethnics? Ethnic group? I don’t remember.) Besides, I didn’t understand a single word they said; however Chinese I might look, I don’t understand any Chinese. I don’t even know how to say “hello”, even though, a couple of years ago, on the pretext that I was born in China, Mummy insisted I should learn Mandarin and signed up a private tutor (who, by the way, wasn’t Chinese but one of her colleagues at uni). Good God, what a complicated language it is! I lasted a couple of weeks (though my teacher was brilliant), and that was only to keep up appearances. The fact is, I prefer sciences and have enough on my plate trying to pick up a smattering of English to want to bother tackling a language as fiendishly difficult as Mandarin.
I may have been born in China, but I have nothing in common with China. But you try telling Mummy that. I don’t even have Chinese friends. Not a single one. And not because I’ve anything against them, right? As I said, at the end of the day the Chinese or Orientals I have bumped into and know by sight (like the ones in the shop or the bar) aren’t my age and aren’t chatty either. All my friends (both boys and girls) are locals (I mean they’re not adopted), so I’m not used to seeing Oriental faces. It’s hardly my fault if I can’t distinguish one Oriental from another, now, is it? Hell, they all look the same to me! I’m not sure, perhaps if my parents had sent me to a state school it would have been easier for me to relate to people of my race (or ethnic group), but they decided to send me to a Catalan progressive school where the only foreigners were a half-Dutch girl who wasn’t even in my class and a Scottish boy who was incredibly freckled and ginger-haired. There were no Chinese (or Korean, Vietnamese, etc.) pupils; I don’t know whether that was because the school was too expensive or because hardly any Orientals lived in Sarrià.
If the mossos are expecting me to identify the attackers because I happen to be from an Oriental race (or ethnic group), they’ll be in for a long wait. And it’s lucky that Mummy won’t be back until later tonight (she works at the uni and had to go to Madrid today as an external examiner) because, knowing her, she’d already have blasted the police, accusing them of being racist and a lot more besides. And, frankly, the last thing I need right now is one of Mummy’s little tantrums. She’s no joke when she gets wound up. And it doesn’t take much. You know, it’s not that I don’t agree that there are racists galore, but she’s got her radar on full all the time, and doesn’t miss a single opportunity. Fuck, you’d think she belonged to the far left … She’s so bloody politically correct that, when she’s around, everybody has to watch out they don’t put a foot wrong, and even then she’ll find something to grouse about. And it’s not as if Daddy and me don’t tell her to give us a break, that there’s no need to be on our case all the time. Not long ago she hit the roof because she heard me say I’d been to eat at a Jap with my girlfriends. A Jap! You know, we don’t mean anything wrong by that (in fact, if we were racist, we wouldn’t go to eat in their restaurants now, would we?). Not to mention the Pakis, another word that’s banned at home because Mummy says it shows contempt. What are we supposed to call the Pakis, given that “Pakistanis” is such a long word to use that nobody bothers? She even reckons it’s racist to say flesh is flesh-coloured, for Christ’s sake! She says you should say “beige”, because flesh can be many colours (for example, she says black people aren’t “flesh-coloured”). Well, maybe she’s right in this case, but I reckon it’s treading a fine line … Besides, beige is brown rather than flesh-white, I reckon. And, according to the dictionary (I consulted one once, out of curiosity), beige is a “yellowy grey”, while everyone knows that flesh-coloured means a light brownish pink. If I’ve ever had to paint something flesh-coloured, I knew what it meant: you take a light brown and add a touch of pink. (If you take grey and add yellow, you don’t get “flesh-coloured”, you get the colour of summer diarrhoea.)
It’s like the mania she’s got for China. Fuck, if she likes China so much, why doesn’t she go there by herself? She’s decided we must go whether we like it or not, so this summer, instead of going to Cadaqués as we do every year, we’re going to spend August tramping around China on one of those package deals that only rich pensioners or couples who spend the whole time with their tongues down each other’s throats go on. And not just two or three weeks, but the whole damned month! You can imagine how thrilled I am! Especially since this year Claudia and Martina and I were intending to go to Ibiza for a week and we’d planned every detail. Where we would sleep (on the beach, to save money, though we weren’t going to tell our parents that), the discos we’d go to, the clothes we’d take … Right, if Mummy wants to have family holidays, as she puts it, she might have listened to me a teeny bit and organized a trip to the States, for example, as that’s somewhere I’m keen to visit. I’d even sketched out a route that went via New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles and included a visit to an Indian reservation (I’m sure you shouldn’t say that, but, for heaven’s sake …), thinking that would convince her … But no chance. We must go to China, she says, so I can be in touch with my origins. As if at this point in my life I give a shit about all that … Sure, I know she’s doing this with the best of intentions, and I’m not saying that later on, when I’m older, I won’t want to know more about the country where I was born and all that jazz … But hell, right now I couldn’t care less about China! How should I put that to her? In Chinese? I’m even allergic to MSG and don’t like Chinese food …! I’ve got other priorities right now, and, to be honest, I must say that I’m not all that keen on the Chinese. Yes, I know that doesn’t sound very nice (God help me if Mummy heard me say that), but it’s out of my hands. I mean, those guys (that is, my biological parents) left me in a basket on the steps of an orphanage knowing full well how lousy those institutions are in China. And if they already had a son and couldn’t have any more, given that the law ruled that out, as Mummy says, they could have fucking well used a condom, right? Or were condoms banned in China at the time? Give me a break …
The policeman says I look as if my mind is on other things and that I should concentrate. But how on earth can I concentrate if all the faces look the same? All I can think about is that it’s only two hours till the concert and I’m wasting my time here. Fucking hell, why do I always have to be so unlucky? Of course, I don’t want to seem insensitive, I know a human being has died, etc., but what about me? This Biel business is more complicated than you’d think, and it wasn’t easy setting it up so I could go to see Beyoncé and go home with him afterwards. And he’s so good-looking! Fair hair, green eyes and tanned skin (his parents own a yacht in the port of Llavaneres and he’s got that seaside dark tone that’s a bit like the colour of Beyoncé’s skin, not flesh-flesh but nor would you call it black-black; caramel, more like). And, by the way, I’m quite a looker too. Maybe my tits let me down – they’re on the small side – but unlike Claudia (who’s always on a diet, poor thing), I’m svelte, clothes always look good on me and I can wear leggings with short, tight-fitting tops that don’t ever reveal any bulges. I’d bought the prettiest black T-shirt for the concert, the kind that shows off your navel, with a plunging neckline and sequinned straps. The advantage of having small tits is that I don’t need to wear a bra and can make my nipples stick out; at least one thing compensates for the other. Not at school, where they’ve hauled me up a couple of times on account of my nipples being on display, which I think is quite unfair. I mean, what about the girls who’ve got big tits? Don’t the guys’ eyes swallow them whole? Like Neus, who wears the tightest jerseys in summer and the teachers never say a word. And you watch how she’ll come on to Biel tonight if I’m not there! Knowing Biel, he’ll go along with her, because Neus is pretty and she knows how to hook a guy. What a pile of shit this is!
And, for Christ’s sake, these fellows look so evil! Their faces say it all! I don’t know, perhaps I should pick out a couple and wind this farce up for good. After all, you bet they’re guilty of something, otherwise the police wouldn’t have them on file. Besides, the mossos will investigate whether they really are the men who tried to hold up the pharmacy, won’t they? Because what’s going to happen to them? They’ll only arrest them for a few hours, while they check out their alibis. And if I have any regrets, I can always return to the station and retract what I said. I was in a state of shock and confused, I’d not had anything to eat and my sugar count was low … You know, the typical excuses people make in these situations. If we leave now, and I can persuade Daddy to drive me, I can still get to the Palau Sant Jordi before the concert starts. I don’t think I’ve got time to go home and change my clothes. Or shave my legs, but I can always do that on the sly in Claudia’s bathroom if in the end Biel and I get together (Claudia’s parents are away and we were intending to sleep at her place). The trousers and T-shirt I’m wearing are pretty tatty, that’s true (the trousers have got the odd bloodstain at the bottom, although you’d hardly notice), but that would be better than missing the concert. What a drag! The outfit I’d selected for tonight was such a good fit …
Now I just have to decide which of these fellows will pick up the tab for what happened at the chemist’s. Ugh, who should I choose? They’ve all got criminal mugs … And not because they are Orientals, but you tell me if they don’t look as if they’ve just done their grandmother in … Obviously it’s quite a big deal to accuse someone like this. Because what if I’m to blame for them putting someone inside the slammer who turns out to be innocent? You know, the remorse might go to my head and do my brain in. These things do happen … Fuck, I don’t know what I should do … Perhaps I should stop playing games and tell the police the truth. And confess that, even though I might have Chinese origins, I’m totally unable to tell one Oriental from another and that all this is one big waste of time. And I need to leave right now, because I’ve got tickets for the Beyoncé concert and I’d like to go home, change my clothes and make myself up a bit …
Though I’m feeling quite exhausted, as if I’d run the marathon. I don’t know what’s coming over me all of a sudden … I reckon I’m going to spew up and I feel dodgy. That’s all I needed, I don’t know what’s wrong … Now I really do feel like a good cry. And what about these flashes … And the whistling in my ears and that …