One evening around that time—when, for better or worse, I locate the origin of my adult personality—Erre and I went to the hectare plot alone. We spent a while chatting about nothing in particular, but he was in a weird mood, evasive, as though keeping a secret he didn’t want to offload. We were sitting on a small mound between two rows of bamboo, resting against a rock. I took advantage of an awkward silence to look up and was lost to the world, watching the slow dance of the bamboo, bowing slightly in the wind, like a crowd of Buddhist monks greeting one another across a square. After a time, as though we were already talking about it, Erre blurted out: I really like Natalia. I immediately knew what he was getting at (that the equilateral triangle of our relationship had become more isosceles, with those two moving closer while I was sinking farther and farther from the base), but I played the moron: I really like her too, I said, that’s why she’s our friend, right? Erre smiled, like he was letting me know he wasn’t buying that: You know what I mean; it’s getting serious, I think she’s the one for me. That expression sounded naive, worthy of the most stupid characters at the Arcadia: hominids who washed the car every weekend and announced, without a trace of self-consciousness, that when they graduated they were going to study business administration at some private college with a questionable academic record. Naturally, I didn’t say that to Erre; I didn’t want to make him mad. Instead, I put a hand on his thigh, leaned in, and kissed his neck. Erre initially drew back a little, the way the leaves of a touch-me-not mimosa do on contact, but then he turned and kissed me on the mouth. Through the warm fabric of his black jeans, I felt his dick hardening. I massaged it lightly as the kiss went on and then opened his zipper. He lay back on the ground, by the rock, in a position that didn’t look too comfortable. I sucked him off slowly until he came in my mouth.

I remember thinking that his come tasted like sweet granadilla, a fruit I’d once sampled in a market, whose seed-filled flesh seemed somehow over the top, as if there were something unidentifiable in the flavor—beyond the lingering aftertaste of cold coins. Erre pulled up his pants and we leaned back against the rock—him with dirt in his hair and on his clothes, me with a sudden craving for beer. I didn’t say anything because I thought Erre seemed distant. He’d perhaps been lost to the world too, watching the movement of the bamboo while I was doing my thing. He’d perhaps discovered some profound truth about himself in that delicate dance and needed to be alone to digest it. But most likely, I thought, he was frightened by his own desire—that thousand-headed hydra, that god capable of assuming any form: from the vulnerable fawn to the ancient cypress; I don’t think it was guilt—that wasn’t something Erre tended to suffer—just the sheer terror of seeing the boundless hunger, the dizzyingly vast ocean of his desire.

We walked back to the wall in silence and waved goodbye with calculated indifference once we were outside the hectare plot.

The following morning, in school, Erre’s attitude to me was still reserved. He joined a rowdy mob of dudes playing soccer in the yard, like he needed to reaffirm his manhood in a group, under the aegis of the violence of others. Natalia and I reacted to that unheard-of betrayal by going off to smoke in a quiet cul-de-sac near the school with a traffic circle at the far end containing a flamboyant tree that in my memory is always in bloom. But on our way we saw another tree, a palm, with its crown in flames. Apparently, a tangle of utility cables had shorted and set fire to it. The palm was like a giant torch signaling some religious event, standing alone, burning in the middle of the street, as combustible as any of us. Natalia and I watched it for a while, each thinking our own thoughts, with the same expression of stunned fascination on our faces.

I’m not sure why, but that spectacle made me ask Natalia what she was thinking of doing when we finished high school. I’d like to go to Europe, she said, to study choreography in Holland or at a university I’ve found in Prague. The prospect of Natalia disappearing all too soon from my life was awful, I felt part of a hillside breaking off close to my lungs and coughed a few times. And do you think Erre will go with you? I asked when I was able to talk again. She said she had no idea, said she liked dating Erre and they were thinking of taking a trip to Oaxaca together, but sometimes she didn’t quite understand him. And then she added: He’s not like you, Conejo, or like me either; we can chat by telepathy, but Erre can’t even hear his own thoughts. That felt like a cruel thing to say, but it was true: Erre’s head seemed to be surrounded by an invisible swarm most of the time, like a cloud of white noise.

A fire truck arrived to deal with the palm tree, but it turned out the firefighters had forgotten to fill the tank and there was no water, so they stood beside us, looking on. I imagined that together we formed a tribe of Paleolithic humans dazzled by a palm tree struck by lightning. Night would soon fall and some of us would be devoured by predators.

Picking up where I’d left off with Natalia, I said: I don’t always understand him either. It’s like he suddenly becomes different from himself; he has a kaleidoscopic personality. Natalia laughed at that image and put her arm around my shoulder, saying, Smartass: One day we’ll both be famous, even if it’s against your will. Famous? Sure, whatever, I retorted, and we started pushing each other in a pretense of roughness. We walked back to school and went to the cafeteria; we had a few minutes spare before the next class. I remember that it was hot, though not as hot as now. The Casino de la Selva hadn’t yet been demolished and its trees made the whole neighborhood pleasantly humid.

That same day, after class, I looked around for Natalia and Erre in the chaos of the schoolyard, but they had already left. And for the first time I felt that the golden thread linking our destinies for just over a year—at that time of our lives, a geological period—had snapped.