THE LIFE OF the campsite went on as usual. Pétanque, water aerobics, ping-pong, children falling off bikes and crying. It was a large campsite; hard to remember faces. It was a large village, with its distant streets and neighborhoods. Nobody was keeping count. If anyone went missing, the assumption was that he must be somewhere else. The days when I hid away on my own, nobody had come to look for me. They weren’t looking for Oscar, either. Nobody cared if he was dead.

I found Luce by the pool, lying on a plastic sun lounger. She was wearing black sunglasses and drinking Coke. The shade cast a slanting line across her legs. I felt something in my heart. I noticed this because it felt curiously high in my body. Since that morning, everything had been happening lower down, in my stomach: anxiety, cramps, the urge to vomit, etc. Towels were stretched out on two other loungers next to hers; they put me on my guard.

“You came! How was it with your parents?”

“It was fine.” I sat at the very end of her lounger, half of my butt hanging over the edge.

“I’m about to leave. I have to go home. You can come with me, if you want.”

“Home?”

“To my parents’ place. They live nearby. I have to do some laundry. Huh, that’s funny, your eyes…”

I lowered my gaze.

“Hang on, let me look. It’s like they’ve changed. What color are they? It’s hard to tell.”

“I don’t know.”

“Kind of gray… with some yellow at the center when you smile. They’re nice.”

Was she making fun of me? I looked around, on the alert for accomplices, hidden cameras, any explanation for this sudden interest in me. I cleared my throat and blushed in advance.

“You have brown eyes,” I said, my voice suddenly going all high-pitched like it did when I first hit puberty.

“Yeah, well observed. They’re pretty boring.”

I shrugged, like the coward I was. I wished I could say something original to her. The two owners of the towels came back from the snack bar with beers, water streaming down their bare chests.

“Yann and Tom,” Luce told me. “This is Leonard. He’s a friend.”

“Yo.”

A friend. They checked me out. I almost left, but I knew I couldn’t really.

“It’s hot, man!”

“I heard a dog died.”

“The one that bit a kid?”

“No, a different one.”

I felt the blood fill my head. Yann sat next to Luce. He leaned his arm on her shoulder and she let him. He was handsome, self-assured. I instantly recognized that calmly condescending attitude: in a single glance, he had categorized me as one of those beings who was inferior to him in every respect, yet with a fragility that he supposed meant he had to be kind to me, the way you might water a stunted little plant out of pity.

“I haven’t seen you around. Leonard, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Like Leonardo DiCaprio.”

“Right, yeah.” I tried to smile, but it hurt.

“Let’s go for a swim…”

“Not me,” said Luce.

“Okay then, stay here on your own,” Yann teased, touching her again. “Coming, Leonard?”

“Not me…” I repeated softly.

They laughed.

“Come on!”

“No, I’m fine, thanks.”

“You’re sweating like a pig!”

“Let him be, man. He doesn’t want to swim.”

“But look at the state of him—he’s melting!”

“I’m fine… I’d rather stay here.”

“At least take off your T-shirt…”

I glanced helplessly at Luce, but she didn’t blink. Tom stood up and winked at me, as if to say: Don’t worry, fragile little boy, my friend can be a prick, but you’ll be fine if you just keep smiling and don’t say anything. Yann kept his arm on Luce’s shoulder. A memory of last night surged back. I’d watched him in his blue trunks, and I’d wanted to let him die.

“She doesn’t want you to touch her,” I muttered.

“What?”

Tom started laughing.

“What did he say? What did he say?” Yann repeated. He was laughing, too, trying to pick a fight.

“Nothing,” I said coldly. “Go swim.”

He slapped me on the face, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to make me hit him back. Perfectly judged.

“You need to have fun, Leonard.”

Tom dragged him toward the pool. Luce stayed where she was, smiling. I was trembling slightly. The tears were pushing up behind my eyes, trying to break them down like doors. Don’t cry, I told myself. There’s nothing to cry about, is there?

“You were so calm… I’d have hit him.”

I looked at the campers, all languishing together in the pool, and the fake grass around it, the fake plants, the sun umbrellas, dotted here and there like a 3-D model of the idea of a vacation. The sun, dead overhead, sizzled like a giant lightbulb. I didn’t know what I wanted. I could see myself doing things or doing nothing at all, with the same strange surprise in either case. I heard the water aerobics instructor telling people to move their hips to the rhythm of the music to give themselves a perfect body, a perfect body for this summer that was almost over, a perfect body so they could be loved despite their ugly faces, their peeling skin… Jump rope, go, go, jump rope, go, go… Easy… Take it easy… Position one, two… Position one, two… That’s good… Yeah, that’s good… Something vibrated in my pocket. The same ringtone as last night. Sweat poured down my back like a little waterfall. I took Oscar’s phone from my pocket and, hiding it behind my thigh, turned it off. Luce hadn’t seen or heard anything. Or maybe she just didn’t care. Maybe she didn’t care about anything. She sipped her Coke. She suddenly seemed like another person, like one of them. She didn’t clash anymore. She, too, was rotting by the pool, this filthy pond. I felt an urge to throw her Coke in her face.

I was sweating too much. I needed to wash myself. Making no attempt to hide what I was doing, I took off my T-shirt for the first time. I had kept it on until then, except in the showers or in my tent, where no one could see me. I was a skinny little runt, my skin marked with tan lines. And maybe with the hands of all the uncles who had slapped me on the back and said: “You need to eat, Leo, you’re wasting away!” There was a weird hollow in my sternum. My ribs and shoulder blades stuck out like a little boy’s. My thin shoulders led to a long, thin neck that looked as if it would snap like a matchstick. Next to the muscular bodies around me, I was pathetic. A product with no value on the market. But I stood up. I put down Oscar’s phone as confidently as if it were mine. I knew that Luce was watching me. I walked over to the pool, head held high, and dived in without pinching my nose. Water flooded my sinuses. I let myself sink toward the bottom. Above me, I saw parts of legs, asses, little feet beating frantically to stay afloat. Filtered through the blue, sunlight and laughter reached me like memories. I could stay there, mouth full of chlorine. One person less at the campsite. No one would notice.