WHILE MY CLOTHES WERE DRYING IN THE SUN on the small clay-colored patio, Mariconchi switched on the TV and told me that I could watch whatever I wanted. She was going to prepare quesadillas for us both: “You must be starving, sweetie.” I asked if she’d managed to get through to my father or sister, and she nodded before disappearing into the kitchen, from where, as if avoiding eye contact, she shouted, “Your daddy will be here in the early evening, sweetie. I’m going to take you to the airport so the two of you can get the next flight home.”
All the TV channels had poor reception, except for one, which was showing a telenovela. I moved the rabbit-ear antenna around in vain and after a while switched the set off. On the telephone table, from where Mariconchi must surely have called my father, I found a small square message pad. I tore off one of the sheets and settled down to making an origami figure on the flowered dining room tablecloth, although I would have preferred a harder surface to obtain sharper creases. I only knew the basic folds by heart; for any animal I’d have needed to consult my instruction manual. But folding pieces of paper in half calmed me down, even when the activity had no actual end in view.
My great adventure was about to draw to a close, and it had been a failure. During the last fifteen hours, I’d become friends with Rat, one of the neighborhood celebrities; I’d made my debut as a smoker and had, for the first time, crossed over into forbidden territory, going beyond Taxqueña and Miramontes without the supervision of a responsible adult; I’d boarded a bus on my own, confronted a soldier with evil intentions, and now I was on a planet called Villahermosa, trying to do origami while the adoptive mother of my fantasies was preparing quesadillas. But all those incidents had served for nothing: I hadn’t reached Chiapas, I hadn’t found Teresa, and I hadn’t sacrificed myself for her in the nascent revolution. And now my father had an excuse to punish me for the rest of my life: I’d never again see the sun or visit Guillermo’s house after class.
I might even have to change schools, and instead of going back to Paideia in September, I’d be sent to a military academy, as I’d heard happened to uncontrollable children. In military school, all the staff would, of course, be like the adolescent soldier at the checkpoint on the highway, more interested in humiliating me and touching my legs than in teaching me how to do multiplication with decimal numbers or to memorize the history of the Mexican Revolution. My Choose Your Own Adventure books, my origami paper, and even my Zero Luminosity Capsule would be confiscated, and I’d be forced to sleep like a dog at the foot of my father’s bed or sit in the living room with him, watching reruns of the Mexican team playing soccer until the 1998 World Cup in France came around.
In fact, there was no reason to assess the failure of my adventure in terms of the punishment that would be meted out to me. Not having reached Chiapas, not having found Teresa, not having become a hero in the eyes of my father, my sister, and her friends was its true measure. Reality had been too much for me. The world was vaster and more sinister than I’d imagined when I crossed Avenida Taxqueña, despite the presence of kindly figures like Mariconchi or less kindly ones like Rat. My failure consisted of having believed, in an arrogant, self-obsessed way, that growing up was a matter of undertaking grand projects and triumphing over adversity.
We ate the quesadillas in silence—I stoically tolerated the habanero chili sauce Mariconchi had added. Although I was still overexcited due to everything that had happened, weariness was beginning to get the better of me.
After eating, I lay on the couch while Mariconchi watched her telenovela. I didn’t feel able to rest. Every time I began to nod off, something jolted me awake: an image or the sensation of falling, or the fear of missing something important. A few hours later Mariconchi touched my shoulder and told me I could put on my pants (it seemed to me that the strong Tabasco sun had left them not just bone dry but also paler). Then, in a matter of minutes, we were leaving for the airport.