Mixtape 91-92: read the first chapters free

1. The One and Only

Summer had flown by. I’d arrived back in my parents’ village on July 1 with my grades in hand, promising to study harder than ever to make up for all the subjects I’d failed and would have to retake in September. To be honest, I didn’t mean a word of it. I always relied on the mercy of my teachers. They were usually so worn out from putting up with me all year that they preferred not to deal with me again the next.

By September, retakes were routine for me. There was even one year when I failed P.E., and I’m not going to deny it—I was proud of it. Not many people could say they’d failed P.E. while in perfect health. If I had an archenemy, it was the creator of the Cooper test. For reasons I’ll never understand, he came up with a test that forced us to run as far as we could for twelve minutes straight, which felt like the biggest waste of time in my entire life. I would have loved to see him run his own test and then, without a shower, sit through two straight hours of math.

In the blink of an eye, it was Monday, September 2, 1991. I had an exhausting day ahead, since I had to take the exams for all four subjects I’d failed in June—geography and history, philosophy, math, and literature—all in one day.

I got up early, dressed, and had breakfast as usual. There was no sign this day would be any different from any other. I wasn’t nervous at all. To be nervous, I would have had to study, or at least study properly. When your chances of passing are about as good as picking the right number on a roulette wheel, getting nervous is impossible.

That said, I was determined to put down on paper everything that crossed my mind, even if I didn’t fully understand who the Enlightenment thinkers were or what reforms they had carried out. My biggest worry was mixing up facts from one subject with another: it’s one thing not to study, and quite another to look like a total idiot. A guy’s still got his pride.

I got there with plenty of time to spare—probably the only day of the school year I ever did. San Pedro de la Luz Eterna. It was the school I’d practically grown up in—I’d started back in 1980. That was eleven years ago.

San Pedro was a school run by priests that my parents had chosen because it was close to home. It was an institution with a reputation built over the years thanks to its brilliant students, who went on to become mayors, ministers, or renowned doctors—but above all, parents of new students.

In the main hallway, where running was forbidden—unless no one was looking—photographs of entire graduating classes, arranged chronologically, hung next to the beautiful multicolored tiles. If you looked closely, you could recognize faces that often appeared on the news.

The exam room was packed with the school's so-called elite—and without realizing it, I was one of them. They ranged from classmates everyone had written off for their endless failures to tense stragglers with just one subject left to pass.

After greeting a couple of familiar faces, I took a quick glance around. Some guys were studying as if it were a matter of life and death, as if it were possible to cram an entire subject into five minutes. Others were chatting, trying to guess the most likely questions. A few were figuring out where to stash their cheat sheets, not realizing they would have been better off just hitting the books.

I arrived with a blue Bic pen—possibly the same one I’d used in June—and took a seat in the back, my natural habitat, waiting for the first exam to start.

That September Monday, Ángel, David, and Tito weren’t there for retakes. They were my best friends, and we were inseparable. But unlike me, they kept pulling top grades year after year, as if acing physics and chemistry took no more effort than eating a Frigo Pie in July.

People probably thought we were all the same, but we were actually very different. For starters, you only had to look at who was taking exams that day and who would still be in bed until noon.

I hadn’t seen them all summer. The four of us had met in our first year at school and grown up together. When the time came to choose between the sciences and the humanities, we all opted for the science track: them because it was their calling, me because I couldn’t care less either way. They knew exactly what they wanted to be in life; I didn’t even know what I wanted to eat tomorrow. And the best part was that I didn’t care.

I had missed them, but not enough to write to them hoping they'd fill me in on their summer escapades. It would have been absurd to send a letter and risk getting no reply. I knew each of them so well that I knew what they’d been up to without needing them to tell me.

Ángel, without a doubt, would have spent the summer going from party to party and bar to bar. If nightlife were an Olympic sport, he would have won all the medals. Perhaps, if he had managed to fool his parents, he might still have been out when the sun came up once or twice, though in no state to appreciate the beauty of the moment. Funny and loyal, he would have racked up so many late-night stories that he could've filled a book … if he managed to remember even half of them. We always joked that when he grew up, he’d end up working the night shift on a garbage truck, because if it were up to him, he’d spend more time on the streets at night than the workers did.

Tito’s summer would have consisted of bouncing from girl to girl, with a string of girlfriends that sometimes even overlapped without the victims catching on. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. Tito had a superpower with women—something innate. If he set his mind to it, he could win over even your mother without breaking a sweat. Those deep blue eyes didn't hurt, and despite being a chain-smoker, he always knew exactly the right thing to say—especially with girls. That’s why he would slip away on a lot of nights to fight his own battles. But his best quality was his generosity: what was his was yours. He never asked for anything back; it was you who had to keep track, never him.

And finally, there was David, who I have no doubt would have snuck into more than one concert, attended the best parties, and scored more free drinks than he ever paid for. He knew everyone and, more importantly, everyone knew him. He was a real operator, but one of the good ones, the kind who dared to ask for things others wouldn't even dream of. Though he looked calm, he wasn’t one to run from a problem; if there was a fight to be had, he wouldn’t think twice about it.

David was a year older than us because he had been held back a year when we first started. He said it was due to a learning difficulty that slowed him down; we joked that he was still a bit slow.

He was the kind of guy you always want on your team, but hate having on the other side—and all the grief that comes with it.

After the last exam, my head still a little foggy from the effort, I left quickly before I ran into anyone who wanted to compare answers with me. It was a game I almost always lost.

Stepping out onto the street at last, I saw my friends waiting for me in the square across from the school, each with a cigarette in hand, as usual. It was thirty degrees Celsius—blazing hot for September—as if someone up there wanted to tell me, “It’s still summer for everyone except you.”

“What’s with the huddle? Who died?” I asked as soon as I reached them, as if I’d last seen them only fifteen minutes ago.

“Well, if you’re the one who died, you tell us—are you dead or not?” Tito replied, taking the last drag of his Marlboro.

It was the first time there was a real chance our group might split up. I had four subjects to retake in September, and I needed to pass at least two to move on to the next year. If I didn’t manage it, I’d have to repeat my third year of BUP—upper secondary school—and my parents had already made it clear they didn’t want me doing it at the same school where, according to them, “you go every day to do anything but study.” And they weren’t wrong. Going to a school far from my friends, finding my way in a new environment, and adapting to a different way of doing things would mean distancing myself from those who had been by my side since I was little. No one wanted that less than I did. But even though I could’ve avoided it all by studying more, summer had a diabolical pull, and I’d never been a saint, nor someone who thought much about the consequences of my actions.

“I think I’m still in the game,” I replied, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes.

“Man, you’ve had more than two months—don’t tell me you went in there just to play the game. You went in to win,” David said.

“Let’s see,” I said. “Math went well. I think I managed to pass.” It would be a bare pass at best. “The geography and history exam was very hard.” And even if it had been easy, it wouldn’t have changed much. “Philosophy…” I continued. “I went through half a pen on that one.” Whether what I wrote was correct is another matter. “And in literature… they say El Pera is retiring, and I think he’ll go easy on his last students.”

“This calls for a celebration,” Ángel said, looking even more eager than I was to change the subject. “How about we meet up at La Cuneta this afternoon for a beer?”

His expression alone made it clear that the important thing was going out, not celebrating. Ángel was always like that: he knew the hard part was getting us to go for a drink on a Monday, but once we had a beer in hand, God only knew where we’d end up that day.

“Ángel, you’ve never had just one beer in your life,” I said, smiling, grateful to be talking about something other than my exams. “My parents aren’t too happy I’m here today, so I’m grounded until I get my results back on Thursday.”

I didn’t know if there would be anything to celebrate on Thursday, but I preferred not to think about it. Thursday would arrive anyway, no matter what I did. I didn’t like the future ahead of me at all—neither the short term, with the results of the exams I’d just taken, nor the long term, with a year ahead where, whatever happened, our lives wouldn’t be the same by the end of it. If I had to repeat the year, it would be a journey into the unknown. And if I passed, the university entrance exams were coming up. That meant choosing a path. A new path. And it was impossible for all of us to choose the same one.

“When you finish COU, the pre-university year, you become a man with your whole future ahead of you,” I’d heard more than once. As for me, I couldn’t care less about the future; the future is for those who don’t know how to enjoy the present. My present was fine. Maybe it wasn’t the best, but it was mine. It was up to me. The future, on the other hand, is impossible to control.

“How about we meet at my place on Thursday, at five?” Tito said. “That way you can tell us firsthand what your grades were.”

Tito lived close to the school too, in a much larger, more modern house than mine, with floor-to-ceiling windows that let light into every last corner. He lived there mostly with his sister, Beatriz, a year younger than him, whom we often saw on the weekends.

Beatriz was friends with Mónica, David’s sister, and they were in the same class. Most days, David and Mónica would arrive at Tito’s house together, though they acted like complete strangers.

Tito’s father was a commercial pilot—“the kind who flies big planes,” as he used to say—and he was always traveling from continent to continent. One day he might be in New York and the next in Tokyo. With that lifestyle, it was rare to see him at home.

As for his mother, we knew absolutely nothing about her, apart from the photos scattered around the house—her with the children when they were little. Tito never spoke about her, and we—being good friends—never asked. We figured that some things are buried for a reason, and we weren’t about to go digging. Sometimes, when Tito wasn’t around, we wondered what had happened to her: had she run off, unable to live with a husband who was always on the move, or had she died? Whatever it was, it was too delicate a subject to talk about.

Over time, Tito’s house had become our headquarters: a place where we could play all kinds of games, watch soccer, do homework, or study—if anyone felt like it. And we were never short of food, thanks to his housekeeper, who came in the mornings to clean, shop, and prepare the meals.

“Perfect. See you on Thursday,” I replied.

Then I walked away, heading home with not the slightest desire to get there—angry at myself and at a world that, for the first time, seemed determined to stop rolling out the red carpet it had always laid at my feet.

“Screw you!”

When I got home, my mother appeared the moment I opened the door. It wasn’t as if she’d been waiting there all morning. When the elevator reached our floor, it made a distinctive sound you could hear throughout the apartment. So it was obvious it could only be the neighbor or me. The peephole did the rest.

“How did it go? Did everything go well?” she asked, in a tone that sounded more like hope than confidence.

It smelled good. My mother had cooked something I liked, and it was probably already on the table. So I decided to head off a possible lecture that could ruin the meal.

“Yes, Mom,” I lied. “The exams went much better than I expected.” That was lie number two. “I feel like the effort I put in this summer really paid off”—the third one, the crowning lie. “Now we just have to wait for the results on Thursday. What’s for lunch?”

I was convinced I hadn’t lied. I’d simply edited the truth to keep the peace at home. In my defense, even a desert can be flooded—with seawater. Still, I knew that, in a way, I was fooling both myself and my mother: deceiving two people for the price of one—like at the supermarket.

I saw my father in the living room, watching television and pretending that a news story about the elections in Singapore interested him more than my exams. I knew he’d heard every word I’d said to my mother, but I doubted he bought any of it. If my mother was an optimist, my father was a realist—he’d rather aim low than risk aiming too high.

I lived with my parents and a male cat named Lola. He weighed roughly twice what an overweight cat should, quite a feat considering my mother was in charge of his diet. She personally chose the three cans of cat food he went through every day. And by “personally,” I mean the cat didn’t touch it unless she had tasted it first. Lola was Dad's baby. Most of the time, he was sprawled on the floor, all four legs stretched out, like a bear rug.

Up until Thursday, my life was confined to the kitchen—where I had breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and my room. I spent hours shut in there, lost in music, as if it were a door to another dimension: an escape route that could carry me away from that bleak future I was so afraid to think about.

I had a pile of tapes stacked on my desk, which was good for anything except studying. And I had my Sanyo double-deck cassette player, a birthday present from two years earlier. I used it mostly to listen to the radio and record the songs I liked, making my own mixtapes to play later on my Aiwa Walkman. I’d been doing it ever since I got the stereo, and I treasured my first compilation from 1989.

On Wednesday night, I decided to fall asleep to music. I chose a tape Ángel had made for me, packed with hard-hitting songs. I put fresh batteries in the Walkman and slipped into bed with the volume cranked all the way up, trying not to think that the next day I’d get my results. It felt like I was caught in a game of the Goose: the die was still in the air, and I didn’t know if it would land me on a space that would send me flying forward, or if I’d end up trapped in the well. That was me, the one and only. I wouldn’t have wanted to be anyone else.

2. Con Nombre de Guerra

My mother came into the room and, without saying a word, raised the blind and threw open the window. Lola rarely came into my room—he knew there was nothing worth eating in there. That cat wouldn’t move a muscle unless it was absolutely necessary.

The room flooded with light, and my half-asleep brain jumped straight to those vampire movies where someone flings open the coffin and sunlight pours in. A blast of fresh air made me pull the blanket over my head. As my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw that the alarm clock on my bedside table read 9:41.

“Good morning! Come on, get up. Today’s going to be a great day—you’ll see,” my mother said.

I was always impressed by my mother’s ability to first lecture me to death, then act like everything was fine. Back in June, the most common words in the house had been “slacker” and “lazy.” Yet two months later, she seemed convinced that passing the exams would be easy.

“I’ve made you breakfast: eight Maria cookies—buttered and arranged in pairs, just the way you like them. Your father picked up the milk before going to work. Don’t dawdle—you’re not late, but you’re not early either.”

I grunted something that vaguely resembled “Coming,” and felt a sharp pain in my ear. Apparently, I’d fallen asleep with the Walkman headphones on, and thanks to the worn-out foam pads, my right ear was red and a little swollen. Worse, I’d left it on auto-reverse, so the tape had been flipping endlessly all night, draining the batteries completely. Just as my mother had predicted, I was off to a stellar start.

To top it off, the sheets practically whispered, “Stay. Why would you leave? You’re so comfortable here. Just a little while longer.”

“And take a shower—you haven’t had one for three days, and I don’t want you going off to school smelling like a goat!” my mother shouted from the end of the hallway.

Mom 1, Sheets 0.

Today’s routine was simple. You got to school, went straight to the bulletin board, and there they were—the lists, sorted by class, then alphabetically. You looked for your name and saw the exams you’d taken, along with the result: pass or fail. They posted the grades at eleven, and that same morning you could go over your exams with the teacher.

I’d never gone over my results with a teacher. Never. There were students who went with their parents to check their grades, and if they hadn’t passed, the whole family would march in to see the teacher. Just thinking about it gave me the shivers; I’d rather get hit by a train than go with my parents to one of those meetings. Luckily, they never even suggested coming with me to check my results. They weren’t fools—they just lived by “what will be, will be.”

I wasn’t exactly a fan of the teachers, but I knew one thing: if you failed an exam, you failed it, no matter how many times you went to a teacher’s office to complain. There was no point in going. Complaining was a waste of time, and I didn’t like wasting mine—or making anyone else waste theirs.

It wasn’t my first time checking September grades, so I knew exactly what to do—and more importantly, what not to do. You should never show up right when the grades are posted—and definitely not before. First, there was no need for everyone to know how many subjects you had failed—which would be the first thing they’d ask you as soon as they saw you. Second, waiting only made you more nervous. So I’d leave the house about ten minutes before the scheduled time, but make sure it took me an hour to get to school, once the dust had settled.

I headed to school with all the enthusiasm of a cow on the way to the slaughterhouse, watching the world keep turning as if it didn’t care what happened to me. When you don’t rush, you discover details that had always been there but you’d never noticed: a sculpture on a building, a new bench in the square, the way the people you pass are dressed… taking it all in like some retired guy killing time—except I hadn’t even started working yet.

Sure enough, I arrived at school exactly when I meant to—in other words, late. I didn’t want to think about whether I was going to pass or fail; I just wanted to know the result and be able to move on to the next stage, whatever it was.

I went in and headed for the bulletin board. I noticed some classmates still loitering in the corridors, most of them with their parents and looking miserable, which didn't bode well for them. Finally, I reached the board and looked for my last name. On the line where my grades should have been, I found only a brief instruction: “Please report to the principal’s office.”

I read it three times, rubbing my eyes as if that might change the words. Even then, it didn't. There it was, clearly written next to my name: “Please report to the principal’s office,” without any additional information to help me understand why that phrase was there instead of my grades.

Without giving it much thought—since I had no other choice—I headed to see the principal, who everyone knew as El Morros. I stopped at the door and knocked softly. “Come in,” a voice called from inside. I stepped in slowly, as if I didn’t want anyone to hear my footsteps, telling myself that if my nerves didn’t give me away, everything would be fine.

“Mr. Ferrer, come in and sit down, please,” the principal said as I entered his office. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting to see you today,” I said cautiously, careful not to offend him. “Please don’t take it the wrong way—it’s nothing personal.”

The principal nodded and leaned toward me as he put on his glasses.

Sitting across from El Morros in his office was never a good sign. I was quietly grateful I’d never had to come in here alone before. It’s not that I’d never gotten into trouble during my years at the school. We’d had our fair share of scrapes—I’d simply been lucky enough to avoid the consequences. At least until now.

“You see, Ferrer,” he said, dropping the formal Mr. and switching to my last name, “I’m not going to beat around the bush. As you know, our school always seeks excellence, especially in the final year before students go on to university. For us, it’s essential that students in their final year have an impeccable academic record, so that they can shape their future without difficulty. We strive for all our students not only to pass the university entrance exams, but to do so with a grade we can be proud of.”

“That entrance-exam grade,” he continued, “is our school’s calling card—the reason parents want their children to attend, confident that they’ll receive a quality education that will prepare them for a future full of opportunities.”

This was an old story, and I knew it well. COU was the only year parents had to pay for. Up to the third year of BUP, you could study for free, but once you reached COU, each student had to pay monthly tuition—and it wasn’t cheap.

Behind the “calling card” the principal had mentioned lay a more pragmatic reality: the more students enrolled in the final year—not only those of us already there, but new ones as well—the more money came in. And more money meant better facilities and more resources, which attracted more students—and with them, more money. That’s why this final year was open to students from other schools with excellent grades. Those new students kept the bar high, got strong results in the entrance exams, and the school boasted about it. It was a well-oiled machine.

What I didn’t understand was what any of that had to do with my September retakes. So I stayed silent and kept listening.

“The problem is,” he went on, “we’re not sure that, with your academic record, you’ll pass the entrance exams—or even get through the year without difficulty. And that, in this school, doesn’t sit well with us.”

“Your September grades are as follows: You passed literature, probably because Mr. García Peral is retiring and doesn’t want to leave behind any failing grades that might affect his successor. You also passed mathematics, and, from what I’m told, that was almost a miracle,” he added.

Two out of two, I thought. That was it. Whatever happened from that moment on, I was going to advance to the next year. I didn’t know what the principal was angling for, but as a poker player, he must have been pretty bad, because I had the best hand—no matter what. Or at least that’s what I thought.

“And that’s where the good news ends,” he continued. “You failed geography and history, and philosophy as well. Given that you’re on the science track, looking at a year with nine subjects instead of seven will make it even harder for you to pass them all, whether in June or in September,” he said, with a faint smile.

“Students facing such an uphill battle usually end up being a bad influence on the classmates closest to them.”

He said that last sentence without looking at me, as if he were thinking aloud, barely veiling the implication that I wasn't just a bad student, but that others might end up the same way because of me.

“However,” he continued, “as your principal—and given that you’ve spent your entire school life with us—I’d like to make you an offer. I’m prepared to fix your record and ensure that all four subjects you failed in June are recorded as solid passes—strong grades, even—provided you agree to transfer to another school.”

“A school your parents don’t have to pay for,” he went on, “and where they can save the monthly tuition they'd be paying for a student who may not be able to handle a year this demanding, particularly with two additional subjects. You must bear in mind that if you don’t pass the year this time, you’ll end up repeating it at a tuition-free school anyway. I’m offering you the opportunity to salvage the year and study two fewer subjects. It’s a very good deal, especially if you think about your future.”

That was the truth: I was the garbage bag that had to be taken out before the school year started, and I had to be replaced by someone with an impeccable academic record—some boring overachiever who contributed nothing beyond good grades. Staying here was a matter of prestige and money, and my parents didn’t have enough of either.

“What do you say?” he asked. “You have to make a decision before you leave this office.”

We make countless decisions every day: what clothes to wear, which TV channel to watch, what record to listen to… We’re so used to deciding that we often do it automatically, without stopping to reflect. Sometimes we come to a crossroads, with two options in front of us, and once we choose one, the other disappears forever. It vanishes into the unknown, and we can never know what would have happened if we’d taken the other path.

“Sir,” I said, looking him straight in the eye, “I have never been so sure about a decision in my life.”

3. El Límite

The first day of school always matters. It’s probably the only day you don’t toss everything into your bag two minutes before you walk out the door—mostly because everything’s new, and you’d feel a bit guilty ignoring what your parents picked out with so much care. So you make a list to make sure nothing gets left behind: lunch money, pens, a pencil case, and your textbooks—neatly covered in clear plastic—just not by you, since you’ve never covered a textbook in your life.

The only thing that isn’t new is your accordion folder. It’s been with you every year, and by now it shows plenty of scars, but you don’t care—they feel like badges of honor. Over the years you’ve decorated it—in my case, with band photos and stickers of my favorite soccer team—and at this point it could go in a museum.

But what makes an accordion folder a FOLDER—in all caps—are the notes inside: friends and acquaintances briefly possessed by the spirit of Cervantes himself, scribbling down the best lines—funny or sappy—that anyone can come up with. Like Drugs and alcohol make you see double, written, of course, with every letter doubled; or they hit me with something totally serious: I don’t know how to write this crap, but you’re one hell of a guy.

It feels like forever, but it was only been a week since I walked out of the principal’s office. I didn’t regret my decision for a second. I knew I’d made the right one. Sometimes a path takes shape in my mind and I know I have to follow it, no matter what. In my case, I didn’t see a road—I saw a four-lane highway.

When I got home that day, after leaving the principal’s office, my parents were waiting anxiously for me. Both of them wanted me to pass more than anything in the world, and they had their reasons: my mother, so she could tell herself that all the effort she’d put into getting me to study over the summer had paid off; and my father, because he didn’t even want to hear about the paperwork involved in switching schools and repeating a year.

“Hello!” I called as I opened the door.

“Honey, how did it go?” my mother asked.

“How do you think it went, Mom? Phenomenal. I’m in COU, of course,” I replied. “And you won’t believe this—the principal called me into his office personally to congratulate me.”

I’d learned to dress up the news a bit, put a different spin on it. It wasn’t about changing the truth—just seeing it differently. And I was an expert at that, especially when it came to talking about school matters with my parents.

“What’s this about the principal congratulating you?” my father asked.

“He called me to congratulate me on the effort I’ve made this summer,” I answered. “He told me that, with four retakes, it’s not easy to pull off what I did—passing the year—and that I had to stay on that path if I wanted to survive the new school year.”

“But how many subjects did you pass?” my father asked again.

The thing is, parents have been playing this game long before their kids even get started, and mine could tell from my explanation that there was a catch.

True to my word, I was at Tito's house on Thursday. There we were, the four of us, eating sandwiches—everyone hanging on my every word like it was a thriller, and me trying to crank up the suspense.

“And what did you tell your father?” Ángel asked.

“At that point, I had no choice but to tell him the truth,” I said, laughing.

“God knows what your version of the truth is,” Tito said, with sandwich crumbs still on his lips.

God knows what my version of the truth was… And he was absolutely right. You can tell your friends almost any story, sure—but some truths are yours alone. Especially the ones that sting.

That day I left the principal’s office grinning from ear to ear, sure of my decision, but inside I was hurting. I was sure none of my friends would have been offered a deal like that; in their case, it would have been brushed off with excuses like “The kid’s had a rough year and needs help,” or “He’ll buckle down in his final year.”

But the school didn't see me as one of their own. In their eyes, I was second-class. I hadn’t noticed it, but the people making decisions at school had—every time they crossed paths with me, every time my name came up. And that hurt. Being different hurts. Not being treated like the others hurts. And the worst thing is being left out of their perfect little story.

“There is only one truth,” I told my friends. “I’m carrying over two subjects to next year—one is geography and history, and the other is philosophy, but it’s as good as if I’d passed them all.”

“You’ve got some balls!” Tito shouted, laughing so hard that a crumb from his sandwich landed on my face. “You’re going to have to explain that one to me really well if you expect me to understand it!”

“You’re going to have to explain that one to me really well if you expect me to understand it,” my father said, his voice deadly serious.

On the walk home, I had prepared this answer and gone over it in my head several times to be as convincing as possible. I firmly believed in what I was going to say. That was my strongest point, or perhaps my weakest: when I believed in something, I believed in it to the end, no matter what.

“It’s simple, Dad. Of the four subjects I had, I cleared the most difficult one and the one I absolutely had to pass—math. Since I'm staying on the science track, having that hanging over me would have been almost impossible to deal with. And passing literature means I move up a year.”

And now came the grand finale.

“I failed philosophy, which we also take in COU. Do you think El Topo, who taught me philosophy last year and will teach me again this year, is going to give me two different exams? No way. He’ll give me one. If I pass this year’s philosophy, it’s obvious I also know last year’s, and he’ll pass me in both subjects.”

“I don’t like you calling your teachers by their nicknames,” my father replied.

So far, so good, I thought. If the only thing he’s stuck on is the nickname, my reasoning has convinced him.

“And regarding geography and history… since I’m on the science track, do you think El Piños—sorry, Mr. Torremira—is going to make life difficult for himself by failing me on an exam that won’t count for anything in my future education? He’ll want to get it over with even sooner than I do, you’ll see.”

Score one for pure logic.

“Gentlemen,” David said, giving me a slow clap. “Not even I would have come up with that. Brilliant. And deep down—okay, very deep down—it’s true. And your parents bought it?”

“They had no choice. The news that I’d passed the year, that I’d be staying at the school, really calmed them down. After that, it was the usual: I had to manage my time better, and this year I’d have to give it everything I had… The typical lines you’d find in the handbook they hand parents when they have a child—chapter title: ‘Maximizing Your Teenager’s Potential.’”

“Great. Well, since the four of us are going to stay together, we have to celebrate. Sooner rather than later,” Ángel added.

“Impossible,” I replied. “I’m still grounded, at least until Christmas. Ironclad logic is one thing; getting off scot-free is quite another. Don’t count on me this week. When classes start next week and my parents relax, I hope I won’t be grounded anymore and we can celebrate properly.”

“So, we won’t be able to rehearse this week?” Tito asked.

We’d had a band for almost a year, if you could even call it that. Tito, who had commandeered a beautiful brown-and-white Fender Mustang his father had kept hanging on the wall for ages, decided that meeting more girls required a band.

“Come on, if you already get girls effortlessly, what do you want—to go after their mothers too?” we’d tell him, laughing.

Tito had a natural gift for music. For a while, he had a teacher who came over to show him the ropes, though before long he could pick up almost any song by ear. He said music relaxed him, although most of what we played was far from relaxing. More than once, he told us that after a night out, he’d play the guitar for a while before going to bed. To do that, you have to really love music.

Ángel, meanwhile, had taken drum lessons. His parents said he was restless and that not a day went by without him breaking something at home. They thought buying him a drum kit so he could burn off energy pounding the kick drum and cymbals would be the best way to tire him out. Unfortunately, they eventually discovered that playing drums at home was impossible. The neighbors, meanwhile, discovered that on the first day.

As for David, he got a Fender Precision bass practically for a song, thanks to a friend who knew some guys who’d had a band but had gotten tired of it and needed cash. Bottom line, he got the bass almost for free—amp included—and even convinced the guy to throw in some lessons for the same price. It was always like that with David: he was the guy who knew a guy, and if someone had a problem or needed something, he always knew who to turn to.

As for me, asking my parents for money to buy a keyboard was out of the question, so I offered to be the singer. I’m not really sure why they accepted; maybe they saw how excited I was about the band and didn’t care that I didn’t play an instrument. The voice is the hardest instrument to master, I told myself. The problem was that, besides being a terrible singer, whenever I didn’t know the lyrics, I made them up on the fly.

When Tito told his father about the idea of forming a band, he didn’t waste a second finding us a place to rehearse. Maybe because he recognized himself in us and remembered his own youth. The place was in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, divided into several rooms where bands of different genres rented space. He paid a year’s rent in advance, which included the room, storage for the instruments, and electricity. As if that weren’t enough, he made it clear to the landlord that as long as we kept showing up to rehearse, the rent would renew automatically. We loved it.

We didn’t have our own songs; we just played covers of the ones we liked. That was the advantage of not being very good: we’d try our hand at anything. We’d never played in front of anyone or recorded demos—nothing like that. But when we played, we were happy. And on the rare occasion we actually sounded good, we were twice as happy.

I remember our first rehearsal. The day before, we’d hauled all the junk into the room, including a mini-fridge—God knows where we got it—that was on its last legs, but it kept the drinks cold. If anyone had been there watching us, they would’ve preferred to get run over by a bus rather than listen to that train wreck. But when we finished playing, we congratulated each other. We all felt the same thing: it was shit—but it was our shit. And from there, the only way was up.

“I’ll ask at home,” I said. “But my parents won’t buy that I’m actually rehearsing, even if it’s true. Still, can’t hurt to ask.”

“Perfect—keep us posted,” Tito said, hoping we could get together to play something before classes started.

And just before I left, Ángel said, “There’s one thing I don’t get. If you pass two subjects and fail two—which, all things considered, is pretty normal—why do you have to go to the principal’s office to pick up your grades? Why aren’t your grades posted with everyone else’s?”

Nothing got past Ángel. Naturally curious and sharp, he had a gift for catching details the rest of us missed. Beneath the laughs and the suspense, there was something that didn’t quite add up for him.

I turned around and looked at them. I wanted to tell them the truth: that the principal saw me as a bad influence on their brilliant futures; that at school they thought I didn’t deserve a place next year; that my parents' names would never make the papers; that the money they were about to pay for this year didn’t seem to count as much as what other families paid for the same education; and that, in the end, they were trying to buy me off.

But the most important thing was that I made the decision quickly, without hesitating for a second. I knew I was going to spend the year walking a tightrope, always teetering between right and wrong, and that maybe the decision to stay wasn’t the wisest one. I was staying just to prove them wrong, to prove that I was worth as much as any of my classmates. After all, life is just a game—you have to place a bet if you want to win. What I wasn’t sure about at all was whether I could pull it off: the theory seemed simple, but in practice it was going to be much more complicated.

“Why did the principal call me?” I said. “He wanted your home phone number so he could ask your mother out—he heard she’s hot.”

And I left laughing, without waiting for Ángel to fire back with something even ruder than mine.