Part 11: Red

They both laughed at their own thoughts. Who knows why they both swore allegiance to their respective minds?

However, in that embrace they knew they would break their promise. For it was no longer enough to try to love something they could not touch, their thoughts were intangible as they did not believe their consciousness had to be as well.

As they intertwined their fingers, they remembered that when he realized she had caught him looking at her through the window; he ducked his head and ran away. Then, she left her partying friends and went after him.

Perhaps on impulse or out of curiosity, who knows why she did it?

He stumbled after dodging a car that almost ran over him in the narrow lane at the end of the block where the party was being held.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to make you run away."

They were both twelve years old and Margot was already the most popular girl in the room. She and her entourage had taken over all the parties. Just popular and if the nerds wanted to come it was only going to be to serve them treats.

Although Luz already belonged to the nerds, she could go dancing because she had passed the test to all the girls in the entourage and Margot. There was only one condition: "Come with an animal costume, we will have fun and I want you to tell jokes to entertain us".

She did exactly what Margot said and also what she didn't say. Luz the only thing she was looking for was to win back her friend and also to gain more friends. She never knew when to quit.

"You didn't make me run away."

To Luz Alexis' voice denoted irritability, it sounded very familiar and boy was she obsessed with the familiar.

Everyone was curious about things they couldn't witness. Of the commonplace in which we all lived, apparently there was nothing interesting about it.

Family was a common subject and so it was relegated, she believed, even by her own parents..... "the common is the world of my wonders".

"I know, but I like to think so."

"You like to believe that running away for you?"

He frowned as he jumped to his feet.

"And you wouldn't like to believe I ran for you?"

"Why are you here? I didn't mean to take you away from your friends."

He would never know she had an obsession with the way he looked. Ever since his mother had shown him the family photos of her and her three siblings, he repaired that the looks had changed so much. He wondered if that happened with all looks.

Ever since she met Alexis, no matter his mood or what he was concentrating on, his gaze never changed: it always seemed to hit something.

The funny thing was that in the pictures Alexis' mother showed them, to her and her mother, it seemed to Luz that since she was a baby his gaze wanted to hit something. But what fed her obsession was that, even before she met him, she had already drawn his gaze.

How could she imagine seeing that look live and direct?

"Why don't you better not come into the party, there will also be chicha de Jora, my mom made it; so your tummy will also have a good time."

"No thanks, I have friends waiting..."

"Then let them come, don't be bitter..."

From between the bushes he noticed the shadows of Alexis' friends, other supposed "nerds".

"Is there honey?"

The shaven-headed boy, just like Alexis, is the one asking about honey with a twinkle in his eye.

"Who can live without sweet in their life?"

With that answer one by one he comes out of hiding and between all of them they bring Alexis, they know he does want to come.

None of them object, not even Margot because in the group of nerds was Alexis. With Luz's action, Margot had a good excuse to have Alexis at the party.

All Luz's classmates and the "official nickname setter", Nick, named her: "The most popular nerd".

Nick was always popular and had seen how Luz had won over all of Margot's friends. Maybe they all wished they had enough personality to dance without needing anyone but themselves.

He also knew that Margot was no exception, but she would never accept that.

That party was to say goodbye to elementary school and Luz was quite scared of what was to come. The older she got, the closer she got to adult problems and that was frightening for her. That was why she saw no other option but to be as happy as she could be during that whole night.

At one point during the party, Luz went to the swing that was in the back garden of the house. There she was looking at the lawn, she still could not look at the stars without transmitting her worry and anxiety.

"Excuse me, but I want to interrupt you."

It was Alexis, who was smiling from ear to ear; although his look never changed, and he was bringing a rose planted in a flowerpot.

"That's why you disappeared from the party."

Luz affirms looking at the rose in the flowerpot.

Alexis walks towards where the grass is illuminated by the moonlight. He and Luz kneel around the plateau containing the rose.

"Do you believe that The Sun really gives The Moon its light?

Don't you think it could be the other way around?"

There was a bitter thrill in his eyes, as if a silver beam was lighting them up as never before. Could it be that it is not love, could it be curiosity that can work miracles in this mortal world.

"Why do you say so?"

He really liked to hear Alexis so nervous, in the good way, for something.

"Last time I was painting the stem of a flower (her voice felt even rougher), but I dropped some of the black paint, a drop or two, on the leaf and with the brush I happened to mix it.

I thought nothing of it and got such an intense green, identical to the stem of that flower (sadness surfaced until she looked at it again and smiled in a lazy way)... I kept mixing and noticed that the excess makes the black give a dirty look to the color.

What I mean is that a little bit of the black gave it that intensity I was looking for in the painting. You know that only at night does the darkness appear, the black and natural background that surrounds us..."

"It's as if nature rests from being seen for our manipulative purposes." He nods very energetically and moves his head up and down so fast that Luz is reminded of those dolls they put on the dashboard of cars. "But that's not what you meant, is it?"

There was a deep sadness that made his features look like those of someone older.

"I just meant that too much darkness, or rather, our excessive desire not to be seen when we get tired of acting cause what surrounds us to be so terrible...anyway (he presses his fingers against his palm), I mean that a little darkness brings us closer to the intensity of life...you know, now that we go to terrible high school (he makes quotation marks with his fingers) and you find out that those black spots are called problems; but without the problems we couldn't get to the intensity."

At that instant he was silent for several minutes, lost in thought and she knew that he had indeed changed. Perhaps there were changes that she did not know how to recognize or that he knew how to hide.

It was so easy to say, "The night brings the darkness that leaves your consciousness no choice but to be the light...the stem had no choice but to paint its petals in intense colors."

The stem is the base and if the base does not have the intensity that granted it a dose of darkness; then it does not matter if the most dazzling light illuminates its path... nothing matters if the light is not born by its own conviction from within.

Luz knew that he had changed because; even if he was a little rushed by his innate shyness, he thought too much when he spoke instead of feeling the words. He was doing exactly the same as she was.

Before Alexis dedicated himself to painting, he spoke very little and only if it was really necessary.

The pot with the rose was just an excuse to get something, but what did he want from her.

They were both 12, but only in physique. Their minds could run faster than the fastest legs in the world.

Not that Luz thought words were bad. Her father talked to her too much and, perhaps, that was why words had a bad reputation according to her logic.

Not really the words themselves; it was rather the reason why one chooses the way to say them... that is the art of writers.

This is the first connection she has with the writer (editor) so far in the story.

As the words that are used to upload the story to the internet are in her head; then the triangle of thought (Luz's, mine and the editor's) that has just emerged is like a sort of Bermuda triangle.

Each vertex represents the main idea (from which all other thoughts arise) of each of the three. These vertices are joined by the points of the self-hugger that were left in the air (I should have guessed) after I used the necessary points to sharpen each of the flames of fire.

Let's say that perhaps these dots were left somewhat resentful and thus supported the writer's unconscious motion.

It is natural for triangles to arise when a human being writes. Writing is for them like entering another world. When writing, their consciousness moves to that other world. For a few long minutes they may be dead to their mortal world.

The thing about this particular triangle is that, unlike the others, this one does not have its vertices joined by a word manipulated by the writer. The word that summarizes the reasons she had at the beginning to write this book and her way of doing it.

This triangle has been joined by the almost infinite points of your self-embrace; so this triangle can be as powerful as it is deadly.

It is one thing to go from reality to the illusion of the book, and quite another to go the other way around. The self-embrace is always powerful, but in the particular case of this story I think it goes beyond what I had thought.

Because of my big toenail problem, the other cats looked at me funny and so I decided to stay away. First they excluded me and then I saved them the trouble of feeling sorry for me.

The points of the self-hugger have a much brighter silver glow than before; while the three vertices continue to look like little swirls that appear and disappear. These changes are not by chance, like every other thing that is inserted into the story or the way it is told.

The tongues of flame (I like their design of rows of golden ribbons) that surround me have literally pushed me into the center of the deadly triangle. That's why I can scrutinize the little sparkle of the vertices and the big glow of the little dots.

These changes affect my shadow. For now it has proved beneficial, for my shadow has moved with giant strides through the tongues of flame. I can feel that my shadow has reached a point where it allows me to perceive the poison that feels as horrendously wet as water.

Truth be told it is also colorless and tasteless and, worst of all, I thought it had the same shape as the rose in the pot.

Poison makes us react (we don't want to die) and, if it weren't for this rose, Luz would still believe that Alexis always had that distant and absorbed look. Since I know the fascination in this story for the symbolisms. Besides the fact that the fire turned from a deep orange to an opaque red like blood losing oxygen... slowly.

However, it has just returned to its deep orange color; what has been painted red is my shadow. Not only is this, I also sense that someone who is neither Lucifer nor the devil is watching me at this very moment.

However, this concern has been put on the back burner, after the area under my lips swells up forming something like a pair of balloons stuck together in an adjacent manner.

I don't know if it has anything to do with the writer having been eating apples.

What the hell am I talking about?

You see, when the writer eats she "attaches her feelings" to both the food she is ingesting and what she writes. Everything that has to do with the writer's feelings will have to influence the story in some way.

As I said, every step and decision is not a coincidence, at least not a pure coincidence; but there is no need to go into details about concepts that are not relevant at the moment.

And if there is any point in wasting words as I am doing now, it is that "wasting time" makes the inflammation not progress any further because the writer is bored with my chatter. If she gets bored the life span of whatever caused this inflammation will die at the root.

If humans should not waste time, as the writer does by eating more apples than she would like just out of sheer anxiety, instead of continuing to concentrate on what is next between Luz and Alexis; it is because time is stopped with a kiss (humans say and do not know how much weight their words can have), but for the kiss there had to be a previous dialogue.

Words can also paralyze time, to tell the truth, time is quite afraid of words because with them you never know in which direction they will lead it... something tells me that you will understand me already.

The point is that words belong to the mind and if time is afraid of words, it is also afraid of the mind. The mind of humans may not grow and remain with limited knowledge. That probably creates the so called "immature people".

Immature animals would also exist if it were not for our fur, but that is another story.

If I focus on the apple, it is a deflating agent, but when time does not pass through the mind it produces confusion and contradictions that cause the apple to produce a force that expands (inflaming action) instead of contracting (deflating). The worst thing for the human is that it expands his most basic instincts and, that is why, the best thing for me is that it gives him the little kick that my shadow needs to enter definitively through the tongues of fire.

I might even say that it could guide her baser instincts to a point of doom; but the demon is supposed to have incited her to certain things during their romance. Although I don't understand how you can fall in love with someone with whom you haven't even crossed half a word, not even via the internet.

I still insist that Alexis is the demon, even if the demon doesn't admit it; there's a reason why she could always see the spectral presence of a cat around Luz.

Not to mention that he also noticed my presence in the camp, so he limited his thoughts.

Either way I have managed to keep my jaw from swelling more than the top half of an apple. Believe me it would be detrimental if the swelling got to the size of a whole apple.

Anyway, I'm not going to be the attractive "bird of ill omen" am I?

Even though the leftover sparks have produced a deadly triangle they have also made my shadow red and this color is like a drug for tongues of fire of light. I hear the tongues of fire crackling around me. It is as if they are celebrating that the instincts of Light have been released. One more step and passion will take over the heat (the only immortal thing humans possess) that the tongues of fire give off.

Just one more step and Luz was going to take the step...

There were still three hours left before the contest started; so Luz and Alexis decided to go to the house of the woman who always made them feel that luck was on their side.

Besides, with their dad in the house, their mother would have no head to think of anyone else.

That woman was also a friend of their mother's, but she lived abroad and only spent the summers in town.

She lived in the area where one of the few attractions in town was located. There stood a row of houses that had been converted into hotels. Not particularly luxurious to the eye, but to the senses: hotels infested with ghosts.

Superstitious people say that because of that spectral plague the winter was eternal in that place.

The existence of the ghosts was proved when a group of explorers was looking for the body of a child they believed to be dead in one of the many frosts of the place. However, they all saw the boy talking to himself and with his arms positioned as if he was hugging someone they could not see.

Everything around the boy was frozen, except him.

When the researchers approached the boy he gave off a warmth that was "as strange as it was touching," or so the explorers said.

But this was only the beginning, after a year, when the invaders tried to attack the island for its natural riches, a forest fire broke out where they had set up their camps. They all made charcoal and this was just the resource that the natives needed for the manufacture of cement. This material was essential for the construction of houses that could withstand the cruel frosts.

The foreigners almost took advantage of this need; but, seeing that perhaps some strange force was inhabiting that island, they decided to simply reach certain commercial agreements through peace treaties and contracts.

What else would they have seen or heard?

The point is that now there are good commercial relations and an example of this are the hotels. All the skeptical and gullible people who come in leave the hotels laughing or crying. Well, that is if it is the first time they come.

In the case of Luz, Alexis and Luz's mother's friend, the ghosts only listen and maybe even mumble certain things.

"Are you okay Marisa?"

Marisa didn't seem very calm when she went to greet them in the hotel lobby. What's more, you could even tell that her eyes had been watering just a few seconds ago.

It wasn't unusual for Alexis to not like haunted places nor did she tolerate the cold as well as Luz. He almost always got sick around this time of year. Nevertheless, Alexis wanted to come because she knew Marisa was the only one who could restore Luz's confidence enough to stand up to a jury of professional letterers. The doctorates broke what little courage Luz had left. Her peers were one thing and those illustrious people were another.

They ran to the new car that Alexis' father had bought his mother for her birthday, at last one of his businesses had turned out to be fruitful, and she had lent it to her son this morning. Luz didn't know until they crossed the tunnel that they were headed for Marisa's hotel. Before she could protest, he said, "You know very well that I never, not even for myself back out of anything.... Are you my friend or not?".

He then turned on the dial where they were playing a versus special of Nirvana and Guns and Roses songs and the two of them started chanting along to every song. Music from the 80's and 90's was the favorite foreign music of the dead and living natives.

Precisely Alexis was outside the hotel to help set up a device that looked like a silver colored tube on a circular black track. That device was supposed to transmit music and the ghosts would generate the electricity to light the long string of lights that had been placed on the poles of all the hotels in the area.

No one could see the ghosts, but they could see the effects of their responses to certain stimuli.

"No, yes, I'm fine just since I'm not here all year. Suddenly one comes and the temperature drops... I know you're going to compete."

Her skin was haggard and the dark circles under her eyes spoke for themselves. Luz avoided everything sad as much as possible, she sought to beautify it. That's why she scrutinized again and again Marisa's spacious apartment.

Furniture with an intricate design that Luz imagined to decipher. Marisa always liked everything strange.

"Maybe curiosity binds the three of us in a circle of pain."

Although since she was thirteen she tried to give up her analytical side, she found it impossible because without it she sensed she would be damaged more than she already was.

"Yes, although I am intimidated."

"Intimidated?"

Marisa's eyes widen as if surprised by Luz's statement.

"Only with you and Alexis am I somewhat more talkative and sociable."

Both are sitting and drinking coffee with milk. But what Luz noticed was that Marisa was wearing a black bracelet instead of the red bracelet that Luz's mother gave her when they were children.

Luz's mother was always poor; so it was impossible for her to give her anything other than a bracelet.

"It is very strange what you say, I know you don't come very often because of what Ana and everyone in this area thinks; but you can see that I only come during the summer and I am calm.

You were always a very cheerful, confident, sociable and very flirtatious girl."

Luz does not remember anything of what Marisa talks about, she has always seen herself as "The deranged girl". Well, maybe it was just her, but the truth was that her siblings and parents were as or more unhinged than she was.

"What era are you talking about that I don't remember?"

Marisa jumps up and asks Luz to wait just a few seconds. Luz was denying herself the very idea of being such a normal, ordinary girl. That same description Marisa had given her about herself is what she had written in her notebook-"School personalities, will it be the same in college?"-to describe the behavior of her classmates and even her sister.

She always wanted to understand the world and people to know how she should act. She was afraid of death, so she had no choice but to adapt; even if she hated the idea that one day she would have to sacrifice her soul to survive... "that must have happened to my parents".

"See if you don't believe me."

Marisa brought a photo album and page after page Luz could not recognize herself.

"Here neither your mom nor I knew how you made a hole in your playpen to get out. From there I knew you were a very lively little girl."

"ALIVE!"

That word made all her thoughts explode. She didn't understand what was so exciting about living without being able to be honest with people because if you don't they literally walk all over you.

Luz's mother was honest with her father and he took advantage of that. Her mom was always accommodating and protective. It didn't matter if the father insinuated that she was "unintelligent" or that she would begrudge him any extra money. Or if Luz herself raised her voice to her mother at times, that her sister changed the channel when the mother wanted to watch the news or that the brother broke everything he wanted and the mother had to see what he was doing because she had to ask the father? "LIVING IS FOR ADULTS AND I DON'T WANT TO".

"Don't give me so many cheers that we all change, although I thought I had not changed much to..."

Luz stared at a picture of her and Flavia hugging, and saw a deep sadness in their gazes.

"That picture when is it from?"

"From when you were 6 and your sister was 4 or 5 I think, how is the other naughty one?"

OTHER TRAVIESA

Now he could not deny his resemblance to her. If Marisa said it, it must be true. Maybe it was more because of this than because of what they were talking about in her town that she didn't visit Marisa.

That was as hard to admit as the fact that he already knew what he didn't want to know: "At 6 years old my transformation began". That meant she no longer had any excuse to leave the memories behind and be a girl with Alexis, or so she thought.

"Well, like most, she's in high school."

Their conversation took a back seat when out of nowhere everything went dark for a few seconds. Then the lights came on brighter than Luz had ever seen.

The two run to the balcony of the apartment because that beautifully blinding light is coming from outside. Spreading across the top of all the hotels were colored lights that glowed with such intensity that Luz felt herself blush; as her eyes and Alexis' met scrutinizing the same pair of red lights that decorated the tube that Alexis helped to place in the center.

The ghosts could do wonders for the area where they resided; but their actions could also modify a little the reality of the nearest area, the area of Luz, the curious girl.

Before, the sky indicated that it was morning for the whole island, but, because of the action of the ghosts, now only in the area of the hotels it has become a winter night.

Through the red Alexis' gaze looked wild and uncontrolled. But it wasn't wild in a "violent" sense, or so she wished to believe. Perhaps Alexis was guessing at Luz's dilemma to understand her gaze or, rather so that her thoughts wouldn't ruin the moment for her.

Alexis showed her lips through the red light for Luz to read and that she did, "I WANT TO BE FREE FOR MORE THAN JUST ONE FANTASMAL NIGHT."

Or something Luz thought she was saying. It was hard for her to concentrate watching his lips burn red. If she didn't concentrate her imagination was going to explode in a way, like the word that sums up Alexis' attitude when making a decision: IRREVERSIBLE.

Luz saw him move his lips away from the red light, saw him position himself where the lights wouldn't touch him. She felt as if her heartbeat was dropping away. Truly now her heartbeat could be compared to the drops; for the first time she felt that her philosophical ego had been petrified of fear inside that red light bulb. It was either black or white, but her ego could not stand the different shades that the world offered to those who received the changes.

White is the color that receives all colors.

How can the color black contain as many colors and illuminate as those colors would within white?

Fear was a state her ego would only survive if she used feelings as swords. Only feelings could guide her through intense darkness.

Her heartbeat was slowing dangerously, then she knew she could no longer think about it, she no longer wanted to explain it to her conscience.

She did not want to explain it to her conscience.

she wanted to kiss him.

The step is the kiss

That was a rhyme in Spanish and everything that rhymes, in whatever language it is, with an unknown intention of the subconscious is pillow enough?

It's like a fairy's pillow

If the end gives a good play

The promise will be fulfilled now

Now that I can give my shadow

Give it the hue of the color that paints life's actions:

RED.

My red shadow is the passion of a girl's fantastic heart and my step will be fiery.

This is the promise of a rhyme

A rhyme that only kisses the soul that loves.

Do you think wild eyes can fall in love?

Maybe it's only from one fiery step in Spanish and one in English.

It doesn't matter, it only matters that it's a burning step.