Part 12: The decision of the skeleton

"How do you feel, don't you feel like the main character in the books I sent you in The Lights Online?"

Luz was not going to put those brown dots on her body, let alone have water dripping more often on her skin; even though she did not need to go anywhere or have someone come to the house, to have the contents of those dots that at first glance would be mistaken for moles unveiled.

However, curiosity is something that always wins over any feeling, for better or worse. Marisa knew this very well. Ana had told her on the phone that it hurt her to see her daughter stinking and with her hair all over the place. To observe that she only got dressed up when there was a visitor at home or if she had to go out for some reason.

The worst thing was that the three brothers were following her example.

"... people in ancient times did not get sick for lack of injections or drugs, it was for lack of cleanliness and she is following the bad way of the ancestors. I feel like hitting her when I complain to her and she tells me: This is adolescence, mother, I'll get over the urge to do nothing or not; but at the end of the day I do it to me not to you, so I'm not a bad person. No one to pay for The Deranged Girl, only me".

The following summer Marisa sent that gift for Christmas. The mother kept it hidden from the father and gave it to Luz in secret. It came in a small red box with a pink ribbon. Inside were 7 brown dots on pink cotton. Luz was amazed, but she didn't wonder the reason for that gift.

Marisa could not stand the father and the feeling was reciprocal, so it was very little that she and her mother saw each other. Besides, her father would never approve anything technological for his family, only for him: "I am forced by my work, I have contact with despicable people, but otherwise how would I bring the sustenance and you eat like lions".

Marisa wanted to give him another 7 points, but the mother did not accept anything else. Although her daughter was already bathing, now she had taken about thirty minutes to wash her mouth.

"It doesn't matter what she does, she is the owner of her life and if she wants to finish it she will finish it. She only heard her laugh when I go to hang the laundry on the roof; but it's just another lie. I guess she laughs because of the content of the stitches, what are they hiding?"

Marisa didn't want to tell him that those dots were catchers of the rays that produce the internet. It could be said that Luz's body was like a living cell phone.

Thanks to the water for conducting electricity well.

Maybe there's more science here, but I'm not here to mess with those things if I already have a pile of questions to solve.

By bathing Luz could have access to an internet, maybe a little limited; but for a girl who has never even had a toy cell phone it is fascinating.

Marisa had configured the internet so that Luz could only access the pages she thought most convenient. Google would be used to access reading platforms and Youtube to listen to music.

This is how Luz was reading fantasy and romance online. The first genre was tremendously familiar to her; on the other hand, the second was something completely new to her mind. Maybe she had already seen romance in cartoons, but in those books the romantic plot was developed in a way that seemed to Luz not so far from reality.

"If there are no talking mice, witches or magic, why couldn't it be real?"

Friends, parties, betrayals, romance and sex.

"Maybe life isn't like Dad, maybe it's more like my mother or, better, Marisa: there are good things and bad things... maybe I should get out of this house."

Before, her obsession with Alexis was a product of a certain curiosity he inspired in her. His mood swings, how much and how little he said when trying to impress her with words; just as she had surprised him with her ability to turn everyone to her favor if she set her mind to it.

Well, also by Luz's strange dreams, but she didn't know that she herself talked about these when she was asleep.

Luz used to look at him as "a guinea pig," but now something pressed against Luz's chest every time they saw each other when her mother visited his.

Now Luz no longer saw him as "the child who is not afraid to show his sadness". She now called him: "The mysterious and bad boy of her heart".

Maybe it was always THAT BOY that Luz needed to "run away for her".

"Yes, yes Marisa, I feel like the protagonist of a teenage romance."

Marisa and a group of girls who were going to celebrate their 15th birthday together were arranging for Luz to celebrate her 15th birthday too.

According to Marisa they had something in their eyes that allowed them to see in the dark. That didn't matter to Luz, she just wanted to BE FREE FROM THAT NIGHT ON.

She did not want to think about what was said about that area.

What if she paralyzed the time of the nearest area?

What if that brought consequences for everyone in her area and also for herself?

There is a reason why no one from Luz's zone goes to this zone. All the girls were from other towns separated from this area at least by a natural barrier.

"Not tonight, tonight neither reality will paralyze my heart. Tonight is about friends, love and partying."

Then she felt she was alone and called out in the dark; but no one answered.

They say that the third time's the charm:

"Do you know why people inject fear into words when they say them in the dark?"

If it wasn't for Alexis' hands holding her by the shoulders Luz would have fallen on a glass coffee table.

Unlike her, he had been to visit Marisa many times and, as nothing ever happened to him, he thought it was just rumors that people talked about this area. He also knew the location of all the items inside Marisa's apartment.

"Because fear and words are a double-edged sword?

Fear for the soul and words for the mind. If they come together fear gives the soul the ability to feel and; words explain it to the mind so that the mind is in search of the moment when it can rest from not feeling and just calculating."

Alexis hesitated for a second, but in the end shakes her head as if she could see it.

"Perhaps, but I believe it is for the fear to bring down the words, the words to the mind and; then the mind remembers that it is part of a body.

The mind speaks the truth of how indoctrinated it is when it trembles and, in that instant, there is the darkness of memory; the memory of how it looked when it first became aware, for the first time, that it was part of a body...when it became aware that it was not seen and was, therefore, only a doctrine of the ego...we tremble because we come from darkness, it is not sight, it is the ego that cannot see us in the darkness"

Alexis barbs her so hard that I would say he wants to take her breath away. Luz is a little stunned by his words. Something makes her think that she has heard those words before and that his message was not something encouraging for her.

"You planned to...?"

She feels so unsettled that she hesitates to speak and her head spins. Alexis sits her down on the couch and caresses her cheek.

"Yes, I know you're not okay because I'm not okay either."

For Luz wondering things about the world was one thing and about themselves was another.

"What does it matter if you say what we already know?"

Alexis felt Luz's discomfort, but that was what she was looking for.

"If we had to say what we know we would never say anything ever, Luz leave your ego for others or am I also part of those others you are distancing yourself from?"

As if she could actually if she could see, Luz stands up with a start and Alexis does the same because she knows that with how nervous she has made her she may trip more than once.

"This is supposed to be my consolation prize for not having a quinceañero; well, you know, I don't want it anymore, just like I don't want your claims because I don't make you any."

He didn't understand her sometimes, but that only increased his desire to get "The Dream Girl" back.

"Claim me if you want, but I can't watch you walk away from everyone and I think it's out of fear. From one moment to the next, you don't dream at night anymore..."

Luz opened her eyes wide and she really was scared.

"What dreams are you talking about, what nights are you talking about, have you been spying on me, answer me!". He said nothing because he felt too ashamed. "No doubt you are very bad, too bad. I think you should worry more about yourself than about me. If what I have is ego for ego's sake I'll survive then."

Luz was talking, but she didn't move away from Alexis and he preferred to believe that it was because they were both feeling the same; but that it was more complicated for Luz to admit it.

"Please, Luz, I have talked to Margot and she says that she has no problems; but that you are somewhat closed to engage in conversation..."

This time Luz moves away and falls back against the floor, Alexis kneels beside her and tries to touch her cheek again; but Luz crawls back on all fours.

"Margot, don't you know that she and her group of thugs beat me?" Alexis shakes her head unable to believe what Luz is telling her. "Why do you think I haven't worn a dress since I was in elementary school? why do you think I don't go to any parties? why do you think I try to be the best in class? do you think I care about my grades? they hate me, but their parents would like me to be their daughter and that's why you're here too?"

Luz wouldn't dress up in nun's clothes just because her father demanded it; she wouldn't mind answering him the way her sister does and earn a few slaps for it. The important thing was to win the moment to live like a living teenager.

If her father had accepted Luz's continued friendship with Alexis, it was because thanks to his daughter's intelligence, beauty, creativity and kindness, he had become an excellent father in the eyes of the whole town. This reputation generated that almost the whole town rode his cab; so much was his success that if he did not have his own cab association at that time it was because he was thinking about how to hide it from his family. He was never going to give more than 20 soles a day.

If Luz did not have as much money as Alexis, who also generated money thanks to her ability and creativity to deal with technology, it was because she secretly refused offers from political parties to join their ranks as a spokesperson and that kind of jobs in which you trick people.

She knew how to reach people because she was part of the people. However, Luz was not going to work for her father to grab the money. Her mother would never fight against her father's designs. She was not going to give her father more than she was already giving him.

"No, I am here because you are the only one I can see without disowning the darkness I came from.

I have a dark past, it's not a safe place and that's why I'm leaving Light."

She immediately crawls forward to be in front of him and steal a first kiss; but she got confused and kissed his neck.

"Luz no." Alexis pulls back with what little will she has left in the face of the passionate sensation Luz has just transmitted to her. "You're not going to kiss me after I told you I'm leaving... you know I can't.

I can't with the ego because I get out of control with it; I survive by my childhood dreams after the storm...I'm trying to inspire you to create a dream after our storm, I want to touch the dream in you."

Suddenly a green light illuminated the darkness and they understood that the ghosts already wanted all their guests dancing at the party.

So where does all this teenage drama leave me?

I'll tell you that drama itself plays with tonalities and shades the soul. It is this shadow that carries the shades of color.

In three-dimensional reality the body leads to the shadow, but in another reality, one closer to the mind, it is the shadow that leads the body to the action of living. This is why, although we cannot see it live, we know that it is the mind that drives the body... I am in the allowed world closer to reality.

My red shadow dragged my spectral weight to the green bulb. Ghosts use their shadows as bridges between bulb and bulb so that the shadows of other beings can go from bulb to bulb. These bulbs are distributed in such a way that the adjacent ones have colors that if mixed together would give the color of electricity: the color yellow.

The red bulb was adjacent to the green one and using the ghostly bridge, there was no problem to pass and, incidentally, contribute to the electrical magic of this area.

UP WITH THE PARTY

From the sum of yellow tonalities one of the many illusions of the ghosts is created. Of course, the view of each participant will be determined by the light that sheltered him at the moment when the drama exploded in his heart; but remember that drama is always more attractive to any audience (including ghosts) when two light it up.

To Luz's eyes the whole landscape looked like a field full of green grass, but without a trace of any standing or fallen tree. The sky seemed to be made up of headless, zigzag-shaped bodies. To me they looked as if there were brains colored by a transparency with greenish glints in the sky.

Through these "brains" Luz observes that of all the moles on his skin, between those that are real and those that are not, they give off a regular stream of flames. It is as if she were dressed with small cascades of fire that leave some spaces of her skin to be caressed by the free air.

She would be desperate not to see Alexis anywhere, but the music soothes her in a way. Where there is music there is a party. All she had left was to trust and not be ashamed of being practically naked. Just little cascades of fire covering parts of her skin from the cold.

However, Luz felt as if this particular cold was touching her gently. It was as if it only sought to give her a rest from so much heat. Leveling the tones of her passion.

I know that is what they were looking for because my shadow sensed their real intentions. No one can fool the shadows because they know what the color of the mud hides.

Perhaps the music that could be heard sought to make auditory waves with those tonalities. To tell the truth, the melodies came from those bodies as zigzagging as celestial. Perhaps that music wanted to rest his soul from so much listening and rebuild itself in an endless cycle.

Before it was her parents, then her schoolmates and now Alexis who were forcing her to change again.

And maybe that's why he used my voice to convey his true intentions.

As my shadow passed from one spotlight to another it was like hearing rumors of a friendship that ended in tragedy.

"The melody of friendship is like this disco music; it conveys a rhythmic peace, a peace that plays with the tonalities as with the different characters we use according to the circumstances.

Disco music is like saying, 'I'm going to shake it off.' To celebrate calamity is to seek to brighten up the picture; even if you only have paintings of dull tones.

Peace on the surface and storms, like tongues of fire, inside. That's... this is my intense peace."

Luz arrived very quickly at the end of the mountaintop. He watched, from the beginning of the stepped path of descent, at the bottom, girls and boys dancing to the disco rhythm.

However, he scrutinized the same panorama as the forest where each of his companions were talking to the supernatural being that they themselves were going to become within the game.

The difference is that here everyone is dancing frantically. Human and supernatural being follow the rhythm as if their lives depended on it.

The strange thing for Luz was that the supernatural being could only be visualized when the same rhythm was given with steps that attached these beings with their respective human partner. As when the rhythm made the supernatural being and the human embrace.

When the same music separated them, the supernatural being was seen as a red shadow with pygmy greenish flashes. These same ones they shared with humans. Supernatural being and human looked framed by a thin line of greenish flash.

Then, Luz felt a tremendous softness on her lower back that made her bite her lip unconsciously. At the same instant she felt someone push her and she began to roll down the stairs.

At every turn she felt each of the blows that her companions had given her reverberate. Blows that she couldn't believe Alexis ignored. And, even if she thought she knew and didn't care, he was the only boy she was allowed to get close to and, since she started reading the online romances, Luz couldn't help but want so badly to feel such a sentimental lie.

Those romances made her laugh, cry, scream, get angry. A whole world of sensations unknown to her opened up before her. She had discovered how beautiful it was to let herself go, not to think, never to calculate again. She found the way to feel; above all, she knew that there was a human being inside her who wanted to live.

"If I can feel, if I can be sincerely moved, then do I have the potential to feel love?"

She had spent all her childhood and part of her adolescence, before the juvenile romance books, trying to understand people's reactions. It was as if she considered other people's lives more interesting than her own. That their lives mattered, but hers... after reading those books she wondered if she had really lived anything within her 15 years of life.

What did it mean to live?

To let a bad boy do and undo with you?

Getting drunk at the party?

Fight and get back together with the bad boy?

Alexis may not have met all the requirements of a bad boy; but Luz would make her meet them all, all just for her romance. Although it would be difficult because her mother wouldn't let her for a second. Until that moment she had not been able to put her plans into action; but, perhaps, her muted tears at night had been transformed into "bad boy seeds".

And I mention this because, as Luz rolled down the stairs, for every bump on the abundant grass, small star-shaped shadows appear to decorate the staircase and, perhaps, for something else.

Some of the flames from the small cascades of fire on his body; they remained attached to the silhouettes of the stars to make them burn.

However, it was not only their flames or only their blows that tattooed the staircase in some geometric form.

Luz's eyes collided with a diversity of silhouette shapes on the grass. Her eyes first hit a pair of square silhouettes that gave her eyes that shape.

With square eyes her perspective was different: she looked at the point of view she took at her father's request. The one she asked at 6 what were those noises he and mom emitted at night. In addition to asking him to please stop making them because they kept her awake at night.

"There are things that belong to the world of adults and that children will only understand when they are adults, do you understand? Your mother and I don't do anything wrong. What we do is part of nature. We can't change because we can't stop being human."

Her father stroked her head, but even though Luz imagined she was hugging Winnie the Pooh, she didn't feel like a child is supposed to feel when being stroked by her father. Tenderness and love was what the drawings she looked at professed, but she did not experience what those drawings showed. She was not like Christopher Robin and her father was not Winnie Pooh.

"Daddy..."

"No, listen first. Good girls listen and good fathers talk to their children to train them in good manners. I talk to you always, I am a good father, and you must be a good daughter because I deserve no less than that (Luz just nods her head).

I can't do anything to help you. Nobody can do anything to help you, you are the only one who can save you. Of course, only if you follow my teachings because that is why I am your father. I will always protect you as far as human nature allows me to.

I guide you because there may be extraordinary situations that go beyond human nature, against which no one can fight, and it is in those cases where I will no longer be able to be by your side to protect you. Nevertheless, my lessons must remain with you, forever father and daughter."

FOREVER

Those two words had become a complete obsession for little Luz. Ever since she noticed that all the little drawings augured a FOREVER that would be understood in an afterlife that Luz hated not being able to continue enjoying. An hour or an hour and a half was not enough fantasy. She wanted FOREVER.

At the thought of that she cried and her father stood in conclusion to catch one of Luz's tears with his thumb.

"What are you watching?"

Luz didn't think twice: "A tear."

The father threw a slap at her and Luz opened her eyes wide. She didn't cry, she was surprised. She did not understand, had he really hit her?

"Don't be silly like your mother, this tear is the reason why you have come to ask me to go against my human nature. The same one you have. It's as if you were attacking the whole family.

You are like your mother, she sometimes asks me for superfluous things, like a pair of pants, when she can mend the one she already has. She looks for any reason to ask for more, but what do I do?

I do the same as she does. From one reason you can invent many excuses. It is the same as from a certain object you can get many other things. They may look different, but they are all united by the same reason."

Her father hugged her and a tear ran down his cheek. This tear he took it with his thumb and placed it on his daughter's index finger.

"Reason, seed and tear for you must be synonymous. It may be that, as I have not yet finished building your foundation, your seed will die out too quickly and you will not have time to make your excuses; so keep my seed in your soul. When the time is right it will unite with yours. Then (at that instant Luz glimpsed the shadow of a sadness a thousand times deeper than hers) your conscience will be imperturbable. Or at least long enough for you to live my little daughter."

He gave her a kiss on the cheek where he had slapped her. Luz felt nothing. What's more, I think the 16-year-old Luz, until now, didn't remember that kiss.

And I already see that I have the wood of a demon.

The little girl did not even notice the kiss because she was paralyzed, scrutinizing her father's tear.

"Every time you listen to your mother and me, ask yourself why we do it. Create your own answers inspired by this seed. Your mother doesn't create her tear-inspired excuses and that's why she doesn't have a need strong enough for her excuses to overpower mine.

Don't make the same mistake as her or many others. If you follow my advice no one will be able to harm you or convince you, only you yourself.

What's more, you are so creative my love, I'm sure you could implant your reason. You could make the world change its perception of itself; see the world as you see it.

Nothing without it

Everything with imagination."

Oh for the jackals, our 16-year-old protagonist has run out of bones. These bones are undecided, they don't know whether to surrender themselves to the rails of the train, to its secret magnetism, or to stay with Luz to use their muscles and skin.

No doubt her mother nourishes her so well that, although sadness has emaciated her, her skin still retains the brightness and lushness of her early years. Her muscles are soft, but strong and compact.

No doubt she was very beautiful for a human being and for any supernatural being.

I do not accept that you say I am indifferent. Thanks to the fact that I am narrating is that her skeleton has the doubt whether to abandon her or not.

Bones love narration with many "gaps" or, rather; stories that say enough and leave certain spaces or clues. Everything so that the reader finds logic to the reason why certain future events will occur in the story.

A reason that restores their faith in something. Even if that something seems impossible.

Bones love the impossible. Otherwise, the human being would have no muscles, but that's another story.

"I'm up to my bones for you."

Why do you think anyone ever came up with that expression?

That human said it because he wanted to feel without limits, to feel without fear. What the human didn't know was that, for the bones; he was enough for them to feel protected enough to feel what he repressed, without limits.

Unconsciously we know that bones love our impossible dreams. Although, of course, they only love them when we seek to make them come true. To seek is to struggle and to struggle is to advance. Everything is summed up in actions and to execute them you have to move your bones.

However, as we are on a mental plane and have left the body of Light; these bones only possess movement through my narration. Of course, I cannot force them to stay with Luz. She would rather sleep than move her bones in search of her dreams. Dreaming and talking in dreams. I guess that's why the narrative has so much power inside her mind.

I cannot control the bones when they move through teleportation. I can only try to talk them out of it.

Critical, relaxed or amused or both. That's what I've tried, even if there is too much drama in this story. You have to level out the drama so the bones don't feel a heavy burden slowing them down. They only want to move forward when they are in the adolescent stage of the body.

What bones may hate most is not growing, being pigeonholed; feeling as if they are inside a limiting figure, like the figure of a square.

So what if there are two squares?

Two square silhouettes that lay on grass that grows to a certain point where it vanishes to reappear in the form of green light.

It is as if the grass rubbed the bones that they could; even having to hold a heavy and invisible being, become universal energy.

Haven't you heard that bones are by nature hard to gnaw?

Well, I cannot assure you that the bones of light retain this nature; but the ego may be the only excess that helps us to survive.

Although the eyes of the 15-year-old protagonist impact against silhouettes of other shapes; the bones move the skin of the 16-year-old girl as if it were a flag waving in the wind.

The wind loves flags. Just as for humans the superstars of music should make us feel a sway of emotions through the truth presented in a beautiful format (that is my personal opinion); the wind feels the sway of desires that human beings have always been asking the sky for. The superstars are as much the reincarnation of our feelings as the flag is the reincarnation, exclusive to heaven, of our desires. The wind loves to play the role of messenger.

Yes, it is a tremendously curious and indiscreet, but it knows how to choose the best wave.

The skin flag emits those same green flashes that framed the figures of Luz's companions and their respective supernatural partners.

The difference is that these flashes are blue. These same flashes are driven by the wind to the rhythm of the flag made of skin.

Have you heard that expression that says "You are loose of bones"?

That expression you say when you see the girl very cheerful, flirtatious and fun. A girl who shows off her ego with every hip movement following the rhythm of some Disco song.

Maybe inside she has a seed of sadness and that's why her ego is dyed from red to electric blue.

However, she as we all have to seek to survive, to find inspiration.

If there is no other option, then let it be an electric blue. However, for the color to stay she must transform into some kind of being that can adapt her ego. His ego has to be able to survive any circumstance.

For this he required that his 15-year-old self no longer change the shape of his eyes. It could happen one more time, but it was better than not. To avoid it, it was necessary to eliminate those squares that Luz now had for eyes.

NO MORE CONFINEMENT

Luz's ego had to walk that dance floor full of mortality. But only the circular lenses were received there, not those of any other shape.

What to do?

Well, the bones were not going to go anywhere, nor would they give up what their flag represented; but risks had to be taken. Therefore, they dropped the flag to believe in the promise of the wind.

"A struggle between a girl's body and her soul

one guided by feelings and the other by the ego

but both united by the same desire

that gives her the gift of beauty

beauty in words

words that will reach the necessary souls

as the message they need

to face their karma.

I have promised that I will spread the beauty of your gift.

so that they will see karma from another point of view

the point of view of the beauty that guards your skin:

Reflection through feelings.

Through a fiery step that will return.

returns with the name of karma".