classroom.
I didn’t understand his strange reaction.
I didn ’t know why he had stepped out of the classroom, very fast.
On that moment I wasn’t paying attention to Mirta because I was paying attention only to him.
I escorted Mirta to the toilet and try to help her.
When it got back to normal, we came back to the classroom.
I looked at his seat and it was empty, that is, he didn’t come back after that. I perceived he had left his books on his desk.
The class was over and everyone left the place, then I realized the classroom was empty.
I walked very fast towards his books and took them with me. I decided to give them back for him personally.
I walked down slowly on a desert street. Several houses were shut; there was few people strolling on those premises.
I examined every house as I was hoping to find him.
Then I met an old man who was walking on the street. He lived in one of those houses. I had seen he was holding a newspaper.
“ Mr., please can you tell me where Eros lives?” I asked when he stopped in front of me.
“ No one called Eros live here.” He answered and smiled after that.
His eyes remained focused on my puzzled face. I was disillusioned and dissatisfied with the information given by the old man.
Then I asked it to another woman who was also walking down the street. I asked her the same thing.
“ I’ve never heard this name before”, she affirmed, and frowned.
I still wasn’t content. I deduced it could be a mistake. Maybe all those people weren’t well informed about their new neighbor.
Optimist ic, I asked to some more people the same information.
And I received the same answers, not those I wanted to have.
“ He doesn’t live here .”… “ I don’t know him ”.
Afterwards, I went home while I still was carrying his books, wondering all the time why he had lied to me about where he lived.
“ What was wrong with this? Was he ashamed about his origins?
Or was he married? Could he have wife and children?
I was sorry during the rest of the day. Eros had become an enigma to me, a mystery in my life.
I knew very little about him, besides his weird way and his icy skin.
At the same time He had been very close to me, it looked as if he was so far away from me as if he were just a hallucination from my imagination.
I was angry with myself; I was silly of caring about his life.
Sometimes I noticed he didn’t care about me at all.
***
I was absentminded at dinner; I couldn’t take my eyes from my meal.
“ You didn’t eat anything!” my mother complained to me, noticing that my plate was still full of food.
“ I’m not hungry”, I said, gazing at nowhere.
“ What happened?” She said as she knew I wasn’t okay.
“ Nothing has happened.” I tried to hide what I was feeling.
“ Don’t lie to me! I know you.” She looked at my face and asked: “Have you had a problem in school?”
“ No.”
“ Is it a boy?” she insisted.
I languished. My sad gazing at the dining-table demonstrated I couldn’t answer her question.
My omission made my mother notice what was happening to me.
Behind everything there was a boy, who was the reason of my sorrow.
After all, my mother had also been a teenager.
“ In that case… I can’t help you.” She stood up to take her plate to the sink.
I had always been reserved to talk to my mother about certain subjects, mostly when they referred to the guys I was interested in.
It was a kind of impediment where I couldn’t express what I felt really and what were my objectives concerned to them.
CHAPTER 15
I found Eros in the reading room, a spacious place with several tables and chairs.
He was sitting on his chair, his elbow hung on the table. He seemed being concentrated on what he was reading. I approached him, miffed.
“ Why have you lain to me?” I asked with a determined voice as I was staring at him.
“ Have I lain to you?” He asked and frowned.
“ You
Elizabeth Amelia Barrington