Free The Summer of Dead Toys by Antonio Hill Page A

speed. And not to criticize her mother.
    Have the cops called you?
cops? no, y?
Shit, they’re coming to see me this afternoon. I don’t know what they want, seriously . . .
A pause of a few seconds.
    definitely nothing. same as always. dont u worry. I’m scared . . . and what if they ask me about . . . they’re not going to ask anything, they dont have a clue. How do you know?
i just know. anyway, we didnt do it in the end, remember?
Gina’s frown signalled an intense mental effort.
     
What do you mean?
    Gina could almost see Aleix’s annoyed face, the one he put on when he was forced to explain things that seemed obvious to him. An expression which, at times—sometimes—irritated her, and usually calmed her down. He was cleverer. That no one doubted. Having the school prodigy as a friend meant putting up with certain condescending looks.
    we thought about doing something but we didnt do it. not the same thing, right? doesnt matter what we planned, in d end we backed out.
Marc didn’t back out.
The cursor was blinking as if it were waiting for her to continue writing.
     
gi, WE DIDNT DO ANYTHING.
     
The capitals rang out like an accusation.
    Yeah, you stopped it . . .
and i was right. or was i not? you and i spoke about it and we agreed. it had to be stopped.
    Gina nodded as if he could see her. But deep down she knew she had no fixed opinion on the matter. Realizing it like this, so crudely, filled her with a profound self-loathing. Aleix had convinced her that afternoon, but in her heart of hearts she knew she’d failed Marc in something that had been very important to him.
    u def have the USB, right?
Yes.
ok. listen, want me to come to ur house this afternoon? for the cops thing.
Gina did want him to, but a stab of pride stopped her admitting it.
     
No, no need, I’ll call you.
     
weird they’re coming to your house . . .
     
She changed the subject.
     
By the way, my mother put perfume on to go out ;-) hahaha . . . and my father’s not coming home for lunch!
    Gina smiled. The supposed affair between her mother and Aleix’s father was something they’d come up with out of boredom one afternoon, while Marc was in Dublin. They’d never bothered to confirm it, but over time, on the strength of repeating it, the hypothesis had become an absolute certainty for them. It amused them to think that her mother and Miquel Rovira, the serious, ultra-Catholic Dr. Rovira, were at that moment fucking furtively in a hotel room.
im gonna have something to eat, gi! talk soon, ok? Kisses
    He didn’t wait for her to answer. His icon suddenly went gray and left her alone in front of the screen. Gina looked around: the unmade bed, the clothes dumped on one of the chairs, the shelves still full of teddies. It’s a little girl’s room, she said to herself scornfully. She bit her lower lip until it bled, and she passed the back of her hand over the injury. Then she got up, took an enormous empty cardboard box from the wardrobe, which until recently had contained all her schoolbooks— all of them, kept out of feigned affection for years—and put it in the centre of the room. Then she went along grabbing the teddies one by one and throwing them face down into the box, almost without looking at them. It didn’t take long. Barely fifteen minutes later the sealed box rested in a corner and the walls looked strangely empty. Naked. Sad. Soulless, her father would say.

8
    As the car climbed toward the upmarket area of the city, the streets seemed to empty. From the dense, noisy traffic around Plaça Espanya, plagued by motorbikes taking advantage of the smallest gap to slip between the cars and taxis moving slowly forward like zombies awaiting a potential victim, they’d come in barely fifteen minutes to the wide expanses of Avinquda Sarrià: they crossed the city in the direction of the Ronda de Dalt. On a day like this, of blinding sun and suffocating temperatures, the sky gave the impression of having been whitewashed and