Mattia was right: the days had slipped over her skin like a solvent, one after the other, each removing a very thin layer of pigment from her tattoo, and from both their memories. The outlines, like the circumstances, were still there, black and well delineated, but the colors had merged together until they faded into a dull, uniform tonality, a neutral absence of meaning.

For Alice and Mattia, the high school years were an open wound that had seemed so deep that it could never heal. They had passed through them without breathing, he rejecting the world and she feeling rejected by it, and eventually they had noticed that it didn't make all that much difference. They had formed a defective and asymmetrical friendship, made up of long absences and much silence, a clean and empty space where both could come back to breathe when the walls of their school became too close for them to ignore the feeling of suffocation.

But over time, the wound of adolescence gradually healed. The edges of skin met in imperceptible but continuous movements. The scab peeled off with each fresh abrasion, but then stubbornly reformed, darker and thicker. Finally a new layer of skin, smooth and elastic, had replaced the missing one. The scar slowly turned from red to white, and ended up merging with all the others.

Now they were lying on Alice's bed, their heads at opposite ends, their legs bent unnaturally to avoid any contact between their bodies. Alice thought if she turned around she could make her toes touch Mattia's back but pretend not to notice. But she was sure he would immediately pull away and decided to spare herself that little disappointment.

Neither one of them had suggested putting on some music. Their only plans were to stay there and wait for Sunday afternoon to wear itself out all by itself and it would once again be time to do something necessary, like eating, sleeping, or starting yet another week. The yellow light of September came in through the open window, dragging with it the intermittent rustle of the street.

Alice stood up on the bed, making the mattress ripple very slightly under Mattia's head. She held her clenched fists by her sides and stared at him from above. Her hair fell over her face, concealing her serious expression.

"Stay right there," she said. "Don't move."

She stepped over him and jumped down from the bed, her good leg dragging the other one behind it like something that had been attached to her by mistake. Mattia bent his chin to his chest to follow her movements around the room. He saw her opening a cube-shaped box that sat in the middle of her desk, and which he hadn't noticed until that moment.

Alice turned around with one eye closed and the other hidden behind an old camera. Mattia started to pull himself up.

"Down," she commanded. "I told you not to move."

Click. The Polaroid spat out a thin white tongue and Alice waved it in the air to bring out the color.

"Where did you get that from?" Mattia asked.

"The cellar. It was my father's. He bought it God knows when but never used it."

Mattia sat up on the bed. Alice dropped the photograph on the carpet and snapped another one.

"Come on, stop," he protested. "I look stupid in photographs."

"You always look stupid."

She snapped again.

"I think I want to be a photographer," Alice said. "I've made up my mind."

"What about university?"

Alice shrugged.

"Only my father cares about that," she said. "He can go, then."

"You're going to quit?"

"Maybe."

"You can't just wake up one day, decide you want to be a photographer, and throw away a year's work. It doesn't work like that," said Mattia sharply.

"Oh, right, I forgot you're just like him," Alice said ironically. "You always know what to do. You knew you wanted to be a mathematician when you were five. You're all so boring. Old and boring."

Then she turned toward the window and snapped a picture at random. She dropped it on the carpet as well, near the other two, and stomped on them with both feet, as if she were treading grapes.

Mattia thought about saying something to make amends, but nothing came out. He bent over and slid the first photograph out from under Alice's foot. The outline of his arms, crossed behind his head, was gradually emerging from the white. He wondered what extraordinary reaction was happening on that shiny surface and decided to look it up in the encyclopedia as soon as he got home.

"There's something else I want to show you," Alice said.

She tossed the camera onto the bed, like a little girl who's grown tired of a toy because she's spotted another, more inviting one, and left the room.

She was gone for a good ten minutes. Mattia started reading the titles of the books leaning crookedly on the shelf above the desk. Always the same ones. He combined the first letters of all the titles, but couldn't come up with a sensible word. He would have liked to identify a logical order in the sequence. He would probably have arranged them according to the color of their spines, copying the electromagnetic spectrum maybe, from red to violet, or according to height, in decreasing order.

"Ta-daaaa." Alice's voice distracted him.

Mattia turned and saw her standing in the doorway, gripping the frame as if afraid she might fall. She was wearing a wedding dress, which must have been dazzlingly white once, but which time had turned yellow at the hem, as if some disease were slowly devouring it. The years spent in a box had made it dry and stiff. The bodice fell limply over Alice's nonexistent bosom. It wasn't especially low-cut, just enough for one of the straps to slip a few inches down her arm. In that position Alice's collarbone looked more pronounced; it broke the soft line of her neck and formed a little hollow, like the basin of a dried-up lake. Mattia wondered what it might be like, eyes closed, to trace its outline with the tip of his finger. The lace at the end of the sleeves was crumpled and on the left arm it stood up slightly. The long train continued out of sight down the hall. Alice was still wearing her red slippers, which peeked out from under the full skirt, creating a curious dissonance.

"Well? Aren't you going to say something?" she said without looking at him. She smoothed the outer layer of tulle on the skirt. It felt cheap, synthetic.

"Whose is it?" asked Mattia.

"Mine, obviously."

"Come on, seriously."

"Whose do you think it is? It's my mother's."

Mattia nodded and imagined Fernanda in that dress. He pictured her wearing the only expression she ever gave him when, before going home, he would stick his head in the living room where she'd be watching television: an expression of tenderness and profound commiseration, like the one usually bestowed upon the sick when people visit them in the hospital. A ridiculous expression, as she was the sick one, sick with an illness that was slowly crumbling her whole body.

"Don't stand there gawking like that. Come on, take a picture of me."

Mattia picked the camera off the bed. He turned it around in his hands to work out which button to press. Alice rocked from side to side in the doorway, as if moved by a breeze that only she could feel. When Mattia brought the camera to his eye, she stiffened her back and assumed a serious, almost provocative expression.

"There," said Mattia.

"Now one of us together."

He shook his head.

"Come on, don't be your usual pain in the ass. And for once I want to see you dressed properly. Not in that mangy sweatshirt that you've been wearing for a month."

Mattia looked down. The wrists of his blue sweater looked as if they'd been devoured by moths. He had a habit of rubbing them with his thumbnail to keep his fingers busy and to keep from scratching the hollow between his index and middle fingers.