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alongside a garden with little flowers, grass and a tree. They we’re getting even, Cuéllar, every recess pelting Judas’s cage with stone after stone, and he that’s great, soon there won’t be one unbroken bone in that bastard, he laughed, when he got out we’d go to the academy at night and climb in over the roof, long live the kid, pow pow, the Masked Eagle, swoosh swoosh, and we’d make him see stars, in good humor but so skinny and pale, that dog, like he did to me. Seated at the head of Cuéllar’s bed were two ladies who gave us chocolates and went out into the garden, sweetie, you go on talking with your friends, they’d smoke a cigarette and come back, the one in the white dress is my mother, the other’s an aunt. C’mon, tell us, Cuéllar, what happened, did he hurt you bad? real bad, where had he bitten him? well, was it right there and he got jittery, on your peepee? yes, blushing scarlet, and he laughed and we laughed and the ladies from the window hello, hello, sweetie and to us only a little longer, a secret, his old man didn’t want, either did his old lady, anybody to know, my boy, better if you don’t say anything, what for? it was only on the leg, sweetie, okay? The operation took two hours, he told them, he’d be back to school in ten days, look at all the vacation, how lucky you are the doctor had said to him. We left and in class everybody wanted to know, they sewed up his belly, right? with needle and thread, right? And Chingolo how embarrassed when he told us, maybe it was a sin to talk about that? Lalo no, how could it be, every night before going to bed his mother asked him did you brush your teeth? did you make weewee? and Manny poor Cuéllar, what a lot of pain he must’ve been in, if a ball hits you there it’d knock anybody out what would a bite be like and especially think about Judas’s fangs, pick up some stones, let’s get out on the field, one, two, three, gr-r-r gr-r-r gr-r-r gr-r-r, how’d you like that? bastard, take that and that’ll teach you. Poor Cuéllar, Choto said, he won’t be able to shine in the championship match beginning tomorrow, and Manny all that practicing for nothing and what’s worse is, Lalo was saying, it’s crippled the team, we’ve got to make an all-out effort if we don’t want to stay at the bottom, guys, swear you’ll make an all-out push.

2.
     
    He only went back to the academy after the national holiday and, funny thing, instead of having learned his lesson from soccer (wasn’t it on account of soccer, in a way, that Judas bit him?) he came back more of a player than ever. On the other hand, studies started mattering less to him. And that was understandable, he was no fool, he didn’t have to grind away anymore: he went into exams with very low averages and the brothers passed him, bad exams and excellent, miserable homework and passed. Ever since the accident they’re treating you with kid gloves, we told him, you don’t know a thing about fractions and, what nerve, they gave you a ninety. In addition, they had him serving at mass, Cuéllar read the catechism, carry this year’s banner in the processions, erase the blackboard, sing in the chorus, pass out the notebooks, and on first Fridays he would come into breakfast even though he had not received communion. Nobody like you, said Choto, you treat yourself to the swell life, too bad Judas didn’t bite us too, and he that wasn’t why: the brothers made him their pet out of fear of his old man. Idiots, what have you done to my son, I’ll have this academy shut down, I’ll have you sent to prison, you don’t know who I am, he was going to kill that damned beast as well as the rector, calm down, calm yourself down, sir, he shook him by the collar. That’s how it was, honest, said Cuéllar, his old man had told his old lady and although they talked in a whisper he, from my bed in the clinic, heard them: that was why they made him their pet, nothing else. By the collar? what