With the first money she had earned, Flavia was able to join a gym. She had taken a liking to exercising, a complete novelty in her whole life as a deceased male and young woman.
On the machines, she unloaded her anger against the bubble of the past that caged her, and afterwards she also took the satisfaction of wandering around at will in the women's locker rooms and showers, where no other man would have gotten away with it.
Less simple was getting away with it with Fabrizio, who saw his daughter's presence thin out at home as the school year progressed. With Michela's complicity and the massive use of calibrated half-truths, she managed to disguise her outings as study afternoons.
To Gianluca's delight, Flavia was also allowing herself some evenings out with friends. She felt comfortable in his company, to the point where she would have liked to enjoy a friendship between males with him.
«You can't imagine how curious I am to see what you look like in your eye-candy doll attire» he had said to her one evening. «This weekend I could come and see you at the disco...»
«No way! It's already embarrassing enough without people who know you looking at you.»
«But I'm your desk mate!»
«So consider yourself lucky enough! I wish I had your chance...»
«What are you talking about?»
«You don't want to know, trust me.»
On the other hand, she felt that her friendship with Michela as a girl was gratifying her much more than the one she had had with Claudia as a boy. Seen in that light, it seemed to her that wearing a skirt could have other advantages besides getting into the women's locker rooms.
At that moment they were lying on Claudia's bed, with more clothes on than Flavia would have liked, and with more French to study than Michela would have liked. While Michela struggled to repeat aloud verbs that sounded all alike, Flavia was in charge of correcting conjugation and pronunciation.
On other occasions Flavia gave all her attention to Michela when she was alone with her, but this time, while she was there with her gaze lost among the soft curls that formed Michela's dark mane, she couldn't keep her attention outside the threshold of her inner world.
Absorbed in her own manicure, she took the nail file, rested it against the nail of her right pinky finger, and made a sharp stroke with conviction. She was instantly paralyzed by the vibrations that had climbed up her arm, intertwining her nerves. She dropped the nail file onto the bed. "It's not for me," she concluded. She took the nail clippers and sheared off at once the thin layer of keratin that protruded over her fingertip. The other problems were harder to uproot.
Flavia's health had not been the same since she died.
Not only did she have restless sleep, struggled to concentrate, and developed an almost deadly allergy to Flavio, but at that specific moment, a less evident though more persistent symptom worried her as she lay on the bed, supposed to be listening to her friend repeating the lesson.
«What's wrong? Your mind seems elsewhere,» Michela noticed, suddenly giving up trying to find meaning in the monotony of the French verbs she struggled to pronounce.
Flavia sighed. She had the furrowed brow of someone who had made a mistake in a Sudoku box.
«Yes, I'm a bit worried.»
«About what?»
Flavia looked at Michela like a rabbit that, at night and in the middle of the road, stares at a pair of headlights coming towards it from the darkness.
YOU ARE READING
Spare Future
Science FictionFlavio Mancini is a brilliant but lonely student from Rome who has a crush on Claudia, a wild and reckless girl. He doesn't know that he is the result of a genetic selection by the Interdimensional Assembly, a group of beings who can manipulate quan...
