A few weeks passed since the hospital incident, and everyone in the family seems more cheerful about it.

Apparently, my body is starting to show signs of improvement; it has verbal and psychomotor issues, but it's progressing day by day. At first, that wasn't the case, and both my mother and sister were disheartened because of it.

<<He's been left behind.>>

<<No, ma'am. Don't say that. It's just that, after all that time in a coma, he has to get used to being himself again.>>

But my mother wouldn't listen to my brother-in-law's well-intentioned explanations and would break into tears, followed by my sister, and then my brother-in-law; all of them sobbing uncontrollably. And meanwhile, I was stuck in this fucking anguish, left without a body, without my niece, and without a soul.

"What are you thinking, Daniela?" asks the psychologist as I doodle with the paper and colored pencils she gave me when I arrived.

If it weren't for the mess I'd get my sister and brother-in-law into, I'd draw a massive orgy or a devilish massacre just so the doctor could analyze it. But nah...

Still, I smile at the thought.

"Is what you're thinking funny?"

"Oh, doc, if only I could tell you..."

How to talk like a little girl. I remember my conversations with Daniela and try, but I know I fail every time.

"I was thinking about a boy I met the other day," I lie.

"From your school?"

"No. From the one across the street."

"And do you like him? How does being with him, playing together, make you feel?"

From my expression, the doctor must realize she's treading on dangerous ground. She retreats, and we go back to more familiar topics—questions about how I feel about being me, about my bodily changes, my mood swings, and a bunch of other things.

God...

Being a girl is a whole ordeal. They think I must feel used, degraded, ignored, overvalued, violated, spoiled at every moment.

Mom is right, kids are wild. She says she never had any trouble with me; as long as I had something to eat, something to watch, and somewhere to pee, there was no problem. And, with a laugh, I try to debate her argument in my mind, but then I remember those afternoons spent watching a snail's slow crawl for hours, only to pick it up and place it back at the starting point just to watch it again. That simple. I also remember those countless afternoons at my grandparents' house, where they'd sit me in the living room and tell me to stay still, and as long as they put a plate of chips and candy in front of me, I remained motionless—except for my hands and mouth. Or the many moments when, grabbing my little thing, I'd warn at the last moment that I couldn't hold it any longer, and within seconds, someone would unzip me, and I'd unleash a whole arsenal of piss on some street corner, park, or avenue, and no one, absolutely no one, complained.

On the other hand, with my sister, everything was more... delicate. She needed more attention, more care, more affection, more time for everything.

Damn, I haven't been in this tiny body for long, and I already understand the injustice of nature, of society.

"Ah, but women can give birth..."

"Ah, but I don't ever want to test that."

I don't want to have sex. I don't want to get pregnant. I don't want to give birth.

Shit, I need to get Dani back into her body and recover mine!

"How do you feel about food?"

"Food?"

The doctor goes silent; she probably realizes I'm rambling. Giving me space to latch onto the question, she waits.

"Oh, you mean the meal later."

"Yes, the meal later," she confirms, maybe surprised by my response. But I'm fed up with all this.

"Look, doc. I've spent weeks hearing that my uncle—who is actually me, or rather, my body—rose from the dead to live as a handicapped person, and that's without mentioning that he threw himself on me when he was on his deathbed. Exterminators come every week to kill more and more rats in an infestation that only happens in our house. Our things move around. There are strange noises in my room. Horrific dreams. My family is sad, then happy, then all crying. Some kids... some sick little bastards groped my classmate and me, and I had to fight against the guilt of breaking their hands and stabbing them with a pencil. And now I'm seeing a psychologist—a very nice one, by the way—whom I can't even tell how I really feel or what's happening to me, because not even with doctor-patient confidentiality would I come out of this unscathed. Plus, there's this family meal, and for the first time, I feel weird about it. We could be the normal family we were, but I know that won't happen, because we're missing my Dani, my dear Dani. And, of course, I'm missing myself."

"Good," I say in a childlike voice as I hand her a drawing of a unicorn.

The meal was supposed to be at a restaurant, which seemed crazy to me. But who listens to kids? While they discussed having it at Arroyo, since I supposedly love their barbacoa, I pictured the commotion, the musicians, the noise, the alcohol. I couldn't allow it.

<<My uncle told me, the day of the accident, that he really wanted to take me to Suntory. That I'd try the best teppanyaki in Mexico.>>

Everyone fell silent.

My mother, eyes brimming with tears, agreed and asked my sister and brother-in-law to go to the Japanese restaurant instead.

Instead of complaints from Dani's parents, I got praise, and I overheard my sister whispering that it was the first time I'd seemed excited about something since the accident—or rather, the incident, the attack on my body.

On the way to the restaurant, I catch my reflection in the window. The burn marks are healing. My poor Dani will never be the same again.

It saddens me to think I don't know where she is or what's become of her.

We arrive and get a nice table. We walk past the lobster tank, and Daniela's parents seem surprised that I don't stop to look at them.

Damn. "The devil is in the details," they say.

My mother and my body arrive. Discreetly, it looks amazed by everything, and when it sees me, a slow, drooling smile spreads across its face. Insidious and sluggish, it makes my skin crawl.

"Hello," it says like an idiot, but also with a hint of complicity.

My mother takes a picture of us, and my sister and brother-in-law embrace.

"Uncle," I say as I hug him, fearing he might get violent toward me. Nothing happens.

During the meal, the idiot burns my body's hand on the grill repeatedly, as if testing how much it can take.

"Stop that, you're going to hurt yourself," my mother says, exasperated.

"Let him be, ma'am. He's not hurting himself," my brother-in-law says, earning a sharp look from my mother.

I step in.

"Be careful, you wouldn't want to get burned, right?"

The fool inhabiting my body—who is most definitely not Daniela—laughs, understanding the irony of my comment. He looks at me with my scarred face, worse than Dani's, and everyone else laughs along with him.

Everyone except me.

Because now I know.

He's not an idiot, and he's not Daniela.