Daisy pushed her away. Filippa, panting, her hair clinging to her face, sketched out an excuse, and from that moment on stopped bothering her.
Daisy was helping Lorena to fasten her bra when Filippa said something, and then one of the girls started screaming.
The high school girl, a small, chubby blonde girl, was running naked with a cloud of foam stuck to her, shouting at all her mates to get dressed. Other girls started screaming, and they all ran out of the showers. One of them slipped on the wet floor and fell to the floor.
"Barbara, what's going on?" Daisy asked the girl, a shy, skinny teenager, bordering on hyanoresis.
Barbara replied that she had run away because she was frightened of the screams. Daisy realised that most of her friends didn't know what was really going on, but they all screamed anyway, influenced by the reactions of the more exaggerated.
Filippa Villa, who remained calm and lucid, looked out beyond the row of clothes hangers.
"Look up there!" she exclaimed, angrily pointing her finger at one of the air intakes.
"Do you see? There's something..."
"Pulitzer expression, Guido. Big stuff on the hands?"
"Come on, am I that predictable?" Guido replied as he passed Manuel along the east wing corridor of the high school.
"They all saw him. Not just you. It's a freak show. I took a few pictures if you need them."
"Who hasn't? Sorry, but I really have to run."
Guido had to write the piece fast. In front of the school, someone had crashed a pickup into a rusty-coloured Austin and rolled it over on its side. The driver of the car was stuck between the plates. He had been deliberately thrown off the road, and from what little was known, it was a passionate affair. There was a betrayed husband involved, full of anger, threats, insults, and tears of despair.
It was the kind of news that in Cronache Cittadine could have ten thousand views in a day, and for Guido it meant a bonus of thirty euros if he managed not to get the piece
burned. He ran to the literature classroom to get the computer from the cabinet.
Guido had been delegated by the headmaster to stay beyond the canonical time of the lessons. Cronache Cittadine was in fact the most trusted voice on high school performance.
The school headmaster had donated three thousand Euros to the newspaper, just to keep the cultural page alive. No sponsor was in fact interested in culture, but since the school bore an illustrious name, that of Giacomo Leopardi, it was almost a moral duty. And the funding was a breath of fresh air for the online newspaper.
Guido had to warn his mother that he was going to be late. He put his hand in his pocket to get his mobile phone, but all he could hear was the hard bottoms of the fabric. He tried to find it in his locker, even though he was sure he hadn't left it there. He opened the door, moved books and notebooks, went through the drawers. Nothing. It was the second phone he'd lost in a year. That's quite gratifying. The money he earned from it would have been used as a down payment on a new cell phone.
Dark in the face, closed the cabinet and went back to the computer.
He was ready to write about the incident when a link opened without him touching anything.
He started streaming what appeared to be a pornographic chat. On the screen appeared the soft shapes of a girl soaping her tongue, her small, white hand exploring her thighs, her face cut out of the frame.
Like all teenagers, Guido was particularly attracted to pornographic sites. But he was worried about the chat because it started automatically, as if it were the work of a hacker ready to infect his computer.
He was about to close the link, but that soapy girl had something familiar to him. He focused his gaze on that image: the foam covered the young woman's face, and she
reclined her head back to rinse her face and hair in the shower.
ʺNo. It can't be.ʺ
His heart began beating fast in the centre of her chest.
ʺNo, it can be her.ʺ
The girl was exactly her.
It was Daisy Magnoli.
She watched her classmate wipe the sponge on her slender, perfect hips. She noticed that her pubic hair had been shaved, and that she had mischievously tattooed a butterfly on the left side of her tongue.
He saw the hidden slit, the one that disturbed his nights, glabrous and shiny with water. The bald version of Coulbert's world was right there in front of him.
Guido, excited and confused, had an erection. The situation was absurd, almost unreal. He tried to regain control by trying to stay calm. He wondered who might be the author of that film.
He adjusted his glasses on his nose and clicked the ESC button to reduce the screen. Graphics appeared around the video. He realized it wasn't a pirate link.
"Oh, shit!" he exclaimed, discolouring his face.
The video was broadcast live from a smartphone.
He recognized the number at the bottom of the screen.
It was his cell phone number.
In the locker room, the girls crowded to the far side of the air.
Filippa noticed a small, compact object behind the slits in the aluminium grille.
She would never have noticed it if the vapour condensation on the object hadn't started dripping onto the bench where she had put her things. Filippa never deviated from her habits. That's why he always put his suit, shorts, and volleyball shirt in the same place, folded the same way,
under one of the four air vents in the locker room. She was taking tampons out of her bag when the drip dampened the back of her hand.
She looked up and saw the phone behind the grille, the camera's pitiless eye on the showers.
Daisy grabbed the stool and placed it under the air intake, climbed on it and grabbed the edges of the grille, which came off effortlessly.
Someone had removed the four screws that secured it to the wall. She grabbed the cell phone, version 5 of the Galactic P6. She owned that same model. Her familiarity with the phone's functions helped Daisy to turn the camera off. "Who's the asshole who had fun filming us?" exclaimed Lorena, quickly tucking her blouse in.
"Surely a big bastard or a big son of a bitch” said Filippa who, along with the other girls, had gone behind Daisy's back to get a better look at the phone. The girls were all furious, and they were all consumed with that animosity that comes every time something happens that makes them feel ashamed and embarrassed through no fault of their own.
"Imagine if that bastard had retrieved the cell phone and put it on the net" Lorraine said, imagining disturbing scenarios like ending up in some porn chat room, or in high school kids' cell phones.
"Us walking around naked in the showers... can you believe it? "Tits and asses in the wind for everyone to see. Can you imagine that shit?"
Daisy sat on the bench, grimacing her phone with a grimace of contempt, as if just having it in her hands disgusts her. She looked at the footage with disgust and said, "This is no joke, I'm sure. It looks more like the work of some perverted maniac" she added, "I've got bad news: we were being filmed live.
The panic began to creep up on the girls, even though some of them, underneath it all, got excited at the idea of being
secretly watched. But the more demure ones, and they were the majority, were terrified that the video might go viral. None of them would have the courage to stick their noses out of the house. Daisy reassured them, "If you look closely, you haven't been filmed, so you don't have to worry.
Daisy discoloured her face when she saw who the only girl on film was naked. She hesitated and picked up her cell phone to show her companions the images that were scrolling across the screen.
"See? You're not in any frame. Only... only I'm being filmed. So the fuckin' shit's only on me."
The girls kept quiet. The news lifted them up and they stopped despairing. Their reputation was safe. Some of them kept pretending to care because, anyway, they thought it was right to show sympathy for Daisy. The girl went through the phone menu to find out who it belong
ed to, assuming it was impossible to trace it back to the owner. No one could be so clueless as to use their phone to perform such an action. Violating privacy was illegal, and in the worst cases, you could even go to jail. Daisy ran her thumb across the screen and read the alphabetically sorted apps: Apps, Calendar, Cinetrailer, Facebook, Games, Weather, Messages...
"Messages. There you go! Now let's see this bastard's texts."
The girls raised the bar.
"Can you tell whose it is?" exclaimed Lorena.
"Wait a second. Here we go. Yeah. I got it." Daisy said, noting that under ʺmessagesʺ there were dozens of texts. She read the most recent ones feverishly.
Hello beast! I'll expect you tonight at nine. I'll bring the beer, you bring the girls! Oh, sorry. I always forget you're a queer. That means I'll settle for beer. Don't be late!
Good morning, Mr. Director. I hope the article it's fine. Otherwise, I'll replace it with a piece of news.
Manuel, I have a review tomorrow. Could I borrow your French dictionary?
Daisy read more messages. With each line, she felt the tears in her eyes rise.
"Well? Did you find something?"
Daisy couldn't respond quickly enough.
"I don't think... I don't..." she slurred, each syllable a painful lament.
"Daisy, are you all right?" worried Lorraine, seeing her pale, her lips trembling, foreshadowing a broken cry.
"The phone, I can't... I can't figure out who’s it is” she lied. "If you agree, I will hand it over to the principal” she proposed, the phrase broken by an inner hiccup.
The girls nodded with a distracted expression of who no longer thought it was their problem.
Daisy finished dressing. She greeted Lorena, who had an appointment with the boy, and headed for the locker room bathroom.
She looked in the mirror to brush her wet locks.
As she watched carefully, she became irritated with herself at the restlessness and suffering on her face.
Guido couldn't have been that important, especially now that he had turned out to be some kind of maniac. She didn't want to cry. That idiot did not deserve his tears. All he had to feel was a healthy pissing off with the bastard. Nothing more.
She put his gym bag over hes shoulder and walked out in slow steps, his phone tightly in his hands, with an overwhelming desire to throw it to the ground.
She walked down the driveway that separated the locker rooms from the school with his head down.
He watched the yellowed leaves rustling on the porphyry tiles. She was lost behind her thoughts, but sometimes she came to her senses, as confused as someone who does not know exactly where she is and where she is going. From
time to time, she simply responded to the greetings of the boys she met.
ʺHi Nico, yeah, that's good. Doesn't it look like it? I'm just worried... no, I'm not afraid to go on tv... ʺ
ʺMy hair? No, no gel, it's just wet...ʺ
ʺYes Rosy. See you at the course...ʺ
So he went back to being a stranger. As he walked down the avenue, he went back to the things he said in the locker room.
"They'll take us for whores ... we would be disgraced for life."
"But no, you're more bitches than bitches" she said out loud, just to hear the concept ringing in his ears and be pleased with it. She had been irritated by the hypocrisy of her companions towards her, but at that moment she thought it was pointless to think of them. Now she had to focus on Guido.
She had promised to take the phone in the direction, but she was no longer so sure she wanted to.
ʺCome could she do something like that? Still, he doesn't look like a maniac. Which, however, is not at all reassuring. Usually it's the ones you think are shy and harmless that do these things” she thought.
He was coming out of the high school gate when he heard her voice.
ʺOh, shit she said to himself as he ran towards her with a serious face, as if tormented by anxiety and uncertainty.
"Daisy, I need to talk to you... wait... let me catch my breath” he said, short of breath and bent in two, his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. He took off his fogged-up glasses to clean the lenses, and when he slipped them on again, he saw Daisy's delicate hand holding his phone almost with disgust. She stared at him haughtily, surprised to feel a thrill of satisfaction at seeing his face become earthy.
"Now you're going to tell me you had nothing to do with it."
"It wasn't me. I swear it wasn't. I swear to God. On my family. On everything I hold most dear."
He remarked the expression “On everything I hold most dearʺ staring at her with an intense expression, as if the oath included her.
It seemed sincere to Daisy, but that was not enough to make the disgust she felt for him at that moment fade away. The situation was serious and required a hard, nasty, grudging attitude.
"Who says you're not a dirty peeping tom?" she asked furiously.
"Because I'm not." he defended himself.
"I don't believe you. You guys are all pigs. And you're probably the king of pigs." she said, slamming his cell phone into his hand.
"Daisy, listen..."
"We have nothing to say to each other” she exclaimed, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Don't you understand? Someone has stolen my phone."
"They stole it! Ah, that's a good one" she interrupted him, waving her hand to end the conversation.
"Wait. Let me finish. Yes, it was stolen. But that's not the point. The point is, there's something weird about it. Look, I want to show you something" Guido slid the backpack straps off his shoulders, put it on the driveway bench, sat down and pulled out the computer.
"I had to write an article when you appeared on the screen" he exclaimed, turning on the computer.
"I saw you in the shower. I was confused and surprised. I thought of a thousand things. Even that you..." he interrupted, unsure whether to be completely honest.
"What did you think?" she replied furiously, sensing what she was implying.
"Okay. I'll tell you. Of all the things, I thought she filmed you on purpose."
"Are you kidding?" she exclaimed with disgust.
"Listen. I'm sure you had nothing to do with it. But think about it. How was I to know which shower room you'd get into? After practice, one usually slips into a cubicle on a random basis. There could be people coming in and out, hot water not working, a few broken pipes... too many surprises. So I'm wondering, did your friend film you? I don't believe that either. I'm guessing someone hid my phone somewhere. But how would they know where to point it? There's too many weird things. And that's not all yet..."
She interrupted him in amazement.
"Are you suggesting that I stole the phone myself to put it in the girls' shower just so you could jerk off?"
"No. I'm... I'm not saying that” he replied uncertainly.
"That's exactly what you're saying! You're trying to defend yourself by blaming me. But I'm not you, man. You're perverted on the inside. It's in your DNA. DNA that's miles of shit when you unroll it. You know what? I'm going to the principal. I'll tell him all about it and get you kicked out of school."
Daisy deviated from the gate that led to the exit and walked a long way down the courtyard avenue. She had let off steam. She had been impulsive, furious, pretending not to have heard Guido's explanation, when in fact she had been paying attention to every single word. Her reasoning was unmistakable. No one could know which shower cubicle she was going to wash herself in. But for some strange reason she had preferred to insult him rather than agree with him.
Daisy measured the steps that separated her from the answering machine door without knowing what to do. Behind the glass in the lobby, she noticed the secretary's cotton-clad hair. She did not know whether or not to report the incident. She pointed her glossy lacquer nail at the doorbell, hesitating whether to press the button.
She felt Guido's breath running out behind her, but he didn't turn around, r
emaining completely on his own.
"You didn't let me finish” he said, staring over her shoulder.
Guido looked pensively at the small, compact computer held in his hands.
"I wanted to tell you that a message came along with the film. A strange comment."
Daisy crossed her arms waiting for him to say what he had to say; she gave him an annoyed look, as if she could barely tolerate his presence.
Guido turned the computer towards Daisy. She looked angrily for the two lines attached to the video, where she was seen sticking her hands between her thighs to wipe her tongue with foam.
Daisy read the commentary and discoloured her face.
Adriano must stop looking for me. Or he'll come to a bad end.
Again, someone was threatening her brother.
Secret file n.3
The editorial staff has received the recorded documentation.
To interview the witness is (omissis)
THE REGISTRATION IS COMPLETE
Noise is caused by the nurse coming in, the sensors on the medical equipment, and the comings and goings of staff outside the room.
"How are you feeling today?"
"Better. The good Lord watches over my martyrdom. Could you please press that button at the foot of the bed? It's for lifting the pillow."
"I don't know if I can do that. Wait, I'll call the nurse."
"Ah, there's Beatrice. Thank you. That's better. Only now I'm a bit sleepy. I don't know if I can tell you everything."
"If you want to rest, I can come back later."
"No. You're keeping me company after all. So, what about that day? It certainly wasn't me. I never thought I'd behave like this. My life is prayer. I pray a lot, you know? I pray all day and think about the church. I spend my life for it, and only for it: Holy Mother Church. And... wait. Before we go
any further, I'd like to know one thing. What do the doctors say? Will I get well soon?"
The Dawn of Sin Page 4