The school bus sped past them just as they were about to turn the corner, leaving behind the small Gothic-style church that stood across the street.

No one could be seen on the sidewalk along which they were proceeding, although the presence of numerous intersections made it almost impossible to predict the sudden arrival of any passersby.

Sensing the presence of some stranger, the elderly German shepherd who was guarding one of the cottages the neighborhood was teeming with stuck his snout through the bars of the gate and barked at him, uncovering his teeth. Hardened by years of endless ambushes, neither of them even bothered to look in his direction.

Alice continued to text on the Smartphone as if nothing had happened, and Alessandro did not for a second stop keeping his eyes on the sidewalk, lost in his own thoughts. In any case, once they had passed the small wall that Marcoed the boundaries of the property, the girl deactivated the screen of the cell phone, and after putting it back in her coat pocket, she turned to her brother.

''What happened between you and Marco?" she asked him point-blank. ''Did you quarrel by any chance?''

Alessandro did not respond, and still keeping his eyes fixed on the asphalt, he continued to advance along the sidewalk.

''Hey, did you hear me?" repeated Alice after a few seconds of vain waiting. ''Earth to Alex.''

''I heard you,'' Alessandro said coldly, without moving his gaze from the ground.

"So what?

Alessandro's lips curved into a grin.

''So,'' he hissed sarcastically, ''maybe you should consider the idea, that if I don't answer it's because I don't want to.''

Alice sighed, raising her eyes to the sky.

''Let me guess, you got another failure with Ronzini, didn't you?''

He huffed resignedly and raised his hands.

''Look, with mom see it any way you want, just don't ask me to cover for you. When she learned that I didn't tell her about the report card, she got mad at me as if I was the one who got that four''

For the umpteenth time Alessandro did not respond, merely moving forward beside his sister.

''You could at least respond with an okay, you know,'' Alice pointed out to him.

Alessandro clenched his fists.

''Okay,'' he growled, barely holding back his anger.

Without stopping walking Alice gave him a look full of annoyance, but when she realized that her brother really didn't want to know about making eye contact with her, she shoved her hands into her pockets and resumed walking looking straight ahead.

''Thank you very much for the tremendous effort,'' she commented dryly.

That simple sentence was the straw that broke the now overflowing camel's back.

Setting off abruptly down the sidewalk Alessandro detached his sister, and ignoring the exclamation of surprise she threw behind him when she realized his intentions, he turned at the first available intersection, barely ten meters away.

At that point he continued straight ahead without ever taking his eyes off the ground. He had no definite goal, no predetermined destination to converge toward. The only thing he cared about at that moment was to keep running at the maximum speed his legs allowed him, in a desperate attempt to vent all the anger and frustration he carried inside.

He hated everything.

Alice's questions, Marco's reprimands, Cominetti's questions, school, classmates, everything. Even himself.

The madness he had carried out the previous Sunday he would never forgive himself. Since then he literally could not think about anything but food. Even during Grandma's funeral he had been unable to concentrate as well as the gravity of the moment would have dictated.

No matter how hard he tried to fight it, the hunger that plagued him became more intense with each passing day. Because of the constant grumbling of his stomach, it had already been three days since he had slept, and given the precedents the situation seemed only likely to get worse.

Unable to oppose it, he proceeded apace toward catastrophe. Whether this was then death or madness remained a mystery yet to be discovered, his only certainty was that it could not be stopped. It was something ruthless and inescapable, like the passage of time, the expansion of the universe, or death itself. On a par with the asphalt under his feet that...

Hold on a second.

The bike lane?

But there was no trail in that area.

He had barely looked up again when his eyes landed on the discolored concrete wall toward which he was proceeding at frightening speed. In fact, rather than running toward it, it seemed to him that he was standing inside the cockpit of a race car, during a race carried out on a straight line.

One hundred, fifty, twenty-five, ten meters.

With each split second, the distance was halved. Impact against the wall seemed inevitable.

Fuck!!!

Drifting on the reddish asphalt of the bike path, Alessandro desperately tried to stop his mad dash before it was too late. Judging by the smoke that rose from his shoes in the course of that abrupt braking, it almost looked as if they were about to catch fire.

Unfortunately for him, however, it was useless. By now he was too close to hope to avoid the impact. He would have been smashed. He would have died!

Hunting a scream of terror Alessandro shielded himself with his arms and closed his eyes. Soon it would all be over.

There was a roar, the feeling that he had hit a hard surface, then his feet came off the ground, and after a short flight Alessandro tumbled to the ground, tumbling onto something wet and damp.

It was enough for him to open his eyes again to find that he was lying on the grass. He was at the park, the same park where he had discovered the alien probe, and pieces of broken bricks and concrete were strewn around him. However, even before he realized his exact location, the thing that struck him more than anything else was another

In fact, in spite of his gloomy predictions, it really seemed that he had managed to survive. In the end, he had not died.

He was alive instead. Alive and well. And he was in the park.

In the park? No, that was not possible.

The park was too far away. He couldn't really be there. It didn't make sense. Yet...

Settling down on the lawn, Alessandro turned his gaze behind him. There where previously nothing could be seen but a smooth concrete wall, there was now a badly damaged wall that was missing several pieces of plaster, and in the middle of which a large breach stood out.

***

Leaning over the thorny bush that lined the driveway for the last time, Alice checked in both directions to see if anyone was coming over, but after receiving yet another negative response she decided she had had enough.

Emitting a resounding snort of frustration, he then whispered an insult to the air, and then angrily started up the short flight of steps leading to the entrance of the apartment building.

Having reached the top, she approached the intercom, and had almost pressed the button next to the call sign Olivieri, when a breath of wind behind her prompted her to stop. No sooner had she turned around than her heart sank.

Alessandro was right in front of her, as quiet and impassive as if he had always been there.

"Where on earth have you been?" blurted out Alice in annoyance.

''Nowhere,'' he replied evasively.

Not at all convinced Alice seemed ready to reply, but Alessandro anticipated her by turning a nod in the direction of the glass door.

''So are you going to intercom or not?''

From there on neither of them said anything else, and once back in the house Alessandro certainly did not give her a chance to make up for it as he immediately dashed into the bathroom. He turned on the light via the wall switch, then closed the door, and after turning the key in the keyhole, he went to look at himself in the mirror.

His own reflected image stared back at him through the polished glass, giving him an almost perfect representation of what he had looked like for over a year.

Rosacea, acne, scabs and pustules distributed heterogeneously over a face that even he could hardly remember what it looked like before that gruesome transformation. Nevertheless, this was not the detail he was interested in delving into at that moment.

Tearing off the band-aid he had applied last morning on the back of his right hand, he stuck it on the edge of the sink so he could inspect the wound concealed underneath.

Although almost a week had now passed, the cut remained identical to how it was when he had inflicted it. A deep laceration, no wider than a couple of centimeters, that left the living flesh underneath exposed. While it was not bleeding it still proved difficult to call it a pleasing sight.

But then how come he felt no pain?

And why had nothing been done in the park?

How on earth could he run like that?

It seemed to Alessandro that he had ended up in one of those crazy dreams he used to have from time to time. Nothing made sense. He could withstand head-on collisions against concrete walls without sustaining a scratch, and then he couldn't recover from such minutiae?

Although one must consider the fact that he had gotten that cut before he became...whatever he had become.

So should he have kept the wound forever?

Would he be forced to live with that cursed hunger until the end of his days?

His only consolation, if you wanted to call it that, was that considering how this was evolving, he would not have to wait much longer before reaching that point.

The mushroom had given him the power to run faster than a Ferrari, but in return he found himself trapped in a condition that would most likely lead to his death. To make matters worse, he could no longer even go to the bathroom.

Quite a bargain.

In short, the pains from the beating had made them disappear for him. Why wasn't the same happening with the rest? Super speed be damned, all he needed to do was recover from the rosacea! If nothing else, the torments of that night would at least have served a purpose. Instead, nothing at all on that front.

Damn, why couldn't he have a normal face?

Actually meant to ask too much!

Meaningless questions, the result of hunger and confusion that reigned in his head. Pointless questions that no one would answer. Although it was hard not to think about them. Who knows what he would look like next. He would have been curious to find out. However, he could always imagine it.

He had just finished conceiving that thought when a vigorous growl rose from his stomach, and an instant later the inexplicable happened. While he was still staring at his own reflection in the mirror, it changed radically, to the point of being almost unrecognizable.

Now Alessandro was no longer looking at the same face he had long since learned to live with, but at something completely different.

What he wanted to be and had never been. A normal boy with clean, blemish-free skin.

Too shocked to speak, Alessandro opened his mouth wide in a mute cry as his eyes stared in astonishment at the inconceivable spectacle before them. In spite of its apparent logicality, the doubt that suddenly flashed through his brain proved so distressing as to send shivers down his spine.

What if by chance he was still asleep?

''Alex, are you finished?''

His sister's voice made him gasp in fright.

By the time he turned his gaze toward the closed door, the stunned expression that until a moment before had been etched on his face had already been replaced by an angry one.

"What do you want!" he asked acidly.

''Do I really have to answer you?" retorted Alice, spouting sarcasm.

Alessandro took a deep breath. He had to calm down.

''In a little while,'' he promised, softening his tone.

Returning his focus to the mirror, Alessandro stood motionless admiring his own reflection, wondering whether what he was witnessing was real or not. Either way, he was not allowed to stay locked there until he found out. He would have to go out soon, and he could not let Alice and his mother see him in that state.

What on earth would they have thought seeing him like this!

Lowering his eyelids, Alessandro concentrated hard, trying to repeat in reverse the same mental process that had led him so far. The new face he had just received had to go back to being pockMarcoed as usual.

One, two, three, four...hopefully not permanent...five

Alessandro opened his eyes again, and it took him but a moment to realize that it had worked.

The face he saw in the mirror was the same as always. So ugly and repulsive that he hated it. That problem solved, he lifted his right arm and took a look at the wound on the back of his hand. Maybe it would work for that too.

The knocks he heard on the door violently called him back to reality.

''Alex, seriously, I have to go in!" blurted out Alice impatiently.