The next morning Flavia wore a honey-colored suit, made of thin corduroy and with a youthful and informal cut. She had her curls smoothed out a bit and her hair shortened to make it easier to tidy up.

She left home early, feeling, despite the feminine underwear, that she had regained part of the masculinity she once had, or that she liked to think she once had. She was armored with a bold optimism towards the cosmos, of which she now knew such embarrassing secrets that she could not tell a soul, not without risking therapies for the treatment of identity disorders. Convinced of guarding information that would be worth blackmailing Life, the Universe and Death, she got on the bus to go to school.

«Hey, look who's here!» Valentina noticed her.

With her was the inseparable Romina and, a step behind, a boy who looked just like the young Flavio: lanky, wearing glasses, jeans, sneakers and the face that Flavia was still so used to seeing reflected in the mirror.

Flavia took a quick look at the semi-empty bus and decided to try to behave with caution. Before saying something compromising she needed to know if she would say it to Claudia, to her past self or to the evil demon who had messed up every aspect of her existence.

«Hi girls!» she greeted her classmates, approaching them to kiss them on the cheek. «How are you?» She noticed that Flavio had seen her. He didn't seem to react in an unusual way, just giving her some curious and very, very shy glances.

«Just look at our faces...» Valentina yawned. «We're so sleepy this morning! We keep having less hours of sleep than we need.»

Flavia frowned to think that the expression «hours of sleep», requires and adjective that modifies countable nouns, and that making people understand this was a desperate undertaking. She remembered thinking the same thing six years earlier on that same bus and didn't know whether to hope that Flavio was thinking it too.

«I try to avoid having less sleep than needed as much as I can...» Flavio said.

Flavia remembered saying that same phrase in the past, deliberately using the adjective less as it should be. The boy was really Flavio, he was fifteen years old and, apparently, he was unaware of time travel and body swapping.

That was the Flavio who was on his way to fight for his future, for that life that Flavia hoped to get back someday. She was two steps away from that life, but she didn't see how she could get back into it. However, she was comforted by the idea that she could stay close to him and watch over him if necessary.

She didn't like his appearance very much, she had never really liked himself physically. Flavia's attention was diverted to a large number of defects in her old self, physical details and aspects of his behavior that she didn't like. Now that she saw himself from the outside, she discovered even more things she wanted to improve compared to what she had wanted to change back then. But that was her old life and she was surprised to feel a terrible nostalgia for it.

She hoped that the two friends she had in common with himself would help her make contact before she had to get off that bus.

«Unfortunately, trying doesn't count for much. Sleep hours only seem to be enough until Wednesday, but for the second half of the week, we have to deal with not getting enough sleep» Romina teased him. «You look good, though!» she added, turning to Flavia. «Did you do something to your hair?»

«They were bothering me, so I had them shortened. I was undecided whether to darken them a bit.»

«No, on the contrary, I think some light highlights would suit you well» evaluated Romina.

Flavia noticed that Valentina and Romina were ignoring Flavio and if she wanted to get to know him she had to take things into her own hands.

«Girls, it seems that you're not very helpful as friends right now, I have to introduce myself...» she stepped forward. «Hi, my name is...»

At that precise moment an idea struck Flavia like a lightning bolt in a black sky. She thought faster than she ever had. She realized that she had the opportunity to find out if her memories were influenced by the alternative past that she was reliving. She wondered if she would remember Claudia's name as Claudia or as Flavia.

If she had introduced herself to Flavio as Claudia, besides revealing an obvious identity disorder to her friends, Flavia would not have caused any changes in his own past and would not have verified the possibility of modifying the events recorded in her memory.

If instead she had introduced herself as Flavia, she could have experimented something about the world in which she had been resurrected. In that case, remembering the name of her friend Claudia meant that her memories remained intact. Remembering that the name of her friend was instead Flavia... would not have told her much. From that point of view, in fact, she could have thought that the girl he had fallen in love with had always been called Flavia, she would not have been able to say otherwise, she would not have had a different memory.

She therefore made a mental note: if the name of the girl he had fallen in love with had been the same as the one she was using, then she had a problem; she risked corrupting her own memories with every action she took that had repercussions on Flavio's life.

«...Flavia» she concluded. With her plan clear in her mind, she immediately checked her memories and found out, happily, that she had fallen in love with a girl named Claudia and had just pronounced a different name. She smiled full of relief and hope, then looked at Flavio, who was gazing at her bewitched. «And yours?»

«Yes, mine too...» he said still stunned by the surprise, «I mean, I'm Flavio.»

Flavia realized how much she was disorienting him. Certainly, until then, no girl had ever smiled at him that way. She noticed the bewildered expressions of Romina and Valentina and remembered the poor regard they had shown towards Flavio. She stared at them with eyes narrowed like slits.

«How selfish!» she said to them with fake resentment, then winked at Flavio. «They wanted you all for themselves...»

Romina and Valentina looked at Flavio with the face of those who had just realized they had boarded the wrong train.

Flavio smiled embarrassed and ran a hand behind his neck. «You think?»

«Come on! Don't make those twisted faces, otherwise Flavio will realize that I'm right...» joked Flavia. She had noticed that her fifteen-year-old self had been assailed by nervousness, and remembered that feeling as if she had just experienced it. In that moment of six years ago, Claudia had seemed unreal and overwhelming, like the dreams he no longer had since he was a child. He had been struck by an extraordinary chiaroscuro of maturity and madness. He had been bewitched by a personality that, he had felt, was not of ordinary mortals. In that moment, Flavia was certain, that was the feeling Flavio was experiencing.

The bus stopped and the doors opened.

«I've arrived...» said Flavio, and his voice seemed to come from a void of dreams and hopes.

«Bye!» Romina and Valentina hurried to bid their farewell.

Flavia saw Flavio leave through the doors and drag behind him with each step Aziz, Nasoni, Cristina, Claudia, Valdaora, the lake... and everything else in her life.

«I'm getting off with you!» she said running after him just before the doors closed again.

«Aren't you in Romina's school?» Flavio asked her.

«Yes, sure. Why?»

«Didn't you do better to get off later?»

Flavia remembered having asked that question to Claudia the day he met her. His only desire at that moment had been to bond with her. As much as Flavio's intention had been to make conversation, he had soon realized that he had shot himself in the foot. But only now that she listened to himself from the other side, Flavia realized what an excellent act of self-sabotage he had done.

«I still have plenty of time. You also start at eight, right?» Flavia suggested.

«Yes...»

«Then come with me, I need to buy some tissues. There's still a bit of time before the first hour, do you always arrive so early?»

«I like to get there early. You too, don't you?» Flavio sought confirmation. He wanted to know for sure what time he could find her on the way to school.

«I don't know anymore... these days I honestly wouldn't know what to tell you.»

«You're strange...» Flavio smiled.

«I know...» Flavia sighed, raising her eyes to the sky. «I take it as a compliment.»

«But it is!» Flavio confirmed, eager. «Really, I didn't mean to say...»

«Yes, I understood what you meant. You also seem quite out of the ordinary to me.»

Flavia had wanted to return the compliment, but she was aware that her other self would not have been able to understand what reasons a girl he had just met could have for showing him such degree of esteem.

«Out of the ordinary or out of the norm?» he asked with hesitation.

For Flavia, the concept of normality had by now lost all meaning. After what had happened to her, nothing could be normal anymore.

«Don't ask me what's normal or not... my life lately is too messed up» she replied, trying to stay vague.

They entered a tobacco shop and Flavia bought her pack of tissues. Behind the counter there were shelves with cigarettes, topped by two macabre posters side by side. The one on the left reminded that smoking causes cancer, while the one on the right threatened an inescapable impotence. Flavia judged that in her current situation, the cigarettes on the right shelf were much less scary.

«You didn't tell me where you're going, what's your school?» she asked once they left the store.

«It's that way, I'm doing the scientific track» Flavio specified.

Flavia was walking with the incarnation of a past for which she could still feel pride. That Flavio had just achieved brilliant results in his studies and had not yet wasted his opportunities. Unfortunately, as far as opportunities were concerned, the new situation had just deprived him of those he would otherwise have had with Claudia. However, Flavia was determined to help himself seize all the others.

«And what grade are you in?» she asked in a self-congratulatory mood.

«I'm in the third year.»

«Really? I didn't think you were that old...»

«Actually, I skipped a year.»

«Wow!» Flavia exclaimed enthusiastically. «That's great, it must be quite a fulfilling achievement.»

«On one hand yes, on the other I find myself in a class of classmates I don't know, for the second time in a row.»

«Yes, I understand you... for real.»

Flavio frowned, but soon disguised his perplexity with a polite smile. Flavia, noticed. It was clear that her other self didn't believe her to be able to imagine what he was going through.

Flavio didn't think that such an extroverted girl could truly understand him, but he preferred to keep that thought to himself and mask his disagreement.

«Are you in the same class as Romina and Valentina?»

«I'm in another section, we took different language tracks.»

«So you're also in the first year» he deduced. «You're younger than me.»

«No, we're the same age!» Flavia declared proudly. «I have been... I'm behind by a year.»

Flavio seemed confused, uncertain.

Flavia knew how Flavio must have felt, besides perceiving the characteristic smell of his male pheromones, she could remember in the smallest details what effect Claudia had on him: she always tried to show him what she was worth, as if she had to try hard not to make a bad impression on him. Maybe Claudia really did try hard, but as much as her attempts were evident, Flavio had always struggled to recognize them. Especially since his heartbeat prevented him from reasoning easily. Short of self-esteem, he preferred to wait to get to know her better before getting his hopes up. Flavia would have liked to tell him everything and find an ally as well as the closest friend she could conceive of. She did not rule out that one day it would be a good idea to do so, but for the moment she had to keep things as they were, hoping that she could go back to being himself, and that Claudia would go back to being herself. As she pondered over the tangle of her existence, a feeling of nausea and weakness began to take hold of her guts.

«I have to go this way» she told him as they returned to the intersection where they had gotten off the bus. «It was really nice to meet you, Flavio.»

«My pleasure...»

Flavia would have liked to take back her own body at that moment, she would have been happy to relive his life and correct all the mistakes he had made, make new ones, dare more and return to his own time without regretting the opportunities he had let go out of fear. A second chance with Claudia was what he had wanted most in life. In front of her eyes she had, in flesh and blood, her insecure and intimidated past that she would have liked to save from the pit of regrets he was about to fall into.

Flavia stretched her arms around Flavio's neck and pulled him towards her to give him a kiss on the cheek.

«See you soon, then!» she said smiling.

«Bye...» Flavio whispered before walking away.

Flavia found it incredible how much that encounter resembled the one he had had with Claudia. She came up with the crazy idea that Claudia had never existed, that she was really Flavia and not Flavio. As the nausea became more insistent, she pulled out her wallet in search of Claudia's identity card, seized by a sudden intuition.

«This is really too much...» she whispered to herself. She stared at the card for a few more moments, incredulous.

She looked up at the sky, at Life, at the Universe and at Death, spreading her arms that fell limp at her sides. «Seriously?»

Maria. Claudia's name was Maria.