The Back Bench

Nine o'clock in the morning in Cañadón Frío always had the same color: a dirty mix between the soot of the exhaust pipes and the yellowish glare of the plastic classroom curtains.

Bianca pressed her forehead against the wood of the desk. It smelled of old varnish and dry correction fluid. Behind her, the radiator glued to the wall creaked with dull thuds, as if someone trapped in the pipes were kicking the cast iron rhythmically.

The midnight tribunal had never sat. At eleven thirty the town's power was cut, the white wind buried the road to Cerro Ceniza, and the Loncopán shut themselves in the records room with Lisandro until past three. Nobody called for Bianca. She waited in the music room until Pascual fell asleep over his crossword, then walked home down the middle of the road, not knowing whether she had been forgiven or only put off for later.

"If you fall asleep now, Professor Antileo is going to nail you a one on the Geography practical," whispered Pascual Meliqueo from the next desk. His fingers were stained with blue ink from a pen that leaked at the threads.

"I'm not falling asleep," Bianca murmured without lifting her head. "I'm pretending I don't exist. They're different disciplines."

"Oh, right. An ancient technique."

"Shut up, Meliqueo."

Pascual pulled a crumpled packet of water crackers from his jacket pocket. There were two left, broken in half and covered in crumbs that looked like sawdust. He offered her a half over the spiral notebook.

"Here. They taste like nothing, but at least they make noise."

"I don't want any."

"Eat it, Pezoa. You look like you spent the entire night counting one-eyed sheep."

Bianca sighed and bit into the cracker. It tasted exactly as promised: salty cardboard and mountain cold. She raised her gaze just a few centimeters, enough to catch the back of Lisandro Véliz's neck three rows ahead.

His hair was still damp from the freezing drizzle falling over the broken tile courtyard. His black sweatshirt, frayed at the cuffs, left his right wrist exposed. There it still was: the scarlet thread of raw wool, tied with three firm turns. Lisandro held a ballpoint pen between his index and thumb, spinning it with an exasperating monotony, without taking a single note from the board.

Bianca took her phone out of her apron pocket. She pressed the side button, but the screen crossed by the diagonal crack didn't turn on: the battery had finished dying the night before, right after Lisandro crossed the hallway guarded by the Loncopáns.

She stood staring at her own blurred reflection in the dark glass, chewing the question she hadn't managed to send him before the blackout:

"Why did you put on the red wool if you swore you weren't going to sign anything with the old men?"

She put the useless device back in her pocket before Antileo caught her.

Things Bianca did not plan to do that Tuesday:

1. Look at Lisandro's back every four minutes.

2. Ask Pascual if he knew anything about the midnight tribunal.

3. Remember that her father used to say there are inheritances that weigh heavier than a wet sack of salt on your back.

4. Take a deep breath.

Pascual leaned over the aisle separating their desks.

"Did you see the pickup that parked outside at seven?" he asked under his breath, pretending to look for an eraser under his pencil case with the broken zipper.

"I didn't look."

"Lies. You were glued to the hallway window like a moth."

"I was checking if it was snowing, idiot."

"It doesn't snow with this white wind, Bianca. The snow blows right past and cuts your face, nothing more."

A piece of chalk hit the corner of Pascual's desk with a dry knock. Professor Antileo, with his gray smock buttoned up to his Adam's apple and his glasses held on by a black elastic band, didn't take his eyes off the blackboard where he was drawing the contour lines of Cerro Ceniza.

"Meliqueo," Antileo said without turning around. "If the topography of the canyon seems fascinating enough to debate in whispers, come to the front and finish marking the basin."

Pascual sank into his chair until his knees hit the wooden drawer.

"All under control, prof. Studying the relief."

A muffled laugh ran through the first two rows. Lisandro didn't laugh. He didn't even stop the spinning of the pen between his long, pale fingers, reddened at the knuckles by the morning frost.

The classroom door opened without knocking.

The screech of the rusty hinges froze the classroom murmur. Director Cárdenas stood out in the frame. He was wearing his dark cloth overcoat still covered in bright little droplets and a brown cardboard folder clutched under his arm. He smelled of hand-rolled tobacco and the reheated coffee of the teachers' room.

"Excuse me, professor," Cárdenas said, sweeping the room with a look that wasn't looking for culprits of any childish mischief.

The classroom went mute.

"Pezoa."

Bianca stayed still. The dry cracker stuck in her throat.

"Me?" she managed to say, pointing at her chest with the tip of her cold fingers.

"Gather your things and come with me to the principal's office. Now."

A low, thick, and rapid murmur began to roll through the wooden desks like a draft filtered through a crack. Two girls in the middle row nudged each other covertly. Pascual looked at her out of the corner of his eye, opening his eyes with an alarm he couldn't quite disguise behind his crooked smile.

For the first time all morning, Lisandro Véliz stopped the pen.

He turned his head back, barely a quarter profile. His dark eyes found Bianca's for half a second. There was no mockery or distance in his gesture; only a tense rigidity in his jaw, and that slight involuntary tremor in his fingers that gave away the cold rising through his blood from the wrist tied with red wool.

"Come on, Pezoa. We don't have all day," the director hurried from the hallway.

Bianca shoved her unfolded notebook into her worn backpack, the dead phone in her pocket, and stood up. The desk scraped the floor with a sharp groan that made her skin crawl.

"If they suspend you, I'm keeping your warm jacket," Pascual whispered as she walked by.

"In your dreams, Meliqueo."

The school hallway was long, dim, and smelled of cheap bleach mixed with the reek of thirty damp coats drying on the pipe coat racks. Every step Bianca took behind Cárdenas's heavy shoes sounded hollow, amplified by the high tin roof vibrating against the onslaught of the mountain wind.

No one spoke. Cárdenas walked fast, hands shoved in his overcoat pockets and head down, dodging the blue plastic bins placed on the floor to catch the melting snow leaks.

"Did I do something wrong, director?" she asked halfway, speeding up so she wouldn't fall behind.

"You didn't do anything, Pezoa."

The dry answer didn't help calm the dull thumping in Bianca's temples.

They entered the principal's office. The study was small, crammed with olive-green metal filing cabinets and faded diplomas framed in cheap wood. A two-bar halogen heater illuminated the worn linoleum floor with an orange glow.

Cárdenas didn't sit behind the desk. He stayed standing by the window overlooking the back yard, where the Council committee trucks still had their engines running, blowing puffs of white smoke against the wire fence.

"Close the door," he instructed without turning back.

Bianca pushed the wooden door until the latch caught with a metal click. Her eyes went straight to the center of the scraped oak desk.

Right there, between a plastic pen holder and a stack of detention slips, rested a thick yellow cardstock folder, its edges worn from years of handling.

On the cover was her father's name, typed with worn ribbon:

"PEZOA, HÉCTOR DANIEL — CASTE AND LINEAGE REGISTRY."

Crossing the closure of the flap, a thick hemp cord held a medallion of black sealing wax, shiny and hard as obsidian, branded with the cloven hoof of the Council of Clans.

The black wax wasn't used for school infractions or file transfers.

It was used for the dead or for traitors.

The wind struck the exterior tin of the window with a sharp blow.

"Read it if you want," Cárdenas said in a very low voice, without taking his eyes off the vehicles waiting outside. "Because before noon they're coming to take him."