The flight to Santiago took off with minimal delay. The attention of the Chilean airline was exquisite and the food was wonderful. Barclays read the paper newspapers. His wife Silvia was watching a movie. Their daughter, Sol, eleven years old, slept in a fetal position, as long and spindly as she was, under the down. They had not been easy days for the girl Sol Barclays. On Saturday her mother Silvia took her to the birthday party of a school friend, a brilliant girl named Elena, who, at such a precocious age, eleven, already spoke Mandarin, as well as other languages. Mother and daughter were impressed by the mansion facing the sea where their friend Elena lived. Silvia thought that she could spend the afternoon in that fabulous house, while the girls played in the pool. But she was informed that only her daughter Sol de ella should remain at the party, since the mothers, a thousand apologies, were not invited to stay. Silvia withdrew with dignity, drove to a cafe and looked at the price of the mansion where her daughter was playing in the pool on her tablet. It had recently been purchased for forty-five million dollars. She ordered a glass of wine from the waiter. She read that the parents of Elena, her school friend, who owned that fabulous house, had also bought a penthouse in New York City. They had paid $230 million, the most expensive property in the city’s history. Silvia Barclays drank a sip of wine, took a breath, and understood that her daughter Sol de ella was playing in the house of a billionaire family. Hours later, returning to her home on a small island near downtown Miami, Silvia Barclays and her daughter Sol della had a heated argument. Silvia admonished her daughter Sol de ella for telling Elena, her birthday friend from school, that she was pampered, pampered. Spoiled was the word that the girl Sol mischievously said to her friend from her school. But Sol claimed in her defense that she said it affectionately, as if playing. Silvia maintained that the school friend did not seem so happy when she Sol told her conceited. She did not say, she did not think it prudent to give figures, what the house where her daughter had spent the afternoon was worth. Neither did she say that the father of her school friend was one of the richest men in the country. The discussion escalated to such a point that the girl Sol criticized her mother because, in her opinion, the gift that they had given to the birthday girl Elena was little, somewhat disappointing. Arriving at her parents’ house, the girl Sol Barclays allowed herself to vent her frustration at her screams: -This is a mediocre house! I live with mediocre parents! We are mediocre! Later, the girl Sol asked her father, Barclays, why they didn’t live in a bigger house, facing the sea, with a yacht on the pier, with a helicopter in the garden, like her friend lived. from her school. Barclays explained to her daughter that she did not have nearly as much money as her friend’s parents. -We are poor? Sol asked, concerned. Are we broke? “Not really,” her father said, smiling. But we are happy in this house. We don’t want to move to any bigger house. Why can’t we move to a nicer house? insisted the girl Sol. “To begin with, because we don’t have as much money as your friend’s parents,” said Barclays. But also because in this house we have been very happy. The Sun girl nodded thoughtfully. “I want to tell you something important,” Barclays told him. You can have many chairs, but you only have one ass. “I don’t understand,” said the girl Sol. “You can live in a mansion with twelve rooms, but in the end you only sleep in one bed.” You can live in a mansion with ten bathrooms, but in the end you only shit in one toilet. You can live in a mansion with a hundred chairs… -But in the end you only sit in one chair -the girl Sol completed. -I have saved the honor -thought Barclays. The next day, while Barclays was sleeping, the girl Sol and her mother Silvia had another heated argument. Sol wanted to go to the apartment of a school friend, Micaela, who lived near her, on the same island. Silvia objected tenaciously. She argued that the day before the girl Sol had already been partying with her friends and that visiting another friend’s house was an excess, an undeserved conceit. While they were arguing, it rained heavily and the streets of the island were flooded in great puddles from which toads and lizards jumped. It had been a long time since it had rained so much on that island. It rained so profusely that the water filtered in persistent drops through the roof of the house and the cars were broken down in the middle of the streets turned into streams. When Barclays woke up, she was in such a good mood that he invited his wife Silvia and her daughter Sol to go shopping at a French fashion house. He felt relieved, smiling, jubilant. His wife had finally found the missing French watch, a fine and expensive instrument that she had given him on his fiftieth birthday. Silvia found it hidden among the chess pieces, inside the chess box, covered by the board and the queen. Barclays had put it in that hiding place and completely forgotten about it. As it rained so much, Silvia decided to challenge her husband, as soon as she woke up, to a game of chess. That was how she found the lost watch. The torrential rain worked the miracle of bringing the clock back into their lives. Silvia delightedly accepted the invitation to the fashion house. Her husband wanted to give him a gift to celebrate the almost miraculous appearance of the clock, confused among the chess pieces, as if he were there to measure the time elapsed between each move of the chip. But the girl Sol refused to accompany them and insisted that she wanted to visit Micaela, her friend from her school. Silvia scolded her loudly, took her cell phone and electronic tablet from her and forbade her to leave her room. Barclays asked his wife to relent. It was in vain. She gently tried to persuade her daughter to go shopping with them, promising her a gift. It was in vain. Then Barclays and his wife left the house, locked it up, and drove downtown to the French fashion house. “We’d better go back,” Silvia said suddenly, frowning, ten minutes later. I have a bad feeling. I think Sol has escaped. -With this rain? Barclays was surprised. It is impossible. She couldn’t walk half a block. “You don’t know your daughter,” Silvia insisted. She is stubborn like you. Let’s go back please. They came right back. Upon reaching the house, Barclays smiled to himself, remembering what his rebellious daughter had said: -This is a mediocre house! My parents are mediocre! We are mediocre! “Sol is probably right,” thought Barclays, enjoying the girl’s insolence. Silvia looked for her daughter Sol de ella throughout the house. She was not her. She had escaped. Where could she go, in the middle of that fierce, incessant storm? Surely she hadn’t been out on a bike or a scooter. “We have to find her,” Silvia said, she barely got into the truck. Distraught, Silvia and her husband toured the island, looking for her daughter. They drove to the pharmacy, to the cafe, to the supermarket. She was nowhere. They looked for her through the streets that led to the apartment of Micaela, her friend from her school. She was not her. Now the Barclays watch was not lost: now her daughter was lost! “She’s going to give me a heart attack,” Barclays said, feeling a crushing pain in his chest. Silvia communicated with Micaela, her friend from school, and with Micaela’s mother. No, Sol wasn’t with them, she hadn’t called, she hadn’t sent them a message. Where could the girl be? In what house of friends could she have taken refuge? They continued to drive around the island, the truck speeding through the waterlogged streets, kicking up little murky waves. The rain did not stop, did not diminish, did not abate. It looked like the end of the world. Suddenly, in the distance, they saw Sol Barclays walking resolutely, as if she had enlisted as a volunteer in a war, without an umbrella, with black rubber boots, barely covered by an overcoat, in the middle of the merciless rain. She was no longer a girl. Suddenly, Sol Barclays was already a woman. She was a woman with enough character to defy the storm, lift her boots between the streams and advance despite everything between toads and lizards, between pigeons and dead squirrels. She was a strong, obstinate, stubborn, stubborn woman. She was a woman willing to die of pneumonia to save her pride. Sol Barclays wanted to get to her friend Micaela’s apartment, and no authoritarian mom would stop her. Barclays understood then that her daughter was now a woman with an indomitable, unruly temper. “She has come out to me,” she thought, smiling, while her wife, Silvia, ran to hug Sol, and took her to the truck. Drenched from head to toe, Sol Barclays did not cry, did not apologize, did not explain. She barely said, with a firm and luminous gaze, as if she were a fanatic on a mission: -Please, take me to Micaela’s house. Barclays thought that this was not the time to scold her daughter or give her moral lessons. “We’ll talk calmly later,” she told him in a friendly tone, relieved to have found her. He then drove to the building where Micaela lived with her mother, her sister, and her two dogs. Micaela went down in the elevator and hugged Sol. “Please, change and put on dry clothes,” Silvia told her daughter. “Don’t worry,” Micaela told Silvia. I have clothes for Sol. Sol Barclays looked at her father and allowed himself a victorious half-smile. Barclays was proud of his daughter. “She risked her life, but in the end she prevailed,” she thought. Then he remembered that he, at the age of thirteen, ran away from his parents’ house, sold some jewelry that he had stolen from them, and spent a month living in hotels of dubious reputation. -Who will my daughter have dated? him, he thought, smiling, driving through the rain to the fashion house. Two days later, the Barclays were at the airport, standing in obnoxiously long lines to get their hand luggage checked. Sol Barclays hated tails even more than his father, even more than his grandmother Dorita. He complained bitterly: -We are mediocre. We don’t have a private plane. My friend has a private plane. -Won’t the plane belong to her parents? Barclays laughed heartily. “That’s why I say,” insisted Sol, grumpy. We are mediocre, compared to them. “But we are happy,” Barclays defended himself. The flight to Santiago took off with minimal delay. Barclays rolled out its newspapers on paper. His wife Silvia turned on a movie. The girl Sol fell asleep. Then her father looked at her with love and thought: -She’s still a girl.
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