Among Wolves

CHAPTER 1

The Fifty-Escudo Coin

My first morning at Instituto Nacional, I made two mistakes.

The first was bringing a fifty-escudo coin to school.

The second was showing it to Mauricio.

I was fourteen and knew very little about the Instituto, except that it was one of the best public schools in Santiago and that, somehow, I had managed to get accepted.

All around me, boys in navy-blue jackets streamed through the gates in noisy groups. They greeted each other, shoved each other, traded insults as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and laughed like they had known each other forever.

I didn’t know anyone.

My grandfather had given me the fifty escudos two days earlier for my birthday. It was a large, heavy, copper-colored coin, and to me it felt like a treasure. I had spent much of the morning touching it through my pocket.

I wasn’t planning to spend it.

It was my money.

The first money that really felt like mine.

I’d brought it mostly to show off. I figured that if the other boys saw I had fifty escudos, maybe they’d accept me a little faster.

But I planned to take it home at the end of the day.

The Instituto was enormous, and finding a classroom among all those courtyards, hallways, floors, and staircases wasn’t easy. When I finally found Room 402-B, it was already packed with boys. There must have been about forty-five of them.

Some were sitting on their desks; others were leaning against the walls. They shouted back and forth across the room, threw paper, shoved each other around, and laughed at jokes I didn’t understand.

When I walked in, nobody paid me any attention.

I was looking for a place to sit when I noticed the coins.

Two boys were bent over the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. About eight boys crowded around them, shouting over one another.

One of the coins had rolled almost to the edge.

“This one’s the winner,” one of the boys said. “No way I’m giving it up.”

The other leaned down, concentrating.

Then—

CLACK!

The coins collided.

One shot off the desk and hit the floor.

The other spun in circles and came to a stop.

The crowd erupted.

“Again!”

“No, no! That one was yours!”

“Move!”

“My turn!”

I watched for a few seconds.

Then a boy beside me noticed I was watching.

“You’ve never played the Sweep, new kid?”

I shook my head.

He looked at me as if I’d just told him I’d never seen a soccer ball.

Before he could explain anything, someone shouted from the doorway:

“Aguirre! Heads up, you assholes!”

Everything stopped.

Not gradually.

Instantly.

The boys scattered.

The coins disappeared as if by magic. The desks went back into place, and everyone scrambled for a seat.

Within seconds, they all looked as innocent as lambs.

I was the only one still standing.

A stocky man with a hard expression walked in, gripping a wooden pointer in his fist.

He stopped.

Looked around.

Then looked directly at me.

“So you’re the new kid?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Name?”

“Roberto.”

He waited.

I realized that wasn’t enough.

“Santoro, sir.”

He nodded once.

“Sit wherever you can, Santoro. Most of the seats are already taken.”

There was only one empty desk left near the back.

The teacher dropped the pointer onto his desk.

The sharp sound echoed through the room.

Class began.

I tried to pay attention, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the coins and that strange game they called the Sweep. During the first recess, I was still trying to figure out how the hell it was played when a boy approached me.

He was thin, dark-haired, and moved so fast I barely had time to look at him.

“You’re the new kid, right?”

I nodded.

“You bring coins?”

“What?”

“For the Sweep.”

I reached into my pocket.

“I’ve got one.”

I pulled out the fifty-escudo coin, mostly just to show it off.

The boy stared at it.

He didn’t say a word.

He simply turned around and ran out the door.

I watched him disappear.

A few seconds later, he came back.

He wasn’t alone.

Three boys followed him.

Then five.

And then more.

I looked around.

What was going on?

One boy shoved another.

“I’m going first!”

“You weren’t even here when I talked to the new kid!”

“Move, I’m telling you! The new kid’s mine!”

A boy near the window grabbed another by the sleeve.

“Let me play first, Eddie. Don’t be an asshole!”

“Why you?”

“Because I was the first one to notice him!”

I looked from one face to another.

Nobody seemed interested in asking me what I wanted.

Why were all these guys fighting over who got to play with me?

I started to suspect there was something I didn’t understand.

There was.

I just didn’t know what it was yet.

Then one boy stepped forward.

The others fell silent.

He was blondish and taller than most of them. His uniform was immaculate, and his hair was perfectly combed. But his upper lip was swollen, with a thin streak of fresh blood.

This guy had just been in a fight, I thought.

For a moment, I expected him to come over and welcome me with his fists.

Then he looked directly at me.

And, to my surprise, held out his hand.

“Gustavo Andrés Lyon.”

I shook his hand.

The name sounded almost aristocratic to me.

“Welcome, Santoro,” he said, almost casually.

“Thanks,” I managed to say.

He looked at the fifty-escudo coin.

“Well, well. Nice coin.”

I nodded.

“Worth a lot, huh?”

I smiled.

“I guess.”

He glanced at the coin again.

Then at me.

“Have you ever played the Sweep?”

“No.”

The boys behind him laughed.

Gustavo gave them a threatening look and raised one hand.

They fell silent immediately.

Then he smiled at me.

“Don’t worry. There’s always a first time for everything in life.”

“One little game and you’re officially baptized.”

I looked at my coin.

I didn’t want to play. Fifty escudos was too much to risk on a game I barely knew how to play.

But everyone was watching me.

If I said no, I’d be the new kid who chickened out on his first recess.

I didn’t want to start that way.

“OK,” I said, trying to make it sound as if I didn’t care.

Gustavo reached into his pocket and pulled out a five-escudo coin.

It was much thinner and lighter than mine.

He spun it between his fingers.

“I play with this one.”

I looked at his coin.

Then at mine.

“But that’s five.”

Gustavo looked at me as if the observation were perfectly reasonable.

“Yeah.”

“And mine is fifty.”

“I know.”

A few laughs came from behind us.

I didn’t understand what was so funny.

“So how much do I win if I beat you?”

Gustavo smiled.

“Fifty.”

That seemed clear enough.

“And you?”

“Your fifty.”

I looked at the five-escudo coin between his fingers.

“Then why do you play with a five?”

Gustavo shrugged.

“Everyone plays with the coin that works best for them.”

He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

He smiled.

“Come on.”

He led me to the teacher’s desk.

Several boys immediately gathered around us.

The desk was much larger than the students’ desks, with a smooth wooden surface worn down by years of use.

Gustavo placed his five-escudo coin on the desk.

“Let’s see how good your fifty-escudo coin is.”

“So how does it work?”

“Look, it’s easy. If mine is the one that falls and yours stays on the desk, you win.”

“And if they both fall?”

Gustavo looked at me.

A slow smile appeared on his face.

“You’ll find out. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

I looked around.

Nobody was laughing anymore.

Even José Rodríguez, who was standing near the window, was watching in silence.

I put my fifty-escudo coin on the desk.

Gustavo stepped back.

“You go first, new kid. I’ll let you start.”

I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together.

I’d played marbles before. Each player got a shot there, too. This couldn’t be that complicated. All I had to do was hit the other coin.

I aimed.

And flicked.

CLACK!

My fifty-escudo coin slammed into Gustavo’s and sent it flying off the edge.

Mine kept spinning.

For a moment, I thought I’d done it perfectly.

Then my coin reached the far edge.

It teetered.

And disappeared.

Both coins hit the floor.

I looked at Gustavo.

“I won,” I said.

Nobody answered.

Then someone let out a short laugh.

I turned around.

Alejandro Valenzuela was shaking his head.

“No, Santoro.”

“What?”

“You lost.”

“But his coin fell!”

“So did yours.”

I looked down.

Gustavo was already picking up both coins—my fifty-escudo coin and his five-escudo coin.

He slipped them into his pocket.

I just stared at him.

“But…”

José Rodríguez appeared beside me.

“That’s how the Sweep works.”

Gustavo turned toward me.

For the first time, his smile seemed sincere.

“Welcome to the Instituto, Santoro.”

Then the bell rang.

And Gustavo walked away with my grandfather’s fifty escudos in his pocket.

I stayed by the teacher’s desk, still trying to understand what had just happened.

Beside me, José watched Gustavo disappear down the hallway.

“You really didn’t know?”

“Know what?”

José shook his head.

“You’re going to have a very interesting year.”

He walked away.

I looked at my empty hand.

It was my first day at Instituto Nacional.

I’d just arrived, and already I was broke.

CHAPTER 2

Don Quixote and the Wolves

The second recess came two hours after I lost the coin.

For me, time had stopped when I saw it hit the floor.

I was still sitting at my desk, staring at my empty hand.

It wasn’t just that I’d lost fifty escudos.

It was that I’d lost them before I’d even decided whether I wanted to risk them.

José Rodríguez appeared beside me.

“You’re taking it pretty hard.”

I looked at him.

“It was fifty escudos.”

“I know.”

“My grandfather gave them to me.”

“So?”

“With fifty escudos, I could’ve bought all kinds of things.”

José thought about it for a moment.

“Probably.”

“Can I get them back?”

“No.”

He said it so calmly that I looked at him again.

“Why not?”

“Because Gustavo has them.”

“That doesn’t explain anything.”

“It explains everything.”

He pulled up a chair, turned it around, and sat with his arms resting on the back.

“You’re new. You still don’t get how things work.”

“I’ve noticed.”

José glanced toward Mr. Aguirre’s desk.

“Gustavo gave you the first shot.”

“What does that mean?”

“He knew you’d go first.”

I didn’t understand.

José stood up and walked over to the desk. He ran his hand across the wooden surface.

“It has a dip.”

“What?”

“Right here, in the middle.”

He placed his palm in the center of the desk and slid it slightly across the surface.

“You can barely see it. But if you hit a heavy coin hard enough, it’ll roll all the way to the other side.”

I looked at the desk.

The wood was smooth and worn, with a few scratches and a dark stain near one corner. It didn’t look like anything special.

I ran my hand over the middle, where José had placed his.

It was slightly lower there.

“And Gustavo knew that?”

José let out a short laugh.

“Gustavo knows that desk by heart.”

I thought back to the game.

The five-escudo coin had fallen off one edge.

Mine had spun all the way to the far edge.

It hadn’t been an accident.

“So he screwed me.”

José shrugged.

“A little.”

“A little?”

“Well, you put your coin up there, too.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

I looked toward the door.

Gustavo was talking to Mauricio and two other boys. One hand was tucked into his jacket pocket.

The pocket where my coin was.

“Gustavo doesn’t lose,” José said.

“But his coin fell.”

José smiled.

“So did yours.”

I said nothing.

José looked at the clock above the door.

“The lunch bell’s going to ring soon.”

“So?”

“Want to make those fifty escudos hurt a little?”

I looked at him.

“How?”

José leaned toward me.

“When everyone’s here, tell him those fifty escudos were supposed to buy empanadas for the whole class at RoyMar.”

“Why would I say that?”

“Because he has the money now.”

“He’s not going to buy empanadas for the whole class.”

“Maybe not.”

“Then what’s the plan?”

José smiled faintly.

“To make him say no in front of everyone.”

I looked at Gustavo again.

He was still talking as if my fifty escudos meant nothing.

“Why would he care?”

José turned toward him.

Then he looked at me.

“Because he’s Gustavo Andrés Lyon.”

He didn’t say anything else.

But I was starting to understand.

At the Instituto, there were rules nobody explained.

One was: don’t show off a fifty-escudo coin unless you were ready to lose it.

Another was that some people couldn’t afford to look cheap.

The lunch bell rang.

The boys started getting up.

Chairs scraped across the floor.

Someone shouted for everyone to hurry up.

Gustavo pulled my grandfather’s coin from his pocket and held it up between two fingers.

“Nice piece,” Mauricio said.

Gustavo spun it in the air.

“Very nice.”

José gave me a small shove.

“Now.”

I swallowed.

I walked over to Gustavo.

“Hey, Gustavo.”

He turned.

“What is it, Santoro?”

A few boys stopped to watch.

Then a few more.

My throat went dry.

José’s idea had sounded much better when he said it.

“Thanks for holding on to my fifty escudos.”

Gustavo stopped smiling.

“What?”

“My grandfather gave them to me so I could treat the whole class to empanadas at RoyMar.”

Silence fell over the room.

José lowered his head to hide a smile.

“But since you beat me,” I continued, “I guess that means you’re paying now.”

For a moment, nobody said anything.

Then someone shouted from the back:

“Empanadas?!”

“At RoyMar!” Antonio added.

“Beef!” someone else yelled.

“And cheese!” Mauricio shouted.

The room filled with voices.

“Gustavo’s buying!”

“Let’s go to RoyMar!”

“Don’t be cheap, Lyon!”

“And Coke!”

Gustavo looked at me.

I expected him to tell me to go to hell.

I expected him to say I was crazy.

But he only looked around.

Every boy in the room was watching him.

My coin was still between his fingers.

Then Gustavo smiled.

Not the smile he’d worn when he took my coin.

This one was tighter.

“Well,” he said, raising his voice, “looks like Santoro has a pretty generous grandfather.”

Gustavo slipped the coin back into his pocket.

“Let’s go, then.”

The boys laughed and applauded.

The class burst out of the room.

We ran down the granite stairs, shoved our way across the Alameda, and reached RoyMar in a rush of navy-blue jackets.

Inside, it smelled of hot oil, melted cheese, and cold soda.

We crowded around the tables.

Some boys had to stand.

Others squeezed three into spaces where barely two could fit.

Gustavo went up to the counter.

He took out the fifty-escudo coin.

For a moment, he stood there looking at it.

Then he handed it to the woman at the register.

“Cheese and beef empanadas for everyone,” he said. “And Coca-Cola.”

The boys cheered as if they’d just won a prize.

I watched Gustavo.

He looked back at me.

Neither of us smiled.

Then he turned to the others.

“Who ordered cheese?”

Half the boys raised their hands.

José sat beside me with a beef empanada.

“You know what your problem is?”

I took an empanada from the bag.

It burned my fingers.

“What?”

“You think you lost.”

I took a bite.

Around us, the boys talked, shouted, argued over the empanadas, and passed around bottles of Coca-Cola.

Mauricio complained because he’d gotten a beef empanada.

Antonio had two empanadas in each hand.

I looked at the greasy paper bag on the table.

My coin was gone.

But for the first time since I’d arrived at the Instituto, everyone knew my name.

At two o’clock, we went back to Room 402-B.

The smell of fried cheese still hung between the desks.

Some boys tried to hide the empty bottles.

Others wiped their hands on crumpled napkins.

I expected Mr. Aguirre to walk in.

But another teacher entered instead.

He was thin, with graying hair, a dark suit, and thin-rimmed glasses.

He walked to the teacher’s desk without looking at anyone.

He set a folder down.

Then waited.

The room gradually fell silent.

“Good afternoon,” he said.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Sánchez,” several boys replied.

He looked at the attendance sheet.

“Santoro.”

I raised my hand.

“Here, sir.”

He looked at me over his glasses.

“New.”

“Yes, sir.”

He nodded.

“Then you’re on time.”

He opened a thick book he’d been carrying under his arm.

The cover read: Don Quixote de la Mancha.

“Chapter Eight,” he said. “The windmills.”

I knew who Don Quixote was.

A skinny old man who mistook windmills for giants.

That was about it.

Mr. Sánchez began to read.

They all listened.

When he reached the part where Don Quixote sees the windmills, he looked up.

“What does Don Quixote see?”

Benavídez raised his hand.

“Giants, sir.”

“And Sancho?”

“Windmills.”

“Which one is right?”

Gustavo raised his hand.

Mr. Sánchez looked at him.

“Lyon.”

“Both of them, sir.”

“Explain.”

Gustavo rested his arms on his desk.

“Sancho is right because they’re windmills. But Don Quixote is right about something else.”

“What is that?”

Gustavo thought for a second.

“That you see what you’re prepared to see.”

Mr. Sánchez kept his eyes on him.

“Go on.”

“To Sancho, they’re windmills. To Don Quixote, they’re giants. They’re looking at the same thing, but they don’t see the same thing.”

There was a silence.

Benavídez raised his hand again.

“But Don Quixote is wrong, sir. He’s not fighting giants. He’s fighting windmills.”

“Exactly,” Mr. Sánchez said. “Sometimes you can have a noble idea and still be completely wrong.”

Mauricio spoke from the back.

“Like Santoro with the coin.”

The room laughed.

I laughed too.

Not because I found it funny.

But because if I didn’t laugh, everyone would notice.

Mr. Sánchez closed the book.

“For tomorrow, Chapter Nine.”

The final bell rang.

Chairs scraped across the floor again.

The boys filed out of the room.

I packed my notebooks slowly.

I could still taste the cheese empanada in my mouth.

When I reached the door, Gustavo was leaning against the frame.

He looked like he was waiting for me.

“Nice move today, Santoro.”

I looked at him.

“It was José’s idea.”

Gustavo smiled.

“José has a lot of ideas.”

He studied me for a moment.

“But you did it.”

For a moment, I said nothing.

Gustavo touched his swollen lip with the tip of a finger.

“Next time, bring a lighter coin.”

“So it won’t roll to the other side?”

“So you don’t stick me with paying for empanadas for the whole class.”

He stepped aside.

“See you tomorrow, Santoro. We’ll see who has better luck.”

I left the Instituto and walked along the Alameda.

I didn’t have a coin in my pocket anymore.

But somehow, I felt like I’d gained something.

That morning, I’d arrived without knowing a single person.

Now I knew José was on my side.

I knew Gustavo Andrés Lyon wasn’t easy to figure out.

And I knew the boys at the Instituto could fight over a coin during recess and then go back to class and argue about Cervantes as if their lives depended on it.

I still didn’t know if I was among wolves.

But I knew one thing.

If I wanted to last there, I’d have to learn fast.

EPILOGUE

From Above

After spending four years at Instituto Nacional, I went back on the first day of school.

I didn’t have to. I had graduated the previous December. I wasn’t wearing the navy-blue jacket or its badge. But some of us showed up anyway, just as others had done before us.

We climbed to the upper galleries overlooking the central courtyard and leaned against the railing.

From up there, it looked impossibly small.

Below us, thousands of boys filled the courtyard, lined up in rigid rows. Inspectors moved among the classes, making sure everyone stayed quiet and maintained discipline.

Farther back stood the newcomers, motionless in their brand-new uniforms, staring straight ahead with an anxiety they could not quite hide.

The anthem began, and the whole courtyard joined in.

The voices rose together and echoed off the Instituto’s high walls.

Someone up there cracked a joke, and the others laughed. I laughed too.

But I was looking down.

I had been down there once too, not understanding the rules.

During my first year, I used to look up during that formation. I would see the graduates in the upper galleries, dressed in their own clothes, talking and laughing among themselves. From down below, it seemed to me that they no longer had to answer to anyone.

They were so high up that their voices never reached us.

All I could see were their silhouettes moving against the sky, and I would think that someday I would be up there too.

And now I was.

The ceremony ended. The classes began to break formation. A tide of navy-blue jackets moved toward the hallways, stairways, and classrooms. The newcomers followed the older boys.

Within minutes, the courtyard began to empty.

We stayed up there a little longer.

Then someone said it was time to go.

We went down the stairs without hurrying.

At the entrance, we began to go our separate ways. Some talked about seeing each other again. Others said goodbye as if they expected to meet again the next day.

I stood for a moment in front of the gates on the Alameda.

The first time I crossed them, I had fifty escudos in my pocket, convinced that a coin could say something important about who I was.

I put my hands in my pockets.

They were empty.

Then I walked through the gates and kept going.