I thought about the inside of my body, the strange shapes with their strange softness, and I could not tell if it was dread or disgust that made me wake up in the middle of night, drenched in sweat. When I could not fall back to sleep, the frogs and the owls took turns to speak some sort of message to me. Sometimes older boys who were already out of school would whistle at me or say something obscene to my face, and then break out laughing. A few years earlier they threw rocks at Fabienne and me, but now they seemed to have lost interest in her.
