THE CURIOUS CASE OF ALESSANDRA CHAVEZ PART 1
JUNE 2005
Alessandra Chavez had never been a normal child. She grew up without a father, and no matter how much she whined, she never managed to extract any real information from her mother. Her dad had apparently gone sailing and never returned. During her childhood, she had quietly accepted this version of the truth. Still, she could see that everyone around her was different. As her mother, Agatha, loved to point out, she was "not stupid."
"Who's your father, Alessandra?" her best friend, Maria Velez, asked one day in the tenth grade.
She and Maria Velez sat on a bench in the schoolyard of Colegio Pestalozzi. Maria looked like a typical Peruvian: light brown skin, chocolate-colored almond-shaped eyes, raven hair, and pearly white teeth. S
