Spiderweb -Part 4.

The next day, before leaving for work, Hugo grabbed the jar and moved it to the edge of the table where the light (what little filtered through the dirty window glass) illuminated it along with its occupant. To Hugo's relief, the spider was still alive.

"This is to warm you up with the sun's rays," he explained.

He exited the shed and propped the door closed. The lock was broken, although he had sworn to fix it someday. For now, a piece of wire would suffice to keep it closed. What he didn't know was that he had left the poor spider vulnerable to a significant threat, not the weather or a wild animal but a small and lovely girl; a little devil...

This simple and unimportant event added another thread to the web.

The rusty hinges squeaked, and a slight breeze swept through the interior of the shed. The spider remained immobile, its front legs resting against the glass wall of its new home. From its perspective, a golden plain surrounded the table and stopped at the chair. First, two pigtails held by blue ribbons appeared, followed by the angelic face of a girl. Julieta knelt on her blue dress; she didn't care if it got dirty on the dusty plastic chair; the maid would wash it. She rested her elbows on the table and gazed at the spider with wide-open eyes. She watched it and watched it, not taking her eyes off it for several minutes; time was not a concern, her parents were almost never at home, and her babysitter was an eighteen-year-old who was probably lounging on her comfortable couch watching the huge LED television her parents had bought.

Julieta tilted her head slowly from side to side, as a cat does when it finds something interesting, and her lips couldn't help but form a marked smile. The spider remained still, but if it could have known the reason behind that smile at that moment, it would probably have tried desperately to escape. It didn't; it was just a spider.

Julieta abandoned the chair with a jump; two large brown stains appeared on her dress. She approached the door, opened it slightly, and peeked into her house; it was lucky to have large windows. She could see how the image on the TV screen was changing frantically; the babysitter was mesmerized. She looked toward the neighbors' house; the man who looked like Santa Claus and his wife, who had that strange smell; rancid, she thought. Unlike her own house, the neighbors' house was sealed, with closed blinds and no lights on; the old lady must be sleeping a lot. The girl remembered her own grandmother; she also slept a lot and smelled rancid.

With nothing to worry about, she returned to her previous kneeling position on the chair. She stretched across the table; the dress got even dirtier. With her fingertips, she picked up the coffee jar; the spider remained motionless. She brought it closer to her face and examined it in detail; the first word that came to her mind was "ugly." The spider was ugly, she didn't like it. Besides seeing the obvious, that it was large and hairy, she noticed something else that Hugo had overlooked, perhaps because he was fascinated or because it wasn't there the previous day or not as visible. Julieta didn't particularly like the strange whitish bump underneath the spider's body, similar to one of those little balls that thousands protected the TV inside the box when her parents bought it.

A small flame ignited inside her.

It wasn't exactly a forest fire, but it bothered her, irritated her. And there was always something that helped her calm down when she was irritated, but not anymore. The cat had gone; it disappeared a few days ago. "It will come back," her parents told her, but she knew it wouldn't. The cat never left at first, no matter how much she squeezed it to soothe herself; it never left. But she needed to ease the irritation every day, and the cat, Fluffy, didn't like that. The ball of fur had become sly and elusive, leaving her with the flame burning and forcing her to cry. She hated crying in front of her parents; Mom and Dad cried alone where no one could see them. Finally, when Fluffy appeared, she squeezed him for all the days of burning; the days she didn't see her parents, the days no one paid attention to her, the days she found them crying, or when they argued, all those days. And Julieta was sure Fluffy had run away for good, traitorous cat.

Her pupils glistened with the desire to cry. The horrible shed was a safe place to do it. But as she looked at the ugly spider, she smiled; the ugly spider can't run away and never come back. Suddenly, and without warning, she pressed her lips together without showing her teeth; her cheeks puffed up, and her eyes narrowed.

And she shook the jar.

She shook it, rattled it, and shook it again non-stop. The spider flew from the glass base to the lid and back, as if it were the ping-pong ball in the final of a professional match between the two best Asians in history; the speed at which it bounced from side to side made it look like a paint stain on a madman's canvas, or a genius.

And just as it began, it stopped.

Julieta's red and furious face returned to that of a happy eight-year-old girl. She was no longer irritated. Shaking the spider was much better than any therapy.

"Much better than talking to Mrs. Lopez," she thought.

Mrs. Lopez was a thin woman with white hair who spent her time in child psychology. Julieta visited her once a week to try to solve her "behavior problems."

With the delicacy of a very responsible girl who cared for her toys, she placed the jar near the window; the light reflected on the glass, and for a moment, the spider seemed dead. It was lying with its legs up, half-closed like flower petals as it started to darken. The strange piece of styrofoam attached to its belly remained in the same place, protected by its hairy legs.

Julieta leaned against the table, folded her hands, rested her chin between her fingers, and stared at the spider. Was it alive or dead?

"I hope it's alive..."

And it was.

One of the spider's legs moved slowly and mechanically. Another followed, and the one next to it, until all eight legs were in operation. With shaky movements and slipping several times while trying to use the sides of the jar to flip over, the spider managed to stand upright. It felt the glass wall with its front legs and struggled to stand on its hind legs alone; the other six gripped the translucent glass toward the girl. Both of them stared at each other. The black, empty eyes of the spider were reflected in Julieta's bright, lively, and mischievous blue eyes. The girl smiled without revealing her teeth and left.

The creature's visual organs followed her until she left the shed, and if spiders are capable of feeling anything, it felt irritated, very irritated.

This was the first but not the last time Julieta would visit the spider, her new friend, over the next few days.

Until the unexpected happened.