El brillo de las luciérnagas

I am ten years old, and I have spent my entire life in this basement. I live in the darkness with my parents, my grandmother, my sister, and my brother. They are all disfigured by fire. My sister wears a white mask to hide her burns because Dad says her face might scare me. I like my cactus. I like reading my book about insects. And spending hours touching the single ray of sunlight that filters through a crack in the ceiling. But ever since my sister had the baby, everyone has been acting strangely. I think they are lying about who the father is, about the cricket-man who lurks at night, about what happened before I was born, and about why we are locked up here. At least I have the fireflies. They arrived in the basement a few days ago, and I’ve kept them in a jar. As my grandmother says, there is no creature more fascinating than one capable of creating its own light. That light encourages me to see the outside world, to escape, to discover what happened. The trouble is, all the doors here are locked. And I don’t know where I’ll find a way out...