I don’t remember my first day at school particularly well, but I do remember enjoying the freedom.

We could wear jeans, T-shirts and whatever shoes we liked. To a twelve-year-old, this felt revolutionary.

Between the novelty of having a locker for the first time and the equally strange experience of attending an all-boys school, I quickly found a small group of friends.

We were introverts.

United by Pokémon tazos, Dragon Ball debates and a shared inability to socialise without experiencing mild panic.

Being one of the nerds was infinitely better than being alone, especially during recess.

My complete inability to kick a football guaranteed that I would never belong to the school’s chosen athletes. The cool boys. The ones who somehow managed to speak to girls as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

One day, one of those chosen boys invited the entire class to his birthday party.

I had never been to a party before.

I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to bring a gift.

Or whether there would be food.

My sisters, thrilled by what they considered my social debut, combed my hair, dressed me in a brand-new shirt and sent me into the world looking considerably more handsome than usual.

At the party, I danced with a girl.

I use the word “danced” very generously.

Dancing has never been one of my natural talents.

Two hours later, my father picked me up.

The interrogation began before we had even left the neighbourhood.

Did you have fun? Did you talk to anyone? Did you dance? Did you meet a girl?

I honestly couldn’t tell whether I had enjoyed myself or not.

The only thing I knew for certain was that I was starving.

As it turned out, there had been no food.

None.

The school itself was enormous.

It had football pitches everywhere and even a hill.

It also had a photographer.

His name was Alfredito.

Alfredito owned one of the school’s two snack bars and seemed to have dedicated a significant portion of his life to documenting the history of the place. Armed with a camera and an endless supply of film, he photographed everything and displayed the results on a large notice board for everyone to see.

Every Monday we would gather around it to find ourselves.

The excitement reached another level after the annual fair, when the school transformed into something resembling a small town festival. We felt the same anticipation whenever the new edition of Javier Deportivo was published, a yearly magazine documenting school life.

Yes.

My school was called Javier. One year I decided to run the school’s annual race.

Two kilometres.

For a fifteen-year-old overweight boy whose greatest athletic ambition was surviving until Christmas, it looked like an impossible challenge.

Alfredito, naturally, was there with his camera.

He captured a photograph that perfectly reflected the exhaustion of someone who had made the questionable decision to leave his bed on a Saturday morning.

My tongue was hanging out.

My face looked defeated.

And for a brief moment I feared I had just provided enough material to entertain every bully in the school.

The caption underneath the photo read:

“It isn’t about winning. It’s about taking part. Javier Martínez is a great example of that.”

I wasn’t particularly thrilled.

When I complained, Alfredito looked at the picture and shrugged.

At fifteen, I didn’t understand what he meant.

Years later, I did.

Especially after running a half marathon.

The Javier gave me every kind of memory imaginable and introduced me to a collection of friends who still appear in many of the stories I tell today.

Some happened during classes.

Some happened during holidays.

And some happened because, at fifteen years old, we believed we were much smarter than we actually were.

One holiday afternoon, Ernesto and Tito came over to my house.

We were fifteen.

Our plan was simple. Share a few bottles of alcohol with some girls.

Like most plans designed by fifteen-year-old boys, it relied entirely on optimism and absolutely no evidence.

A few days earlier I had celebrated my birthday and was proudly wearing a brand-new pair of shoes. Tito and Ernesto arrived looking exactly like the kind of well-off boys Guayaquil specializes in producing.

The mission was straightforward. We would meet our friend Carlos at the stadium where he trained with Guayas’ volleyball team and then somehow socialise with members of the women’s team.

Carlos, according to Carlos, was exceptionally good at this sort of thing.

We took the number 63 bus from my house.

It dropped us right outside the stadium.

Everything went according to plan.

Which, in hindsight, should have worried us.

We found Carlos.

Unfortunately, our confidence in his romantic abilities proved to be deeply misplaced.

The girls remained entirely unaware of our existence.

Carlos turned out not to be the irresistible charmer he had advertised himself to be.

Still, that wasn’t going to ruin an afternoon dedicated to underage drinking in some park around Guayaquil.

So we left the stadium and started walking.

Our destination was unclear.

Our commitment to finding somewhere to drink our Pedritos was not.

Pedro Coco was a coconut-flavoured alcoholic drink perfectly suited to the budgets and questionable decision-making abilities of Ecuadorian teenagers.

Carlos carried a giant sports bag containing what appeared to be every possession he owned.

Training gear.

Spare clothes.

Extra shoes.

Possibly enough supplies to survive several months in the wilderness.

We hadn’t been walking for very long when the character responsible for several of my future anxieties about urban safety made his entrance.

He was extremely thin.

Covered in facial tattoos.

Wearing clothes far too large for his body, long before oversized fashion became fashionable.

He approached us politely.

Very politely.

“Can you spare three dollars for the bus?”

I told him I didn’t have any money.

Then, demonstrating the survival instincts that would later define my teenage years, I pointed at Carlos.

“Carlos does.”

I had seen the coins.

From that moment on, our group of friends gained a new member.

We realised this shortly after he produced a knife large enough to negotiate with livestock and pressed it against Carlos’ stomach.

At some point he had already learned our names.

According to him, we needed to stay close together so nobody would suspect anything.

To be fair, people probably should have suspected something.

The difference between us and him was fairly obvious.

But confused, terrified and lacking any better alternatives, we kept walking.

As the afternoon grew darker, we arrived at an empty school.

Classes were held during the day, so the place was deserted.

Our kidnapper’s plan was simple. Get us inside. Take everything.

Disappear.

Carlos climbed the wall first.

Then Tito.

Then me.

Ernesto, however, had never been particularly gifted when it came to athletic activities.

Faced with this challenge, the robber decided to help.

He crouched down and offered his knee as a step.

A gesture known in Ecuador as a “pata de gallo”.

Watching the scene unfold from the other side of the wall was one of the funniest things I had ever seen.

The robber helping Ernesto climb into the school.

Ernesto struggling anyway.

The complete absurdity of the situation.

We burst out laughing.

All of us.

Including the robber.

At that precise moment I understood why he was managing to rob us so easily.

Once inside, he lined us up against a wall and began his work.

Tito went first.

The Ray-Ban sunglasses disappeared immediately.

Then came the cash from his wallet.

To his credit, the robber returned the documents.

Professional courtesy, perhaps.

Next came my turn.

Unfortunately, my brand-new shoes happened to fit him perfectly. He tried them on. They looked great.

He kept them.

Then it was Carlos.

The robber spent several minutes inspecting the contents of his enormous sports bag. The operation quickly evolved from robbery to shopping.

He found clothes.

Shoes.

Training equipment.

And most importantly, a bag large enough to carry all his newly acquired possessions.

So he took that too.

Finally, there was Ernesto.

This should have been the easiest part.

Ernesto owned exactly two things of value.

A mobile phone.

And ten dollars intended for Pedro Coco.

The phone was a cheap Chinese model distributed by the budget mobile operator of the time.

The robber examined it.

Thought for a moment.

And handed it back.

“Keep it,” he said.

“So you can call a taxi.”

Even criminals, apparently, have standards.

And just like that, he left us there.

Four teenagers. One pair of missing shoes. Several missing possessions.

And a growing concern about being discovered inside a private school after dark.

We climbed back out and took a taxi to Ernesto’s grandmother’s house.

When we told the story, everyone laughed.

I got home.

Everyone laughed.

I told it again.

Everyone laughed.

Somehow, what should have been a traumatic experience became a joke.

Even for us.

Years passed.

Only Ernesto ever saw the robber again. They crossed paths several times around the city.

They recognized each other.

The robber never stole from him again.

In fact, after a while, he started asking Ernesto for money.

The last update we received about our former kidnapper was simple.