In the summer of 1996, Tamara enjoys the last few weeks in the village where she lives on the coast of Alagoas before going to Brasília. Over the summer, however, Tamara meets and gets attracted to a mysterious girl nicknamed "Heartless".

Tamara, a 14-year-old girl, is about the leave Guaxuma, the fishing village she grew up in, to go study in Brasilia. She is a middle-class white girl, always surrounded by her group of friends: a mixture of girls and boys from different social backgrounds. Like most girls in the village, Tamara has a boyfriend, Kinzão, but it seems they are growing apart. One day, she hears about a mysterious teenager whom her friends call "Heartless", a nickname in reference to the scar on her chest, left by an old heart surgery. During an expedition at sea, Tamara sees Heartless for the first time, suddenly emerging from the water with an octopus wrapped around her arm. From then on, this fascinating image never ceases to occupy Tamara's mind, and her sense of curiosity turns into admiration.—Christian_Wolfgang_Barth