Fire (23 page)

Vanessa feels so terrifically alive. Why shouldn’t she? Why should her life end, because Wille isn’t in it? Wille is a loser. She stumbles over to the bookshelf where she left her glass of booze and Coke, drinks until she feels less thirsty and carries on dancing.

The tune ends and is followed by a track with a hip-hop beat. A girl is rapping about how she tastes just like candy. Vanessa looks around. Evelina has disappeared. But there’s Jari, standing at the other end of the room. They were going to the same parties all summer, but she hasn’t
seen
him the way she does now. He smiles at her and comes over her way.

‘You’re having a good time,’ he says and pushes his dark fringe back from his face.

Instead of replying, Vanessa puts her glass down and drags him with her to the middle of the floor. With her arm round his neck, she moves to the beat of the music, so close to him that their bodies almost, but don’t quite, touch.

Jari tries to follow her. He is a little clumsy but it doesn’t matter, it’s just sweet.

‘Somebody told me you’re single now,’ he says.

She stumbles and their bodies are tightly pressed together. He puts his arm around her waist. Shit, he’s so sexy.

‘I had almost stopped hoping that you’d ever drop that idiot,’ he says close to her ear.

‘That makes two of us,’ Vanessa replies.

Evelina comes back and sneaks along to stand next to them.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but Michelle is freaking out, almost,’ she says. ‘The usual.’

Vanessa rolls her eyes. Michelle and Mehmet have been on and off since they started dating. This week, it’s off. So what? They’ll be all over each other before the party ends.

She turns to Jari, tells him she’ll be back soon, then takes Evelina’s hand and pushes her way through the crowd.

‘Have I got it right, it’s you and Jari now?’ Evelina says.

‘We’ll see.’

‘My mum always says the best way to get over one man is to get under another.’

‘So,
that’s
how she got to sleep with half the town?’ Vanessa says and they laugh and make yuck-noises.

The kitchen is if possible even more crowded. The music is drowned out by the loud, drunken voices. The sink is full of empty beer cans and plastic bottles and squeezed slices of lemon. Broken glass is crunching under Vanessa’s high heels.

Evelina leads the way to the balcony where a lot of guys are hanging out. They push through to where Michelle sits,
crouched in a corner. She is crying. Her eye make-up is in such a mess she looks like a grief-stricken panda.

Vanessa isn’t absolutely certain that it isn’t because she’s drunk, but the floor seems to be at an angle. How many people can this rotten old balcony cope with? She doesn’t want to think about it

‘What’s happened?’ she says and sits down next to Michelle.

Michelle throws herself around Vanessa’s neck and sucks some snot up her nose with a moist sound.

‘Fucking Mehmet, he doesn’t give a shit about me!’

Vanessa strokes her back and glances upwards at Evelina.

‘So don’t give a shit about him,’ Vanessa says.

‘But … I … fucking … love … him!’ Michelle sobs. She seems close to choking on snot and tears and has to swallow several times before she can speak again.

‘He hasn’t paid attention to me all evening, like, not given me a glance. He just talks with Rickard non-stop.’

Vanessa hasn’t seen Mehmet for several hours and doesn’t know which Rickard Michelle means.

Evelina points discreetly towards the bedroom window next to the balcony door and Vanessa, still crouching, straightens up to look inside.

Mehmet is sitting on the bed belonging to Evelina’s mother, with one of the Engelsfors FC players next to him. Aha,
that
Rickard. A nice enough guy, with glasses, sort of good-looking but totally pointless, never known to talk about anything except football, protein drinks and match results. None of which is Mehmet’s favourite subject, but he still looks absorbed by whatever Rickard has got to say.

Vanessa sinks down to be close to Michelle again.

‘Who cares?’ she says. ‘Like, fuck it, Michelle. We are the best lookers at the party …’

Michelle looks up. Her eyes are red from crying but a smile is spreading over her face.

‘We are, aren’t we? You, Evelina and me.’

‘No question. And nobody, neither Mehmet nor Wille nor
anyone
can take that away from us. We are seventeen only once. A few years from now, do you think we’ll even
remember
these guys?’

Michelle laughs a little, a small snorting noise that makes a big bubble of snot inflate in one of her nostrils. Vanessa wipes it away with the hem of her dress. Then she dries the tears from Michelle’s cheeks. Vanessa’s dress becomes streaked with mascara.

‘Now, just chill,’ she says.

Michelle nods and Evelina helps them both up on their feet. Vanessa’s head suddenly goes into a spin.

‘Do you know what we need, girls?’ Evelina says. ‘More booze!’

A couple of hours later, Vanessa is lying back on the tufty sofa in the living room. It is rocking her gently, as if it is afloat on a gentle sea. The voices and the music around her seem to be woven into a wall of sound that makes her drowsy. It’s all Evelina’s fault, her and her shots of whatever. Vanessa giggles. She loves her friends. Just now, she loves
everyone
.

‘Feeling good?’ someone says close to her ear and she slowly opens her eyes.

Jari. His face is very close to hers.

‘Never better,’ she replies and then, suddenly, feels completely awake.

Alert and somehow charged with energy that must have an outlet. Instantly. Time to test the validity of Evelina’s mum’s theory.

She lifts her head and kisses him. And he doesn’t hesitate. Kisses her back.

Jari’s mouth is warm and soft. Vanessa’s lips start tingling in response. She relaxes back on the sofa again and he follows her, covers her body with his. She allows her hands to slip in under his T-shirt. Somebody wolf-whistles at them and they start laughing, still nuzzling each other’s lips.

Hope Wille hears about this, she thinks.

And that’s it.

One thought and the atmosphere is ruined. Her nerve endings stop reacting to Jari’s touch. Now the only thing she can think about is how different his kisses are from Wille’s, his lingering, firm lips.

Jari is too eager.

Vanessa shuts her eyes, tries to lose herself in the feeling that was so strong a moment ago. But when Jari’s hand fumbles along her hip, she twists away.

Oh, fuck. This isn’t working. Fuck Wille. Fuck everything.

Vanessa places one hand on Jari’s chest and pushes him away. He looks surprised.

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

Jari looks so anxious she tries to smile. She really likes him. Only, it isn’t him she wants to kiss just now.

‘I simply realised I have to get home.’

Jari gets up from the sofa at the same time as Vanessa. She totters and he holds out his arm to support her.

‘Will you be all right? Would you like me to walk you home?’

Vanessa shakes her head.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she says and wishes it were true.

The night is dark and scented with decaying greenery.
Whatever the heat is trying to make the citizens believe, the fact is that autumn has come. September.

Vanessa has to cover one eye to make out what she is texting to Evelina.

wnt home <3 <3 <3

She can hear bellowing men and laughing women further along the street. Thumping music. The sounds from Götis. She screws up her eyes to read the time on her mobile. Twelve-thirty. Half an hour to go before closing time. They’ll be in top gear in there.

Groups of people are clustered near the entrance. They stumble, gabble, cling to each other. The middle-aged ones are the most sozzled, though they ought to have had enough time to learn to deal with alcohol. As she passes, Vanessa catches fragments of their talk. The negotiations are rolling. Who is going home with whom, who is throwing a latenighter, who has to walk home alone?

Looking in through a window, Vanessa catches sight of a young couple in the bar. They are standing so close together they have surely just fallen in love. The girl’s dark, shiny ponytail rocks when she starts laughing.

Vanessa wonders at how naively happy they are, asks herself how that can be. Is it possible to forget how microscopically small the chance is that a relationship will last? Will she ever be like those two again? As of now, she feels in a risk zone, about to start a lifetime of bitterness.

Then everything happens very quickly.

Jonte turns up in the bar.

The girl turns to him and smiles and there’s something vaguely familiar about her profile.

Her boyfriend playfully puts his hand under her chin and kisses her on the lips.

Vanessa stops in mid-step when she sees his face.

Wille
. It is
Wille
. His cheeks shaved, his hair cut in a new way. He is wearing a black T-shirt that fits more tightly than his old ones.

Vanessa’s innards have transformed into a bunch of slithery, wet snakes that writhe around each other. She runs to the back of Götis, stops to lean forward over a small bush next to the parking lot. The retching is rough, even violent, but produces nothing except clear, rubbery saliva.

She straightens up. Aware that she has just had a terribly bad idea. But impossible to resist.

She shuts her eyes. Tries to focus on her power and notes that it’s that much harder when you’re drunk. She tries so hard she feels nauseous again, but then magic wafts over her skin. She slides into invisibility. One deep breath and then she walks towards the entrance to Götis.

The Council has forbidden them to use their magic. All magic. That rat Alexander tried to scare them, telling them that there were spies everywhere. But how are the spies, if there actually are any, meant to keep an eye on someone who is invisible? She sticks both her long fingers up in the air and twirls in a full circle, just in case.

Vanessa glides past the bored bouncer who sits propped up on a tall stool and stares into the middle distance.

That’s the one who threw her and Evelina out in the summer. Vanessa has to do something. She pinches his ear, fast and hard. He leaps up from his stool and looks wildly around. She laughs and walks past him into the nightclub.

In here, the heat is tropical. The air stinks of bodies, alcohol and desperation. The DJ is playing an old dance tune that Mum likes listening to sometimes. Vanessa crosses the dance floor, where the strobe lights make everything dreamlike.

She pushes past a group of girls and accidentally bumps
into one of them so that she tumbles on to the floor in a bundle of long legs and flowery fabric.

The others are killing themselves laughing.

Sorry about that, Vanessa thinks and goes to the bar.

She sees Jonte in profile. He is drinking beer from the bottle.

Vanessa rounds a pillar and sees Wille and the girl with the dark hair. They are seated on bar stools now.

So this is Elin.

She is lovely. Fuck it, she is truly beautiful. High cheekbones, perfectly plucked eyebrows, skin that looks as if it is treated to expensive creams every evening.

And now Vanessa recognises her. Elin works in the bank at Storvall Square. It was she who escorted Nicolaus and Vanessa down to the safe room with the bank deposit boxes.

Vanessa had been invisible that time, too.

The chick he cheated on you with. You have seen her once, but she’s never seen you
.

Vanessa is beginning to feel insanely fed up with Mona always being right, sod her.

She glides closer until she is standing next to them. Elin has turned towards Wille again. He looks fixedly at her, as if hypnotised.

Vanessa feels as if she has tumbled straight into a parallel universe. Only a few weeks ago, Wille was the most important human being in her life, the person her days were centred around. They were engaged; one day she would leave Engelsfors together with him. And now he’s sitting here and looking at someone else with an expression on his face that Vanessa knows so very well, because that is how he has looked at her.

The snakes in Vanessa’s belly are coming back to life. Her mouth fills with saliva and she swallows hard.

‘What do you think? Time to go home?’ Elin says. Her smile suggests only one thing.

And Wille, who never leaves a party if there are still drinks or drugs to be had, nods willingly and kisses her.

‘I’ll just go to the loo,’ Elin says and slides off the bar stool.

‘We’re off.’ Wille shouts to be heard above the music. Jonte nods.

There you are, he and Elin are
we
already, Vanessa thinks. It is as if he doesn’t even remember me.

‘I’ll stay here,’ Jonte shouts back and turns to the bar to order.

The feeling between them seems tense.

Good, Vanessa thinks.

Wille sits down and stares in the direction of the toilets. Vanessa goes for it. She slides on to the stool next to him. The plastic mock-leather seat is still warm after Elin’s butt.

Vanessa leans towards Wille. Feels his familiar smell. Tears are burning in the corners of her eyes. Her lips are close to his ear when he raises his glass of beer.

‘How could you do this to me?’ she whispers.

Wille twitches. A few drops of cold beer splat from his glass and land on Vanessa’s thigh.

‘Nessa?’ he says hoarsely.

Jonte turns round.

‘What’s that?’ he asks.

Wille opens his mouth to speak, but Vanessa is faster.

‘Don’t say a thing. He’ll think you’re mad,’ she whispers.

Wille shuts his mouth again, looks at Jonte and shakes his head.

‘Maybe you
are
mad?’ Vanessa suggests and Wille goes pale. ‘Or else, I’m really here and you can’t do a thing about it. You choose what you’d rather believe. But I can see
everything you do. I know it all. Every time you shag her, I’m there, watching. I hear everything you tell her.’

She blows lightly at his face and his eyes widen with terror.

‘You will never have any more secrets from me,’ she whispers. Her parting shot.