Fire (38 page)

Not that Vanessa falls for his tricks. Doesn’t he grasp that they talk about him and compare what he says to them? They got his number long ago. He plays all these different roles. With Vanessa, he is mostly quiet and serious. She assumes that he thinks this will make her nervous.

‘I’m not …’ he begins, then falls silent. ‘Look, this investigation hasn’t been much fun for me either, if that’s what you think.’

‘Bad luck that your lot have been dragging it out for half a year, then.’

‘We must be thorough,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t mean I enjoy it.’

‘Such a shame, Viktor. Poor you.’

He looks away, suddenly mega-keen on the wall poster showing the periodic system.

‘I get it. It doesn’t matter what I say. We belong to different camps.’

‘Have you realised that just this minute?’

‘I truly wish the circumstances had been different,’ Viktor says. He sounds almost sad. ‘Very, very different.’

‘So do I,’ Vanessa says. ‘I wish that you and your father had never come here at all. For your own sakes.’

Viktor looks surprised.

‘You will make such a total sodding mess of this trial of yours. And lose so badly it will be an absolute catastrophe. You’ll never recover. Do you know why?’

Viktor shakes his head.

‘Because we are the Chosen Ones,’ Vanessa says and smiles. ‘And who the fuck are you?’

He seems to have no answer.

Vanessa’s hand trembles a little when she undoes the lock. She has no idea how they are to go about winning the trial, doesn’t even know if it is possible.

But she does know that she will do
everything
to make it happen.

Minoo walks heavily up the main school staircase. It feels like climbing a mountain. She is so tired she could lie down on the spot and fall asleep instantly. She has hardly slept at all for three nights running.

‘WE GO TOWARDS BRIGHTER TIMES!’ She passes one of the neon-yellow posters advertising that spring party.

A horde of Positive Engelsforsers are stampeding up the stairs and Minoo clings to the wall to avoid being trampled. Kevin is in the lead, as if he was the flock’s alpha male. Minoo asks herself how many yellow polo shirts he has stocked up on. Hopefully more than one, because, like many of his PE mates, he has taken to wearing one every day, like a sort of school uniform.

She stops on the next floor up.

The new caretaker is up a ladder, scraping gobbets of chewing tobacco off the corridor ceiling. People throw them to see if they stick. She is so young you might take her for one of the pupils.

While Minoo gets her breath back, she watches the caretaker. There is something mildly hypnotic about her grim cleaning job.

A sound like someone playing a xylophone starts up in Minoo’s jacket pocket. It’s so loud people turn to see. She pulls out her new mobile and turns off the ringtone.

Yesterday was her birthday and the mobile is one of her presents. Whenever she has touched it, she can’t resist wiping the screen so it won’t be marked by a single fingerprint. Soon, it will be another ordinary piece of kit, but just now it feels sacrilegious even to use it.

She looks up the text.

Hope your present is of use to you, darling! Be in touch soon!

It is the first time ever that Mum has texted Minoo. Mum used to say that you should phone up with any messages. Yet another of the many small, but still gigantic, things that have changed in her mother since she moved to Stockholm. She wears her hair cut shorter. Uses another perfume. Lots of seemingly minor details that add up to the new life she leads somewhere else, a life that goes on without Minoo.

They often chat, but since she moved last autumn, Mum has only come to see them once a month. Dad is working harder than ever. Minoo sometimes feels both are equally absent.

She is pleased with her mobile. No question. But the mountain of gifts that Mum and Dad dumped on her bed yesterday morning smacked of guilty conscience.

She carries on up the next flight of stairs. She thought it would feel different to become eighteen. Grown up. Her own person, in the eyes of others. But being allowed to buy alcoholic drinks in a bar is not such a treat when you have carried the fate of the whole world on your shoulder for a year and half.

When she comes into the classroom, Kevin is already in his seat. He is holding court among the people at the back of the room. Minoo sits down next to Anna-Karin, who looks up from her physics textbook.

‘Did you enjoy your birthday?’

‘It was all right. How was your weekend?’

Anna-Karin points at the page in her book and looks unhappily at Minoo.

‘I will never understand this,’ she says.

Minoo recognises the problem. She has spent most of her weekend working through the more intricate aspects of magnetic fields. That is one of the reasons for her not sleeping.

‘Let’s go through this together after school today,’ Minoo says. ‘Maybe we’ll get the hang of it together.’

Anna-Karin doesn’t look cheered up at all.

‘If even you don’t get it, I haven’t a hope,’ she says.

‘We’ll make it.’

Minoo’s past experience of studying with other people has been made up of the kind of group assignments that meant she did all the work while the rest of the group sat around gossiping about parties she hadn’t been asked to.

But it is different with Anna-Karin. During the autumn term, the two of them started preparing for the end-of-term exams. In a way, Anna-Karin is even
better
at studying than Minoo. She never gives up before she understands every last detail.

‘Dad asked if you’d like to join us at home on Saturday night,’ Minoo says.

Anna-Karin looks surprised. Just then, the bell goes for the start of lessons.

‘Why?’

To do something about his guilty conscience about working all the time, Minoo thinks. Because when he is free for once, he wants to show off what a brilliant father he is. And because it suited him to bring this idea up while Mum was at home to demonstrate to her that he really does care about me and my life.

‘Well, why not?’ she says.

‘That would be really nice,’ Anna-Karin says after a moment’s hesitation.

She is just about to add something when Viktor enters the classroom. Minoo watches Anna-Karin shrink in her seat when he walks up to them. But Viktor doesn’t even look at her.

‘Did you get my present?’ he asks Minoo.

‘No, I haven’t had a present from you. And if I had, I would’ve binned it.’

Viktor’s parcel was in the letterbox yesterday. A beautifully wrapped first edition of
The Secret History
in English. Minoo definitely won’t tell him that she’s started to read it and has already got halfway through. Or that she agrees with him that it is a different experience to read it in the original.

‘I don’t think you would’ve,’ Viktor says with his usual self-satisfied smirk.

Ylva enters with a bundle of papers in her arms.

‘Sit down, class!’

Viktor wanders over to the empty seat next to Levan and starts lining his belongings up on the desk, following the same neat pattern as always.

Ylva puts her pile of papers on her desk with a bang.

‘Excuse me, but you’re late, actually,’ Kevin says.

Here and there, people are giggling. Ylva’s jaw muscles tense. She acts as if the final breakdown is lurking just below the surface and Minoo cannot think how Ylva has managed to keep going for this long.

‘Or, is it like, okay for
you
to be late, but not for us?’ Kevin goes on.

‘That’s right, Kevin. It is okay for me to be a few minutes late when the copier is playing up,’ Ylva says and straightens her back.

But Minoo can see Ylva’s hand shake as she writes ‘INDUCTION’ on the blackboard.

‘We’ll do some revision today,’ she says. ‘Can anyone explain the concept of induction?’

As if on an agreed signal, both Minoo and Anna-Karin put up a hand.

Ylva looks disappointed and checks the classroom.

‘Is there really nobody else who knows the answer?’

‘Well, we think that we all ought to talk together about how this class doesn’t have a good atmosphere,’ Hanna A says. ‘I think we should do some role-playing exercises to sort it out.’

Minoo lowers her hand. She recalls with horror the exercise they had tried in the English lessons at the beginning of the spring term. Everyone was supposed to ‘talk freely’ about their opinions of each other. The would-be exercise was quickly debased into covert bullying. All expressed in English and sanctioned by Patrick, the teacher, who seemed clueless about what was going on.

‘You’re here to learn—’ Ylva begins.

‘So you think it’s more important to talk about induction than about how your pupils are feeling, right?’ Hanna A says.

‘The other teachers get what’s really important,’ Hanna H says.

‘I’m uninterested in what other teachers might or might not “get”. This is
my
lesson.’

‘Come on, it’s cool,’ Kevin laughs. ‘We’re just trying to help you to help us.’

‘Kind of you,’ Ylva says through clenched teeth. ‘Minoo, would you answer my question?’

The change that the arrival of Positive Engelsfors has brought about is most easily seen in the dining area. The most popular crowd is still hanging out in the small, partitioned-off room. The difference is that most of them wear yellow now.
They and their many fans are rooting for the PE spirit, which by now has percolated through the entire school.

While Minoo queues at the salad buffet she catches sight of Gustaf at Rickard’s table. At least Gustaf isn’t wearing a yellow shirt.

Not yet, anyway.

How did it happen? Her friend Gustaf, the same Gustaf who had been Rebecka’s boyfriend, would never have subdivided the world into positive and negative, black and white, the way PE tells them to do.

Minoo piles grated carrots and white cabbage on her plate. Perhaps Gustaf was never the person she thought he was. What does she know about people? It took her six months to figure out that she had fallen in love with a murderer.

I loved Max, she thinks. And I thought he loved me and asked him to wait until I’m eighteen. And now I am eighteen and in the place where he tried to kill us all. What if Max is the only one who will ever love me? What if I’m the perfect love object for supernatural killers with severe personality disorder?

The thoughts are flying about in her head as she follows Anna-Karin to the table where Vanessa and Linnéa are already seated.

They’re talking quietly with their heads close together. Minoo puts her tray down and checks that there is no chewing gum stuck to her chair.

Vanessa leans towards Anna-Karin.

‘Has Viktor said anything to you?’ she whispers.

Anna-Karin shakes her head.

‘It’s my turn now, is it?’ she mumbles.

‘Yes,’ Vanessa says. ‘He told me this morning. He’ll drive you to the manor house after the last lesson today.’

‘Why did Viktor tell
you
?’ Minoo asks Vanessa.

‘He said it was because it would be easier for Anna-Karin to hear it from me.’

‘He could’ve told me in that case. We’re in the same class, after all.’

‘Oh, Minoo, are you jealous?’ Linnéa says with a grin.

‘So witty,’ Minoo says. ‘But you’ve got to admit it’s weird.’

‘What’s
not
weird about that guy?’ Vanessa says. ‘Just thank your lucky stars you got out of talking with him.’

‘I didn’t, as a matter of fact,’ Minoo says.

She steals a glance at Anna-Karin, who stares silently at the tabletop.

Minoo wishes she could think of something reassuring to say. But her own interrogation was nightmarish and she can’t even imagine what it is going to be like for Anna-Karin.

‘Afterwards, you’ll feel like you said the wrong thing, however hard you tried,’ Minoo says. ‘That’s how we all felt.’

‘Remember, Alexander will do everything to break you. He asked me for ages, like, quarter of an hour, about Minoo and the iron filings,’ Vanessa says. ‘Stick to what we’ve agreed and it will be all right.’

‘Try to get some protection against magic ready,’ Linnéa says. ‘I don’t think Viktor can read your thoughts, but he’s up to
something
.’

‘I know,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘I’m grateful. I understand that you’re trying to help me—’

Vanessa interrupts her.

‘Hi! What do you want?’ she says quickly to someone standing behind Minoo’s back.

When Minoo turns round, Evelina is there, holding a tray. She looks like a walking, talking reminder to Minoo of all her inferiority complexes. Evelina’s dark skin is flawless, she carries off her tight outfit with confidence and her feet, at the
ends of her impossibly long legs, definitely can’t be bigger than size 4.

‘Hi,’ she says and sits down next to Vanessa.

Minoo doesn’t even dare to look at the others. Could Evelina have heard anything?

‘What a party atmosphere,’ Evelina says and drinks some water.

‘I thought you were going to eat with Michelle today,’ Vanessa says.

‘She wanted to go out to the diner and I’m broke. What’s going on, have I disturbed some life-or-death talk?’

Minoo looks up, exchanges a glance with Vanessa. If only Evelina knew how right she is.

‘No, we’re just deathly dull,’ Vanessa says. ‘Tired out, all of us.’

‘I know someone who doesn’t think you’re dull in the slightest,’ Evelina grins and turns to the others. ‘If you must know, I met Samir this weekend and he’s like, totally obsessed with her.’

Vanessa laughs a little. Minoo has no idea who Samir is.

‘Samir, as well as just about all other guys alive in Sweden today,’ Evelina adds and spears a piece of hamburger. ‘No one left for the rest of us, practically.’

fuck

Minoo jerks upright and almost spills her water when she hears the voice inside her head.

Her heart is racing at the same pace as her thoughts. It must be Max. He has waited for her eighteenth birthday and now he’s back to reunite with her.

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Now she realises that this is a completely different voice. A voice she knows well, even though she has never before heard it in this way.