Little Star (33 page)

She was also preoccupied with her new insight into the concept of simplicity. You usually know what to do in a given situation, but doubt, cowardice or misguided concern for others gets in the way. Moving her hand and body back, then shifting her weight forward and delivering the blow had been the obvious thing to do. The problem was how to apply this same simplicity to situations that were not about violence, that could not be solved with violence.

Listen to your heart.

Yes, in a way it was an incredibly banal insight. But perhaps the most banal insights were the greatest of all, if you were really capable of living by them. It could well be true, and Teresa’s thoughts continued along these lines as the Principal and the counsellor droned on with their questions.

She answered in monosyllables, in a tone of voice she hoped sounded authentic. ‘Don’t know’, ‘Don’t know’, ‘No’, ‘Yes’. The role this time was
girl shocked by her own actions.

Fortunately she had scratches on her cheek, which helped with her interpretation of the role. She had seen red, she hadn’t known what she was doing. Eventually she was allowed to go back to her lesson.

When she walked into the classroom everyone fell silent as she sat down at her desk. She glanced at Micke, and the hint of a smile flitted across his face. She took out her exercise book and scribbled down the fragments of ‘Mush’ that had come to her. She already knew what melody they would fit.

If a journey of a
thousand miles begins with a single step, then many things that end up being of major significance start out as a cool idea. Someone is bored and tries out some small idea just to pass the time. And before you know it we have Pacman, nylon stockings, the theory of gravity or the idea for
The Lord of the Rings.
A professor is sitting in his study one gloomy day. He takes a piece of paper and jots down, ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ He doesn’t know what a hobbit is, or what kind of hole it is. But it’s a jolly little sentence—what might come next?

The weekend after the incident with Jenny, Theres and Teresa were sitting around on Saturday evening with nothing to do. They didn’t feel like watching a film, and they had spent so much time working on songs that they’d run out of steam. Teresa had taught Theres to play noughts and crosses, but after a few trial games they were so unbearably even that each round became simply a matter of who could hold out the longest, and it was always Theres.

Theres seemed to lack any capacity for boredom, and as they sat opposite one another at the coffee table with a round of noughts and crosses between them that already covered half a page, Teresa began to feel a desperate urge to come up with something, anything, new.

Then it came to her. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘Shall we make a video?’

Max Hansen hadn’t been in touch for several days, and it seemed as if Theres’ career in music was over before it had begun. They might
as well mess about a bit on their own, it didn’t really matter after all.

They dug out a dark blue sheet which they hung on the wall in Theres’ bedroom, and mounted some small lamps for the lighting. In a drawer in the kitchen Teresa found a light-rope which they suspended from the ceiling so that it would make Theres’ eyes sparkle when she looked up at it.

Teresa fastened her mobile to the back of a chair with duct tape, then adjusted the height by putting a few DVDs under the legs of the chair so that Theres’ face just filled the screen. Then she began recording and started the song on the computer.

Theres couldn’t grasp the concept of miming; she just sang the song. Perhaps the lip synching worked better that way, and in any case it wouldn’t be a problem to remove the sound from the film and add the pre-recorded track instead. The real Theres’ voice blended perfectly with the pre-recorded version as she sang the whole song.

Fly, fly away from everyday things

Fly, fly away and put aside your wings

Fly, fly away from ties that bind

Fly to me, fly to me…

Teresa never got used to it, she was just as spellbound every single time. When Theres had finished singing it was a long time before Teresa could bring herself to lean forward and switch off the camera.

They had done some work on iMovie in school, and Teresa knew the basics of how to edit and add sound. As she was about to replace what Theres had just sung with the pre-recorded version, she stopped. Instead of removing the new version completely, she simply lowered the volume.

The new version sounded different, but still toned perfectly with the old one. The quality on the mobile’s microphone was much worse, but the tinny, metallic sound in the background somehow made the song fuller, more exciting. Teresa wasn’t musical…What was that called?

‘Theres,’ she asked. ‘What you sang just now. You weren’t singing
the same thing, were you? You were singing a harmony, weren’t you?’

‘I don’t know. What’s a harmony?’

‘I think what you just sang was a harmony.’

‘That’s the way it should be. Sometimes.’

Teresa experimented, making Theres’ voice from the mobile louder and softer in different places, removing it from the verse and making it significantly louder in certain parts of the refrain until Theres said that was the way it should be. They played the result on full screen with sound and picture, and everything fitted together in a way that was difficult to define. It just worked.

Theres’ calm, expressionless face, only her mouth moving as she sang the dramatic words to the natural melody, occasionally supplemented by the electronic voice that seemed to come from another world. It fitted.

Teresa leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest as she looked at the frozen image of Theres on the screen. ‘Shall we post it on the net?’ she said. ‘On MySpace or something? Somewhere that people can watch it?’

‘Yes. People can watch it.’

Teresa spent a while sorting out a MySpace account for her old alias Josefin. As she was about to post the video, she came across a problem she hadn’t considered: who was she going to put down as the singer, and who was behind the song? Theres was already known as Tora Larsson, and what about Teresa? Did she want to expose herself to possible derision? That was always a risk when you put yourself out there in some way.

The cursor flashed, demanding a name in the box for artist and originator. Teresa juggled with words. Tora Larsson, Teresa, Theres, Larsson, Tora, Teresa, Larsson…

Te…sla.

‘Tesla,’ she said.

‘What’s that?’

‘We are. That’s what we’re called, the two of us together. Tesla. Is that OK?’

‘Yes.’

Teresa keyed in the name and the title, ‘Fly’, and sent the package off to the incalculable storage area that is MySpace. Then she logged out, switched the computer to standby mode and shrugged.

‘We can check later,’ she said. ‘If anyone’s watched it. Anyway, it’s done now. Although I don’t suppose anyone will be interested.’

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Two days later, twenty people
had watched and listened. Four days later it was three hundred. When Teresa went up to Stockholm the following weekend and they checked the number of hits together, it had reached two thousand. Without exception the comments were positive, and some enthusiasts had sent the link to every single person they knew. Virtually all of them seemed to be young girls.

A couple of hours before Teresa was due to go home on Sunday, they checked again. The number of people who had listened to the track was up to four thousand, and the video had been given the honour of a place on the banner as ‘most played’, which would presumably guarantee even
more
hits.

Just as Teresa was about to leave for the station, Max Hansen rang; he was absolutely beside himself. Someone had told him about the video clip, and how the hell could they possibly have done something so bloody stupid? They’d ruined everything now. All the work he’d put in, all the money he’d invested to get the
right
version released, and they’d just killed all his efforts stone dead with this fucking awful recording that absolutely anybody could get hold of for free.

Max Hansen was so angry that his voice was breaking, and it was impossible to work out if his screams were rage or just distress.

‘But it doesn’t matter,’ said Teresa.

It was rage. Max Hansen roared with a fury that made it difficult to hear what he was saying, and Teresa had to hold the receiver away from her ear.

‘You have no fucking idea! You think all you have to do is record a song and next week you’re on
Tracks
and you get to be on TV, you’re so fucking stupid I could kill myself! Let me tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to go into your account and take down that fucking video right now, because otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to—’

‘Bye,’ said Teresa, and put the phone down. When it rang again she pulled the jack out of the wall.

The Christmas holidays arrived, and ‘Fly’ continued to grow exponentially. As more people watched they told others to watch, and when those people had watched they mentioned it to others. Soon the video was also on YouTube, attracting even more hits.

At first Teresa had tried to follow all the comments, lapping up the praise and delighting in the fact that so many young girls found consolation in the song and thought the lyrics were ‘fantastic’, but ignoring the sexual allusions and derogatory remarks from boys and girls who somehow felt threatened by Theres’ appearance.

But it all got too much.

One day when she was sitting reading yet another post along the lines of
wasn’t she the girl who was on
Idol
and why does she look so peculiar and who is she and what are the words really about,
she suddenly realised that was enough. She just couldn’t read one more word.

A large part of her life and her thoughts had begun to focus on the lyrics she had written, the little video they had made in a couple of hours, and she couldn’t help it: she regretted it.

She had finally done something that would
show those bastards,
and her name wasn’t even there. She tried to convince herself that it wasn’t important, that she didn’t care because she was above such things. But it wasn’t true. Even if she had no desire to stand in the spotlight, she wanted people to
know.
Know that it was
her,
Teresa Svensson, that girl there, that little grey girl, she was the one who wrote ‘Fly’.

She felt as if her brain was boiling to the point of disintegration as she read all the positive comments that were about her, but without one single person being aware of that fact. She just couldn’t cope anymore.

Göran and Maria had decided to try something new, and had booked a chalet in the mountains for a week over Christmas. Teresa hadn’t wanted to go and had tried to come up with a good reason why she had to stay at home, but a couple of days before they were due to leave, she changed her mind. She needed to get away. Away from the computer, away from the regrets.

After only two days she had withdrawal symptoms. Since she didn’t like skiing, she had nothing to do apart from reading the poetry books she had brought with her, listening to music and playing games on her mobile. She loathed the whole environment, with all these outdoor types packing their skis into their roofrack capsules in the mornings, her contemporaries with their over-sized snowboard clothing and something unbearably
sporty
about the way they moved. If she was an outsider at school, she was a complete alien here.

Her brothers soon made friends and hung out with them, while her parents set off on cross-country skiing expeditions. On the third day Teresa decided the only way to survive mentally was to get out her notebook and start writing a couple of new songs.

One evening when the family had had dinner in the hotel and were passing reception on the way back to their chalet, Teresa heard the song. A group of young people aged about seventeen or eighteen were sitting on the sofas around a laptop. She could see Theres’ face on the screen, and ‘Fly’ could be heard through the small external speakers. The teenagers sat motionless, staring into Theres’ slightly blurred eyes as she sang.

Olof nudged her shoulder and nodded over towards the group. ‘Have you heard that? It’s brilliant.’

‘I wrote it,’ said Teresa.

‘Sure you did. You and Beyoncé. Why the fuck are you saying that?’

‘Because it’s true.’

Olof grinned at Arvid and twisted his index finger at his temple, and the family headed for the exit. Teresa stayed where she was, her fists clenched, staring down at the floor. The song faded away and the teenagers began to make comments. One girl said it was
like the best song ever,
and another wondered why there weren’t more. One of the boys brought the discussion to an end by playing a clip where a drunk fell out of a window.

Teresa sat down in an armchair a little way off and picked up a discarded copy of the evening paper,
Aftonbladet,
in order to distract herself. On page seven there was a feature article with the headline, ‘Who is Tesla?’ pointing out that the song ‘Fly’ had now scored almost a million hits, despite the fact that nobody really knew who the artist was.

Suddenly and without warning, Teresa’s head caught fire. The next moment a thick fire blanket was thrown over her. Darkness enveloped her, and she could hardly breathe. Her lungs contracted and lost all strength. Searing pain sliced through her still-burning head and she was pressed down in the armchair, incapable of moving.

That was how Göran found her fifteen minutes later. He walked into reception, looked around and spotted Teresa, slumped in the armchair. ‘There you are. Where did you get to?’ Teresa opened her mouth to reply, but her tongue refused to co-operate. Göran leaned over her, tugged at her hand. ‘Come on. We’re all going to have a game of Yahtzee.’

Teresa had felt bad many times, been unhappy and spat out the word
angst
without really knowing what it meant. Now she knew. If she had been capable of thought she would not have referred to the state she was in as angst, but would have believed that some latent illness had suddenly and violently struck her down. But angst was what it was. Pure, sheer panic, paralysing every muscle in her body. Göran had to more or less carry her back to the chalet.

Teresa hardly slept that night; she lay staring into the darkness until the grey light of dawn brought the frost patterns on the window
into focus. She didn’t want any breakfast, and Maria forced her to take two painkillers before the family set off on their respective adventures.

Only when they returned in time for dinner did Göran and Maria start to worry. They found Teresa in exactly the same position as they had left her, lying on her side in bed, her eyes fixed on the sign that said waxing skis inside the chalet was not permitted.

Maria placed a hand on her forehead and established that she didn’t have a temperature. ‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’

Maria’s voice sounded strange to Teresa’s ears. The volume was normal, but it didn’t sound as if it was coming from somewhere nearby. This was probably because the person who was speaking was far away, and the voice was electronically enhanced. So there was no point in responding, and in any case the question didn’t make any sense.

‘Has something happened?’ asked Maria.

Same again. The question had nothing to do with her. It was being directed out into empty space, and the room Teresa took up in that space was insignificant and shrinking. She was slowly being crumpled up like a sheet of paper covered in writing, weighed down by words of no value. Soon she would be a white ball, and would roll away out of sight.

During the night, as Teresa once again lay staring out into the darkness, ‘Fly’ passed one million hits on MySpace.