The Key (6 page)

After the finals, she’ll have to make it on her own. Or, she won’t make it at all and will have to sit through meetings like this for the rest of her life. The world is full of misfits who never accomplish anything apart from having kids, who in turn become misfits and losers too.

Just like Linnéa’s parents.

She tries to convince herself that she doesn’t have to repeat their mistakes. At least, she is positive that she will never ever have children.

It will be tough enough not to make a bleeding mess of her own life.

‘Is there anything you’d like to ask us?’ Diana asks at the end of the session.

There is nothing. It is over. Linnéa nods goodbye to the three monkeys and hurries away.

The streets of Engelsfors are unusually crowded. Lots of people carry clanking bags from the System shops run by the state alcohol monopoly.

May Day Eve. People used to believe that this was the night when witches rode around on broomsticks or goats.

No wonder I’m feeling restless, Linnéa thinks.

She pulls out a packet of cigarettes from the top of her boot; as she lights a fag, she glances at the burnt-out building that used to house the
Engelsfors Herald
, then starts off again to get to Ingrid’s tiny shop, where she sometimes helps out. By the time she arrives, the glowing tip has reached the filter.

The faint ceiling lights are flickering. Ingrid sits behind the counter and smiles when she sees Linnéa.

‘Nice to see you,’ Ingrid says.

Her white hair is pulled back into an untidy bun with a pencil stuck through it.

‘I thought I’d pick up that dress,’ Linnéa tells her.

Ingrid leaves to look in the storeroom.

Linnéa stays, eyeing all the stuff: the shelves full of old toys, odd glasses and cups and collectors’ plates; the piles of video cassettes. She doesn’t recognise any of the titles on the back of the boxes, but the blood-spattered letters promise cannibals, zombies, blood and terror. This makes her think of Vanessa, who can’t have enough of horror films. She even enjoys the bad ones.

Linnéa would like to give Vanessa a call, ask her to come over tonight. They could watch a bad horror movie. Side by side, close together. Maybe share the same blanket. Then Linnéa could smell the scent of Vanessa’s hair, feel the warmth of her body.

Yes, even the thought of cannibalistic terror makes Linnéa fantasise about Vanessa. But it is May Day Eve. Vanessa is certain to have made other plans for tonight.

‘It’s a perfectly hideous old party frock but I’m sure you’ll be able to make something special of it,’ Ingrid says when she returns with an armful of black silk. It’s a lovely material, but Linnéa can see that sewing it will be a nightmare.

Ingrid puts the dress in a carrier bag and hands it to Linnéa, who thanks her and puts her hand into the bag to touch the smooth fabric.

‘I fancied watching the bonfire later on,’ Ingrid says. ‘Who knows, there might be people there to chat to.’

She smiles and Linnéa wonders whether Ingrid is lonely. And if she is, does it trouble her? Maybe she likes things as they are?

‘Have a good time tonight, then.’ Linnéa hopes the words don’t sound as formal and unnatural as they feel when she says them.

‘And the same to you,’ Ingrid says. She turns the sign round to
Closed
even before the door has shut behind Linnéa.

Linnéa spots him as soon as she steps into the street.

Dad.

And he has seen her. There is no place to hide.

The last time they spoke, he was busy clearing out the furniture from the Positive Engelsfors Centre. He had promised her that he wouldn’t start drinking again and that he would prove it to her daily. She examines him now, and sees no sign of him having broken that promise.

People do change sometimes
.

That’s what Mona said in the Crystal Cave on the day of the Spring Equinox.

Although, given that Mona missed the fact that Ida would die that night, Linnéa feels less than confident about Mona’s prophetic gifts.

‘Hello.’ Björn stops. ‘Happy May Day Eve. Are you going to celebrate tonight?’

‘No. I never was that keen on the May Day thing.’

Does he even remember, she asks herself, all the May Day night piss-ups with his mates? Linnéa used to hide under her bed all night. She couldn’t sleep and, once, when she didn’t dare go to the toilet, she had peed herself and stayed for hours in her wet clothes. When silence had fallen in the kitchen at last, she had tiptoed down to the laundry room in the block of flats, washed herself in the sink, changed her clothes and stuffed her old things into one of the washing machines. Then she had finally fallen asleep, with her head against the drying cupboard. She had been nine years old.

‘No, I suppose not,’ he says. ‘But look, if you don’t have any plans … I’ve got some ground beef at home, just right for hamburgers. Why don’t you come round?’

‘I haven’t eaten meat since I was twelve,’ Linnéa reminds him.

‘Sorry, I knew that, really. What about the veggie ones? The Ica store is still open.’

He looks pleadingly at her and tries hard to hide it at the same time. It tugs at her heart. And then she becomes angry with him for making her feel like that.

‘Last time we met, you said you wouldn’t demand anything from me,’ she says. ‘But I can’t help feeling that you’re pretty demanding.’

He nods. And looks devastated.

She has an almost irresistible urge to carry on. To cause him pain with her wretched memories.

But what scares her isn’t the temptation to hurt him; it’s her longing for him. Her feelings are pulling her in opposite directions and she feels the ground shift beneath her feet.

The first wave of panic wells up inside her.

‘I’ll be off now,’ she mumbles, and walks away before he has had a chance to reply.

Vanessa stares at the flames as they lick at the twigs and branches, chipped boards, an old bedstead and whatever else has been hauled up to the top of Olsson’s Hill. The fire crackles and roars against the black sky.

The choir bursts into song:

Winter’s fury ends in our mountains, snowdrifts’ glimmer fades away and dies
…

The conductor beats time with his arms in front of the small group of bony little old men, who are all wearing decaying dark suits. One of the old boys walked past Vanessa just moments earlier, giving off booze fumes so powerful he’d surely explode if he got too near the fire.

A gust of wind makes the smoke whoosh out over the crowd. Vanessa’s eyes fill with tears.

She will be reeking of bonfire smoke when she gets to Linnéa’s place. Stinking, when she turns up to tell Linnéa that … well, that she has been thinking … that she has kind of grasped … that she …

Vanessa curses under her breath. Smelling of smoke is clearly going to be the least of her problems.

Yes, I’ll join you! Greetings, joyous breezes, birds and countryside so fair
…

Vanessa’s little brother Melvin squeezes her hand hard and sings along, though he knows neither the words nor the tune. Mum smiles to Vanessa. Ever since they left home, Mum has been going on and on about how pleased she is that Vanessa is keeping them company.

Vanessa was twelve when she was last up here for the May Day Eve festival. The year after that was the first time that she, Michelle and Evelina had got drunk together.

Ever since, it has seemed so much more tempting to spend time with her friends. Vanessa has agreed to meet up with Evelina at a party tonight, but has no intention of staying on.

Tonight is the night when she will face up to it. She will tell Linnéa that she is … that she …

The choir is reaching the end:

Blackbirds’ song among the pine and fir trees, water birds at play around the isles
.

The old boys fall silent and acknowledge the applause with pleased expressions.

Melvin howls with delight when a burning branch falls to the ground in a shower of sparks. He tugs at Vanessa to get closer to the fire and she goes down on her haunches and puts her arm around him.

‘No way, darling. Stay put,’ she tells him.

‘It’s fire!’ Melvin shouts. ‘I want fire!’

Vanessa wonders if she should worry about her kid brother’s pyromaniac tendencies.

‘When are you off to your party?’ Mum asks.

‘Soon,’ Vanessa says, and notes the nervous fluttering inside her stomach.

Melvin twists in her arms and she loses her balance for a moment. Her heels sink into the grassy ground.

As she looks into the flames, she remembers Matilda, the Chosen One from the seventeenth century. Nicolaus’s daughter who was burnt at the stake. Alive. The heat is scorching on Vanessa’s face, even though she is standing several metres away from the fire.

She pulls Melvin closer and kisses his soft, dark curls. She doesn’t want to think about Matilda.

‘I’m going now,’ she tells Melvin, who nods absentmindedly, fixated on the flames.

She straightens up, waits for Mum to take Melvin’s hand.

‘Who is giving the party?’ Mum asks.

‘No one you know.’

Actually, Vanessa doesn’t know him either, except that he’s one of the geeks who is in the same class as Minoo and Anna-Karin.

She’ll just drop in and say hi. Then go round to Linnéa’s.

Whenever she tries to utter the words, they vanish out of her mind.

It’s time for you to wake up, sweetie
.

That’s what Mona had said to her. Vanessa is wide awake now and she is scared to death.

This whole situation is new to her. In the past, fancying someone had felt like a game. It never made her wretched, because she never had anything to lose. Not even when she met Wille. She had checked him out at parties, kept track of what he was up to, but hadn’t fallen
in love
with him until later on, when they were already together.

With Linnéa, it’s different. Not only are they friends, but Fate has also joined them one to the other. If Vanessa screws up tonight, it will ruin everything.

But she has to speak out. She needs to know if she has a chance. Or if she should just find a suitably sized hole and lie down to die. Because that’s how she feels. Either or.

Linnéa
.

Her name is enough for that fluttering inside to start again. Linnéa’s dark, dark eyes, her black hair. Her hands, her lips. Her bare skin; that time she was kissing Jonte on the sofa and Vanessa still had no clue why she couldn’t stop looking.

‘See you,’ Vanessa says.

‘Have fun,’ Mum tells her. ‘But not
too
much fun.’

The wooden house is painted pale blue. Now and then, raucous voices are heard from inside it. The thump of the music comes across easily and every beat makes Vanessa realise that she really doesn’t want to be at this party.

Still. She checks her lip gloss. Puts a hairpin into place. She
promised
Evelina. Besides, she promised herself a drink.

Which is totally pathetic. Linnéa doesn’t drink any more. She wouldn’t need alcohol to give her the courage to say something like this. She would just say it.

Which means if Linnéa felt something for me, she thinks, she would have told me already.

She opens the front door, takes a big step over the piles of shoes and jackets in the hall, and almost falls when one of her heels gets stuck inside a large trainer. She has to plough her way past a big huddle of guys filling half the hall. One of them wolf-whistles. In the sitting-room doorway, a girl from Minoo and Anna-Karin’s class seems to be humping the doorframe in time to the music. Vanessa carefully walks round.

The big room is full of people dancing, and so hot that the windows are coated in condensation. A boy has passed out on the stairs to the upper floor, with a dead fag still sticking to his lips. A girl comes running downstairs, stumbles on his stretched-out arm, loses her balance, falls down the last few steps and knocks the humping girl over. Everyone starts to laugh and applaud. The girl who has fallen laughs harder than anyone else.

On the face of it, it’s just another party. But, somehow, it seems to be simmering. And not in a fun way, either. The whole house feels like a pressure cooker.

Most of these people were at the Spring Equinox event in the school gym. They don’t remember anything from that night, apart from waking up as if from a bad dream. Helena and Krister Malmgren were lying on the floor, dead, and, soon afterwards, Ida had died too.

They have forgotten how they had been breathing in the same rhythm, like a single being. How glowing circles came and went on walls and floor, and flashes of lightning hissed through the air.

But they are aware that something went
wrong
, and now they are fed up with wondering about what it was. Fed up with feeling afraid. A collective sense of frustration has built up and needs release.

The lights flicker and the music stops suddenly. There’s a moment of confusion. A girl in a pink cowboy hat rushes up to the player and gets it going again.

Vanessa scans the room. There’s no sign of Evelina, but Michelle and Mehmet are kissing, tucked in under a windowsill. The drooping, pointy leaves of a potted plant just above Michelle are becoming tangled in her hair. The pot wobbles unnervingly.

When she catches sight of Vanessa, Michelle pulls away from Mehmet and waves happily. A slender thread of saliva is suspended between her lips and Mehmet’s, but breaks when Michelle shouts something that drowns in the music.

Vanessa waves back at her.

She spots the door to the kitchen and begins to push her way through the crowd, but comes to a halt behind a circle of boys with their arms around each other’s backs. They seem to be practising some kind of Cossack dance and their faces look euphoric. One boy’s glasses are coated in moisture and his sweat-soaked hair lies glued to his skull. She tries to manoeuvre around them but only manages to hit her knee on a low table she hadn’t even noticed.

Kevin Månsson is seated on the puffy black leather sofa with a bottle of red wine on the table in front of him. It still seems weird to see him without the yellow polo shirt he wore daily while the Positive Engelsfors rule of terror dominated the school. He is playing a game on his mobile, prodding the screen so hard it seems he’s determined to crack it.