The Circle (Hammer)

44



VANESSA WAKES UP because she’s cold. She’s wedged in the gap between the bed and the wall. Her head is full of nightmare images. The principal’s burn. Gustaf at Rebecka’s grave, digging up Rebecka’s coffin. Cat’s staring green eye.

Vanessa turns over to look at her slumbering boyfriend. Wille has taken all the bedclothes again and wrapped himself up in them like a Wille tortilla. Only his hair is sticking out. Vanessa kicks him angrily, but he just snuffles and turns over.

She glances at the Batman alarm clock, a relic from Wille’s childhood. She has to get up in five minutes anyway. She clambers over him and almost loses her balance as she slides out of bed.

Wille’s room has always looked like an archaeological dig with layers of artefacts from different eras. Since Vanessa moved in it’s twice as bad. Neither of them can keep the place tidy and, for better or worse, Sirpa ignores everything that goes on, declaring it ‘their space’.

Vanessa feels something soft and sticky under her foot. She’s stepped on a liver-sausage sandwich.

Her anger explodes like a geyser. She picks up one of Wille’s slippers and throws it at the bed. It bounces off the headboard and lands on his face. The tortilla wakes up.

‘What the f*ck is your problem?’ he says groggily.

‘What the f*ck is your problem?’ Vanessa mimics. ‘I’ll tell you what the f*ck my problem is. I’ve just trodden on the disgusting old sandwich you chucked on to your disgusting f*cking floor!’

Wille sits up, still wrapped in the blanket. ‘It’s not my bloody sandwich,’ he says.

‘I. Don’t. Eat. Liver sausage,’ Vanessa enunciates, as if Wille were old and deaf. ‘Just look at this place!’

‘You live here too.’

‘I’m at school all day! You don’t do anything! Can’t you at least clean it up?’

‘You’ve just had, like, the longest sodding Christmas break ever. You clean up your shit and I’ll clean up mine,’ he says, and pulls one of her bras from under his pillow. He flings it at her, and it lands at her feet.

Vanessa wants to scream at him, but the thought of Sirpa in the next room stops her. Instead she grabs the bra and throws it back at Wille. It lands on his head with one cup hanging over his face.

‘Give me a f*cking break,’ Wille whines, but he’s smiling.

Vanessa picks up a car magazine from the floor and hurls it at him.

‘Stop it,’ Wille says, and is hit by a disgusting-looking sock. ‘That does it!’ he says. He jumps out of bed, grabs Vanessa and carries her back to the bed.

‘Let go! I’ve got liver sausage on my foot!’

‘I don’t give a shit.’

‘I’ve got to go to school!’

‘No, you haven’t.’

‘I have! The holidays are over!’

‘The first day of the spring term is always sports day,’ says Wille, and lays her on the mattress.

Vanessa smiles. She’d forgotten that. She grabs the bedclothes and wraps them around her. Sports day is a free day. Everyone knows that.

‘Then I’m going back to sleep,’ she says. ‘And you’re going to throw away that revolting sandwich. And wipe my heel,’ she adds, waving her foot.

Wille leaves the room and Vanessa shuts her eyes. She falls asleep surprisingly quickly, waking up briefly as Wille wields a tissue on her foot, bowing ironically when he’s done.



The pain is so sharp and so sudden that for a few seconds Minoo forgets how to breathe. She’s sure she’s broken her tail bone and the ice underneath her.

She hears catcalls and mittened applause and tries to laugh – No problem, I’m fine. Doesn’t hurt a bit – even though the tears are stinging the corners of her eyes.

She had chosen to spend the day on skates because Max is supervising the activities at Engelsfors sports field. Of course he’s barely looking in her direction.

Minoo tries to stand up. The skates slip from under her so her legs splay in impossible directions. She puts her hands against the smoothly polished ice and tries again. This time she lands hard on her knees. Fresh pain shoots up her thighs.

She hears someone come towards her across the ice. She looks up just as Max brakes perfectly, showering her with a thin mist of ice crystals. He holds out his hand and helps her up, but she almost falls over again and is in danger of pulling him down with her. Max wobbles. They support each other for a moment in what looks almost like an embrace. She gets the giddy feeling that he’s about to kiss her again.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks, and gently lets go of her.

No, I’m bloody not, Minoo wants to say –actually, there’s a lot she’d like to say. Instead she says, ‘No. My right knee really hurts. I don’t think I can skate any more.’

‘Then go home and rest,’ Max says.

He’s completely impersonal again. It’s painful for her to be so close to him and unable to touch him. She feels as if he’s ripped her heart out, thrown it on to the ice, set fire to it, stamped on it, stuffed it back into her chest, sewn it up, and started all over again.

‘I’ve handed in my notice. I’ll be leaving at the end of the spring term.’

He doesn’t bat an eyelid when he says it. His gaze is fixed on Julia and Felicia, who are making failed attempts at pirouettes.

‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t like you,’ he continues, in a low voice. ‘Quite the opposite.’

Finally he looks her in the eyes.

‘I like you far too much.’

Then he skates off. A few quick strides and he’s gone. Minoo is left alone, looking after him and trying to understand what she has just heard. The pain has subsided. Instead she is filled with a new and dangerous sensation.

Hope.



Anna-Karin shuts her eyes and glides down the hill. She’s skied here a thousand times before and knows every curve. The rush of air hits her face. The snow is whispering beneath her skis. She feels light and free. She opens her eyes and blinks at the sun as she coasts into the next curve.

Anna-Karin used to go cross-country skiing with Grandpa on these trails in winter, and it’s always been the obvious choice for her during school sports days. It’s the only sport she’s reasonably good at, and she loves shooting through the forest among the fir trees. She’s never had to worry about meeting any of her bullies on these tracks: cross-country skiing is not the sport of choice for the in-crowd.

Anna-Karin relishes being alone. She has to steel herself for the new term and the difficult task she’s set herself.

If only she didn’t have such a vivid image in her mind of the principal’s scarred skin.

It’s nothing compared to what they did to him.

What will the Council do to Anna-Karin?

There’s a rest stop a short distance ahead. She sets her sights on the dark brown wooden roof, the solid table with its two long benches, and picks up speed.

When she reaches it, she sticks her poles into a snowdrift, takes off her skis and stands them alongside. She opens her jacket to let in the cold air and tosses her backpack on to the table. She has just started to take out her packed lunch when she hears a skier swishing towards her.

The figure catches sight of her, stops, looks around, then skis in closer. Anna-Karin sees her blonde hair and puts down her drink.

It’s Ida.

‘What do you want?’ Anna-Karin asks, as she comes up.

‘Just to say hi.’

Anna-Karin glances around automatically. Are Robin, Kevin and Erik hiding in the forest? Or any of the others that Ida has lamented her with over the years? Can they already be out to get her?

‘Now you’ve said it,’ says Anna-Karin. ‘So leave me alone.’

‘It’s a free country.’

‘What – are you still at primary school?’

‘I just want you to know one thing,’ Ida says, taking off her skis. She looks almost unnaturally healthy, as if she lives on vitamins, organic vegetables and outdoor activities in clean alpine air. ‘This term’s going to be different. You took away everything that was mine, and now I’m taking it back. You can’t stop me. You’re going to regret ruining my life.’

So says Ida. The Ida who had made Anna-Karin’s life miserable for nine excruciating years.

It’s as if something bursts inside her, something she hasn’t been completely aware of. It’s like the thin membrane inside an eggshell, a protective layer that has somehow held together the roiling mass of angst, fear and rage. Now it breaks, and all the ugliness and venom pour out, spreading through her: a dark, seething sludge of pure hatred.

‘Everybody hates you, Ida,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Don’t you know that?’

‘Thanks to you, yeah. But don’t go thinking—’

‘No,’ Anna-Karin carries on relentlessly. ‘Everybody has always hated you. They just pretended to like you because they were afraid of being your next victim. It makes no difference what you do to me. It won’t change what they think of you.’

For a moment Ida looks as if she’s about to cry –the tears are just beneath the surface. ‘Nobody’s friends with you because they want to be either,’ she says.

Anna-Karin moves a step closer and Ida backs away. ‘Maybe, but I never hurt anyone. You did, all the time. What I did is nothing compared to what you’ve been doing.’

‘You’re such a f*cking freak!’

‘You ruined my entire life,’ Anna-Karin says. She walks forwards a few more steps. Ida’s heels are pressed against a snowdrift.

‘It wasn’t just me,’ Ida says defiantly.

‘No. But you were one of the ones who started it. I never understood why you picked on me. I used to lie awake at night trying to work out what was wrong with me so I could change. I discovered loads of things to hate about myself. I tried everything. But it was never enough. Not even when I gave up, when I did everything not to draw attention to myself.’

Anna-Karin glimpses a momentary hesitation in her.

‘No, it wasn’t enough,’ Ida says slowly, as if she really wants Anna-Karin to hear every word. ‘You should have killed yourself.’

The dark wave that has built inside Anna-Karin washes over her. She allows herself be swept along by it.

She throws herself forward. She’s heavier than Ida and adrenalin makes her strong. Ida topples to the ground. Anna-Karin pins her shoulders to the snowdrift and straddles her waist. Ida struggles, twists and strains, but to no avail.

‘Let go! I can’t breathe!’

It’s as if the power inside Anna-Karin has a life of its own. A living entity that has been lying in wait, biding its time for this very moment.

Go away, leave this town and never show your face here again.

Ida’s pupils widen. Anna-Karin sees her struggle to resist, her face turning redder and redder.

Be gone …

There is an invisible wall between her and Ida.

Anna-Karin recognises it from the practice exercises. Ida resists.

Anna-Karin pushes harder, puts all her will and concentration behind her power to break through the wall between them. It buckles but doesn’t break. Finally Anna-Karin realises she has nothing left to draw from.

Exhaustion overcomes her. She tumbles to the side, into the snowdrift. Ida gets up, staggering, but triumph shines in her eyes. And Anna-Karin realises she fell into Ida’s trap. She allowed herself to be provoked. Just as Ida had wanted.

‘I’m not afraid of you any more,’ Ida says. ‘The book taught me how to do it. It’s on my side.’ She stumbles towards her skis and puts them on. Anna-Karin is unable to speak.

‘You should follow your own advice,’ Ida says. ‘You should leave. Tomorrow school starts for real, and then everything will be just as it should be.’

She glides down the track. Anna-Karin shuts her eyes. If she lies here long enough she’ll freeze to death. It wouldn’t matter much. ‘I can’t take it any more,’ she whispers. ‘I can’t take it any more.’