The Circle (33 page)

‘See anything you like?’

Her gaze falls on
The Lover
and her cheeks heat.

‘This one’s great,’ she answers and fingers the spine of
Steppenwolf
.
Great?
She could hit herself.
Interesting, fascinating, fantastic
. Any other superlative would have sounded better. But Max seems pleasantly surprised.

‘It’s one of my favourites,’ he says.

‘And I really like those,’ she continues, and points, hoping it isn’t too obvious how hard she’s trying to impress him. Sure, she’s read those books and she likes them. But she reads other stuff, too. Fantasy and science fiction. Max would probably find that immature. Wouldn’t he?

‘
The Stranger
and
Notes from the Underground
,’ Max says, when he sees which titles she’s pointing at. He laughs. ‘You’re not a fan of happy books, are you?’

‘Happy books depress me,’ she answers, which is true. But she hears how it sounds and smiles sheepishly. ‘And
that
didn’t sound pretentious in the least.’

‘It’s okay,’ Max says, returning her smile. ‘Especially for a sixteen-year-old.’

The comment about her age stings a little, but she’s still intoxicated by the attention. She sits down on the black sofa. Max puts the cups on the table and sinks down beside her. There’s just a metre between them. She could reach out and touch him. At least, she could if she were a different, much braver and better-looking person. Vanessa, for example.

‘What a nice place you’ve got,’ she says.

‘Thanks.’ He doesn’t say more. He just looks at her with his greenish-brown eyes.

Minoo’s gaze wanders towards the steaming cups on the coffee-table. ‘Do you like it here?’ she asks. ‘In Engelsfors, I mean.’

‘No.’

When she looks at him he smiles. Minoo can’t help but smile, too. ‘Are we so terrible?’

‘It’s not the students but the other teachers. They want everything to be as it’s always been. In the beginning I thought they might be more open to change. But now it’s been almost a whole term …’

Minoo had always thought teachers stuck together. That they agreed on everything. He’s speaking to me like he would to a grown-up, she realises. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know. I’ll stay till the summer anyway. Then we’ll have to see.’

Minoo reaches out for her cup and hopes she can wash down the desperate cry of
Don’t go!
that’s trying to erupt from her throat. Tea spills over the rim of the cup as she lifts it, and droplets of boiling liquid spatter her skin.

‘Careful,’ Max says, taking it from her.

His hand touches hers and she’s happy that he’s holding the cup or she would have spilt it over both of them. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbles.

He dries the cup with a napkin, then hands it back to her. Minoo’s damp fingers slip on the smooth porcelain handle. She raises the cup slowly to her lips again and sips.

‘How about you?’ he asks.

‘What?’

Max pulls up his leg slightly so that he’s facing her. His arm is resting on the back of the sofa. If she moved a little closer he’d be able to put it around her, like he did when they were sitting on the steps at school. She’d curl up against him, rest her head on his chest.

‘I suspect you and Engelsfors don’t mix very well either,’ he says.

Minoo gives a silly, nervous laugh and puts down her cup. Her hand is far too unsteady. ‘I hate this town,’ she says.

‘I can understand that,’ he says. ‘You don’t fit in here.’ He must have seen the anxious look in her eyes because he reaches out and lays his hand on hers. ‘I meant it as a compliment,’ he says.

His hand is so warm and soft against hers. And he doesn’t take it away.

‘I grew up in a little backwater, not far from here, that’s just like Engelsfors,’ he says. ‘I remember how trapped I felt. How lonely and claustrophobic. But later you see that there doesn’t have to be anything wrong with you because you don’t fit in. Could even be the other way around.’

‘Rebecka fitted in,’ Minoo says. ‘At least, nobody thought she was strange. But she was still different.’

‘She meant a lot to you,’ Max says softly.

That was an opening, as if he’d said, ‘It’s okay to talk if you want to.’

‘Not just to me,’ she says. ‘Everybody loved her. Especially Gustaf, her boyfriend. They were such a nice couple.’

Minoo manages to stop talking and leans back into the sofa. His hand is still on hers. She wonders if the back of your hand can sweat. She turns her gaze towards the woman on the wall. ‘Who painted that? The original, I mean.’ Good thing I pointed out I knew it was a poster and not an original, she thinks to herself.

Max removes his hand. ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti,’ he says, sounding a little like his teacher-self. ‘He belonged to an English art movement – the Pre-Raphaelites. The model’s name was Jane Morris. She was Rossetti’s muse. In this one he painted her as Persephone, who was carried off by Hades, god of the underworld. She became his sad queen.’

Minoo gazes at the woman’s milky-white skin and thinks that she must look like a monster by comparison. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she says, and turns back to Max. ‘She’s beautiful.’

‘Do you remember the friend I was telling you about? The one who committed suicide?’ he asks softly.

Minoo nods.

‘Her name was Alice. She showed me that picture … She looked so much like her, it was uncanny. She used to joke that she was Jane Morris’s reincarnation.’

‘You loved her.’ Minoo doesn’t know where those words came from.

Max looks at her in surprise, as if she’s woken him up. ‘Yes,’ he answers. ‘I did.’

She meets his gaze and holds it.

‘You’re a very unusual person, Minoo,’ he says quietly. ‘I wish …’

He falls silent.

‘What?’ she asks, in a voice that is no more than a whisper.

She moves closer to him – just a hair’s breadth – but she feels as if she’s just thrown herself off a cliff. It’s now or never. Let it happen, she thinks. Please, let it happen.

Max’s hand, which just a moment ago was resting on the back of the sofa, finds its way to her shoulder and lies there.

It’s as if they’ve become each other’s reflection. When he moves towards her, she moves towards him, until they’re so close that their lips meet.

Minoo has always worried that she’d do something wrong the first time she kissed someone. But Max is kissing her now and it’s not difficult at all. It’s simple, it’s perfect. His lips are warm and soft and taste a little of tea. His hands are on her back, then on her waist, and she moves in closer to him.

Then he stops himself. His lips pull away from hers and he straightens, takes away his hands. He presses the tips of his fingers to his forehead and shuts his eyes tightly, as if he had a splitting headache. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally. ‘This is wrong. You’re my student … And I’m far too old for you—’

‘No,’ she interrupts. ‘You don’t understand. I may be sixteen, but I don’t feel sixteen. I can’t even speak to people my own age.’

‘I understand you might feel like that,’ he says, ‘but when you’re older you’ll realise how young you actually were.’

It hurts so much that she can’t understand how she can still be alive. She gets up from the sofa. ‘I have to go.’ She
rushes
out into the hall and pulls on her jacket, shoves her feet into her shoes and staggers towards the front door.

‘Minoo,’ she hears Max say behind her.

She presses down the handle and almost falls out of the house. She continues straight across the street and runs as fast as she can, back the way she came, without turning once.

She doesn’t slow down until she reaches Storvall Park. The few scattered streetlamps spread pools of light in the dense darkness. Minoo sinks on to a bench. Snowflakes begin to fall and more come in quick succession. The first real snowfall of the year.

If I just sit here without moving I’ll soon be hidden under a layer of snow, Minoo thinks hopefully. I can thaw in time for spring, completely dead.

A low doleful mewing drifts through the park. She listens into the darkness. It’s impossible to tell which direction it’s coming from. The wind blows through bushes and the trees’ bare branches. A shadow glides into the light of the streetlamp.

Cat.

All at once she feels enormous pity for the poor creature. We’re both wretched, you and me. ‘Pss, pss, pss,’ she says, trying to get its attention.

The cat stops, looks at her and moves closer. Then suddenly it lets out a
blurk
and bends its neck as if something were stuck in its throat.
Blurk
. Minoo is glad she didn’t pet it – who knows what diseases it has?

Blurk
, it croaks again.

And suddenly she realises what the animal is doing: it’s trying to cough up a hairball.

‘Goodnight, Cat,’ she mumbles, and stands up. ‘Good luck.’

Blurk
, Cat responds, and something lands on the ground in front of it with a tinkle. A small object that glitters in the light of the streetlamp.

Cat looks at Minoo urgently and she moves closer.

There, in a little pool of cat puke and hair, lies a key.

Minoo hesitates for a long moment, then picks it up.

Like some kind of affirmation, Cat rubs against her once, then disappears into the darkness.

34

ON MONDAY MORNING
Minoo gets up half an hour earlier than usual. The weekend feels like a long and strange dream. The blue flame. The six elements. The book of patterns. Cat and the key. And Max. Above all Max.

Max had kissed her.

There’s no denying that.

He had kissed her and it had meant something to him. However much she doubts herself, she could see it in his eyes.

He wants her. Her heart sings when she thinks about it. Max wants her, and she’s going to make him understand that it’s okay. There’s no reason to fight what they feel for each other.

Minoo puts on a black top she bought last year but never dared wear. It’s tighter than the ones she usually wears and is a bit lower cut. Normally she doesn’t wear much makeup, except for concealer on her acne, but now she takes out her barely used eyeliner and frames her eyes. When she examines herself in the mirror, she immediately dislikes the result. Her eyes look smaller.

She washes it all off and starts from scratch – covers her
acne
with concealer, applies a little more beneath her eyes, and finishes off with mascara on her upper lashes. She uses the concealer on a few more pimples just beneath her collarbone and on her shoulder. Why content yourself with pimples on your face when you can have them all over your body?

Minoo puts her makeup bag on the bedside table and catches sight of the little key. She’s washed it several times and rubbed it with disinfectant, but still she can barely make herself touch it.

She has a theory about where it leads. Before the weekend, Minoo would immediately have shown it to the principal. But she has no intention of doing that now. Not after what happened at the fairground. Adriana Lopez hasn’t been in touch since Minoo left – obviously she doesn’t consider her a Chosen One any more, so why should Minoo be loyal to her?

She puts the key into her pocket and glances at herself in the full-length mirror.

She doesn’t look bad. If she squints she can almost pretend she’s pretty.

It’s snowing and a centimetre-thick layer of snow has settled over the playground. Minoo is early. Only a few pairs of footprints wind their way up to the entrance.

When she enters the school she’s hit by the pungent smell of cleaning fluid. The graffiti that had adorned one of the walls is still visible, despite attempts to scrub it off:

IF U WANNA SAVE THE PLANET KILL UR FUCKIN SELF

Minoo doesn’t know if it’s the smell or the message that makes her feel sick. She looks away and continues towards Nicolaus’s office at the far end of the corridor. Her footsteps echo desolately beneath the buzz of the fluorescent lighting.

She hears something else: a muffled scraping sound behind her. Like something dragging itself along the floor.

Minoo spins around.

The corridor is deserted.

‘Minoo?’ someone whispers.

She turns back. Nicolaus has appeared in the doorway of his office. She casts a glance over her shoulder before she heads into his room.

Nicolaus is dressed in a threadbare grey suit. He looks threadbare and grey too. As if he has aged a few decades since the principal dismissed him.

‘Hi,’ Minoo says. ‘I have to show you something.’

‘Oh?’ Nicolaus says, raising one eyebrow. ‘Has
that woman
given her permission?’

‘No,’ Minoo answers gravely. ‘I haven’t said anything to her. And I’m not going to either, if you don’t want me to.’

A little smile spreads across Nicolaus’s face before he catches himself and switches to a more dignified expression. ‘Very well. Show me.’