The Circle (9 page)

‘Might as well get it over with,’ she adds.

‘Want a lift?’

‘No, thanks.’

Her father looks at her with concern, and Minoo feels compelled to change the subject. ‘Have you made up your mind whether or not to write about it?’

‘We’re going to wait and see how things develop. There might be an investigation into the school’s responsibility in the tragedy. The boy’s parents might demand it. Then we’d find ourselves in a completely different position.’

Minoo is relieved. Mainly for selfish reasons. The sooner everyone forgets about it, the sooner she can go back to being anonymous.

She brushes her teeth and goes into her room to fetch her bag. She glances out of the window and shudders when she thinks of last night. Of the figure standing out there.

Her father waits for her in the hall, his hands clasped over
his
stomach, which has grown considerably over the last few years. ‘Are you sure you want to go?’

‘
Yes
,’ she answers, instantly regretting the irritation in her voice. She gives her father a hug.

Minoo often worries about him – he sleeps too little, works too hard, and eats too much junk food. Her grandfather, whom she never met, died of a heart attack when he was just fifty-four. Her father is fifty-three. Now and then he and her mother argue about it. These ‘discussions’, as they refer to them, are conducted in low, heated voices that Minoo isn’t supposed to hear, but sometimes her father loses his temper. ‘Save your diagnoses for your patients!’ he snaps.

At those moments Minoo hates him. If he won’t look after himself for his own sake, he ought to for theirs.

‘Ring me if you need anything,’ her father says. Minoo nods and hugs him again, extra tightly this time.

Minoo doesn’t need to hear the hushed voices in the playground to know that they’re all talking about the same thing: Elias. How he did it. The girls who found him.

‘Look, there she is,’ a few older kids whisper, as she walks past.

She pulls her backpack hard against her as she goes into the school. She lowers her head, trying to make herself invisible as she pushes her way through the bustling entrance hall. The entire school has been told to assemble in the auditorium to observe a minute’s silence for Elias.

The looks and whispers follow her. Her ears grow redder with each step she takes. Minoo can’t take it any more. She runs down the stairs to the cafeteria in the basement. At this time of the morning, no one is there except the kitchen staff. She heads for the girls’ toilets.

Only once she has shut the door can she breathe normally. She looks at her watch. If she waits a few minutes, sneaks into the auditorium as the ceremony is about to start and sits at the back, perhaps no one will notice her.

She walks up to a mirror and stares at her face. Is this how Elias was standing before he … did it? She shuts her eyes and opens them again. She tries to see her face from outside, as Max would see it.

It’s become an obsession every time she looks at herself in the mirror.

If my spots cleared up, I might be pretty, she thinks. Or all right at least.

Then she’s unsure again. How is it possible to spend so much time in front of the mirror every day and still not know what you really look like?

She thinks of when she was alone in the classroom with Max. The warmth from his hand. She feels it again and it spreads throughout her body. Why did she run away? What would have happened if she’d stayed?

The door is thrown open with a bang. Minoo spins around. Linnéa’s standing there.

‘Hi,’ Minoo says, wondering if what she was thinking might be printed across her forehead.

‘Hi,’ Linnéa answers, and walks in.

She’s wearing black jeans and a long black hoody. She looks Minoo up and down. ‘Hiding again?’ she asks, with a hint of a smile.

Minoo ought to be angry with her, but she can’t be. The harsh words that were said yesterday don’t count: too petty in view of what happened.

‘Can we forget what I said yesterday?’ Linnéa asks, as if she had just been thinking the same thing.

‘Sure.’ Minoo tries to shrug with a degree of indifference. ‘How are you doing?’ she blurts out. Not the most sensitive question to ask someone who had found their best friend dead in a toilet.

Linnéa looks as if she’s about to say something sarcastic, but then her face softens. ‘I wasn’t going to come in today,’ she says quietly, ‘but I felt I had to, for Elias’s sake.’

Minoo thinks of her own selfish reasons for not staying at home, and is happy that Linnéa isn’t looking at her. Her gaze is directed somewhere else, almost as if she’s looking inside herself. She nibbles the tip of her bright pink thumbnail.

‘I wish more people had known him,’ she says. ‘He could be so funny. And considerate.’

Minoo is uncertain how to answer. ‘Shall we go?’ she says, after a moment’s hesitation.

Linnéa nods and walks out ahead of her.

The entrance hall is now empty, except for a few stragglers hurrying towards the auditorium.

‘Are you all right?’ Minoo asks, before they go in.

The murmuring from the auditorium sounds like a gigantic beehive.

‘No,’ Linnéa answers, with her hard little smile. ‘But I never am.’

8

REBECKA AND GUSTAF
are sitting next to each other in the penultimate row. The auditorium has remained essentially unchanged since the school was built: a big hall with a raked floor leading down to a wood-panelled stage. The sun falls in through the high, dirty windows and casts a shadow pattern on the opposite wall. A lectern has been placed on the stage, and the rows of seats are packed with students.

Rebecka turns her head and sees Minoo Falk Karimi and Linnéa Wallin slip in and sit in the row behind her. She smiles at them uncertainly. Linnéa doesn’t appear to see her, but Minoo smiles back.

Rebecka has always liked Minoo but it’s difficult to get close to her. She comes across as so grown-up that she makes Rebecka feel childish and at a disadvantage. Besides, Minoo is so damn smart. She was unstoppable during class discussions last year. She would put forward one crystal-clear argument after another. No one stood a chance against her, not even the teachers. Once a lesson was over, Rebecka sometimes saw holes in Minoo’s reasoning. But when Minoo had presented her arguments they’d sounded so feasible that you just had to accept them.

It must be nice to be like that, Rebecka thinks. To never doubt yourself.

‘The whole school’s here,’ Gustaf says, in a low voice.

‘It’s so awful,’ Rebecka whispers. ‘Everyone cares all of a sudden.’

‘I guess they all want to show they weren’t one of the people who were bullying him,’ Gustaf says.

Rebecka looks at his serious expression, his straight profile and ruffled blond hair. A lot of people see Gustaf just as a good-looking football hunk. But they don’t know anything about him. He’s clever – cleverer than almost anyone else Rebecka knows. And by that she doesn’t mean academic: he knows about life. She takes his warm, dry hand and squeezes it tightly.

The chatter in the hall dies down as the principal walks up to the lectern. ‘Tragedy has struck our school,’ she begins.

The first sniffles start in the front rows, but Rebecka can’t see who’s crying.

‘Yesterday Elias Malmgren was found dead here. We cannot begin to understand what his family and friends are going through, but it affects us all when a young person chooses to take his own life.’

More sniffling. Suddenly Rebecka feels dizzy. The air is heavy and it’s difficult to breathe.

‘Rebecka?’ Gustaf whispers.

The principal’s voice sounds increasingly distant, as if she were speaking under water.

‘I have to …’ Rebecka murmurs.

Gustaf understands. As always. He helps her up and leads
her
discreetly towards the door. She notices heads turning in their direction, but she doesn’t care. She needs air.

As soon as they emerge from the auditorium the dizziness subsides. She takes a deep breath.

‘Do you want to go outside?’ Gustaf asks. ‘Shall I get you a glass of water?’

‘Thanks,’ she says, and gives him a hug, pressing her nose against his neck and taking in his smell. ‘It’s better now. I just felt a bit light-headed.’

‘Have you had anything to eat today?’

‘Yes,’ she answers. ‘Why do you ask?’

They’ve never talked about her problem, but Rebecka is sure that Gustaf senses something. It comes across in glances and pauses, as if he’s building himself up to ask but doesn’t know how to.

‘I just thought … You said you were feeling light-headed.’

She shouldn’t be annoyed. He’s just showing he cares.

But can’t you ask me straight out? she thinks. Can’t you just ask what you’ve been wondering for months? Is it true what they say about Rebecka? That she throws up after lunch? That she passed out during PE at the beginning of last year because she hadn’t eaten?

And why can’t
you
tell him about it? a little voice asks. He’s your boyfriend. You love each other.

Rebecka already knows the answer.

She’s afraid he’ll disappear. How could he stand to be with someone who’s such a pain? Who’s so disturbed she won’t eat, then eats too much, throws it all up and goes back to not
eating
. Someone who lives in constant fear of falling apart. Boys don’t want girls with hang-ups. They want girls who are relaxed, cheerful and laugh a lot. It’s not hard to be like that with Gustaf because he makes her happy. She’s been able to conceal the other side so far.

Why wouldn’t he be able to love that side, too? the voice asks. Let him in and you’ll see. Tell him what you’ve never told anyone else.

Rebecka savours those words and the relief she knows she would feel. Then she remembers the anxiety that would return as soon as she’d told him. To confide is to make oneself vulnerable. She remembers how in the past secrets were used as weapons in the endless personal wars that broke out. How even the most innocent things could be turned into poison in other people’s hands.

But Gustaf wouldn’t do that, would he?

Not knowingly. But all it takes is one careless comment to someone during football practice – how he’s worried about her – to get the gossip mill churning.

No, she decides. Better to keep it inside. Only then can she be sure where her secret is.

‘I probably had too little breakfast,’ she says. ‘I was out running this morning so I should have had a bit extra.’ Surely that’s not something you’d say if you really had a problem?

Gustaf looks relieved, if not completely convinced. ‘You have to look after yourself,’ he says. ‘You mean so much to me.’

Rebecka kisses his unbelievably soft lips. ‘You mean
everything
to me,’ she whispers, thinking that that wasn’t quite true because the others mean something, too – her
mum
and dad, her brothers and sisters – but it feels nice to say it. Somehow it captures the immensity of what she feels for Gustaf, which she finds impossible to put into words.

‘Want to go back inside?’ he asks.

She nods. It would be wrong to run off.

When they step back into the auditorium, the principal is still at the lectern. Now students of all ages are crying, people who didn’t even know Elias existed. No one looks at Rebecka and Gustaf as they take their seats.

‘Now we’re going to listen to a poem, after which we’ll observe a minute’s silence for Elias,’ the principal says softly. ‘Then we’ll go out into the playground and watch as the flag is flown at half-mast.’

The principal makes way for a fair-haired girl, who has mounted the stage.

Rebecka’s mouth is instantly dry. It’s Ida Holmström.

‘I don’t believe this …’ Gustaf mumbles.

But no one else seems to react. And why would they? Most of them probably didn’t know how mean Ida could be.

Nobody was forcing Elias to dress like that and wear makeup to school
.

The words echo in Rebecka’s head. Ida leans forward and accidentally breathes too close to the microphone, generating a blast of feedback from the loudspeakers. The snivelling fades out.

‘My name is Ida Holmström and I’ve been in Elias’s class since I was nine. He was really nice and we tried to
be
there for him when he was down. It feels so empty now he’s gone. I’d like to read this poem on behalf of his friends.’

Rebecka glances at Gustaf, who is clenching his teeth so hard that his jaw muscles tense visibly.

‘When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree …’

Ida clears her throat as her voice quivers. Is she moved? Or putting it on? The sniffling has started up again. It’s a beautiful poem, but nothing could be more wrong than Ida Holmström reading it to Elias.