Dandelion Girl

by Isa Hansen

  “I don’t think so, but thanks anyway.”

  “Are you at school? I’m close by, I could give you a ride if you want. It’s raining awfully hard.”

  “No, that’s OK. I’m on the bus. And I might hang out with Ebba for a while.”

  “OK, great,” Anette said. “I’ll see you later. Have fun.”

  “Thanks, you too.”

  Celia hung up and scrolled back to Oskar’s texts when she heard a high-pitched laugh behind her. Then voices in English.

  “Ohmigod, I’m like, such a stupid American.”

  “Yeah, like, like—”

  “Uh huh. Like, so totally, like.”

  It took Celia a second before she realized that the voices were meant to be mocking her. She looked over her shoulder.

  In the seat behind her sat two girls, both with heavy makeup and faded jean jackets. One was blond with a pixie cut, the other had long stringy hair in a streaky red color. They were leaning in to each other, laughing.

  So much for all Swedish high schoolers being mature. Celia had been struck by how grown up so many of the people at school seemed. Clearly there were exceptions.

  “Seriously?” Celia said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  The girl with the blond hair stifled a giggle.

  The other one bobbed her head. “Like, seriously?” she quipped, attempting vocal fry. “I like, watch Ellen every day.”

  “Yeah, like, like.”

  “Uh huh. Like, ohmigod, like.”

  Celia glared at them. “That’s not even how you do it.”

  “Oh yeah, do it.”

  “Like, do it, like.”

  Celia swore under her breath and drew back, determined to ignore them. She stared out the window into the rain drenched street.

  The girls continued their annoying valley girl jabber. When Celia didn’t respond, they kicked the back of her seat.

  Her face heated up, her jaw tight: “Will you stop?”

  They ceased for just a moment but started soon again. “Hey, stupid Yankee!” the blond taunted. The other girl pounded Celia’s seat. The girls snorted and laughed.

  A voice cut in from behind: “Shut up! You stop that!”

  Celia and the two girls whirled around in perfect synchrony.

  In the aisle, a few seats back, stood a girl, fuming. Celia’s brows shot up with surprise. It was the girl she’d seen in the cafeteria. The lonely girl.

  The girl’s body was arched, her dark eyes sparking with rage.

  “Oooo … Arab bitch…” the blond girl said.

  “Yo, terrorist skank,” the other girl mocked.

  “Hey!” Celia snapped. She glowered at the girls. “Quit being like that.”

  The bus lurched to a stop.

  The girl steadied herself against an empty seat, securing her book bag over her shoulder. She gave the two bullies one last furious frown, reversed, and got off at the back of the bus—the two girls hooing and haaing at her until she had ducked out and disappeared.

  Once the doors closed, Celia was certain they’d resume hassling her. But they stayed quiet. The red-haired girl leaned in and whispered something to the blond.

  For the rest of the trip, the two girls let her be, though she could hear them whispering and stifling laughs.

  The next stop was Celia’s.

  She scooted out of her seat and scurried toward the front doors. The two girls were causing a ruckus behind her but she didn’t look back at them. With a quick hop she was off the bus and headed in the direction of home.

  The rain had stopped. Crossing the drenched street, she jumped over large pools of water.

  Something hit her shoulder.

  A bright pink cigarette lighter fell to the ground.

  She whipped around.

  The girls were following her. Her blood rushed hot. She wasn’t an angry person, but the few times she went into rage it wasn’t pretty.

  She spotted a golf-sized stone by her feet. She scooped it up, eyeing her target.

  She’d been pitching for years back home in her softball team. She knew her throw was hard, fast, and precise.

  The stone hit the blond girl right above the knee. The girl yelped and hunched down in pain. She looked up at Celia with fiery eyes. “Va fan? Jävla hora!”

  The red-haired girl charged across the street with the blond in tow but froze as a Volvo station wagon steamed toward them and screeched to a halt, just nano seconds before hitting them.

  In the driver’s seat sat Ebba, lurched forward, a grim look on her face.

  Ebba: Celia had all but forgotten that she was meeting her at the bus stop.

  The ratty-haired girl squawked at the car: “Jävla fitta!” The two of them turned but before bolting off, the girl twisted back and spat in Celia’s direction.

  Celia stood pegged, clutching her book bag—her pulse soaring.

  The car door slammed and Ebba appeared, her head in the direction of the fleeing girls. “So I guess you’ve met Nicole Rönn. You OK?”

  “I’m fine.” Celia shook her head. “Who’s Nicole Rönn?”

  “She’s a loser a-hole.”

  “You know those girls?”

  “Just the one, the girl with the long hair. I was unlucky enough to go to school with her.”

  Ebba was quiet for a moment, she bit into her lip. “We’ll have to think of a way to deal with this…” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her rain coat. “I don’t think Nicole is going to let this go.”

  “I don’t get it,” Celia said, frowning. “They were harassing me, and they were harassing another girl on the bus. What’s her problem?”

  “She’s got lots of them. The girl isn’t normal.” Ebba nodded toward her Volvo, suddenly animated. “Enough of her. Come on, get in—we’re going for a ride.”

  Still trembling, Celia fumbled into the passenger seat. She wasn’t sure if her body was shaking from emotions or from the chill of her wet clothes. Probably both.

  Ebba got in on the other side. She leaned against the steering wheel. “Did Oskar get a hold of you?”

  “No, I saw he texted, but then those girls … never mind. Why, what’s up?”

  “He found where the key goes to.”

  Celia’s eyes widened. “No way!?”

  “Yep. The logo is for Wahlström Storage Solutions. They have storage units at the end of town.” Ebba spoke quickly and excitedly: “It’s a locker number, the code you gave him. He’s there, but he didn’t wanted to open it until we got there.”

  “OK then.” Celia shoved her seatbelt into its slot. “Let’s go.”

  Ebba sat up tall and shifted the car’s gears into motion.

  They arrived at the other end of town some 20 minutes later.

  It was an area of town that Celia hadn’t been to before. It looked like some kind of manufacturing hub; they drove past large warehouse buildings, parked trucks, a hardware shop, a small Thai restaurant with a crooked sign—Thai Garden.

  Several high rises loomed off in the distance.

  Ebba turned off the street into a desolate parking lot. She parked close to a warehouse-looking building tagged with colorful graffiti. They hopped out of the car and Ebba called Oskar. With her phone against her ear, following Oskar’s directions, she led them past the graffiti building to another structure that only had a roof and metal sides. There was no front wall.

  Oskar waited for them there. Behind him, deep into the structure were rows of lockers.

  Upon seeing them, he dipped his head toward a ground-level locker: “This is it.”

  “How did you find it?” Celia asked, hurrying up to him. The idiot girls on the bus were quickly becoming a distant memory.

  “It wasn’t that hard actually,” he said. “One of my friends recognized the W logo. Then I looked up the company. Wahlström Storage Solutions only has one facility in Björkby. I came over and here it was: 2396.”

  He handed the key to Celia. She knelt down to the lower level and stuck the key into t
he lock—the door was only slightly wider than that of her locker at school. The lock clicked open and Celia pulled at the door. The three of them peered into the narrow space.

  There was only one thing in the storage unit.

  A bright red plastic container.

  Celia pulled it out.

  “It’s a gasoline tank,” Ebba said.

  “Is there anything in it?” Oskar asked.

  Still kneeling, Celia screwed off the top that was crusty and stuck on pretty hard. “Feels empty,” she said. She angled the tank and looked inside.

  “Yeah, empty.”

  She set it down and jumped to her feet, trading dismayed glances with Ebba and Oskar.

  Ebba tapped the container with her shoe. “Why would someone keep an empty gasoline tank in a locker?”

  Celia couldn’t answer that. She couldn’t come up with any reasons—at least not any innocuous ones.

  CHAPTER 9

  Celia didn’t have too much time to process what they had found in the storage unit, or to think about what happened between her and the two bullies for that matter. Back home she hurried to shower and get into fresh clothes, eat a quick snack, and reapply her makeup before heading out to Ming House.

  She was meeting Ebba outside the restaurant at 7:30. They wanted to get there early to settle into a good spot for their meeting with Hans. Celia got there first, just a few minutes before their agreed upon time. A rush of excitement—the thrill of skirting close to something dangerous and unknown—sparked through her. The on and off rain had stopped and now the air was smoky and cold: autumn was setting in.

  After waiting for a few minutes, Celia shuffled around, excitement slipping into angst. A feeling of discomfort crept over her.

  She scanned about the town square. The streets around her were foggy and dim and dark. It was Thursday night, which seemed to be a somewhat buzzing time for downtown Björkby. Boisterous teens loitered around and a group of intoxicated businessmen brawled at a car for not stopping at the crosswalk. Laughter and music spilled out from nearby pubs.

  Straight ahead, down a narrow village road, a line of cars were parked. Celia homed in on the third car down. With the fog and the dark she wasn’t certain, but there seemed to be a human shape in there: someone motionless, waiting, watching.

  She was tilting her head, squinting at the car when Ebba arrived.

  “You ready?” Ebba said, her eyes focused and bright.

  Celia threw one last glance at the car and nodded.

  They headed in together and chose a roomy booth. A woman came over and took their order. Ebba asked for a beer; Celia settled for a soda. The woman checked Ebba’s ID, then returned after a few minutes with their drinks.

  The interior of the establishment was odd, a combination of Irish pub and Chinese restaurant. The place was dimly lit with paper lanterns along the walls. A few families were dining at dark oak tables in the middle of the room. A scatter of older patrons were up at the bar, huddled over pints of beer. In the corner, a television was on—airing the popular Swedish adventure reality show Fångarna på fortet. In the screen a blond woman shrieked while shoving her hand inside a glass box full of monster spiders.

  The door plinged.

  Celia diverted her eyes from the television.

  Hans was early, too. He stayed by the door until he’d spotted Celia and Ebba in the booth. He moved in their direction. “Be right back,” he said, passing them.

  They watched him approach the bar and say a few words to the bartender—a potbellied guy with a mane of reddish brown hair—who then poured him a whiskey.

  Celia discretely pulled her phone onto her lap and pressed record. Having the conversation recorded might just come in handy at some point. She’d just slipped the phone back into the bag when Hans returned with his drink. He slid into the seat across the table from them.

  “She’s not going anywhere with you,” Ebba said, defiant.

  He ignored her. “I have to know…” he said to Celia. “How did you find out about Liv? Do you know what your relation is to her? I’m just amazed. I haven’t been able to get over—”

  “Oh, no,” Ebba interrupted. “That’s not how this is going to work. You were supposed to give us information. Not the other way around.”

  Hans shot Ebba an irked look. “All right.” He pulled something out of his bag. It was a thick booklet that he placed on the table and pushed toward Celia.

  She eyed the book. “What’s this?”

  “Open it up to the bookmark.”

  She drew the book toward herself and paused at the cover, recognizing Björkby gymnasium’s school logo.

  It was the high school yearbook from 1984.

  She opened up the book to a class photo of students assembled in three rows.

  “See anyone you recognize?” Hans prompted.

  Celia scanned the photo, her eyes searching for meaning in the faces. Then she froze.

  She stooped closer.

  Ebba lowered her face at the same time.

  “Herregud,” Ebba breathed, her finger on the faded group photograph, her eyes flicking from the photo to Celia. “It’s you.”

  Celia knew that teenaged Liv had to have been similar to herself in appearance, but she hadn’t been prepared for how uncannily alike they really were.

  Ebba drew her hand down to the names below the photograph. “Liv Sörensson,” she read out loud.

  Celia stared at Liv. She had a typical 80s hairstyle in poofy waves and was wearing a wooly sweater—one that looked like it would be in style even today among Seattle’s hipsters. Liv’s features wore a hint of a smile, her face framed by dark, glossy hair. Her eyes were dark and her nose had just the slightest upturn. Without realizing what she was doing, Celia put her hand up and touched her own nose.

  She saw Hans studying her face and quickly let her hand drop into her lap.

  “It’s incredible how much you look like her,” he said. “You even have that same…” He paused, shaking his head, searching for the right word. He didn’t seem to find it, instead he said: “Here she was two years below you in school, but my God, you look—”

  “She’s gone, isn’t she?” Celia blurted.

  Because that’s how Hans was talking about her. As someone who’d vanished. Not as someone he simply used to know and who was now living a perfectly ordinary life somewhere out in the world.

  Hans didn’t seem to react to her bluntness. “She died not long after this photo was taken.”

  He took a breath indicating a follow-up, but Ebba spoke first: “How did she die?”

  “She drowned.” Hans’s voice dropped. “She went swimming too late in the season. In a lake outside of town, Björnsjön. It got too cold and she cramped.” He jerked his head with a slight twitch. “At least that’s the official account.”

  Ebba said, “You don’t think that’s what happened?”

  “I’m not sure it was an accident.”

  “No?”

  “I don’t know.” Hans fixed his stare back on Celia. “It’s a feeling I had at the time. But then, maybe it was just that, a feeling. I don’t know anyone who would have wanted her dead. She was a nice and easygoing girl, despite that things were hard for her.”

  Celia observed Hans. Why was he telling her this? She couldn’t quite wrap her head around him. She wanted answers about her family, but what was in it for him? All the same, she asked: “But something made you think it wasn’t an accident?” She thumbed the booklet in her hands. “What made you think that?”

  Hans weighed the question. Eventually, he said, “It wasn’t how she died that was strange, it was how she disappeared.”

  “OK?”

  “She died because of the cramp. Liv was an excellent swimmer, but even well-trained people end up in situations they can’t handle. The water was too cold, and even though I thought she’d know better than to swim in those conditions, she did push herself to the extreme. She was aiming for the Olympics. When it came to swimming, s
he went all out. So even that wasn’t too hard to believe.”

  Hans went silent for a beat, rounding his fingers around his drink. “But she disappeared from school in the middle of the day. And she hadn’t been acting normal. She was distracted and seemed bothered. And then she was gone. Just like that. She left during lunch break without telling anyone. That’s not what she was like. She didn’t skip school. She wasn’t one to just disappear. That’s what was strange to me.” He nodded at Celia. “She didn’t come back to school the next day either. Then in the evening she was found at the lake. She died earlier that day. And that was the other strange thing. I kept asking myself: what had she been doing all that time in between?”

  Celia was quiet, taking it all in. Hans’s tone was neutral, but behind the vacant expression she sensed emotions that were being held back.

  He had to be the same Hans as in the diary; he had to have been the boyfriend.

  She asked, “Do you know Lars Lindberg? Or Maj-Britt Lindberg?”

  After considering, Hans said, “No. I don’t think so.”

  Celia blinked slowly.

  “They’re your relatives?” Hans wondered.

  “My grandparents,” she replied, thinking to herself: Apparently not Liv’s parents, though.

  If Hans was being truthful, then he knew as little about Celia’s relation to Liv as she did. Yet she wasn’t willing to believe there wasn’t one. There was too much there, pointing to a connection between them.

  Hans was studying her face again.

  “Were you and Liv close?” she asked, curious what his response would be.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She waited, but he offered no more information. She was about to ask about Liv’s parents, about what he knew of Liv’s family, when Ebba came from out of left field. “Did she have any destructive hobbies, like playing with fire?”

  Hans whipped his head toward Ebba so fast that Celia could almost hear his neck snap.

  “What?”

  Celia held her breath.

  Ebba, seemingly surprised by the reaction but determined to milk it: “Did she enjoy setting fire to things?” she asked, slowly and clearly.

  Within a second Hans’s face turned blank.