by Isa Hansen
Liv watches her friends.
Katja’s all wide smiles, defined shoulders, slim, blindingly blond; Swedish teenage beauty queen. She sits on a rock, her knees spread far apart, leaning forward with her elbows against her thighs.
Lottis, small and mousey, crouches next to Katja, barely taking up any space at all.
Hans. Gorgeous Hans with his thick hair, hazel eyes, and tanned face with just a dusting of summertime freckles. Liv still can’t believe she’s with him, even though they’ve been together for a while now. She snuggles up to him, just a little closer.
Petter’s dark haired and slick: part disruptive dynamite, part people pleaser. Switches between the two—you never know which one you’re getting and you can rarely see the switch coming. Petter takes a chug from the bottle of whiskey in his hand.
“Girls, these are push-ups, not sexual intercourse practices,” Katja says, imitating their former gym teacher. She does a decent job mimicking Günther’s German accent.
Petter throws his head back and laughs, takes another swig and passes the bottle to Hans.
Lottis giggles. “The gym is so ugly,” she says. That’s a safe enough statement, even for Lottis to make. They’re sitting closest to the gym side of the school. The building’s tar-colored roof is smacked down flat over red vertical siding.
“The whole school is ugly,” Hans says and takes a drink.
They sit there, passing the bottle around.
Liv’s legs feel lazy, the whiskey hums assuringly in her throat and up toward her head. It makes her feel good, like she doesn’t exist and is fully alive, all at the same time. She can see why her mother takes to the drink.
Then comes the idea.
It’s Petter’s.
“How ‘bout we burn down the place?”
It’s like a record scratch moment. What?
Liv sneaks a glance at Petter.
Petter’s unpredictability makes people nervous, but the other side of it is that he’s wildly exhilarating to be around. It’s like you feel more when you’re in his presence: like you can reach out and touch something that’s bigger and sharper than anything you’ve ever been close to before. It’s like a drug, being around Petter.
Lottis whispers, “You’re not being serious?”
Liv hopes it’s a joke, but Katja has a dangerous gleam in her eye. She says, “Let’s do it.”
Hans leans forward, his hands to his temples.
The group is silent, the air is sharp and pressing.
They should push rewind, have their conversation speed up backwards and shoot back into their mouths:
“.ti od s’teL”
“?suoires gnieb ton er’uoY?”
“?ecalp eht nwod nrub ew tuob woH”
But the genie’s already out, the bottle’s empty, the fate has been cast.
“We’d be doing the new students a favor. They’d get a much better school. No more of this dated 40s piece of crap,” Katja says.
Katja’s so confident in what she says that Liv almost believes her. Almost.
“Your mom has a gasoline tank in her garage, doesn’t she?” Katja says, her impossibly blue eyes landing on Liv. “It’s not like she’s going to miss it, or even know it’s missing.” There’s a hint of cruelty in Katja’s eyes, but only a hint. She’s only ever slightly cruel, never enough where you can actually call her out on it.
“Perfect,” Petter says.
Liv tries to steer them away from their crazy plan, but Petter urges them forward.
It’s becoming clear that Petter is leading this crusade and once Petter wants something few things tend to get in his way.
They head toward Viveca Sörensson’s house.
“Mamma?” Liv calls from the hall. The other four stand behind her in a tight group.
Liv tells the others to wait and heads into the living room. She doesn’t want them to see. She’s embarrassed. Everyone knows Liv’s mother is an alcoholic, but no one talks openly about it. Her mother has always been the big drunk elephant in the room.
Liv snaps on the lamp that stands on the coffee table. The living room isn’t in bad shape; yesterday she spent a few hours cleaning up. Liv’s mother is sleeping on the sofa. Viveca almost looks innocent, like she’s an ordinary mamma who got tired from her day job—or from doing something else motherly and responsible—and fell asleep. But the empty vodka bottle under the sofa tells a different story. Liv finds a knitted afghan and lays it over her mother. Watches her for a moment, the afghan rising and falling with her mother’s breathing.
Then she leads the others to the garage, to find the tank.
There’s only a little bit left in it, but a little is all that they need.
Once they’re back at school, Petter says they should start the fire on the roof. He chooses a spot over the gym.
As Petter hunches over, creating a small bonfire out of sticks and ripped paper, Liv gets this feeling. This peculiar feeling that this wasn’t one of Petter’s impetuous spur of the moment ideas, but rather he planned this.
The fire starts small. Just a little spark, just a tiny bonfire. Then they climb down, taking the tank with them. They move to the side of the rock formation and take refuge among the trees.
They watch the school take to the flames. It happens so much quicker than Liv expects. She’s starting to sober up, she feels sick. She doesn’t know why she agreed to be part of this.
The heat of the flames presses against her skin.
The smoke gets in her nose.
Petter’s body is beginning to twitch. He’s either regretful or bored, either way he doesn’t want to watch anymore. Katja on the other hand is standing still, in awe, a slight smile on her face. Like she just realized that she is powerful, that she can do whatever she wants. Lottis’s mouth is hanging open. It’s hard to gage what she’s thinking.
Liv doesn’t look at Hans. A sinking, sobering realization comes over her that nothing will be the same with them. Not after this.
She hears Hans say: “We have to go.”
They’ve been there too long. It’s the middle of the night, but once someone sees, the place will be milling with firemen and police.
They start to run.
The gasoline tank has been left behind, standing between trees.
Liv stops, tries to think. Take it or leave it. Her impulse is to grab it. She runs back and pulls it up in one swift motion and darts after the others. She’s crossing the street when a car swerves in front of her. She falls, skinning her knee. It should hurt but she barely registers any pain. The car slams to a halt, just a second a way from hitting her. The gasoline tank flies and lands a few meters away.
The driver’s door swings open and a man lunges out of the car. He’s lean and angular with a narrow face and intense eyes.
“Are you OK?” he asks. Then he sees the gasoline tank. His eyes wander from the gas tank to Liv’s face—side lit from the fire which is now consuming the school.
Their eyes lock for a moment, then Liv scrambles to her feet, grabs the gasoline tank and sprints. The man yells something after her, but she runs—she can barely feel her feet against the ground—leaving the fire behind, shooting into the shadows.
She’s gone.
part two
AUTUMN
CHAPTER 14
There was a place just outside Björkby’s high school grounds called smultronskogen: the strawberry woods. A sturdy timber fence stood where the campus lawn ended and the forest floor’s tangle of moss and roots began. Known for its abundance of wild strawberries that grew there during the summer, smultronskogen was a serene spot with its sea of dark greens melting into one another, the air rich with fragrances of spruce needles and earth.
Celia, Ebba, and Zari hung out by the fence that separated the campus and the woods. Celia lay on the cool dry ground, her legs hung over the lower beam of the fence. She looked up at Ebba who sat perched on the upper beam wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt that read: Karin Boye is King. Ebba was foc
used on her phone, texting.
Zari sat next to Celia, leaning back on her elbows. Celia had been getting to know Zari better over the past weeks and had soon introduced her to Ebba. Just as Celia expected, the two of them got along wonderfully and effortlessly.
It was the middle of October. The mornings were nippy, but the afternoons remained fairly pleasant and warm. Leaves floated down in shade variations of gold, purple, and red, covering the school grounds with splashes of color.
The three girls were just far enough away from the bustle of school goers moving between classes for privacy of conversation.
Celia twirled the stem of a bright yellow maple leaf between her fingers. “Why don’t you like Alex?” she asked, directing the question at Ebba.
It was no secret that Ebba didn’t like Celia’s friend. She herself had noticed that Alex could be frustratingly moody at times, but she was curious why Ebba hated him so.
Ebba’s lips pulled into a tight frown. “You know Alex’s mate William?” she said, sliding her phone into her back pocket.
“Sure,” Celia said.
William was in the economy program at school. An almost white-haired kid, tall, a bit scrawny. She didn’t know him well, but he’d been around a few times when she hung out with Alex. He’d also played with her and Oskar on their brännboll team a few times during the late summer and early fall.
“Well, first year of high school he was my boyfriend,” Ebba said. “It was cool, he was cool, I guess. Until I realized that he was two-timing me with this other girl, Josefin. So one day I waited by Josefin’s locker until she got out of class and said to her: ‘William’s being a sleaze and cheating on both of us. What should we do about it?’”
“What happened?” Zari asked.
“Next time I hung out with William, I said to him: ‘I have this new friend and she’s so great, she’s the best. Her name is Josefin.’ He got all nervous and Josefin and I hung out all the time. It didn’t take long for him to catch on to what we were doing so that’s where the fun ended. But Josefin and I stayed friends, so at least I got a good friend out of that crappy relationship.”
“Cool that the two of you became friends,” Celia said. “But what does that have to do with Alex?”
“Alex and William are exactly the same.” Ebba gripped the timber beam with both hands. “Rich brats who only care about themselves.”
“Do you know that about Alex for sure?” Celia asked.
“Everyone knows that about Alex,” Ebba retorted.
Celia looked over at Zari who smiled and shrugged.
“Sorry about William,” Celia said. “He sounds like a jerk, but I don’t think Alex is like that.”
Zari changed the subject; sitting up and crossing her legs under her, she nodded toward Celia. “When are we going to look for things for the house?”
After Zari was introduced to Ebba and Oskar, she’d enthusiastically joined their efforts on the summer house renovation. She soon proved to have a great eye for design and a natural knack for working with her hands.
Together, the four of them had spent the past weekends working on the renovation. They had stripped away tired wallpaper, scraped off old paint, and sanded the floors in the hall and living room. They’d painted the walls in the kitchen and living room a light pearl gray and had colored the baseboards and window trim a clean white that made the place pop with brightness.
The bathroom was still a mess, the bedroom still in progress, and the green kitchen cabinets needed to be sanded and painted. Though there was still a lot of work to be done, the transformation was astounding with the promise of the rickety little house turning into a charming cottage.
Now they were excited to scour flea markets and antique shops to find inspiration for decorating the house. There was some furniture in the place already, but Celia agreed with her friends that putting their own things in the house would make it more uniquely theirs. The way Celia saw it, the house wasn’t just hers; it was theirs.
“Are you guys free on Saturday?” Celia asked.
“I’m doing something with my dad,” Ebba said. “But go on without me. The flea markets won’t be open for much longer.”
Zari thought for a moment. “I’m free, I think.” She began to rise, brushing off grass and leaves from the back of her clothes. “My class is starting soon.”
“Mine is, too.” Celia pulled her legs from the fence and scrambled to her feet. “I’ll walk with you. Later, Ebbs.”
“See you,” Ebba said and went back to her phone.
Zari and Celia walked together to the main school building where they parted ways.
***
Alex huddled on his bed, his knees pressed against his chest. He took deep breaths. With his eyes fixed on the ceiling, he focused on the patterned swirls of the crown molding. He might be able to prevent the rising panic from taking over.
Sometimes it worked.
He’d learned that from a YouTube video: how to stop a panic attack.
He breathed—deep inhale, hold, exhale.
Breathe in, steady, focus on the swirls.
Exhale, steady.
Inhale again.
Hold.
Twirly swirls.
Breathe.
Repeat.
He let out another breath and let his head slump against the wall. He was always deflated afterward. Like someone had punched a hole in him and all the air and energy inside of him had seeped out.
He wanted to blame it all on Celia but knew he couldn’t. His anxieties and panic attacks were hardly her fault, even though they’d patently grown worse during the two months that he’d known her.
The first time he saw her was at Nystedts café. He’d sat stooped over his phone. At first he only barely registered Ebba a few tables away, talking to a girl in English. But then curiosity took over and he looked up.
The girl had round cheeks, a sweet smile and a high pony tail that bobbed over her shoulder. She was cute, very cute. American. Her face was animated and at times her voice dipped down so low he couldn’t hear what she was saying.
He’d been restless and bored, and cute foreign girls were fun. So when Ebba got up from the table, he took that as his cue to approach.
Speaking to her, he drawled his accent American and tweaked his vocabulary Gossip Girl-ish. He did that without thinking—social shape shifting was as natural and easy for him as breathing.
She was an exchange student, she told him, all bright-eyed and sincere. She would be going to his school.
Nice, he’d thought, and not but a moment after began picturing her as a little bit on the side. Exchange student with benefits. Send her home after a year of casual fun.
Nice and easy, that’s what it was supposed to be.
If only he’d known.
Not only would there be no benefits, there’d be stress and copious amounts of confusion. It began a few days after they first met: when she appeared at the house, dressed in running attire, gazing up at the windows.
It was strange that she showed up like that. Although people sometimes did, to see Rosenlunden herrgård. Their home was a cultural landmark after all. Maybe she was just curious about the estate. But the way his father reacted; her presence that day changed the atmosphere in the house. No words were spoken, at least not to Alex, but he could sense the tension.
And then with the phone calls and muffled conversations behind closed doors, he just knew there was something there. It drove him crazy that he didn’t know what was going on. Now more pieces had fallen into place, but that did nothing to console him. On the contrary—
The buzzing of his phone.
He eyed the screen that was lit up with Celia’s name.
“Speaking of—” he mumbled to himself.
“Hey,” he said, picking up.
Celia sounded cute and perky, like she always did. She wanted to go to flea marketing, antique shopping, and wondered if he wanted to come along.
He told her, “Sure, why not
.”
There was that sound again.
The weight of human steps outside his window.
“Really?” She sounded surprised. “Cause I was going with some other friends, but no one ended up being able to go. Wasn’t sure that would be your jam.”
“No, I’m free,” he said, straining his ears, his head in the direction of the window. He vaguely heard Celia say something about borrowing her uncle’s car and that she’d text him about the time.
“Yeah, OK great … uh huh … see ya.” Alex hung up, still listening.
The sound was more audible now. Like someone trampling around in the gravel. But he knew from experience if he crept up to the window to look out, there’d be no one there.
Nope. That couldn’t be blamed on Celia.
Since, in fact, he’d had these issues for as long as he could remember.
If anything, it was the fault of the damned house. As soon as he was done with school, he’d be out of there.
Alex’s father had lived in Rosenlunden since he was a young boy, his own father having bought back the estate after it had been out of the family for over a century. The family wanted to reclaim the manor as theirs. Why, Alex had no idea. The place was creepy as hell.
One of Rosenlunden’s first owners had taken part in prosecuting a village woman for witchcraft. Alex didn’t even want to think of what else could have happened in the house, with the power dynamics being what they were between nobility and their servants.
When he was very young, his brothers would come to his room at night, hold flashlights to their faces and tell him ghost stories, the most frightening one being about that village woman. The thing about her, Filip and Kristian would say in their deep moahaha voices, was that she actually was a real witch, and till this day she’d return to the estate, to haunt the halls of Rosenlunden.
Those stories would send Alex squealing under his bed covers.
They loved to scare him, Filip and Kristian.