Dandelion Girl

by Isa Hansen

  A group of Elise’s friends were headed in their direction now and were calling out to her. Elise made a flittering movement with her hand. “I just thought you should know.”

  She hooked arms with one of the girls passing by, melted into the group, and just like that she was gone.

  Alone now, Celia’s thoughts went to the night she was followed in the park.

  William was tall and skinny—just like the faceless attacker.

  Were Alex and William also behind the threatening messages?

  That made no sense, but then them trying to mug her made no sense either.

  With a hurried decisiveness she threw her satchel into the locker and went to look for Ebba. She found her in one of the art classrooms. Ebba was working on a clay project: something that resembled two winged demons fighting.

  Celia grabbed a chair and sat down opposite her.

  “Do you know Elise?” she asked.

  “Elise Landered? Not too well.” Ebba smoothened out a lump on the left demon’s back with careful strokes. “We were in the same class in elementary and junior high school. But we were never besties if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Is she trustworthy?”

  “Why are you wondering?”

  Celia went over the cryptic conversation that she’d just had with the girl. Part of her wondered if Elise was in on it, and she and Alex and William were setting her up.

  Ebba stopped her sculpting and looked up at the ceiling for a few moments. “I’d go with that she’s being sincere.”

  Celia was about to say something, but Ebba raised a clay-clumped hand. “I know what you’re thinking. That I’m saying this because it’s against two people I can’t stand. That’s not it. Elise and I may never have been friends, but I’ve never known her to be mean or callous. Honestly, I always thought she socialized beneath her level of dignity.”

  “So you don’t think this is a trap?”

  “I’d say be careful, but no, I don’t think so.”

  Ebba pursed her lips. “William…” she mumbled. “I’m gonna give that ex-boyfriend of mine a piece of my sweet mind.”

  “No, no.” Celia put a hand on Ebba’s shoulder. “We can’t let Alex know we’re on to him.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I need to become friends with him again.”

  Ebba gave her questioning look.

  “You know—” Celia said. “The Godfather; friends and enemies and all that.”

  “I know The Godfather, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

  Celia lifted a brow. “Why?”

  “Because Alex is well-trained in manipulation and lying,” Ebba said evenly. “He’s had that with him since childhood. You don’t. This isn’t a game you’re likely to win.”

  Ebba went back to her sculpture.

  Celia watched her work the clay.

  She nodded toward the project. “What is that anyway?”

  “It’s a Rorschach test.”

  “Hmm.”

  Ebba stopped molding and slanted her head to view her creation from a different angle. “So, what do you see?” she inquired.

  “What do I see?” Celia pressed her mouth into a thin line. “I see a shitstorm coming.”

  CHAPTER 35

  On December 13th all the early morning classes were cancelled in lieu of the high school’s Lucia celebration. The event was voluntary and held at a church close to school.

  It was still dark when Celia arrived at the church. Students were waiting outside, hunched together in groups. The chapel, a ghost white building from the 17th century, stood before a hilly oak meadow. Overnight it had snowed; a dusting of crystal flakes covered the treetops and the stone wall that circled the church. A row of lanterns glimmered along the walkway up to the front doors.

  Ebba wasn’t going to be there. She said she’d rather sleep in than watch a beauty contest disguised as saintly tradition. Celia didn’t see Zari or Oskar, so she joined her classmates where they stood huddled, waiting in the dark-hued cold morning.

  As time passed Celia hung out less and less with the people from her own program. She was on good terms with everyone, but the more they realized she was living her life elsewhere, the less they actively engaged with her. These days it was like she was in a bubble with Zari, Ebba, and Oskar. She wasn’t letting anyone else in.

  Just before the church doors clicked and unlocked, Celia noticed Alex bunched in with a group of kids behind her. Seeing him made her temperature rise. She tried her best to keep her face neutral but inside her gloves her hands were knitted into tight fists.

  The heavy wooden doors swung open and Celia entered with her classmates.

  The inside of the church was ancient stone and burning wax: in scent and in mood. The sanctuary was darkened. The only source of light came from candles—tall candles stood alongside the walls and two more flickering rows lined the aisles. Another cluster of candles was arranged up by the pulpit.

  Students and teachers along with visitors from the general public filed into the church. Celia scooted in on an end pew seat next to Samir. She observed Alex take the seat directly across the aisle from her.

  She had gone back and forth between being thoroughly outraged by Alex to being utterly confused. What had she ever done to him? What could possibly have ignited his anger to turn him into Nattvakten? And William? She hardly even knew the guy.

  What they were doing to her—if this really was them—was sadistic. Were they both completely deranged? Morally corrupt? Or just mindlessly bored rich kids looking for something to do? She couldn’t even begin to wrap her brain around it.

  The sound of song from a distance brought Celia back to the church. Lulling choral vocals, quiet first, growing louder as the Lucia train entered.

  Elise walked in first, stunning and serene. She was dressed in a long white gown with a red silk band tied around her slender waist. On her head she wore a wreathed crown holding candles. Her hands were clasped together in a gesture that evoked prayer. After her floated several white-clad girls, each carrying a candle, with strings of tinsel in their hair. They were followed by boys, also in white gowns, wearing white coned hats. To Celia the train looked a bit like an outlandish wizard show, but the tranquil song with the candles in the dark created a peaceful ambience.

  As the Lucia train filed in, Celia sensed Alex watching her between the flickers and flames.

  Elise and her flock of candle bearers assembled at the front of the church where the procession continued to sing for their audience. Celia used the tranquility of the ceremony to get into a Zen mood: to force her feelings of anger and bewilderment to the side. She needed to trick Alex into believing that she genuinely wanted to be friends again. That was her key to getting inside his head.

  After the performance was over, the Lucia train moved back out the same way they came in. Some time after, the audience streamed out in slow-moving lines. Outside the street lights were off and the sky was lightening into a frosty blue. Celia caught up with Alex who was just leaving.

  “Hey,” she said, jogging behind him.

  He waited for her to catch up. “Hey.”

  She took a step closer. “So I just wanted to apologize.”

  “For what?” His face was unreadable.

  “About the text I sent you; I didn’t mean what I wrote. I was just upset. I think I’m really homesick and kind of depressed, but that’s no excuse. It wasn’t fair of me to lash out at you.”

  Her stomach prickled from being so brazenly dishonest, but then she considered her audience and ignored the feeling.

  “No big deal,” Alex said.

  “Can we be friends?” She attempted a smile.

  He considered her request. His gaze flicked away from her, landing on some abstract spot beyond the church.

  Under the winter morning light he looked exhausted. Pale and thin with shadows under his eyes. He’d looked like that for a while, she realized. It was a small consolation that whatever Ale
x was up to, he didn’t appear to be enjoying it.

  He locked eyes on her again. “Great,” he said. “Let’s be friends.” He reached out and gave her shoulder a quick rub.

  “Great,” she said, too, although she wondered how genuine she seemed. As Ebba had pointed out, lying and manipulation was his forte, not hers.

  On her way back to school, she called Ebba.

  “Hey, do you have Elise’s phone number?”

  “Nope, I don’t. But Oskar might. He dated Elise for like a minute the summer before high school.”

  When Celia went quiet, Ebba said: “What? You’re not jealous, are you? Because they were never serious about each other.”

  Celia said, “No, I was just thinking. About how all of you were in the same class together. You, Alex, Oskar, Elise, William… It must have felt like a different world.”

  Tight-knit group. She wasn’t sure why that popped into her head. Not that the five of them had ever been tight-knit, or even a group. She shrugged, losing her train of thought.

  “It was a different world,” Ebba said.

  “All right Ebbs, thanks.”

  Celia texted Oskar. After a few minutes he responded with Elise’s number.

  She added the number as a contact and dallied with her fingers on the keypad, wording and rewording her message to Elise. Finally she ended up sending a simple: Hi, this is Celia. Can we meet up and talk?

  ***

  On the afternoon of the 80s party, Celia found herself dreading the event. She felt put off after the latest message from Nattvakten. But she wasn’t about to have Alex threaten her into changing her plans. He could go straight to hell.

  Elise hadn’t responded to her text and Celia doubted that she would; the girl had given the information she was willing to part with.

  She started dressing for the party and already began feeling a little bit better when Zari came over so they could get ready together.

  And she felt better yet when Ebba joined them.

  Ebba had transformed into a fluffy little creature. Her face was half-white and half-brown with large elf-like ears and sweet large eyes. She had a little white tummy and fuzzy legs and feet and knobby toes sticking out from underneath the fluff.

  “Oh my gosh, that’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Celia cried out and hugged Ebba’s furry frame.

  Zari laughed and got herself a furry hug as well.

  “Just don’t feed me after midnight,” Ebba said. “Then I won’t be so cute anymore.”

  Ebba pulled off the head of her costume and smiled brightly. “And look at you two!”

  Zari and Celia did little twirls. They had scrunched up each other’s hair into big 80s hairstyles. Zari wore a headband; Celia wore big dangly earrings, and they were both dressed in colorful shirts, short skirts, leggings and high heeled boots.

  They congregated in the kitchen where Anette immediately busied herself taking pictures of the girls. After a series of snapshots, they headed off to catch the 29 that would take them through central Björkby to where the party was held.

  “She’s really trying,” Zari said about Anette on the way.

  “She is,” Celia agreed.

  At the bus stop, Celia’s phone buzzed.

  Pulling it out from her bright pink handbag, she scowled. It was a text this time.

  Change of plans. I have a surprise for you. Walk down Kalvägen until you hit Industrigatan, then take a left. Enter factory number five. Find me at back in the boiler room. Nattvakten

  “Is it from him?” Zari asked, turning sharply toward Celia.

  Celia read the text aloud.

  Ebba huffed. “What happens if you call the number?”

  “It’s blocked.” Celia circled around, 360 degrees. Where are you, Alexander?

  The message completely changed the mood of their little group, and now the three of them stood defensively scanning the streets.

  “Should we go there?” Zari asked.

  “No way,” Celia said grimly. “He doesn’t get to dictate my life.”

  “Sounds right to me,” Ebba said.

  And so they continued on to the party.

  It was a fun party.

  In theory.

  Everyone was decked out and glammed up in crazy outfits and the collective spirit was high. Celia mingled and danced with people from her class who all seemed surprised to see her out and about. She tried her hardest to stay in a good mood, although it was difficult because she kept thinking about Alex.

  He could easily be there, at the party.

  He could be the guy in the Freddy Krueger costume, or in one of the many Jason masks, or he could be hiding out in the gremlin outfit. Although she hoped he wasn’t the gremlin because Ebba was out on the floor with it more than once, shaking it up with some pretty unsightly dance moves.

  Despite her best efforts, the thought of Alex stayed with her, the whole night. And the night ended on a note of him, too. As she and Zari and Ebba were about to leave, a bride in a blood red getup nudged her by the arm.

  “Come with me,” a girl’s voice said.

  Before Celia could answer, the bride’s hand closed around hers, and she was guided through the dancing crowd.

  She was led into a toilet stall. The girl locked the door and pulled up her veil. Elise peered at her from underneath the tulle. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “About Alex,” Celia said quickly, eager for the unexpected chance to gain information. “Do you know why he sent William to mug me? Did William give any reason?”

  Elise shook her head. “Alex was just being stupid. I think they were both a little high that night. At least William was. He didn’t mention any reason behind it.”

  “OK,” Celia said. “Look, I’ve been getting messages.” She shifted her weight; her feet were starting to hurt from the high heels. “Threatening messages. Have they mentioned anything about that? Either directly or indirectly?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Elise pulled at her bridal gown after catching sight of herself in the mirror.

  “But could they have? Does that seem like something they would do?”

  “What kind of messages exactly?”

  “Death threats.”

  Elise stopped rearranging her costume and stared at Celia. “For real?”

  “Yeah.”

  Well, they weren’t exactly death threats, but Celia wasn’t about to try explaining her messed up life with a Beetlejuice bride in a tight bathroom stall.

  Elise’s brows were pulled together. “William, no. I could never see it,” she said after a while. “And Alex. No, not him either. They can be stupid and bitchy, God, sometimes I get so tired of them, but they’re not dangerous like that.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. “I should probably go.”

  “Yeah, me too, but please don’t tell them we talked, OK?”

  Elise unlocked the door. “This conversation never happened,” she said, and for some reason Celia felt that she could trust her. Elise pulled her veil back down, but before she disappeared into the crowd, she stepped close to Celia.

  “If you haven’t already, you really should see the police about those messages.”

  ***

  It wasn’t until Celia had left the party and was walking homeward with Ebba and Zari that she received a follow-up message from Nattvakten:

  Leaving the party so soon? Too bad we couldn’t meet earlier. But I was there watching you all night.

  Anger zapped through her. She wanted to scream at her phone. She had to stop herself from smashing it against the pavement.

  Ebba tugged at her arm. “He always knows where you are.”

  “Well, he was at the party. He could have been in any of those masked costumes.”

  Zari said: “But earlier, too. When he gave us directions of where to walk. He knew we were on our way.”

  “Yeah,” Celia said. The thought had struck her as well.

  A deliberative look crossed Zari’s face
. “Do you have any apps on your phone that you don’t recognize?”

  “Of course!” Ebba cried out.

  Celia checked her phone, scrolling through applications and folders until she saw an app image that had a blurry purple and blue swirl as a logo. She couldn’t remember having downloaded that. “There is something here,” she said. “I don’t know what this is.”

  “What’s it called?” Ebba asked.

  “Blue Caterpillar.”

  Ebba searched for information on her own phone. “It’s spyware,” she confirmed after a quick scroll.

  “What kind of spyware? Can they read emails and texts or do they just track me?”

  “Just track your location,” Ebba replied after reading some more.

  “They’d need to actually have your phone to install that,” Zari noted. “Who would’ve had access?”

  “For one: Alex. He’s been alone with my phone a few times. Like that time Oskar called and he picked up.”

  “Surprise.” Ebba crossed her arms.

  “Other than that…” Celia thought some more. “Maybe Hans. Maybe, but that’s a stretch. He couldn’t get to my phone without people in class noticing.”

  “It’s Alex,” Ebba said flatly.

  “Are you going to remove the app?” Zari asked.

  “You know,” Celia said, her mood shifting, “we’re ahead of the game now. We know it’s Alex. And we know that he’s monitoring my phone, but he doesn’t know we’re on to him.”

  Zari’s eyes glittered. “You can take advantage of that.”

  “Exactly. It could serve me to leave the app right where it is…”

  When they began walking again, Celia felt calmer than she had in a long time. She was gaining back control over her life. Unless Alex saw her talking to Elise, which could spell trouble for her. But she decided to not worry about that for the time being. Right now she needed to focus.

  She needed a plan.

  CHAPTER 36

  Over the weekend, Celia received an email from her mom who asked if she would consider coming home for the holidays. “We’ll pay for your ticket,” Julie wrote. Celia struggled with her response. She’d hardly been in touch with her family or her friends from the States; lately it was just a quick message here and there. She wrote back with a polite, firm decline. There was just too much going on. She couldn’t go home now. Not with everything coming to a head.