It felt like it was our last kiss.
Like I knew what was going to happen.
I remember that moment.
Our last kiss…For me, it felt like the first. I remember being certain at that moment that I wanted to grow old with her.
How could I have been so dumb?
“I challenge you,” said Kate as we looked at the beam. “Walk over to the other side without falling.”
“If you make it, I’ll write a song for you.” Fender removed any remaining doubt.
It was pitch dark on either side of the beam. You couldn’t even see the floor below.
“Don’t do it.” Lucas stopped me. “You’re really drunk. You’re going to fall.”
“I’ll do what I like.” The words came out in bumps and jolts, like I was going along a bumpy road. “So long.”
I put my right foot on the beam.
“She’s really going to do it!” Kate cheered me on.
When I was halfway across the beam, I glanced up for a moment. The starry sky was so glorious that it made me cry. Why was everything so incredibly broken?
“Isolde?”
I heard Fender’s voice and looked back.
Then.
That was when I said her name.
For the last time.
I lost my balance. That must have been it, because I was suddenly falling.
Why did I call her? What exactly was so very important right at that moment?
No matter how many hours I’ve spent worrying about that question, I still can’t remember.
I heard voices shouting all at once. Footsteps coming closer.
“An ambulance!” Kate shouted. “We need an ambulance. Lucas? Lucas!”
There was no answer.
“Hang in there!” said a voice. “Please, hang in there.”
It was Fender.
I looked and saw his sweet eyes, full of panic.
There was no need for him to be afraid. I was okay.
Maybe the stars would calm him down.
“Look,” I said to him, pointing up. “My star sign.”
But then the pain hit me like a tidal wave.
I flailed at my face.
“Take them away! Take these knives out of my face!”
Now I realize that it was glass.
Thousands of shards of glass.
I’d fallen on a sheet of glass, face down.
Like diving into a swimming pool off the high board.
A silence falls.
The end is approaching.
I can’t wait.
Finally they’re listening.
All of them.
“Fender, the next one is for you.”
It doesn’t seem to worry Claus that Fender is having to listen to his girlfriend’s experience of that night of horror.
“Fender can’t…” Kate looks at Claus. “Let me read it.”
Claus shakes his head. “No, that’s against the rules.”
“Screw your rules!”
Kate stands up and throws her dome across the room. It bounces off the bathroom door and rolls under the four-poster bed.
“Sit down.” Claus raises his stun gun. Does Kate really want to make him mad? Could she be that dumb?
“What do you want from us?” Kate throws her arms in the air. “Money? Maybe we can arrange something with my father. He’s a lawyer. He makes loads of money. I’m sure I can get him to—”
“Sit down,” says Claus again, putting his finger on the trigger. “And don’t insult me.”
Kate’s eyes shoot fire. For a moment I’m afraid she’ll attack him, but then she sinks back into her seat.
“Okay, the next dome, then.” Claus looks at his watch. “We’ll have to hurry a bit or we’ll miss twelve o’clock.”
He’s really enjoying this.
I see that Kate is doing everything in her power not to explode at him.
Fender picks up the silver dome and takes the envelope from underneath. Every movement seems to be an effort, as if he’s hurting all over.
I touch the rope on the left with my right hand. Now I can feel that there’s a double knot in it. How am I ever going to untie it?
Pain.
That’s what I remember from the ambulance ride.
Excruciating pain.
I wanted to die.
But in the hospital they fought for me.
For my face.
I slept through it all.
The rope begins to loosen. I can move my left hand just a little bit more—and then more.
If Claus looks this way now, the game is up.
But he only has eyes for Fender, who collapses more with each word.
The dressings are finally off.
Today they let me look in the mirror.
They say it’s me.
But all I saw was a monster.
My hand is so painful, but I keep frantically trying to pull the rope free. I have to get out of here alive.
Mom and Dad say it’s not that bad.
Even Marius is going along with it.
He says I’ll always be his beautiful little sister.
But as he was saying it, he couldn’t even look at me.
“Why did you stop?”
I’m startled by Claus’s voice. Fender has lowered the diary pages and tears are streaming down his cheeks.
I’ve never seen him cry before.
“Keep reading.”
“No.” Fender shakes his head.
“You will keep on reading. Now!”
“No.”
“All right.” Claus pulls the pages from his hand. “Then I’ll read it.”
Fender came by today.
I heard a nurse in the corridor tell him he had to understand that I’d changed.
“Changed.” That truly is what she said.
Like I’d dyed my hair.
Or was wearing different clothes.
She didn’t mention my eye.
Or the volcanic eruption that was my face.
I wanted to shout that Fender should stay out there in the corridor, but he was already coming into the room.
I dived under the covers.
“It’s me,” he said.
“I know.”
“Will you come here? I want to hold you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Of course I do. It’s us.”
I wanted to believe him so badly that I came out from under the covers.
I heard him gasp.
It was just a very small intake of breath.
Minuscule.
But big enough.
“That’s not true,” I manage to say. “That’s not what it says.”
“That is what it says.” Claus fixes his gaze on me. “You were disgusted by her.”
“No. Absolutely not.” I search for the right words. “I…”
Claus’s eyes narrow. “You had the shock of your life when you saw her.”
“Go away,” I said.
Fender didn’t leave.
Instead, he just stared at me.
I thought it was so bad, how everyone avoided looking at me, but this was way worse.
“Let me hold you.”
“No.” I put my hands over my face. The face I would have to make do with for the rest of my life. One functioning eye, dozens of scars.
And lots more operations ahead to make it bearable.
I was no longer the girl he’d fallen in love with.
Not even a tenth of that.
“Go away!” I screamed. “Go away, go away, go away!”
I kept shouting until my throat was raw.
And even then I kept going. I emptied out my entire body.
After what seemed like hours, I felt two hands on my wrists.
“Hey, hey, calm down.”
I was looking into a nurse’s face.
Fender had listened to me. He’d gone.
I climbed out of bed and looked around the corner of the door.
They were standing nearby.
Kate and Fender, by the coffee machine.
The two of them entwined.
Finally she could hold him like that.
She must have been waiting for that all her life.
“This is ridiculous.” Kate shakes her head. “She’s acting like I was happy and—”
“You were,” Claus cuts her off. “Admit it. You have everything you want, except for one thing. Or should I say: one person?”
Kate’s eyes are filled with blind panic, as if she’s about to lose everything.
“Fender, don’t listen to him, it’s not true.”
But Fender doesn’t seem to hear her. He’s just staring straight ahead.
“We’re almost there,” Claus continues. “The last one’s for you, Lucas.”
Claus just keeps on going, like a bulldozer crushing everyone in his path.
“I’m not doing this anymore,” says Lucas.
“What?”
“You can read it out yourself.” Lucas looks up. “Give me ten electric shocks if you like, but I quit.”
I hold my breath. What’s he doing? We’ve all seen what Claus is capable of.
“In fact, we’re leaving.” Lucas stands up and looks at Fender and Kate. “You guys coming?”
Claus jumps to his feet and reaches me in two strides. He presses the stun gun to my temple.
“You’re going to leave Linnea with me?”
“Leave her alone.”
“I know what I said about it not being lethal, but if I use it in this spot, that might be a different story. So what’s it going to be? Running away—or Linnea?”
I feel the pins pricking my skin. What would it feel like to get a shock?
“Well?” Claus presses the weapon deeper into my skin. “You really like her, don’t you?”
Lucas raises his hand as a sign for him to stop. “Okay, okay. I’ll read it.”
Today I went back to where I used to live.
I had to see them one more time.
Kate, Fender, and Lucas were sitting in the schoolyard, in our usual place.
There was another girl with them.
A blond girl, like me.
A girl with a flawless face, like I once had.
I have no idea who she is.
Lucas said something funny. Fender laughed. Kate was kind of clinging to him.
As I stood there watching, it suddenly hit me.
They’ve moved on without me.
While I’m just going backward.
I feel the pain in every word that Lucas reads out. I don’t dare look at Fender.
Claus is sitting on the edge of the bed, with his back to me. The rope is getting looser and looser. Any minute now, my left hand will be free too.
Claus must have spotted me, because he came after me. Close to the station, he caught up with me and grabbed hold of my wrist.
“Isolde?” He was out of breath from running. “Is it really you?”
I could have denied it, but my identity is written ten times all over my face. Even with operation after operation I’ll still look like this.
“What are you doing here? Ah, it doesn’t matter, you’re here now.”
He held out his hand and took my sunglasses off my face.
He stared at my scars and then stroked them with his index finger. He kept stroking the biggest scar in particular, the one on my forehead.
I felt tears burning in my eyes.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Why not?”
“You disgust me.”
Claus sneered at me.
All the contempt in the world was in that one look.
“I disgust you? Think yourself lucky that anyone wants to touch you at all.”
I don’t even think about it.
With a yell of rage, I throw myself upon Claus, hitting him wherever I can. We roll onto the floor, right next to the bed.
“How could you dare to say that to her?” I thump him in the ribs.
Claus holds the stun gun to my shoulder. “Want some more?”
I’m no match for that thing, no matter how much I want to fight. I lower my fists and roll off Claus.
“You just don’t get it,” I pant. “She meant everything to me. She still does! What happened to her destroys me every day.”
I forget that Linnea, Kate, and Lucas can hear everything.
“Don’t you understand? I was the one who called her name. It’s my fault that she fell. She lay there in a pool of her own blood, and she pointed up at the stars. And then she mumbled something about star signs. I think, even at that moment, she was trying to comfort me.”
I can barely swallow away the lump in my throat. I’m almost choking on my own words.
“If I could, I’d take on all of her pain. I didn’t think she was ugly or scary—anything but.”
“You gasped when you saw her,” shouts Claus. “That’s what it says in her diary!”
“Of course I was shocked. It was my fault that she looked like that. They weren’t able to save her eye. She’d never be able to see with it again.”
I take a deep breath.
“I couldn’t find her in the place she’d moved to. I waited at the harbor every Friday, but she never came.”
“You’re lying,” says Claus.
“No, I’m not. I’ve never forgiven myself, and I never will. That’s why I couldn’t look at her. Not because she disgusted me, but because I felt so guilty. I haven’t said her name ever since that night.”
For a moment, there’s silence.
I can see that Claus is completely stunned. In the few seconds it takes him to recover, I dive forward. Before he can react, I snatch the stun gun from his hand.
I grab his shirt and hold the stun gun to his temple. It’s not lethal, he said, but what will happen if I do this?
“You’re no better than I am,” I hiss. “We both destroyed her.”
“Fender,” I hear Kate say. “Please, let’s call the police. They can take him away.”
“No,” I growl. “I want to do this myself.”
If only she were here now, then she could have seen me taking on Claus. She could have told me everything, and I would have helped her.
“You still don’t get it, do you?” Claus looks at me. His voice suddenly sounds different. “You still don’t get who I am.”
What’s he talking about? Is he trying to buy time by playing some new game?
“You’re a psychopath. That’s what I get.”
I put my finger on the trigger, but just as I’m about to pull it, someone yanks back my arm.
“Don’t do it.” It’s Linnea, who’s freed herself from the ropes. “Listen.”
Fender wants to kill me.
I can see it in his eyes.
Does he still not get it?
“It’s me,” I say quietly. “Isolde.”
“It’s me,” I hear Claus say in a voice that sounds softer than before. Girlish. “Isolde.”
I feel Fender’s muscles tensing. I don’t know if I can still hold him. He’s staring at Claus as if he’s possessed.
“Kate,” I shout.
Kate finally starts moving and gently takes the weapon from Fender’s hand.
“It’s me,” Claus says again. “Don’t you recognize my voice?”
He stands up.
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I look at the boy in front of me. The boy with the average face. I’ve talked to him. I’m one hundred percent certain he’s not a girl.
“That’s not possible,” Kate stammers. “Isolde’s dead.”
Claus shakes his head. “I really wanted to do it, but I couldn’t.”
“But…we saw the death notice. We got the suicide note…” Kate sounds like she’s about to faint.
“I placed my own death notice in this morning’s newspaper. I left the house before my dad could read the newspaper. I posted the suicide note myself.”
Kate shakes her head. “You can’t be Isolde. You’re lying.”
“You’re the one who’s lying, Kate. You’re all lying.” Claus grabs his own hair and pulls. For a moment I think he wants to hurt himself, but then his black hair comes away from his head.
I gasp for breath as blond strands of hair appear from under the wig. And finally: a braid.
“It’s a disguise.” Isolde drops the black wig by her side. “I didn’t want you to know it was me. Do you know something? I’ve stood by the train tracks dozens of times because I wanted to jump. I’ve stood in the bathroom with a razor blade in my hand, and I’ve lain in bed with a bottle of sleeping pills. I wanted to die, because of you guys. I wanted to make you feel what it would be like if I really had dared to do it.”
I stare at the boy in front of me. It’s Claus, but it’s also Isolde. It’s too much to handle.
“I was so happy when you suddenly appeared outside the door,” Isolde says to me. “My replacement. If I mutilated you, they’d have to go through everything again. And your life would be over, just like mine is. I’ve been practically dead for a year. The Isolde from before has been murdered. But I can’t do it. Seems there’s still a bit of the old Isolde left inside me after all.”
“B-but why…,” I stutter. “Why did you disguise yourself as the boy you hated? I mean, you wrote about Claus and…Did you make him up?”
“No, he’s not made up. But he’s not really called Claus. That’s an alias.”
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