She stood up. Her legs trembled. Her hands hung limp. The cold nipped at her fingers. She wiped her wet face. Anna-Sofia sat up hunched over, and Vanessa knelt next to her. They did not look Lumikki in the eye. Lumikki did not look them in the eye. No one said anything. Silence spoke louder than words.
With shaking, exhausted legs, Lumikki set off toward home. She was not afraid that the girls would follow her and try to get revenge. She was not afraid of anything. She did not feel anything. She did not think anything. Halfway home, she stopped on the side of the road and vomited. The pea soup looked surprisingly similar to how it had before being eaten.
At home, she slipped straight into the bathroom before her parents could see. The girl who looked back from the mirror was a stranger. On her cheeks were streaks of blood. In wonder, Lumikki raised her hands and touched them. The girl in the mirror did the same. The blood was not hers. It was Anna-Sofia’s blood. Lumikki washed her face once, twice, three times, four times with water as hot as she could stand. She scrubbed her hands with soap until they stung.
After finally getting in bed that night, she drifted off immediately and slept long into the morning without dreaming. When a beep from her cell phone woke her up, she felt worse than she ever had before. Worse than the mornings after she’d been beaten black and blue.
Lumikki was sure things wouldn’t end there. Anna-Sofia and Vanessa would never let it go. She would be punished one way or another, officially or not. They would never give up on revenge.
One day passed, then two, three, a week, a month. Nothing happened. Anna-Sofia and Vanessa simply left her alone. Yes, she was still isolated from the rest of her class and no one spoke to her voluntarily, but there were no more beatings. Or names. Or text messages threatening to kill her.
Everything just stopped.
Gradually, Lumikki began to trust it. She breathed more easily. Spring came, bringing with it more light and fewer school days. As she listened to the others singing “Den blomstertid nu kommer,” the hymn they always sang at every graduation, Lumikki felt something heavy and black release its grip on her. With her ninth-grade diploma in hand, she walked out into the streaming sunlight, summer, and freedom.
The snow shone yellow. Then orange. Then a moment later, green. Lumikki saw the lights and heard a pop. Golden stars fell from the sky. Then enormous roses burst into life, their petals opening, melting, and vanishing. A unicorn struggled toward the moon. The planets danced. Fireworks.
In honor of Polar Bear, probably.
It was probably almost twelve thirty.
Lumikki thought of the small tracker strapped to her thigh. She considered the instructions she had given Elisa in case she didn’t return from the party or report back by midnight.
She had to leave the party before the clock struck twelve.
But wasn’t that a different story? Cinderella?
The crackling continued. Lumikki floated on multicolored waves. She felt fine. Just tired.
“Every evening when the lamp turns out and real night arrives.”
Wasn’t that how the lullaby went?
Wasn’t that how the blue dream began?
Blue, blue, sparkling blue.
For a moment, Lumikki thought the fireworks were still going. Then she realized that she wasn’t hearing explosions anymore. A wailing started.
A white wall. A sterile smell. Bright lights.
Sickening, pulsating pain somewhere far away. Lumikki couldn’t think about it. The taste of antibiotics in her mouth.
Drip, drip, drip. Something was flowing into her. She was attached to something. She vaguely remembered that there were names for all these things surrounding her. She didn’t have the strength to think of them though.
Figures moving in front of the lights.
Familiar faces.
Mom. Dad.
Sounds from far away, behind glass, above the surface of the water, on the other side of a wall.
“The doctor said she’s turned a corner. Don’t cry, darling. Älskling. She’ll be all right. She’s a fighter.”
“I just can’t stop thinking. I don’t think I could survive if we lost her too.”
“We won’t. Hush. Hush.”
Too? Who had Mom and Dad lost? Lumikki wanted to ask, but she couldn’t form the words. Opening her mouth would have taken an overwhelming effort. She just wanted to sleep. She would have to remember to ask later. Sometime later. After she had slept for a hundred years.
But wasn’t that a different story? Sleeping Beauty?
Lumikki felt herself sinking into the bed, into its softness, slipping through the mattress as if through layers of cloud, and flying.
On the card was a black-and-white photograph of a muscular naked man holding a kitten in a strategic location. Lumikki didn’t even need to turn the card over to guess who it was from.
Hey, girl!
Everything’s okay here. Mom isn’t as nervous as before, and I’m sleeping through the night without waking up all the time, and I don’t even look behind myself all the time when I’m walking down the street now. It’s been good for me to have some free time away from everything. I’m applying for cosmetology school here. If I get in, I start in the fall. I’m pretty sure that’s going to be my thing.
Jenna
PS I’m already used to my new name. I don’t turn around anymore when someone shouts my old name on the street or anything.
PPS I haven’t been to see Dad. Maybe someday. I still can’t deal. I’m sure you understand. I can’t even write anything about it without starting to cry.
PPPS I knitted you some gloves. They’ll come in the mail later. Sorry it took a while. It’s too late for you to need them now, but you’ll have them next fall.
Lumikki smiled. She glanced out the window. Elisa, or, well, Jenna now, was right. It was already the end of June and bewilderingly hot. Everything was blooming and radiant.
It was good to hear she was doing well. Her dad had gone to jail, along with Boris Sokolov. They’d been prosecuted with unusual speed. The police department had been anxious to get it over with as fast as possible so they could start cleaning up their image. Both had received long sentences. Sokolov’s Estonian sidekick Linnart Kask had also been sent to prison. Elisa and her mother had moved to another part of the country and changed their names. That was probably smart under the circumstances. Elisa had sworn up and down to Child Protective Services that she was done with drugs. Lumikki believed her. Elisa and her mom would have to find a totally new way to live their lives and be a family. That wasn’t necessarily all bad.
Lumikki’s left hand gravitated to the short-cropped hair at the back of her neck. She still wasn’t used to such a short hairdo, although it did feel liberating. Once blond roots had become obvious under her dyed black bob, she made the decision. A never-ending spiral of hair dying wasn’t appealing, and she hated the way the combination of fair skin and dark hair drew attention to her name. So, super short hair and her natural color it was. She also liked how simple the style was.
The truth was, it felt safer to see a completely different girl staring back from the mirror than the one who had attended Polar Bear’s party. Not that she was actually afraid of anyone from the party recognizing her on the street. People were surprisingly blind when visual images were removed from their original contexts. Since no one could imagine that a girl with no makeup, traipsing down the street in old combat boots and a green army jacket, could ever have been at a high-class party, the conclusion was obvious: she hadn’t been there. The human mind was just that simple. Stupid, really, but so lucky for her.
Over the past two months, Elisa/Jenna had sent Lumikki cards a few times before. Lumikki kept them under the false bottom of the top drawer of the dresser in her old room.
Yes, she was living at home again. In Riihimäki, that is, in the house where she grew up. After the events of the winter, the police had interrogated her first and then her parents had. She had told both only the bare minimu
m. Her parents had insisted that she move back home “at least for the time being.” Lumikki tolerated it even though her old room was so full of the past and felt so small. She commuted back to school in Tampere by train, even though that meant waking up at an inhuman hour.
For the time being.
Lumikki hoped she’d be able to convince her parents over the summer that it was safe for her to live alone in Tampere again.
No one looked at her strangely at school because no one knew. Kasper and Tuukka had been expelled when the news about their drug use and the school break-in had come out. Everything had been handled as quietly as possible. There were rumors around school, of course, but no one knew to connect Lumikki to them. Some of the rumors were pretty wild, but none of them even approached the insanity of the truth.
Terho Väisänen was in prison. Boris Sokolov was in prison. Polar Bear was not. Were not.
Lumikki had kept her mouth shut tight about them in her interviews. She knew that if she talked, she’d only be hurting herself. She didn’t have any proof that the twins were involved in anything illegal. She didn’t actually know anything about them.
And the police didn’t ask. The party venue had been in Boris Sokolov’s name, and everything else was routed through him too. Officially, there was no Polar Bear. No one had ever seen or heard of him, her, or them.
Lumikki idly stroked the edge of the postcard. Strange that Elisa preferred to send cards rather than writing e-mails. That was another flaw in her shiny image, an aberration that, to her own surprise, made Lumikki really value the girl’s friendship. She had thought of Elisa when painting a tiny pink rose in the bottom corner of her Girlfriends painting. You wouldn’t even notice it unless you looked closely.
She put the card with the others. Under the dresser drawer, there was also an envelope she’d received immediately after getting home from the hospital. Inside were two five-hundred-euro bills. A thousand euros. It was such a small part of thirty thousand that no one would miss it. She didn’t know whether Elisa, Tuukka, and Kasper had hidden any more. She didn’t want to know.
A thousand euros was enough of a secret.
Lumikki was used to having secrets. She had always had them, sometimes big, sometimes small. Closing the dresser drawer, she imagined that she was also putting away the other secrets she didn’t have the evidence to prove.
Polar Bear and the fact that she’d met them.
Anna-Sofia and Vanessa and what they had done to her during elementary and middle school.
The important person Mom and Dad had lost, but who she hadn’t been able to work up the courage to ask about. In a house furnished with taboos, you didn’t just start redecorating like it was nothing.
And one more secret. The one whose picture Lumikki was holding now. Of course, a photograph was physical evidence that the person in it was real, but nothing proved that Lumikki had loved him. That he had loved Lumikki. If he had. Lumikki wanted to believe he had.
She stroked the picture carefully with her thumb. Short, light brown hair that shifted from wheat to hazel. A cheek, a shoulder, an arm. Captivated once again by those eyes so blue they made you think of a purebred husky. Some people thought those eyes were piercing, scornful. Lumikki saw deeper. She saw the warmth, the uncertainty, the joy, the light.
Longing clenched her stomach with astonishing strength. Lumikki thought it had eased by now. She was as wrong as wrong can be.
The name was already tingling on her lips. The name she had whispered and cried aloud. She wasn’t over it yet. She wasn’t ready to move on like that. Not now, maybe not ever.
Lumikki locked the drawer, even though she knew it was safe. She held the small, tarnished key in her hand. It gleamed, but dimly. It was plain and inconspicuous.
Once upon a time, there was a little key that could fit in any lock.
Fairy tales don’t begin that way. That’s how other, brighter stories begin.
Photo © 2012 Karoliina Ek
Winner of the 2013 Topelius Prize, Salla Simukka is an author of young adult fiction and a screenwriter. She has written several novels and one collection of short stories for young readers, and she has translated adult fiction, children’s books, and plays. She writes book reviews for several Finnish newspapers, and she also writes for TV. Simukka lives in Tampere, Finland.
Photo © 2012 Pekka Piri
Owen F. Witesman is a professional literary translator with a master’s in Finnish and Estonian area studies from Indiana University. He has translated over thirty Finnish books into English, including novels, children’s books, poetry, plays, graphic novels, and nonfiction. His recent translations include the novels in the Maria Kallio series, My First Murder, Her Enemy and Copper Heart (AmazonCrossing), the satire The Human Part by Kari Hotakainen (MacLehose Press), the thriller Cold Courage by Pekka Hiltunen (Hesperus), and the 1884 classic The Railroad by Juhani Aho (Norvik Press). He currently resides in Springville, Utah, with his wife and three daughters, two dogs, a cat, and twenty-nine fruit trees.
As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy) Page 17