Yeah, I know. Such a cliché. Show me a teen girl who doesn’t think she’s unique and that no one understands her.
But that’s not why it took me so long to tell Amina about the rape. It was something else. I so desperately wanted to be the strong girl everyone thought I was, so I couldn’t identify with the victim role. Was I even a victim? Mom and Dad said I was the one who would suffer the most if we reported it. For a week or so I went around thinking that I hadn’t been subjected to an assault at all. I had willingly followed him to the counselors’ cabin; I’d been into it too. After all, it was my plan from the start. I was mostly just furious at Dad for spying.
“Oh my god.” Shirine raises her voice. “You were subjected to a horrific assault and your parents didn’t take it seriously.”
“But I understand why,” I say. “Now I understand.”
“What? You don’t mean that.”
“I’m glad we didn’t report him.”
Shirine is almost breathless.
“Was I supposed to sit through a trial and explain why I kissed him and followed him to his cabin? They would have questioned why I didn’t resist or cry for help. People would have judged me even though I was the victim.”
Shirine shakes her head.
“You have to trust the justice system.”
“No, you don’t. I wish I could, I really want to, but I don’t have to. I have to protect myself.”
Shirine raises her eyebrows as if she’s just come to a realization. I’m afraid that I’ve said too much.
60
The sun stayed through Saturday. I stretched out on a blanket in the botanical gardens and soaked up the summer’s first real warmth. That night we were sitting on Amina’s balcony, discussing whether we should go out. One second Amina was super stoked, while I was hesitant. The next second I was the one who was dying to party, while Amina wanted to back out.
“I’ve got a match tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t you have to work?”
I did. I had to work basically every day all summer.
“It shouldn’t be called work; my job isn’t actually hard work. It’s fun. Going to school was fucking hard, but working at H&M doesn’t take any effort at all.”
Amina laughed.
“Was school really that hard for you?”
“Maybe not so much for me, but it was for people who studied all the time.”
Amina was one of them, of course. I made it through with decent grades thanks to a solid base of previous knowledge, good sense, and my gift for verbal diarrhea. Amina, though, she had something I was missing. I think maybe you could call it a sense of duty, that ability to just accept certain things, to just plow through without questioning or protesting. She says it’s a second-generation immigrant thing, but I don’t know if that’s true. Anyway, she’s always been like that. Amina nods obediently and does as she’s told, only to vomit out all her feelings afterward, while I get all worked up and cocky and spew out all my resistance in the heat of the moment.
“Okay, let’s stay home then,” I say. “We’ll sit around and wither away in pointlessness.”
A group of girls was making a happy racket down on the street, and Amina topped off our glasses with wine.
“What’s Chris up to tonight?”
“No idea,” I said. “Whatever thirty-year-olds do. Couples dinner? Bank meeting? Weekly grocery shop?”
Amina typed his name into Facebook.
“Private profile.”
“Not so strange, if you’ve been stalked before.”
“One mutual friend,” Amina said. “Stella Sandell. You’ll have to check out his profile.”
“Why?”
“To snoop, obviously.”
I took out my phone and searched for him. In his profile pic he was looking right at the camera and smiling, with messy hair and a gleam in his eye.
His page was basically empty. A status update here and there, photos from a couple of trips, a restaurant recommendation. Only 187 friends.
“Scroll through his cover photos,” said Amina. “People always forget to clean those up.”
I clicked on his cover photo, which was of an endless white beach in an orange sunset. There were two more. One was the logo of Liverpool FC. In the last one, Chris was standing in front of a tall stone wall. He was sunburned and red-eyed and holding a woman’s hand.
“Is that her? The ex?”
Amina yanked the phone from me.
“I don’t know.”
But it felt like I really did know. It had to be her. Linda.
The woman in the picture looked like a total supermodel. Curly blond hair, shining blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, and smooth peaches-and-cream skin.
“She doesn’t look like a psycho,” Amina said.
I didn’t respond. I didn’t like what I saw.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing at her own screen.
She had brought up a page of personal information. At the top was the name Christopher Olsen. The address was right, Pilegatan, Lund. Further down it said that he was involved with four different companies. He was unmarried and his birthday was in December. He would be thirty-three.
“Thirty-three? Didn’t he say—”
“He lied about his age.”
Amina stared at me, a concerned look on her face.
I hadn’t suspected a thing. Apparently Chris Olsen was a good liar.
* * *
I biked home in the warm night air. My purse dangled from the handlebars; all the windows were dark. Lund was slumbering.
When Chris called, my first inclination was to ignore it. I stood straddling my bike in the railway tunnel on Trollebergsvägen with the vibrating phone in my hand. His name called to me from the screen, and at last my curiosity won out.
“Can’t you come over?” he said.
“Now?”
I looked at the time. Twelve thirty.
“Yes, now.”
He’d been at some fancy dinner in Helsingborg and sounded a little tipsy.
“I miss you,” he said.
It sounded like he meant it.
I was still plenty awake and up for some fun, slightly disappointed that Amina hadn’t wanted to come out with me.
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
What was the worst that could happen?
* * *
The door of the yellow brick building was open and I dashed up the stairs. Chris was wearing a checked shirt and a tie. He smelled like man and the air quavered between us.
“I’ve been in agony all day long,” he said, taking my jacket. “I can’t believe I … I really wanted to kiss you, Stella.”
He took my hands and looked me in the eyes.
I hesitated. Why had he lied about his age?
“How old did you say you were?” I asked.
He responded immediately, with no reaction.
“I guess I said I was twenty-nine. I’m actually thirty-two.”
“So you lied?”
He made a chagrined face.
“I was afraid of scaring you off. When Amina guessed twenty-nine, I just happened to say she was right.”
A little white lie. Well, I’d been known to add a few years to my age now and then.
“Age is only a number, after all,” I said.
Chris smiled.
“I had no idea you’d feel the same. But, I’m sorry, I should have told you earlier.”
“It’s okay.”
I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. The tip of his tongue slipped gently into my mouth; I closed my eyes and everything spun.
My heart swelled. At last, something was happening.
Soon I was on my back on the sofa and Chris was stroking me slowly, gently—sometimes with his eyes, sometimes with his fingertips. It was heaven.
61
I’m back with Shirine. She looks cool and amiable, as always, and her Bambi eyes are Bambier than ever. Like in the movie, when the mom has just been shot.
“How are you doi
ng?” she asks.
I can hardly manage a shrug.
“I brought this for you.”
She hands me a brochure entitled A Career in Psychology. I take it and page through it without much enthusiasm.
“Thanks,” I say. “But I don’t think I can become a psychologist.”
Shirine shoots me a look of exaggerated surprise.
“You can’t or you don’t want to? I think you would make an excellent psychologist.”
“Right?”
I put the brochure aside and stare down at the table.
“What’s this about?”
“What?”
“This resignation. As if you don’t believe in yourself at all.”
“Are you joking? I’m in here for murder. Even if I’m not convicted in court, I’m screwed. Guilty in everyone’s eyes. Do you seriously think I could become a psychologist? Come on.”
Shirine leans forward.
“You’re not screwed, Stella. You’re intelligent, funny, quick, and … attractive.”
She’s embarrassing me.
“Are you hitting on me?” I say.
Shirine laughs, breaking the tension.
“What do you want to talk about today?” she asks.
“Anything but myself.”
“We can talk about someone else. It’s up to you.”
I think about Dad. I’ve been thinking about him a lot in the past few days.
“Anyone?” I ask.
“Of course.”
“Control freaks. What do you know about them?”
“Control freaks?”
“Is it the same as having OCD?”
“No, not really,” Shirine says, pushing the plastic pitcher of water toward me. “Being a control freak, or using coercive control, can be a compulsion, but it doesn’t have to be. Many people associate the need for control with a pedantic sense of order, but I’d say it often has to do with the need to be able to predict the future.”
I pour water into my glass.
“To avoid surprises?”
“Many people are frightened of the fact that reality is changeable. People seek security in their lives. So a person might feel that they’re in control when they have the chance to predict what will happen, and when they can make good decisions based on solid knowledge.”
I don’t manage to swallow all the water down, and some trickles from the corner of my mouth.
“Good decisions? Is there such a thing?”
Shirine hands me a napkin.
“Well, the decision you think is best, the one you think will benefit you and your family.”
That sounds reasonable. Of course there’s a difference between making an objectively good decision and one you yourself believe is right.
“In today’s society, when people become brands and everything has to be documented on social media, lots of people also feel a great need to look a certain way in the eyes of others. Of course, this can lead to an unhealthy need for control as well.”
Dad’s words echo inside me. Keep it in the family. He hates social media. Some things are private.
“The paradox is, you know, the more you try to keep control, the less control you feel like you have. It turns into a vicious cycle. You lose control, so you feel stressed, and you try to balance it out by being even more controlling.”
Shirine scratches her ear and looks at me for a long time. She’s good at looking truly concerned, as if she honestly cares, as if this isn’t just a job.
Then her gaze clears. She places her hands on the table and her voice grows sharper.
“Are we talking about Christopher Olsen here?”
“Huh?”
It takes a moment for me to catch on.
“Did he try to control you, Stella? Was he jealous?”
I battle my impulses. They’re hammering and pounding inside my skull, yanking and tugging at every fiber of my being. Christopher Olsen? Was this what Shirine was trying to get at from the very start? Is she trying to investigate me? Everything has just been a front.
“Fuck you!”
I plant my hands on the table and stare her down. Shirine scoots backward in her chair and one hand slips under the edge of the table. I know there’s a panic button there.
“Go to hell,” I say. “You’re just like everyone else.”
Then I stand up even as two guards storm in and lock my arms behind my back.
62
The two weeks that followed were fantastic. Summer was in full bloom. Chris and I ate ice cream on the long pier in Bjärred and he snuck his hand under my skirt and kissed the caramel sprinkles from my lips.
“Let’s go to a spa!” he said over beers the next night when he met me at Stortorget after work.
“I’m working all weekend,” I said with a crooked smile.
“I don’t mean this weekend. I mean now!”
Of course. Why not?
He made me call Malin and say I was sick.
“Brutal cramps,” I whimpered into the phone. “I can hardly stand up.”
Then we walked around in bathrobes all day, having sex every hour, and when nightfall came we cuddled in a wicker chair with our limbs intertwined, enjoying champagne and strawberries, watching the sun sprinkle the Baltic Sea with twilight.
On Sunday Amina called while we were walking on the beach.
“I was worried,” she said. “You’re not answering your texts.”
“Sorry!”
I realized that I’d completely lost track of time and space. Chris had occupied my world and I felt bewitched.
“Friday,” I said to Amina. “Let’s go to Tegnérs.”
Chris winked and squeezed my hand.
I kept playing hooky from work. On Monday we took the train to Tivoli in Copenhagen and screamed ourselves hoarse on the roller coaster, checked into a hotel when it got late, and had sex in the morning until they called from the reception desk to say we should have checked out an hour earlier.
* * *
On Friday, Amina came over to my house with pizza.
We ate with our hands in front of Dr. Phil and discussed some of life’s great questions. Such as whether it’s to your advantage to mention, in your résumé, that you’ve been on a reality show (depends on which reality show and what job you’re applying for), which quote we would have chosen to get as a tattoo and where (I fear no evil on the back of your neck or It hurts to know, but wondering is just as painful on your forearm), and obviously, whether Dr. Phil’s wife had had even more plastic surgery, and how gross it was that she was sitting there in the audience in every episode and left the studio arm-in-arm with Dr. Phil when the show was over.
It didn’t take long before I was texting Chris.
“Can I see?” Amina asked, yanking at my phone. “What did he say? Is it dirty?”
“Dirty?”
She laughed.
“Come on, though. Why so secretive?”
I don’t know why. Normally I have no problem with the whole kiss-and-tell thing. Kind of the opposite—I like to dissect every last detail. There’s not an erogenous zone on my body that Amina doesn’t know about. But somehow it was different with Chris. It felt wrong to discuss it too exhaustively. Not just the sex, all of it.
“So, what? Are you together?” Amina asked.
“Of course not.”
“But you like him?”
“Maybe? I don’t know.”
Most of all I didn’t want to think about it too much. There was no way that could lead to anything good. I was not about to fall in love, especially not with a thirty-two-year-old.
“I guess a summer fling isn’t so bad.”
Really, it was just something I threw out casually. That’s not how it felt. The problem was, those feelings I’d started to discover in myself were scaring the shit out of me.
“You player!” said Amina.
“You should get a summer fling too.” I laughed.
* * *
I slept at Chris’s
after Tegnérs that Friday and woke to a breakfast buffet with fresh-baked buns and candles. Chris filled the juicer with oranges and massaged my shoulders as I drank.
“Can’t you forget about work today?”
“No,” I said. “Not again.”
I needed my job. I needed every single krona to make my Asia trip happen. But I didn’t mention that. I was afraid Chris would be disappointed, that he would launch a campaign to convince me to drop my travel plans. Or in the worst case, he would want to come along. I definitely wasn’t ready for that conversation.
“But I get off early today,” I said, stroking his arm. “We’ll see each other soon.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t understand what you do to me. I feel lonely as soon as you leave.”
We kissed several times at the door, and then I ran down the stairs and biked off like crazy. Panting, I stumbled into the store five minutes late. Malin looked at me and winked.
“Walk of shame?”
* * *
I’d been at the register for quite a while when Benita finally showed up and relieved me. The lack of sleep over the past few weeks was starting to put me a little out of balance.
“So will you be buying that?” I said to a customer who’d tried on four different blouses in similar colors.
She shot me a hateful look.
In order to get away for a while, I snuck up to the men’s department and unpacked new shirts. I got lost in my thoughts and jumped when I heard a voice behind me.
“Hi, Stella.”
A girl of around twenty-five, with blond curls, was right next to me, wringing her hands.
“Do I know you?”
There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t place it.
“We don’t know each other,” she said. “But you know Chris.”
In that instant, I knew who she was. The same girl I’d seen in the picture on Facebook.
“What do you want?”
I took a step back.
“My name is Linda,” she said. “I’m sure Chris has mentioned me. Is that why you look so scared?”
A Nearly Normal Family Page 21