“We just want to help you.”
v“Sure.”
She stumbles, bracing herself against the power box, then takes another drag on her cigarette and squints against the smoke.
“I’m leaving now,” she announces.
“Where are you going?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“To Sait?”
“Stop it. Sait is nothing.”
“Tilda . . . If you’re going to get more of that shit . . . don’t. Please.”
She throws her cigarette aside; it hisses against the wet pavement. But she doesn’t move, turning her gaze up to the sky, blinking against the rain. Tiny droplets sparkle in her hair.
“Do you know what I’ve realized?” she says. “Everyone who says they know what’s best for me . . . and think they’re that much fucking better than me . . . they’re the worst ones. And I’m not putting up with it anymore.”
“Tilda,” I say. “I don’t think I’m better than you.”
She starts crying and shakes her head. I try to put my arm around her, but she pulls away.
“You don’t get it. There’s only one person who could, but she’s . . .” Tilda goes silent, angrily rubbing her cheeks dry.
“I’d get it if you talked to me,” I say. “We used to talk about everything.”
“No. We didn’t.”
Does she even know what she’s saying? Is she deliberately trying to hurt me? I can’t read this Tilda. I don’t know who she is.
“You should go home,” I say. “I’ll come with you. I promise I won’t try to stay. I just need to know that you’re—”
“I can’t go home. I can’t stand it.”
She wipes away fresh tears. I want to tell her that I know about Klas and the True Church. And I want to tell her that I can’t stand being at home, either. That I don’t feel at home anywhere since she left me.
But Tilda’s spotted something behind my back. Her face changes, as if she’s put on a mask. Her smile is huge. Fake. A poor imitation of her old self. I turn around just as Amanda and Elin throw their arms around us. Hampus and Ali are with them.
“Shit, it’s so good to see you. That was super scary,” Amanda says, kissing Tilda on the cheek before shooting me a look.
“What happened to your eyebrow?” Elin asks.
I raise my hand, touching the wound gently. “Someone accidentally brained me.”
“Afteeer-paaarty,” Hampus hollers, and does a pirouette that makes him stumble off the curb. “Come on. We’re going back to Ali’s.”
“We’ll be right there,” I say.
“Simon will be right there,” Tilda says quickly. “I have to go and talk to someone.”
Elin and Amanda exchange a look.
“Come with us instead,” Amanda says.
But Tilda shakes her head.
Hampus is getting antsy, and finally, Elin and Amanda give up. Tilda and I stay on the corner watching the others as they disappear toward the apartment complex on the other side of the tracks.
Tilda takes out a new cigarette. This time, she manages to light it herself. Her hands have stopped trembling.
“I’ll walk with you, wherever you’re going,” I say. “You shouldn’t be alone in the city when—”
“Leave me alone, Simon. I’ve got my own life now. It’s got nothing to do with you.” She starts to walk away. I follow her, and she whirls around.
“If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll scream.”
I look up toward Storgatan, wondering if the men in windbreakers are still there, still eager to rush to her rescue.
I don’t say anything. I stay where I am. I let her go.
4 WEEKS, 2 DAYS LEFT
SIMON
Boomer starts howling as soon as I get the key into the lock. The entire stairwell shakes when I open the door. I quickly pull the door shut behind me, shushing him until he stops barking, but a hundred and fifty pounds of dog running around in circles in the hall still makes a lot of noise.
“Take it easy, boy,” I croak, and fall over as I try to pull my shoes off.
A wet tongue squelches at me before I manage to get back up again. I stagger into the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. The Band-Aid I got from Ali at the after-party came off on the way home. There are spots of blood on my cheek. My eyebrow is swollen and tender.
I brush my teeth, nearly vomiting when my toothbrush slips toward the back of tongue. Afterward, I rinse my mouth with water straight from the tap, then stay slumped over the sink.
The mood was odd at Ali’s place. I think we were all shocked by the chaos in the city—it was like walking through a war zone. I kept hoping Tilda would show up, and drank way too much while I waited for her.
Your ex is a fucking whore!
The bleach-blonde girl screamed it at me. I still don’t know her name. We made out again, but I was too drunk to hide the fact that I was texting Tilda at the same time. I tried to explain that I was worried about her, that I wanted to know she’d arrived safely wherever she was going. But then I got moonshine poured over me. Everyone stared. And Tilda still hasn’t replied to the message.
I’m so tired. More tired than I’ve ever been. If I turned the lights off, I could curl up on the bathroom rug and sleep until the comet hits and everything’s over. Instead, I pull myself together and straighten up. Dry my mouth.
When I step out of the bathroom, Judette is waiting for me in the low light. She’s wearing her robe. Her eyes are bloodshot.
“Sorry if I woke you,” I say.
“You think I could sleep? You promised to get home early.”
She practically pushes me into the kitchen. I cautiously take a seat. The window is ajar, and birds are chirping like crazy outside. It’s stopped raining. The sky is brighter.
“What happened to your face?” Judette says, placing a glass of water in front of me. “Did you go down to the square?”
“We didn’t plan to do it. It just happened.”
Judette’s eyes are burning with rage. I look away, toward the expensive and beautiful orchids that nestle together on the windowsill—Venus slipper, pink and yellow Paphiopedilum Pinocchio. Judette brought them with her from the flower shop when it closed down. When I was a kid, I knew the name of every flower in that place. Now it’s just an abandoned building on Storgatan with its windows smashed in.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Have you been in a fight?”
“Someone just bumped into me. It was an accident.”
“And then what?”
“And then?”
“What did you do after the game?”
“We just sat and talked for a while at Ali’s place.”
Judette watches me in silence. I know that this is a trick. She waits until I start talking, letting me dig my own grave. And I still can’t resist picking up the spade and starting to shovel.
“I thought that since you’d already gone to bed, it wouldn’t matter when—”
“Bullshit,” she interrupts. “You weren’t thinking about us at all.”
She’s wrong. I did think about them. I just decided I didn’t care.