My phone vibrates in the pocket of my jeans. It’s a message from my mom Stina: PROMISE ME YOU WON’T GO OUT AND WATCH THE GAME? THERE’S ALREADY FIGHTING.
I type out a promise. When I look up again, Johannes is gone.
I drink more. At least the quality of the moonshine is better than the stuff we had at the pool. Now and then, new ice cubes pass through my mouth. In the living room, “Save the World” comes on and everyone cheers.
It’s so hot. I’m so drunk. Someone is watching me. The bleach-blonde girl. She’s perched on the kitchen counter now, getting a glass of water, waving at me to come over. I move toward her, squeezing past a couple who seem to be having sex in the middle of the floor. The bleach-blonde girl hands me her glass and I drink it down. Water trickles down my chin, and she laughs. When I put the glass back down by the counter, she says something—I assume it’s her name—and I put my hand next to her hip, say my name into her ear.
“I know,” she says, and smiles.
The vibrations from the bassline travel up my legs. My body starts throbbing in time with the music.
I really only want Tilda. I only want Tilda to want me.
But Tilda isn’t here. And I need the closeness of another human being. I want it so much my skin aches.
I should let go. Everyone else does.
My lips brush against the unknown girl’s lips. They’re thinner than Tilda’s; they feel so different. She shifts so that one soft breast presses against my arm. One thigh ends up between my legs. And my body responds immediately.
She takes my hand. We push our way into the hallway, sneaking out to the stairway without turning the lights on. On the landing above Ali’s apartment, she kisses me again. A red light glints next to us like a staring eye. I fumble to get her skirt up over her hips, touch her like I used to touch Tilda. She gasps in my ear.
It feels like Tilda is here with me in the darkness. As if she’s the one I’m entering. The music from Ali’s apartment booms through the stairwell, drowning out the sound of our bodies moving against each other. We should hurry up before someone catches us, but I don’t want it to end. I know that the moment it’s done, reality will come rushing back into my head.
She’s breathing faster now.
Ali’s door is thrown open with a bang. The music in the stairwell is even louder. Someone turns the light on, and we’re suddenly bathed in light. The spell is broken. The girl giggles while we rush to put our clothes back on.
Voices and laughter drift out from the apartment, bodies falling over each other as they try to find their jackets in the hallway.
“Are you guys done?” Ali says, and grins at me from the doorway. “The game is about to start.”
NAME: LUCINDA
TELLUS #0392811002
POST 0004
My little sister, Miranda, is sleeping in my bed. She’s eleven years old, but this summer she started sucking her thumb again. Her speech has regressed. She’s become afraid of the dark. Now, she’s finally snoring in the tangled mess she’s made of my sheets, but I can’t sleep. I can barely breathe. It feels like I’m falling through a bottomless black pit.
I try to remind myself that the anxiety will pass. The body can’t sustain it for too long. I know that, really.
The game has started. The roars from town can be heard all the way here. They rise and surge in waves that echo between the buildings. Echo inside my body. Multiply into new waves of panic. Right now, I just want to call the ER and ask Dad to come home. Miranda isn’t the only one who needs to be comforted tonight.
She and I watched a documentary about the rainforest. (It was her choice—she loves anything to do with animals.) The camera tracked a frog, blue and gleaming and poisonous, and I stared at it and realized for the first time that it’s going to be gone. It’s not just us humans; it’s the animals, too. Not even bacteria will survive. Nothing. Scientists say that the planet will be “sterilized.”
Outside the windows, the sky is dark. The moon and the stars are hidden behind thick clouds. Foxworth is up there somewhere, incredibly far away, but on its way, closer with every second that passes.
Miranda asked me so many questions tonight; so much is going on inside her head. She wondered what was going to happen after the comet, and I said something cowardly and pointless about how we’re going meet in heaven afterward. Miranda wondered how we’d find each other there, considering heaven must be a big place if we were all going to fit. My lovely sister, who’s been so neglected this past year when everything’s revolved around me—how long has she been wondering about these things?
She didn’t want to sleep alone, and honestly, neither did I. Her heart pounded hard against my arm as she lay next to me in bed. And I thought about her heart, and mine, and the almost eight billion hearts that will cease beating at the same time.
And now my heart is pounding so hard it hurts, as if it’s trying to make up for all the beats it’s going to miss.
SIMON
Ican barely see what’s happening on the screens, but I roar when everyone else does. I scream like I’ve never screamed before. Let out all the darkness inside of me.
There must be thousands of us gathered in the square. Our voices become one voice; our bodies turn into one creature. It feels like I’m dissolving, and I find myself liking it. Together, we’re strong. Invincible.
And then it’s all over. Östersunds FK has won at home, and the screens shut down. We become individuals again, and we’re all moving in different directions at the same time. I land in my own body. Only now, I’m aware of a cold drizzle falling from the dark sky. The droplets are so small they look like rippling mist in the glow from the spotlights. The smoke from the flares is heavy on one side of the square. I can smell the stench from here. I try to stay close to Ali and Hampus, but other people keep pushing between us. Someone screams—in rage? Pain?—and panic swells like a mushroom cloud in my chest when I realize I can’t move. I’m trapped.
Someone slams into me. All of a sudden, blood is pouring from my right eyebrow. I’ve been headbutted, but can barely feel it. Ali shouts; I can’t see him anywhere. I wipe the blood away as best I can, and spot a fight by the fountain in the middle of the square. Flushed faces, hateful glares. Everyone around them is trying to get away, shoving anyone who stands in their way. A few seconds later, the domino effect reaches me. I stumble backward, accidentally planting my elbow in someone’s chest, but manage to stay upright. If I fall, there’s no way I’ll get up again.
I set a course for the H&M sign, trying to focus on getting there, but moving in a straight line is impossible. Bodies press against me from every direction. I have to walk around people who won’t let go of one another’s hands, swerve past glowing cigarettes, duck so I don’t get my eye poked out by an umbrella that someone has, unbelievably, opened in this mess.
Screams are echoing across the square now. I don’t know how long I can keep myself from just charging forward, not giving a shit about who I trample, and not giving a shit about getting trampled myself.
“Simon!”
Tilda’s voice. I spot her a few feet away. She’s high again, looking around confused.