Let the right one in (58 page)

"I'm sorry. About starting this."

"No, it's alright."

Silence. For a long time. Then Eli asked, hesitantly:

"Would you want to ... become like me?"

"... no. I would like to be with you, but..."

"No, of course you don't. I understand."

In the evening they finally stood up, put their clothes on. They were standing with their arms around each other in the living room when they heard the saw. The lock was being removed.

They ran to the balcony, jumped over the railing, landing fairly softly in the bushes below.

From inside the apartment they heard someone say:

"What in the world .. ."

They curled up under the balcony. There was no time.

Eli turned his face to Oskar's, said:

Closed his mouth. Then pressed a kiss on Oskar's lips.

For a few seconds Oskar saw through Eli's eyes. And what he saw was

... himself. Only much better, more handsome, stronger than what he thought of himself. Seen with love.

For a few seconds.

+

Voices in the apartment next door.

The last thing Eli had done before they got up was remove the piece of paper with the Morse code. Now strange feet are clomping around in the room where Eli once lay and tapped on the wall to him.

Oskar holds his hand up against the wall.

"Eli..."

10 NOVEMBER

Oskar did not go to school on Tuesday. He lay in his bed and listened to the sounds through the wall, wondered if they would find anything that would lead them to him. In the afternoon it grew quiet and they had still not come by.

At that point he got up, put his clothes on, and walked over to Eli's building. The door to the apartment was sealed. No one was allowed in. While he stood there looking a police officer walked by on the stairs. But Oskar was only a curious boy from the neighborhood.

When the sun went down he carried the boxes into the basement and put an old rug over them. Would decide later what he would do with them. If some thief decided to break into their storage unit he would hit the jackpot.

He sat in the darkness of the basement for a long time, thought about Eli, Tommy, the old guy. Eli had told him everything; that he hadn't meant for things to turn out the way they did.

But Tommy was alive and would be fine. That's what his mom had told Oskar's mom. He was going to be coming home tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow Oskar would go back to school.

To Jonny, Tomas, to ... We'll have to start training him again. Jonny's cold hard fingers across his cheeks. Pressing the soft flesh against his jaws until the corners of his mouth were unwillingly forced up. Squeal like a pig.

Oskar interlaced his fingers, leaned his face against them, looked at the little hill that the rug over the boxes made. He got up, pulled the rug away and opened the box of money.

One thousand kronor notes, one hundred kronor notes, all mixed up, a few bundles of bank notes. He dug around with his hand among the bank notes until he found one of the plastic bottles. Then he went up to the apartment and got some matches.

A lone spotlight cast a cold, white glow onto the schoolyard. Outside its circle of light you could see the outlines of playground structures. The Ping-Pong tables that were so cracked you couldn't play on them with anything other than a tennis ball, were covered in slush.

A few rows of school windows were illuminated. Evening classes. For this reason one of the side doors was unlocked.

He made his way through the darkened corridors to his homeroom. Stood for a while looking at the desks. The classroom looked unreal at night like this, as if ghosts silently whispering were using it for their school, whatever that would look like.

He walked over to Jonny's desk, opened the lid, and sprayed a few quarts of T-Rod onto it. Tomas' desk, same thing. He stood without moving for a second in front of Micke's desk. Decided not to. Then he went and sat at his own desk. Letting it soak in, like you do with charcoal.
I'm a ghost. Booo .
. .
booo ...

He opened the lid and took out his copy of
Firestarter,
smiled at the title and slipped it into his bag. The exercise book where he had written a story he liked. His favorite pen. They all went into the bag. Then he stood up, made a final round of the classroom and enjoyed simply being there. In peace.

Jonny's desk gave off a chemical smell when he raised the lid again, took out the matches.
No, wait...

He went and got two rough-hewn wooden rulers from a shelf at the back of the classroom. Rigged up Jonny's desk with one so it would stay open, Tomas' with the other. Otherwise they would stop burning the moment he let the lids drop. Two hungry prehistoric animals gaping for food. Dragons.

He lit one match, held it in his hand until the flame was large and clear. Then dropped it. It fell from his hand, a yellow drop, and—

Damn...

His eyes stung when a purple comet's tail shot up out of the desk, licked his face. He sprung back; had expected it to burn like ... charcoal, but the desk was fully lit, one big bonfire reaching up to the ceiling. It was burning too much.

The fire danced, flickered across the classroom walls, and a garland of large letters made of paper, hanging over Jonny's desk, broke off and fell to the floor, the P and Q burning. The other half of the garland swung in a large arc and fell onto Tomas' desk which immediately burst into flames with the same

a searing explosion while Oskar ran from the classroom with his schoolbag bouncing on his hip.

What if the whole school...

When he reached the end of the corridor the bells started to ring. A metallic clatter that filled the building and it was only when he was a good ways down the stairs that he realized it was the fire alarm. Out in the schoolyard the large bell rang fiercely to assemble students who were not there, gathered up the school's ghosts, and followed Oskar halfway home.

Only when he reached the old Konsum grocery store and he no longer heard the bell did he relax. He walked calmly the rest of the way. In the bathroom mirror he saw that the tops of his eyelashes were rolled up, singed. When he touched them with his finger they broke off.

Wednesday

11 NOVEMBER

H ome from school. Headache. The phone rang around nine. He didn't answer. In the middle of the day he saw Tommy and his mom walk past outside the window. Tommy walked bent over, slowly. Like an old person. Oskar ducked down under the windowsill as they went by. The phone rang every hour. Finally, at twelve o'clock, he picked it up.

"This is Oskar."

"Hi. My name is Bertil Svanberg and I am, as you may know, the principal of the school that you . . ."

He hung up. The phone rang again. Oskar stood there for a while, looking at the ringing phone, imagining the principal sitting in his checkered sport coat, fingers drumming on the desk, making faces. Then he put his clothes on and went down into the basement. Picked at the puzzles, poked at the little white wooden box where the thousand pieces of the gold egg glittered. Eli had only taken a couple of thousand and the Cube. He closed the lid of the puzzle box, opened the other, mixed up the rustling bank notes with his hand. Took a fistful of them, threw them on the ground. Pushed them down into his pockets. Took them out one by one, played "The Boy with the Gold Pants" until he grew tired of it. Twelve wrinkled thousand kronor and seven hundred kronor bills lay at his feet.

He gathered up the thousand kronor notes into a pile and folded them up. Put the hundred kronor notes back, closed the box. Walked up into the apartment, found an envelope that he stuffed the money into. Sat with the envelope in his hand and wondered what he should do. Didn't want to write, someone could recognize his handwriting.

The phone rang.

Stop it. Understand that I don't exist anymore.

Someone wanted to have a long talk with him. Someone wanted to ask him if he realized the gravity of what he had done, which he did. As did Jonny and Tomas probably. Quite well, in fact. Nothing more to talk about.

He walked over to his desk and took out his rubber letters and ink set. In the middle of the envelope he stamped a'T' and an 'O.' The first 'M' went askew, but the second one was straight, like the 'Y.'

When he opened the door to Tommy's building with the envelope in his coat pocket he was more nervous than he had been at his school the night before. His heart thumping, he gingerly eased the envelope through the mail slot in Tommy's door so no one would come to the door or catch sight of him through the window.

But no one came and when Oskar was back in his apartment he felt a little better. For a while. Then it sneaked up on him again.

I won't.. . be here.

At three o'clock his mom came home, several hours earlier than usual. At that point Oskar was sitting in the living room with the Vikings'

album. She walked into the room, lifted the needle, and turned off the record player. By her face he sensed that she knew.

"How are things with you?"

"Not so good."

"No ..."

She sighed, sat down on the couch.

"The principal called me. At work. He told me that... there was a fire there last night. At your school."

"Really. Did it burn to the ground?"

"No, but..."

She closed her mouth, her gaze getting stuck in the hooked rug for a few seconds. Then she lifted her eyes and met his.

"Oskar. Was it you?"

He looked straight back at her and said:

"No."

Pause.

"No. It's just that it seems that although much of the classroom was destroyed, that... that Jonny's and Tomas' desks ... that it was there it had started."

"Oh."

"And they were apparently quite sure that... that it was you."

"But it wasn't."

His mom sat on the couch, breathing through her nose. They sat a meter apart, an endless distance.

"They want to ... talk to you."

"I don't want to talk to them."

It was going to be a long evening. There was nothing good on TV.

+

That night Oskar couldn't sleep. He got up out of bed, tiptoed to the window. He thought he saw something in the jungle gym down on the playground. But it was just his imagination, of course. Nonetheless he continued to stare at the shadow down there until his eyelids grew heavy. When he got back into bed he still couldn't sleep. He gently tapped on the wall. No answer. Just the dry sound of his own fingertips, knuckles against the concrete, knocking on a door that was closed forever.

12 NOVEMBER

Oskar threw up in the morning and was allowed to stay home another day. Despite the fact that he had only slept a few hours the night before he was unable to rest. There was a gnawing anxiety in his body that forced him around the apartment. He picked things up, looked at them, put them back.

It was as if there was something he had to do. Something absolutely necessary, but he simply couldn't think of what it was.

At the time he had thought he was doing
it
while he set fire to Jonny's and Tomas' desks. Then he had thought
it
was giving the money to Tommy. But that wasn't
it.
It was something else.

A great theater performance that was now over. He paced back and forth on the emptied, darkened stage and swept up that which had been left behind. When it was something else....

But what?

When the mail arrived at eleven there was only a single letter. His heart made a somersault in his chest as he picked it up, turned it over. It was addressed to his mom. "South Angby School District" was printed in the upper right-hand corner. Without opening it he ripped it into pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Regretted it. Too late. He didn't care what was
written
in it, but there would be even
more
trouble if he started messing around with this, than if he just let it be. But it didn't matter.

He undressed, put on his bathrobe. Stood in front of the mirror in the hall, studied himself. Pretended he was someone else. Leaned over to kiss the glass. At the same time that his lips met the cold surface the phone rang. Without thinking he lifted the receiver. "Hi. It's me."

"Oskar?" "Yes."

"Hi. Fernando here." "What?"

"Avila. Mr. Avila." "Oh. Yeah. Hi."

"I just wanted to ask ... are you coming to the training tonight?" "I'm ... a bit sick."

Silence on the other end. Oskar could hear Mr. Avila's breaths. One. Two. Then "Oskar. If you did. Or did not. I do not care about this. If you want to talk; we talk. If you do not want to talk; we don't. But I want you to come to the training." "Why?"

"Because Oskar, you cannot sit like
caracol,
how do you say... the snail. In the shell. If you aren't sick, you will get sick. Are you sick?" "... Yes."

"Then you need physical fitness training. You will come tonight." "What about the others?"

"The others? What are the others? If they are stupid I will say boo, they stop. But they are not stupid. This is training." Oskar didn't reply. "OK?

You'll come?" "Yes..."

"Good. See you later."

Oskar put the phone down and everything was quiet around him again. He didn't want to go to the workout session. But he wanted to see Mr. Avila. Maybe he could go there a little earlier, see if he was there. Then go home again when the session started. Not that Mr. Avila would accept that, but. . .

He completed another round of the apartment. Packed his workout things, mainly to have something to do. Lucky he hadn't started the fire in Micke's desk, since Micke would be going to the gym. Although maybe it got destroyed anyway because it was right next to Jonny's. How much had actually been destroyed?

Something to ask...

The phone rang again around three o'clock. Oskar hesitated before picking it up, but after the flicker of hope he had felt after seeing the lone envelope he couldn't resist answering it.

"Hello, this is Oskar."