Let the right one in (59 page)

"Hi. It's Johan."

"Hi."

"What's up?"

"Nothing much."

"Want to do something tonight?"

"When ... what?"

"Oh ... about seven, or something."

"No, I'm going to ... the gym."

"Oh. OK. Too bad. Catch you later."

"Johan?"

"Yeah?"

"I... heard there was a fire. In our classroom. Did... a lot get destroyed?"

"Naw. Just a couple of desks."

"Nothing else?"

"Naw... some ... papers and that."

"Oh."

"Your desk is fine."

"Oh. Good."

"OK. Bye."

"Bye."

Oskar hung up with a strange feeling in his stomach. He had thought that
everyone knew
it was him. But that's not how Johan had sounded. And his mom had said that
a lot
had been destroyed. But she could have been exaggerating, of course.

Oskar chose to believe Johan. He had
seen
it, after all.

+

Oh, for Christ's sake . .."

Johan hung up, and looked around, hesitantly. Jimmy shook his head, blew smoke out of Jonny's bedroom window. "That was the worst I've heard." In a meek voice Johan said: "It's not so easy." Jimmy turned to face Jbnny, who was sitting on the bed rubbing a tassle from the bedspread between his fingers.

"What happened? Half the classroom burned down?"
Jonny
nodded.

"Everyone in the class hates him." "And you . . ." Jimmy turned toward him again, "you say that. . . what was it you said? 'Some paper.' Do you think he'll go for that?" Johan lowered his head, embarrassed.

"I didn't know what to say. I thought he would ... get suspicious if I said that. . ."

"Yes, yes. Done is done. Now we just have to hope he turns up." Johan's gaze flew back and forth between Jonny and Jimmy. Their eyes were empty, lost in images of the coming evening. "What are you guys going to do?"

Jimmy leaned forward in his seat, brushing away a little ash that had fallen on his sweater, and said slowly:

"He burned it. Everything we had from our dad. So what we're going to do is something that. . . that doesn't concern you. Understand?"

+

His mom came home at half past five. The lies, the distrust from the night before still hung like a cold cloud between them, and his mom went straight to the kitchen, started making an unnecessary amount of noise with the dishes. Oskar shut his door. Laid on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

He could go somewhere. Out into the yard. Down into the basement. To the square. Take the subway. But there still wasn't any place ... no place where he . . . nothing.

He heard his mom walk to the phone and dial a lot of numbers. His dad's probably.

Oskar shivered a little.

He pulled the blankets over him, sat up with his head against the wall, listening to the sound of his mom and dad's conversation. If he could talk to dad. But he couldn't. It never happened.

Oskar pulled the blanket around himself, pretending to be an Indian chieftain, indifferent to everything as his mom's voice rose. After a while she started to yell and the Indian chieftain fell down on the bed, pressed the blanket, his hands over his ears.

It's so quiet inside your head. It is... like outer space.
Oskar made the lines, colors, dots in front of his eyes into planets, distant solar systems that he traveled through. Landed on comets, flew for a while, jumped off and hovered freely in weightlessness until something pulled on his blanket and he opened his eyes.

Mom was standing there. Her lips twisted. Her voice abrupt and sharp as she talked:

"So. Now your father has told me ... that he ... on Saturday ... that you ... where were you? Tell me. Where were you? Can you tell me that?" His mom pulled on the blanket up by his face. Her throat tensed to a hard, thick sinew.

"You're never going there again. Never. You hear me? Why didn't you say anything? I mean ... that bastard. People like him shouldn't have children. He is not going to see you anymore. And then he can sit there and drink as much as he likes. You hear me? We don't need him. I am
so...

His mom twirled abruptly away from the bed, slammed the door so hard the walls shook. Oskar heard her rapidly dial the long number again, swearing when she missed a digit, had to start over. A few seconds after she finished dialing she started to yell.

Oskar crept out from under his blanket, grabbed his workout bag, and walked into the hall where his mom was so preoccupied with yelling at his dad that she didn't notice the fact that he had slipped on his shoes and walked up to the front door without tying them.

It was only when he was standing in the stairwell that she saw him.

"Wait a second! Where do you think you're going?"

Oskar banged the door shut and ran down the stairs, kept running, the soles of his shoes pattering, on his way to the pool.

+

Roger, Prebbe ..."

With his plastic fork, Jimmy jabbed in the direction of the two guys emerging from the subway station. The bite that Jonny had just taken from his shrimp sandwich lodged halfway down his throat and he was forced to swallow again in order to get it down. He looked quizzically at his brother but Jimmy's attention was directed at the guys on their way over to the hot dog stand, greeted them.

Roger was thin and had long, straggly hair, a leather jacket. The skin in his face was punctured by hundreds of small craters and appeared shrunk since the cheekbones stood out sharply and his eyes seemed unnaturally large.

Prebbe had a denim jacket with the arms cut off and a T-shirt under that, and nothing else, even though it was only a couple of degrees above zero. He was a big guy. Spilling out over the edges, cropped hair. An out-of-shape paratrooper.

Jimmy said something to them, pointed, and they took off in the direction of the transformer-station above the subway tracks. Jonny whispered:

"Why... are they coming?"

"To help out, of course."

"Do we need it?"

Jimmy sniffed and shook his head as if Jonny didn't know the first thing about how these things worked.

"How were you planning to get around the teach?"

"Avila?"

"Yeah, you think he would just let us walk on in and . .. you know?" Jonny had no answer for this, so he just followed his brother in behind the little brick house. Roger and Prebbe were standing in the shadows with their hands in their pockets, stamping their feet. Jimmy took out a metallic cigarette case, flicked it open, and held it out to the other two. Roger studied the six hand-rolled cigarettes inside, said: "My, my, prerolled and everything, why thank you," and used two thin fingers to nab the thickest one.

Prebbe made a face so he looked like one of the old balcony guys on
The
Muppet Show.
"They lose their freshness if they sit around." Jimmy wiggled the case in an inviting way, said:

"Quit your whining, you old woman. I rolled them an hour ago. And this isn't any of that Moroccan shit you run around with. This is the real thing."

Prebbe sucked in his breath and helped himself to one of the cigarettes. Roger helped him light it.

Jonny looked at his brother. Jimmy's face was sharply silhouetted against the light from the subway station platform. Jonny admired him. Wondered if he would ever be someone who dared to say "you old woman" to someone like Prebbe.

Jimmy also took one of the cigarettes and lit it. The rolled-up paper at the tip burned for a moment before it simply glowed. He inhaled deeply and Jonny was enveloped by the sweet smell that always clung to Jimmy's clothing.

They smoked in silence for a while. Then Roger held out his joint to Jonny.

"You want a drag, or what?"

Jonny was about to hold his hand out for it, but Jimmy hit Roger on the shoulder.

"Idiot. Want him to turn out like you?"

"That so bad?"

"OK for you, maybe. Not for him."

Roger shrugged, took back his offer.

It was half-past six when everyone was done smoking, and when Jimmy spoke it was with an exaggerated articulation, every word a complicated sculpture he had to get out of his mouth.

"OK. This ... is Jonny. My brother."

Roger and Prebbe nodded knowingly. Jimmy took hold of Jonny's chin with a slightly clumsy movement, turned his head so the other two saw it in profile.

"Check out his ear. That's what this squirt did. That's what we're going to

... take care of."

Roger took a step forward, squinted at Jonny's ear, smacked.

"Shit. It looks bad."

"I'm not asking for an ... expert... opinion. You just listen. Then this will be ..."

+

The steel gates in the corridor between the brick walls were unlocked. The echo from Oskar's footsteps went
ka-ploff ka-ploff as
he walked over to the door of the swimming pool, pulled it open. A damp warmth wafted over his face and a cloud of vapor billowed out into the cold corridor. He hurried in and shut the door. He kicked his shoes off and kept going into the locker room. Empty. He heard the sound of running water from the shower room, a deep voice singing:

Besame, besame mucho

Como sifuera esta noche la ultima vez...

Mr. Avila. Without taking off his jacket, Oskar sat down on one of the benches, waited. After a while both the splashing and the singing stopped and the teacher came out of the shower area with a towel around his hips. His chest looked completely covered in black, curly hair with splashes of gray. Oskar thought he looked like something from another planet. Mr. Avila saw him, smiled broadly.

"Oskar! So you crawl out of your shell after all."

Oskar nodded.

"It got a bit.. . stuffy."

Mr. Avila laughed, scratched his chest; the tips of his fingers disappeared in the fuzz.

"You are early."

"Yes, I was thinking ..."

Oskar shrugged. Mr. Avila stopped scratching himself.

"You were thinking?"

"I don't know."

"To talk?"

"No, I just..."

"Let me take a look at you."

Mr. Avila took a couple of rapid strides up to Oskar, studied his face, nodded. "Aha. OK."

"What?"

"It was you." Mr. Avila pointed to his eyes. "I see. You have burned your eyebrows. No, what is it called? Underneath. Eye ..."

"Lashes?"

"Eyelashes. Yes. A little in the hair as well. Hm. If you don't want anyone to know for sure you have to cut your hair a little. Eye . .. lashes grow fast. Monday it is gone. Gasoline?"

"T-Rod."

Mr. Avila expelled air through his lips, shook his head.

"Very dangerous. Probably. . ." Mr. Avila touched Oskar's temple ". . . you a little crazy. Not a lot. But a little. Why T-Rod?"

"I... found it."

"Found? Where?"

Oskar looked up at Mr. Avila's face: a damp, kindly stone. And he wanted to tell him, wanted to tell him all of it. He just didn't know where to start. Mr. Avila waited. Then he said:

"To play with fire is very dangerous. Can become a habit. Is no good method. Much better physical exercise."

Oskar nodded, and the feeling disappeared. Mr. Avila was great but he would never understand.

"Now you get changed and I show you a little technique with bench press. OK?"

Mr. Avila turned to go back to his office. Stopped outside the door.

"And Oskar. You don't worry. I say nothing to nobody if you don't want. Sound good? We can talk more after the training session." Oskar changed his clothes. When he was finished Patrik and Hasse came in, two guys from 6A. They said hi to Oskar, but he thought they looked at him a little too long, and when he walked into the gym he heard them start whispering to each other.

A sense of despondency settled in the pit of his stomach. He regretted having come here. But shortly thereafter Mr. Avila came in, now in a Tshirt and shorts, and showed him how you could get a better grip on the bench press bar by allowing it to rest against the tips of your fingers, and Oskar managed twenty-eight kilos, two kilos more than last time. Mr. Avila noted the new record in his notebook.

More guys came in, among them Micke. He smiled his usual, cryptic smile that could mean everything from that he was about to give you a nice present, to he was about to do something terrible to you.

+

It was the latter that was the case, even if Micke himself did not understand the full extent of it. On the way to the training session Jonny had come running up to him and asked him to do something, since he was planning to set Oskar up. Micke thought that sounded cool. He liked pranks. And anyway Micke's complete collection of hockey cards had burned up Tuesday night, so paying Oskar back was something he was more than happy to participate in.

But for now he smiled.

+

The session went on. Oskar thought the others were looking at him strangely, but as soon as he tried to meet their eyes they looked away. Most of all he would have liked to go home.

...
no
...
go . . .

Just go.

But Mr. Avila was watching over him, bolstering him with peppy comments, and there was kind of no possibility of leaving. And anyway: to be here was at least better than being at home.

When Oskar was done with the strength training he was so exhausted he didn't even have the energy to feel bad. He walked off to the showers, lagging a little behind the others, showering with his back facing the room. Not that it mattered. You still showered naked.

He stood for a while by the glass divide between the shower room and the pool, used his hand to make a small peephole in the condensation covering the glass, looked at the others jumping around in the pool, chasing each other, throwing balls. And it came over him again. Not a thought formulated in words, but as a virulent feeling:

I am alone. I am . .. completely alone.

Then Mr. Avila caught sight of him, waved for him to enter, to jump in. Oskar shuffled down the short staircase, walked over to the edge of the pool, and looked down into the chemically blue water. He had no spring left in his body, so he climbed in from the ladder, one step at a time and let himself be enveloped by the rather cold water.