Little Star

by John Ajvide Lindqvist

  It took a couple of long conversations with Maria, in which Göran was on Teresa’s side, before she was given permission to go. Teresa, forced to resort to a ploy that was beneath her dignity, said, ‘It’s the only thing I enjoy.’ Maria gave in, and Teresa felt vaguely grubby. But she was allowed to go, that was the important thing. As long as she remembered to take her tablets.

  This was Maria’s new hobby horse. Since Teresa’s stay in the unit her attitude had changed from being completely ignorant and therefore deeply sceptical of psychiatric drugs to regarding Fontex as God’s gift to mankind. It was thanks to the pills that Teresa was back home and functioning, that they didn’t have to have a depressed child. Teresa wasn’t quite so sure, but for the time being she carried on taking them three times a day.

  On the Saturday she packed her tablets, her new-found friend Ekelöf and her MP3 player. Bright Eyes had been a constant companion during her illness, and by this stage she knew every nuance, every remarkable sound on the tracks on ‘Digital Ash in a Digital Urn’. He still had it.

  The train journey was a means of transport, nothing else. She had a distant memory of previous journeys when she had felt anxious or excited or wistful. Not any more. When she had written to Theres that she missed her it was, like so many other things, true and not true. She was sitting on a train. She would be reunited with Theres, and what had been divided would become one again. This was right and proper, but no reason for anxiety or hope. It just was.

  But still. When she got off at Svedmyra and reached the shop on the corner where she could look up at Theres’ balcony, it was like colour. As if a little colour had come into her empty space. What colour? She closed her eyes and tried to work it out, because this was a welcome feeling, a real feeling.

  Violet.

  It was dark violet, tending towards purple. She hoisted her bag up on her shoulder and headed for Theres’ door, dark violet Teresa.

  It was Jerry who answered. He seemed irritated, but when he saw Teresa he gave a big smile and even touched her shoulder, almost ushering her into the apartment.

  ‘Hi Teresa,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while. Theres said you’d been ill—what’s been the matter?’

  ‘I…’

  Teresa went blank whenever she tried to describe what had happened in simple terms. She had never been given a neat diagnosis that she could just trot out. Jerry waited for a while, then asked:

  ‘Was it something to do with your head?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. But you’re better now?’

  ‘Yes. I’m better now.’

  ‘Cool. Theres is in there. There’s been so much going on around here, it’s just crazy. You wouldn’t believe it.’

  Teresa assumed he was referring to all the fuss about ‘Fly’. She hadn’t read any newspapers, or listened to the radio or gone on the internet for over two months, and had no idea what had become of the little song they had put together in a different life.

  As Teresa approached Theres’ room, she thought there must be a television on somewhere. She could hear the murmur of voices talking quietly. Behind her Jerry said, ‘Squeeze in, as they say.’ Teresa stopped dead in the doorway, and every scrap of colour drained away from her. Regardless of what she had hoped or not hoped would happen when she came to visit Theres, she hadn’t expected this.

  The room was full of girls of Teresa’s own age. Theres was sitting in the middle of the bed with a girl on either side of her, and five more were sitting on the floor. They were all looking at Theres, who seemed to be finishing an explanation with the words, ‘You will die. First. Then you will live. Then no one can touch you. Then no one can hurt you. If anyone wants to hurt you, you must make them dead. Then it is yours.’

  The girls sat open-mouthed, listening to the words flowing in a rhythmic stream from Theres’ mouth. If Teresa hadn’t been so shocked, she would have been carried along too. She had been there, she had been the one to whom Theres directed her words. The girls in the room were like her, and they had replaced her. She couldn’t see any faces, just a shapeless group of enemies.

  Theres caught sight of her and said, ‘Teresa.’

  Teresa whispered, ‘Theres’—more of a whimper than a reply—and the chainsaw started up with a furious roar, hacking and cutting to chop off the lead weight that was dropping through her body, trying to drag her down, down. Down on her knees, down on her face, down through the floor, down into the ground.

  I am nothing. Not even to you.

  One of the girls sitting on the floor got up and came over. She was an emo girl about the same age as Teresa. Black hair with a pink fringe, full-on eye make-up, a piercing in her lower lip and stick-thin legs in skinny jeans. ‘Hi. Miranda.’

  A fragile hand was extended towards Teresa. The nails were painted black. Teresa looked at the outstretched hand. It was all about to go wrong. She could feel it. Chainsaw and medication or not: the fire blanket was about to be thrown over her. It was here in the room with her now.

  ‘Are you Teresa?’ asked Miranda. ‘I really love your lyrics. All of them.’

  Teresa couldn’t shake the hand, because her arms were locked around her stomach as she concentrated on trying to breathe.

  Your lyrics. All of them.

  Theres had played the songs to these girls. Their songs. Their secrets.

  She clutched her bag tightly and rushed to the door, ran down the stairs and carried on running until she reached the subway station. The train rumbled in and Teresa sat down on the disabled seat right in the corner, making herself as small as possible.

  It was over now. It was really over now, and the only voices that existed were the voices under the earth:

  I became the last piece of the jigsaw

  The piece that doesn’t fit anywhere, the picture complete without me.

  ALL THE GIRLS

  What does it take to break a person?

  Torturers and interrogators would be able to provide statistics. This many nights without sleep, this many needles, this much water, this voltage of current on this many occasions.

  But there is considerable variation in people’s ability to withstand torture. Sometimes one can achieve the desired result simply by showing the instruments and explaining what is to be done with them. Sometimes it takes weeks; one may be forced to restart a heart which has given out from the pain, and even then one may not manage to break the subject down.

  However, it is presumably possible to discern some kind of average. This many needles, this many blows to the soles of the feet, before most people are sufficiently destroyed to give up what they once held most dear.

  But in everyday life?

  After all, even a normal life contains its quota of pain and disappointment. The difference is that these are not mechanically applied, but are mainly to be found on the emotional plane, and are therefore even more unpredictable. Some people seem able to tolerate just about anything, while others fall apart at the least setback. You never know. Something which is devastating to one person can be no more than a shrug of the shoulders to another, who in turn is shattered by something that others perceive as trivial.

  On top of all this, the situation can vary from day to day, even for the same person. It must be hell to be a torturer with only the instruments of everyday life as your resources for finding the breaking point.

  Teresa did not fall down dead, nor did she do anything to make that happen. She shuffled her clumsy body along, bought a ticket at the central station, rang home and asked to be picked up in Österyd. Then she sat and stared at the arrival and departure board. She didn’t read anything, she didn’t listen to any music, she didn’t think.

  If anyone who didn’t know her had seen her getting on the train, that person would have seen a girl getting on the train. If anyone who knew her had seen her taking her seat, that person would have seen Teresa taking her seat. After all, nothing had really happened from the world’s point of view, except that a girl had given up all hope. Hard
ly even worth mentioning.

  When she arrived in Österyd, she didn’t do a very good job of playing the role of herself. Göran was worried, and asked if she’d taken her tablets. She had taken her tablets. She would always take her tablets. That was what she would do from now on: she would eat, drink, sleep and take her tablets.

  When she sat down at the computer in her room, she didn’t weigh up the pros and cons. She simply did it. She knew Theres’ password, and she hacked into her email account. As she suspected there were hundreds of messages from a couple of dozen addresses. Girls who had heard ‘Fly’ and got in touch with Theres, and Theres had replied and invited them to Svedmyra.

  The tone of the messages became more reverential as time went on. It was clear that these girls looked up to Theres as an idol in the original meaning of the word. An icon, a focus for prayer.

  From a few odd sentences such as, ‘I’d kill my parents too if I only had the nerve’ and ‘I feel as if I grew up in a cellar too’, Teresa realised that Theres had told them. Everything she had shared only with Teresa was now public property. At least for those who worshipped Theres.

  Teresa took out the DVD of Max Hansen in the hotel room and sat for a long time, looking at herself in its shiny surface. She would post the film on the net. She had no idea what the consequences would be, but in the end it would probably harm Theres. Create problems for her. Make her into something other than the lovely girl singing the beautiful song that wasn’t even her own.

  Teresa slipped the DVD into the computer and double clicked to open it. Click, click. A few more clicks and everything would change for Theres.

  Instead she took out the DVD, meticulously scratched it all over with a ballpoint pen, then threw it in the waste paper basket. She took out her mobile and deleted every picture of Theres. She logged into her own email account and deleted all the old messages from Theres. A new one had arrived an hour earlier. She deleted that one without even reading it.

  Then she leaned forward on her chair, rubbing her temples as she tried to delete the images of Theres from the hard drive in her brain. It was more difficult, and the effort made her start thinking about Theres. She would have to live with the images. They would probably fade, little by little.

  The images did not fade. Teresa lived through the days and weeks that followed with a Theres-shaped space inside her that just grew and grew. In the end the space was the same shape as her body, and it was empty. The emptiness was nothing new, it was the emptiness that had put her in bed, sent her to the psychiatric unit and given her pills to take.

  But even emptiness has its topography, its smell and its taste. This was a different emptiness. It echoed with Theres, and it hurt. Sometimes it felt as if Teresa consisted only of pain and absence, as if they were what kept her upright.

  She tried out what remedies she could think of. She tried self-harming. Sitting in the old cave where she used to spend time with Johannes, she cut herself with pieces of glass she found in the forest. It gave her a moment’s relief, but after a few days she gave up. It didn’t last.

  She tried starving herself, hiding away the food served up at the kitchen table, until she was found out. Then she started sticking her fingers down her throat in the bathroom after she had eaten. That brought no relief either, and she gave up the experiment.

  She tried taking more tablets, eating more food, drinking more soft drinks. The soft drinks helped a bit. The moment she put a glass of cold Trocadero to her lips everything felt OK, and went on feeling OK for the first few gulps. She drank more fizzy drinks.

  While all this was going on, she kept up with her school work. She developed the trick of creating a tunnel from her head to the teacher or the book. As long as she managed to keep the tunnel intact, she could maintain her concentration.

  At the end of March there was the class party. Not the kind that’s arranged by the school, where the adult gaze damps down the festivities, but a real class party. Mimmi’s parents had gone to Egypt for a week and she had the house to herself. Perhaps the party was a kind of revenge; Mimmi would have liked to go with them but she had to stay at home because of her poor grades.

  The whole class was invited, along with a few other people, and it didn’t occur to anyone to exclude Teresa. Jenny might have her hangers on, but not everyone thought it was a bad thing that her nose had been rearranged, and despite the fact that Teresa didn’t have anyone she could call a friend, a few people at least had a silent regard for her as the dark point that allows the rest of the picture to shine. She could come to the party.

  Teresa went to the party for the same reason she did everything these days. Because she could. Because it was there. Because it made no difference what she did in any case. She might as well sit on a sofa at Mimmi’s house as on a chair in her bedroom.

  As she approached the house she heard ‘Toxic’ pulsating through the walls, and through the living room window she could see a couple of Britney clones moving slowly, like water weed in an aquarium. Jenny and Ester. Teresa felt neither unease nor anticipation, but an exhaustion came over her. She just didn’t have the strength.

  She put down the plastic bag containing a bottle of Trocadero and two cans of beer and sat down on the steps. ‘Toxic’ was followed by that song by The Ark that everybody thought was going to win Eurovision next weekend. Teresa sat listening, surrounded by cheerful pop songs about angst, then got up to go home. She heard a whistle behind her.

  The light was on in the garage and the door was open. Micke was sitting just inside, waving her over. He had a cardboard box next to him. As Teresa went over, he pointed at her plastic bag. ‘What have you got?’

  Teresa showed him her cans of beer and her Trocadero. Micke shook his head and told her to sit down, then took a bottle out of his box, opened it and handed it to her. Teresa looked at the label. Bacardi Breezer with melon.

  ‘I thought it was only girls who drank this stuff,’ she said.

  ‘What the fuck do you know about it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Micke clinked his bottle against hers, and they drank. Teresa thought it was delicious, even nicer than Trocadero. When they had emptied the bottles, Micke said, ‘Okaaay. So are you ready to partaaaay?’

  ‘No.’

  Micke laughed. ‘OK. Let’s have another then.’

  He gave her a cigarette, and this time Teresa didn’t even have to make an effort not to cough. The alcopop had smoothed a soft channel in her throat, and the smoke slid down without prickling.

  ‘You know what, Teresa,’ said Micke. ‘I like you. You’re kind of weird. You’re completely different from…Chip ‘n’ Dale, for example.’

  ‘Chip ‘n’ Dale?’

  ‘You know. Jenny and Ester. Chip ‘n’ Dale. With their bunches and all the rest of it. Bling-bling and the whole fucking Christmas tree thing going on.’

  Teresa hadn’t thought it could happen; she was so completely unprepared for the laugh that burst out of her that she started coughing as it collided with a swig of alcohol on the way down. Micke thumped her on the back and said, ‘Nice and calm, nice and calm now.’

  They finished their cigarettes and emptied their bottles, and the incredible thing was that that was exactly how Teresa felt: nice and calm. Bearing in mind all the different kinds of alcohol Göran had at home, it was strange that Teresa had never considered it as a drug to ease her troubles. She looked at the bottle in her hand. Strange, bordering on idiotic. This actually worked.

  She didn’t feel drunk, just elated; she couldn’t remember when she had last felt like this. When they got up to go in and join the party, Teresa grabbed hold of Micke’s hand, and he moved away with a grin.

  ‘Get it together,’ he said. ‘You’re cool aren’t you?’

  No, Teresa wasn’t cool. But it didn’t really matter. She stayed a little way behind Micke as they went up the steps and into the party, then they split up. Five minutes later Teresa sneaked into the garage and q
uickly knocked back another Bacardi Breezer. Then she went inside again.

  Johannes was sitting on his own on the sofa, and Teresa flopped down next to him.

  ‘Hi. Where’s Agnes?’

  Johannes folded his arms. ‘She’s coming later. I think.’

  ‘Why isn’t she here now?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know? I don’t know what she’s doing.’

  ‘Of course you do. You’re an item.’

  ‘And what if we’re not? Are you pissed, by the way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sound pissed.’

  ‘I’m just a little bit happy. Aren’t I allowed to be a little bit happy?’

  Johannes shrugged, and Teresa grabbed a handful of cheese puffs out of a bowl, munching them as she sank back on the sofa and looked around the room. With a few exceptions they weren’t too bad after all, the people in her class. She looked at Leo and remembered the time he helped her fix her bicycle chain when it came off. She looked at Mimmi and remembered they’d quite enjoyed doing a Swedish project together. And so on.

  For the first time in ages a faint longing stirred inside her. She wanted to join in, if only a little bit. Get closer, be part of things, do what the others did. A part of her knew that she actually didn’t want to and couldn’t anyway, but right now that was the way she felt and because it was pleasant, she stayed with the feeling.

  ‘I sometimes wonder,’ said Johannes, who hadn’t spoken for a while.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t moved house.’

  Teresa waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, she helped him out. ‘You turned into a bit of a dude after that.’