Little Star

In the living room Johannes’ games were strewn all over the coffee table with a half-empty packet of crisps next to them. Johannes slumped down on the sofa and offered her the packet; Teresa took a couple of crisps and sat down on the armchair.

Johannes spotted a box and grinned. ‘Shall we have a game of Tekken? Just for fun?’

Teresa shrugged her shoulders and Johannes slithered off the sofa to insert the game. Only now, seeing Johannes in this altered environment, did Teresa notice how much he had changed. His clothes hung loosely, his movements were casual and his smile had been freed from a pressure that said there was nothing to smile about. He just smiled.

‘Where’s your mum?’ she asked.

‘Some Spanish course, I think. Or dancing, I don’t know.’

Teresa tried to picture this. It was almost impossible. But if she needed final proof, she got it when her gaze fell on the hand-held vacuum cleaner that Johannes’ mother had used so assiduously in the past. It was covered in a thin layer of dust.

Johannes chucked her a handset and she manoeuvred adroitly through the menus and chose Kuma, the bear in the red T-shirt. To her surprise Johannes chose Lee Chaolan, who resembled a well-groomed male model more than anything. He used to go for Julia Chang, the woman with the unbreakable glasses.

As the intro began to play, Teresa pressed pause.

‘Johannes,’ she said. ‘Are you moving house?’

Johannes pushed back his hair, which he had allowed to grow. ‘Yes. Dad’s frittered away his money somehow, and now he wants half the house.’

‘What do you mean, half the house?’

‘Mum has to buy him out if we want to stay here, and she can’t do that.’

‘So where are you going to live?’

‘Dunno. In an apartment, maybe. In Osteryd. I mean, I’ll be starting Year 7 there anyway, so…what about you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Where will you be going to high school?’

‘Osteryd, I suppose.’

‘Great. We’ll see each other there, then. Maybe we’ll be in the same class.’

‘Yes…’

Teresa didn’t want to be in the same class as Johannes, and his nonchalant attitude almost made her want to cry. She wished she could go somewhere far, far away where no one knew her, and start all over again. With… yes, with Johannes. But it was too soon for that. And it was already too late.

‘Teresa?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are we playing, or what?’

She pressed the start button and the fight began. Kuma lumbered into the arena. Lee made his moves. Suddenly Teresa felt it was absolutely essential for her to win. With a frenzy that was unusual for her, her fingers flew over the buttons as she tried to achieve the combos she could still remember.

But it was no use. Without disturbing one hair in his perfectly groomed fringe, Lee threw Kuma around all over the place, kicked him and beat him until he lay flat out in his red T-shirt, with his nose pointing skywards.

Teresa’s cheeks burned and she just wanted to scream. This was totally unreal. In reality the bear would have torn the model to pieces, ripped his head from his body. The floor would have been covered in blood.

***

Johannes moved house in the middle of May. Teresa stood in the window of the box room on the second floor munching on a piece of crispbread with peanut butter as she watched the last removal van disappear down the drive. A fly was dancing against the glass, and the gritty paste in Teresa’s mouth became difficult to swallow. Then it was over. Somewhere in the house Maria was shouting for Teresa to come and try on her graduation dress.

The dress that had fitted perfectly in the middle of May didn’t fit quite so well in the middle of June. Teresa stood right at the back along with the rest of Year 6, miming the words to the traditional songs, Den blomstertid nu kommer and Barfotavisan. She saw the youngest children racing around or hopping impatiently on the spot. The summer was almost here.

Arvid and Olof had their end-of-year assemblies later in the week and Goran had to work, so Teresa’s family was represented by Maria, along with Goran’s parents Ingrid and Johan. There wasn’t much conversation afterwards as they sat on a blanket behind the football field having their picnic. Johan sat fingering the necklace made of plastic beads which he still wore, and Ingrid handed over a gift voucher for five hundred kronor.

It was a beautiful day, perfect for the end of the school year. Wispy clouds drifted across a picture postcard blue sky, and children’s laughter rang out in the warm air. Teresa sat cross-legged on the blanket and realised she was really happy. When Ingrid placed a hand on her knee and said, ‘Just think, you’ve got the whole glorious summer ahead of you,’ she answered in all honesty, ‘Yes, it’ll be lovely.’

She would never fully understand what happened the following day.

She and Johannes had agreed over the phone that she would come over to his new apartment. When she stepped out into the garden at ten o’clock in the morning, she was filled with something light and happy. It was another lovely day, and it would be nice to cycle the four kilometres to Osteryd. The seventy days of the summer holiday lay before her like empty, brightly coloured boxes, just waiting to be filled.

She had been given a new bike for her twelfth birthday just over six months earlier. Three gears-she didn’t want any more than that. She checked that the tyres were well pumped up before she jumped on and set off along the gravel track.

The stones crunched beneath the wheels and the breeze fanned her face as she sped along. She had to cycle a kilometre along the gravel track before she came out on the main road leading to Osteryd. When a bird chirruped in a tree close by, she clearly formulated the thought: I am a child on the first day of my summer holiday. I am cycling along a fine gravel track.

She looked up and saw the track snaking away between the fields. She stopped pedalling and just coasted along. I am a child and the summer holiday has just…

Something changed.

At first she thought it was a storm cloud that had drifted over and blocked the sun, the feeling was so strong. But the sky was virtually cloudless, and the sun was pouring down its light over the world.

So how come she suddenly thought the gravel track stretching out ahead of her disappeared into darkness in the distance? After all, she knew this stretch very well. Two hundred metres along the flat, then up a hill, then the field where the sheep were, then a gentle slope down to the main road. But that wasn’t what she could see now. She could see a track leading towards the great unknown, surrounded by vast expanses upon which her feet had never walked.

She had thought that the world consisted of a number of different places, and the roads between them. That was all that existed, her little planet. It was as if she had been swimming around in a little creek, and now she had suddenly been dropped in the middle of the sea, with no land in sight in any direction. She couldn’t get her breath, she gripped the handlebars tightly and braked. She rubbed her eyes.

There’s something wrong with my eyes. I can’t see properly.

She got off her bike and looked back in the direction she had come from. The track snaked off in the same way and disappeared behind a grove of elder trees. She no longer believed that her house was at the end of the track. Everything had been erased or was being erased behind her, and the contours were blurred.

Fear clutched at her heart. She was a small person cast out into the universe, and she knew nothing about anything.

Stop it. What are you doing?

The fear ebbed slightly. Perhaps she could talk herself round. She tried. It worked to a certain extent, but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that everything behind her had been erased. She hauled herself back onto her bike