Little Star

recommended, then got it back. Teresa had the unusual sense of being on home ground. She had read at least forty of the books on the shelves behind her, and they carried her like a silent cheer squad.

She could easily have made a fool of Agnes, with the home crowd behind her, but she hadn’t done it.

The encounter in the library didn’t make Teresa and Agnes friends-far from it. But it created a kind of secret mutual understanding. A week before the summer holidays Agnes told Teresa during the lunch break that she had now read everything by Szymborska. She wondered if Teresa had listened to Bright Eyes? Teresa said she hadn’t, and the next day Agnes brought in a CD of Lifted that she’d burned.

That was all it was. And perhaps that’s all there could be with Agnes. Even though she was popular, there was a kind of remoteness about her, a sense of distance between her and those around her which had nothing to do with superciliousness. It was as if she arrived in every moment three seconds after it had happened, and you never saw her sitting whispering with another girl, their heads close together. She wasn’t really there. It was impossible to say whether this was down to absent-mindedness, insecurity or something else. Teresa often found herself secretly studying Agnes. It didn’t make her any the wiser.

To Teresa’s amazement, not only did she like Bright Eyes-or Conor Oberst, as she discovered he was actually called-she thought he was absolutely brilliant. That fragile voice and those dark, well-written lyrics.

For the first time in her life she bought a CD, even though she already had the copy Agnes had burned for her. Bright Eyes was the first artist she thought deserved that respect. He became her constant companion during the long summer holiday.

***

It must have happened during the summer. At any rate it was a done deal when Teresa started Year 8 in the autumn. Agnes and Johannes were an item. She didn’t know how it had happened, but she saw them kissing in the playground before they went off to their respective classes for registration.

The sight created such a storm inside her that her analytical ability went haywire. She couldn’t work out how she felt, or why. Therefore she took the picture of the two of them, screwed it up and tried to toss it into a dark corner right at the back of her head where she wouldn’t have to deal with it.

It didn’t go too well. That same evening she was lying on her bed listening to Bright Eyes. The song said it was the first day of his life, that he was glad he hadn’t died before he met someone, and Teresa felt hot tears of fury spring to her eyes.

She plugged the MP3 player into her computer and deleted every single Bright Eyes track. Then she deleted the entire playlist. Unfortunately she had also bought every one of his CDs. She gathered them up, went down to the cellar and placed them on the chopping block. Only then did she realise how ridiculous her behaviour was, and lowered the axe.

I’m not going to give them the satisfaction.

Bright Eyes was not Agnes’ property. He couldn’t be, since Agnes probably didn’t understand a single word of the lyrics. What could those lines of alienation, of nonchalant despair, possibly mean to Agnes? Nothing. They were just cool words. Cool words to listen to with Johannes, curled up together in Agnes’ bed…

Teresa put down the axe, went up to her room and replaced the CDs in the rack.

She sat down at the computer. On the Friends discussion forum for victims of bullying she wrote a long contribution in defence of school massacres. Which weapons could be used in Sweden, where it was so difficult to get hold of firearms. She was expecting lots of replies.

Unfortunately her contribution was removed before anyone had time to respond, so instead she used a different alias and wrote a real tear-jerker about the terrible bullying she had been subjected to, notes with horrible things written on them stapled to her body. They didn’t dare remove that, and she got lots and lots of sympathy which didn’t touch her at all.

As the autumn swept in with falling leaves and chilly afternoons, it was clear that Agnes and Johannes were serious about their relationship. Teresa had never thought otherwise.

They were always together at break and lunchtime, and had to put up with a certain amount of envious teasing, which they ignored completely. After a while the scornful comments dried up, and soon the two of them were an institution, a fact that simply had to be accepted.

Teresa remained neutral. Johannes said hello to her in the corridor and sometimes they chatted for a while, with or without Agnes. Eventually Teresa found she had done the same as everyone else, at least on one level: she had accepted the situation. It was kind of completely natural for those two to be together. You only had to look at them to see that it was as if they were made for each other.

On another level it made you want to throw up. But then again, that was a different story.

It eventually got to the point where an outside observer might regard Johannes, Agnes and Teresa as a little trio. Not in the way that Johannes and Agnes were a couple, but Teresa was the third person who was seen around them, who talked to them more than anyone else.

In her loneliness Teresa came up with ideas like poking herself in the eye with a hand blender or banging her head against a wall until it split open.

At the end of September, something happened that was to change a lot of things.

Teresa’s family were all caught up in different activities and interests; they often ate at different times, all living in a world of their own under the same roof. There was only one thing that brought them all together, and that was Idol. Arvid and Olof started watching first, and one by one the rest of the family were drawn into the talent show’s enchanted circle.

Perhaps it was a subconscious emergency measure. Without Idol the family would probably never have sat down together, could maybe even have been described as dysfunctional, in need of help. But now there was Idol, and in the absence of anything else it had turned into a little family occasion, with tasty snacks and lively conversation of a kind that never happened in their everyday existence.

It was on Idol that Teresa saw Tora for the first time. Tora Larsson from Stockholm. Even her audition was an unusual story. Boys and girls would come in and sing like broken cement mixers, then be absolutely furious with the judges when they didn’t get any further. Or they sang well, and were ecstatic when they found out they’d got through.

Tora was different. Small and thin, with long blonde hair, she walked into the studio and fixed her eyes on a point above the judges’ heads. She said. ‘My name is Tora Larsson. I am going to sing.’

The judges laughed indulgently and one of them said, ‘And are you going to sing something special for us?’

Tora shook her head, and the judges pulled faces as if they felt sorry for a very small child. ‘So what’s the name of the song you’re going to sing?’

‘I don’t know.’

The judges looked at each other and seemed to be on the point of asking someone to come and remove the girl. Then she began to sing. Teresa recognised the song, but couldn’t place it.

A thousand and one nights I lay alone,

Alone and dreaming

Dreaming of a friend

A friend like you…

The usual thing was for the optimistic contestants to sing a contemporary song, hoping that a little of the stardust from the original artists would rub off on them. Not Tora. Unless Teresa was very much mistaken, this song was way past its sell-by date.

But the voice, the voice. And the way she sang. Teresa sat motionless on the sofa, and it was as if that voice went straight through her breastbone. Tora Larsson didn’t make any gestures, didn’t try to play any kind of part. She simply sang, and it moved Teresa even though she didn’t understand why. Even the judges sat there lit up like candles for the minute or so she was singing. Then the voice fell silent, and they came to and looked at each other.

‘You’re definitely through,’ said one of them. ‘You have a voice like…I don’t know how to describe it. If certain artists could kill for that voice, we’d have a bloodbath here. You’re through, one hundred per cent. But you