Little Star

‘What did you say?’

‘I love you, Teresa. Let go of my hand.’

Without noticing, Teresa had squeezed Theres’ hand tightly when she heard the words that had never been spoken to her before. She let go of the hand, leaned back and closed her eyes.

But in spite of the difference between them, they needed each other as the day needs the night. As the water needs the person who drinks it, and as the wanderer needs the water.

Teresa didn’t know how the story went on, or how it would end. But it was hers, and she wanted to be a part of it.

***

When Jerry got back to Svedmyra, he was feeling happier than he had for a long time. Everything had gone according to expectations, even if Paris hadn’t been the voracious lover he had hoped for. She had mostly lain still, gazing into his eyes in a way that paradoxically felt much too intimate. When he came she bit him hard on the shoulder, then began to cry.

It brought back so many things, she explained as they lay smoking afterwards. They would have to give it time. It would get better. Jerry stroked her curves and said that was all he wanted. Time with her. All the time in the world.

When he stepped into the lift her skin and her soft flesh were still there within him like a body memory. He had been woken by her hand on his penis, and had made love with her again, half-asleep, gently; with no tears. She was wonderful, he was wonderful, everything was wonderful.

He had been careless, he knew that. He had hardly given Theres a thought since he went home with Paris. But that was the way things were now; it would all work out, or it wouldn’t. He was in love for the first time in his life, and if everything else went to hell, then so be it.

However, he still felt a stab of anxiety when he inserted the key and realised that the door wasn’t locked. He walked in and shouted, ‘Theres? Theres? Are you here? Theres?’

The DVD cases for Saw and Hostel were lying on the table in the living room. His own mattress was on the floor next to Theres’ bed. Breadcrumbs and an empty baby food jar on the kitchen table. No note anywhere; he went around like a CSI technician trying to reconstruct the girls’ activities before they disappeared.

He sat down at the kitchen table, swept the crumbs into his hand and ate them. There was nothing he could do but wait. He sat there looking out of the window, and the whole thing felt like a dream. Theres had never existed. The events of the last year had never happened. Would he really live with a fourteen-year-old girl who had killed his parents and who didn’t exist in the eyes of society? The very idea was just absurd.

He slipped his shirt off his shoulder and studied the marks left by Paris’ teeth, glowing red against his pale skin. That had clearly happened, at least. Which was a good thing. He got up and drank a glass of water, wondering what he ought to do, but came to no conclusion.

When the doorbell rang ten minutes later he was sure it was the police or some authority figure coming to put a stop to everything, one way or another. But it was the girls.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’

Theres slunk into the apartment without answering, and Teresa pointed at her wrist, where she appeared to be wearing an invisible watch. ‘I have to go. My train leaves in half an hour.’

‘Yes, that’s all very well, but where have you been?’

Teresa was on her way down the stairs, and answered over her shoulder, ‘Out.’

When he went back inside, Theres was busy dragging his mattress out of her room. He picked up the other end and helped her to carry it, then sat down on his bed.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Start talking. What have you done?’

‘We made songs. Teresa did the words. They were good.’

‘OK. Then you watched horror films and then you both slept in your room because you got scared…’

Theres shook her head. ‘Not scared. Happy.’

‘Yeah, right. But what did you do this morning?’

‘We went to see Max Hansen.’

‘The agent, the one who wrote? What the fuck did you do that for?’

‘I’m going to make a CD.’

Theres was standing in front of him, and Jerry grabbed hold of her hand. ‘Theres, for God’s sake. You can’t do things like that. You can’t just go off like that without me. You get that, don’t you?’

Theres pulled her hand away and examined it, as if she wanted to make sure it was unharmed after the contact. Then she said, ‘Teresa was with me. That was better.’

***

Teresa didn’t know how much of her was sitting on the train to Osteryd. It felt like less than half. She had left the essential parts in Theres’ safekeeping in Stockholm, and the thing filling the seat on the train was no more than a functioning sack of blood and internal organs.

It was intoxicating and quite unpleasant. She was no longer in control of herself. The fine hairs on her forearms missed Theres’ presence, the warmth of the body by her side. Yes. When she examined her longing, she discovered that was exactly how it looked: she wanted to be next to Theres. They didn’t have to do or say anything, they could just sit next to one another in silence as long as they were together.

She had never experienced anything like it, this purely physical perception of a lack, an awareness that something big and important was missing. She wasn’t blind. She realised that there was something significantly wrong with Theres, perhaps she even had some kind of brain damage. She didn’t do anything in the same way as normal people, she didn’t even eat normal food.

But ‘normal’? What was so good about ‘normal’?

The people in Teresa’s class were more or less normal. She didn’t like them. She wasn’t interested in the other girls’ tacky little secrets, she thought the boys were just stupid with their hoodies and their baseball caps, their pimply skin. None of them had courage. They walked like cowards and talked like cowards.

She could imagine them all in a deep hole, lined up just as they would be for a class photo, but with their hands and feet bound. She herself would be standing up at the top next to a huge pile of earth. Then she would throw one shovelful at a time into the hole. It would take many hours, but eventually it would be done. Nothing could be seen, nothing could be heard, and the world would be not one jot poorer.

Ten minutes before the train was due to arrive in Osteryd, Teresa started to smile. She gave a big smile, she gave a little smile, she gave a medium-sized smile. Trained up her muscles as she constructed a role for herself.

When Goran picked her up at the station, the rehearsal was over. She was the lonely girl who had found a good friend at last. They had watched films and talked half the night and had a brilliant time. The smile and the glow around her were firmly in place, and Goran felt much better when he saw his daughter’s changed mood. Teresa noticed how credible she was, and it wasn’t really difficult because it was all true, on a simple level.

As soon as she got home she checked her emails and found a message from Theres in her Inbox, ‘hi come back soon write more words to the songs’. Four MP3 files without titles were attached. Teresa opened them and found they were four of the melodies she had liked best.

She got to work. After working for a couple of hours she watched the clip of Theres on Idol several times, then carried on writing. When she was on her way to bed, she remembered the DVD from Max Hansen’s camera. She took it out of her bag and stood there turning it over in her hands for a long time. Then she put it in an unmarked case and slid it into the CD rack.

The role she had invented for herself could also be used in school. She was less frosty if anyone spoke to her, and on the whole displayed a less pugnacious attitude. Not that anyone actually cared, but the friction lessened slightly.