Little Star

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 Goran 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 quickly 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.’