Little Star

Theres nodded. Then she shook her head. ‘That’s not good. A lot of people is not good. I know.’

‘No. And secondly. You are not going to end up in a loony bin. And if you do, I’ll be coming with you. We’re both just as screwed up, OK? Whatever happens to you, happens to me. That’s just the way it is. But this business with Max Hansen…I don’t know what we’re going to do.’

‘We’ll have to make him dead.’

Teresa laughed. ‘I should think he’ll be bloody careful around us from now on. But we’ll have to think of something.’

‘Yes. That’s good. Now let go of my hand.’

Teresa didn’t let go. When Theres tried to pull away, she held on more tightly. ‘Why don’t you like it when I take your hand?’

‘You’re not to take my hand. It’s my hand.’

The leap of logic distracted Teresa, and Theres pulled away and stood up. Teresa stayed where she was, looking at her own hands. Take my hand. People took things from one another. She was not to take Theres’ hand. Of course.

She hoisted up the rucksack again and went ahead of Theres along Sollidsbacken, outside the railings. On the miniature map she had printed off from the internet the distances had looked quite short, but when they reached the Solliden entrance she realised they had almost a kilometre still to go. A bus passed on Djurgardsvagen; presumably the buses went all the way. She would bear that in mind for next time. If there was a next time.

They turned off onto Sirishovsvagen. Teresa looked at her map, and once they had passed the Bellman gate they walked another hundred metres along the wire fence, peering through the netting.

‘They’re not here,’ said Theres.

Teresa looped her fingers through the wire and slowly scanned the terrain. She had imagine a more open area, but the wolf enclosure was a landscape of trees with new leaves, bushes and stones strewn over hillsides. Their natural environment. She knew there should be seven wolves in there, but there was no sign of any of them.

Her gaze stopped at an oddly shaped rock, and she gasped. It was a block of stone, but its strange shape was due to the fact that there was a wolf lying right on top. It was lying completely still, looking in their direction.

‘There,’ she said, pointing it out to Theres. ‘There.’

Theres stood right next to her, pressing her body against the fence so that she could get as close as possible. They were caught in the wolf’s field of vision, and a faint breeze was blowing towards their backs. Presumably the wolf had picked up their scent. Teresa’s stomach flipped over. Right now you’re thinking about us. What are you thinking? How do you think?

They stood there for a long time, clinging to the fence and looking at the wolf looking back at them. They were together. Then the wolf began to lick the fur on its paws, and left them.

‘Why are you unhappy?’ asked Theres.

Only then did Teresa discover that her eyes were wet, and tears had run down her cheeks.

‘I’m not unhappy,’ she said. ‘I’m happy. Because I’ve arrived.’

They spread blankets on the ground in front of the wolf enclosure. Before Teresa pulled the wolf skin out of her rucksack, she glanced over at the rock. The wolf had left its post, which was a good thing, because as she placed it in the centre it felt like a kind of blasphemy. As if she were not worthy.

She and Theres sat down on the blankets with their backs to the fence and waited. In the message calling everyone to the meeting, they had explained that Teresa who wrote the lyrics would also be coming. She didn’t feel like Teresa who wrote the lyrics. She was a little lone wolf, and a strange pack was moving closer.

‘Theres?’ she asked. ‘Have you played them all the songs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you told them about yourself?’

‘Yes.’

‘Lennart and Laila and…everything?’

‘Yes. Everything.’

It was as she suspected, and there was really only one question she wanted to ask. She was afraid of the question because she was afraid of the answer, but she asked it anyway.

‘Theres. What is it that makes me different from them?’

‘You came first. You wrote the words.’

‘But otherwise we’re similar?’

‘Yes. Very similar.’

Teresa lowered her head. What had she thought? That she was unique and the only person in the whole world with whom Theres could have contact, the only person who could love Theres? Yes. That’s exactly what she had thought, until she walked into Theres’ apartment and found the pack gathered. Now she had the final confirmation that she had been an idiot.

Very similar.

The first group of seven girls was approaching from the bus stop. There was one consolation to be found in Theres’ painful honesty: perhaps the pack wasn’t as alien as she had thought. She watched the seven girls, and even from a distance there was already something she recognised in their movements, the way they walked, as if their footsteps might damage the ground.

Teresa undid her boots, pulled the laces tighter and said, ‘But they haven’t made anyone dead, have they? None of them?’

‘No.’

‘And do you think they could?’

‘Yes. All of them.’

Teresa looked at the little group who had now reached the fence, and her eyes narrowed. A new plan took its first uncertain steps in her brain. Then she waved and smiled.

All of them.

When the girls came over to say hello, Teresa felt elevated in a way she had never experienced before. She was treated with respect, as if she were giving an audience. She couldn’t help it; she enjoyed it. She had never been the focus of so much positive attention.

They praised certain phrasing or individual lines, some said that her lyrics described exactly how they felt themselves, and that they wished they could write like that. After a few comments in that vein Teresa sought refuge in false modesty, and said that it wasn’t really anything special, anyone could have…and so on.

In spite of the fact that the other girls regarded her as an authority, they still spoke the same language. It was a different matter with Theres. They treated her like something made of the finest porcelain, speaking quietly and not daring to touch her. When Theres spoke they listened, their bodies tense with concentration.

What Theres said was nothing remarkable, but of course Teresa knew how it worked. Theres had the ability to say exactly the right thing to the right person, the self-evident truth that that particular person needed, expressed with that elusive, subjugating tone in her voice that made it into more than truth, into The Truth.

After exchanging greetings and chatting for a while, the girls sat down around the wolf skin and immersed themselves in their own thoughts, or ventured some tentative comment.

Teresa hadn’t expected it, but when they were all assembled and she looked around the group-how they sat, the way they moved their hands, how they looked-she concluded that she was probably the strongest person there. She had nothing to be afraid of.

On the other hand, she was the one who had known Theres the longest, the one sitting by her side. What would she have been without Theres? A little grey mouse, scurrying along by the wall and trying to be invisible. Maybe. Or maybe not. In any case, she looked at the others with tenderness in her eyes. When little Linn started to look as if she might burst into tears, Teresa felt no jealousy as Theres crept over to her and whispered in her ear until she was calm again.

Apart from Ronja, none of these girls would pick up much support in the voting for prom queen. Several of them were a few kilos overweight, like Teresa, and about half had piercings: lips, nose or eyebrows. Beata’s appearance was Asiatic, and she was the only one who seemed to have naturally black hair; both Annas, Linn and Caroline had different-coloured roots.

Only Cecilia was actually fat, and she hid her body in coarse military clothing, but most of the others were