Little Star

dressed in bulky clothes that hid their shape. As for make-up, it covered the entire spectrum-from Melinda, who had birds’ wings drawn in pen at the corners of her eyes, to Erika who wasn’t wearing any make-up at all, and who was so colourless in general that she was almost invisible. Teresa guessed that hardly any of them were joiners: they wouldn’t be members of any club or society.

But Ronja was the exception. She was the oldest in the group at nineteen, and looked like the sporty type: football, probably. She was wearing Adidas trousers and a windbreaker, she was slender and her hair was blonde and straight. A more athletic, socially adept version of Theres. Not the prettiest girl in the class, but a perfectly acceptable candidate to wear the crown. And she was the one who ate glass.

A common denominator united them, and it was probably only Teresa who was aware of it: the scent of the girls. They all smelled more or less the same. Hardly any of them used perfume, and those few did so sparingly. But that wasn’t the scent they had in common, it was what lay beneath it. Fear.

It had been Teresa’s own bodily odour for so many years that she recognised it immediately. She could probably have sniffed her way to each and every one of these girls if they were on the same bus. A bitter, sweetish smell with a hint of flammable liquid. Coca-Cola mixed with petrol.

As the girls shuffled closer to one another and the conversations got going, there was a change in the air around them. The security of the pack made the scent diminish. Their bodies, their skin, ceased to exude fear as the conversations intertwined to form a single, unified melody.

‘…and I can feel the whole thing just falling apart…my mum’s got a new bloke and I don’t like the way he looks at me…they said I couldn’t come even if I paid…he came home in the middle of the night and he had a knife…and even though I try my best in every way…shook my little brother and he ended up with brain damage… have to wear earphones all the time so nobody can hear…and when I’m walking along, it’s as if it’s somebody else walking along…that I was completely worthless, that I had no chance…tried to hide under the bed, which was just so fucking stupid…the music I listen to, my clothes, how I look, everything…that noise, when I hear that noise I know…as if I didn’t exist…little tiny pinpricks all the time…just to walk away, leave it all behind…nobody but me…’

Teresa turned towards the enclosure just in time to see the wolf clambering up onto his rock once more, folding its paws in front of it then looking down on the group of girls with its ears pricked, as if it were listening to their conversations. Teresa turned back to the others and pointed.

‘That wolf,’ she said. ‘It’s looking at us. It’s wondering who we are. Who are we?’

The conversations died away, and they all looked up at the grey figure lying calmly watching them. Judging by the size, Teresa guessed it was a female.

‘Because we are something, aren’t we?’ she went on. ‘Together we are something, although we don’t know what it is yet. Do you feel it too?’

While the girls were talking, Theres had sat there humming quietly to herself, but now the humming turned into words, flowing out of her mouth like a song. Her gaze was turned inwards, and her hands hovered in front of her as if she were carrying out some complex invocation of which her voice was a part. In a second they were all swept up in its rhythm, and several of the girls began to sway in time with the melody of her speech.

‘All those who are afraid must stop being afraid. No one has done wrong. No one will be alone. The big people want us. They will not have us. I do not understand. But we are strong now. I do not understand we. We. We. I am small. We are not small. We are the red that comes out. We are what they want. No one will be allowed to touch us.’

When the flow of words ceased, there was absolute silence, and all the girls sat gazing into space with unseeing eyes. Then the silence was broken by a muted clapping. It was Ronja, bringing her palms together three times, applauding.

Teresa pulled the wolf skin towards her and took the plate shears out of her rucksack. She cut a strip off the skin and gave it to Linn, who whispered, ‘Thank you,’ and rubbed the coarse fur over her cheek. Teresa carried on cutting and handing out strips until everyone had a piece. Some put it in their pocket, but most sat stroking the grey, dense hair as if it really was a body they held in their hands.

‘From now on,’ said Teresa, ‘we are the pack. Anyone who harms one of us, harms us all.’

The girls nodded and stroked the wolf skin they now shared. Suddenly Ronja laughed out loud. She rocked back and forth, howling with laughter and waving the strip of skin around. Teresa looked at her, listened to the sound of her laughter and recognised something from her time in the psychiatric unit, from the other inmates. Ronja was a combination of letters, a diagnosis. She had some kind of mental illness that Teresa couldn’t put a name to.

When Ronja had finished laughing, she kissed the piece of skin several times, then knotted it around her arm with the help of her teeth before turning to Teresa.

‘You said just now that we are something, although we don’t know what it is yet. I can tell you what we are. We’re a gang of losers who like your songs. And we’re dangerous. Seriously fucking dangerous.’

***

Over the next few weeks the group tried to find its direction. Apart from Theres and Teresa’s songs, there wasn’t much that linked them, no interest or activity on which to focus. They only thing they had was the feeling of necessity, the sense that they needed to meet and be together, but in every other way they were a drifting pack with no definite goal.

All of them wanted to be close to Theres. A contradictory mixture of the urge to defend and take care of this fragile girl, and the urge to venerate and fear her as something sent from heaven. They thirsted for her words, her voice when she occasionally sang, her mere presence.

And they thirsted for each other. Gradually they all spoke of the scent Teresa had been aware of during their first meeting. This was the only group where they felt safe. The fear that ruled their everyday lives faded away when they sat down together.

Teresa had begun to regard these Sunday gatherings as her real life, and the group as her family. The other days of the week were merely incidental; she longed constantly for the weekend when she would be with her family.

And yet there was something missing. Ronja said they were more like an encounter group than a pack. They all had their piece of wolf skin, some had even sewn it on their jackets, but where was this pack actually going, what was it going to do?

The third time they met, Linn, who had begun to pluck up the courage to speak, told them that she sometimes pretended she was dead. She mentioned it in passing, but struck an unexpected chord. It turned out that they had found a very clear common denominator. All of them, every single one of the girls, played that particular game.

So they began to play it together. Lying on the grass outside the wolf enclosure, they held each other’s hands, closed their eyes and whispered chants such as: ‘The grass is growing through our hearts’, ‘Our bodies are rotting and the worms are eating us from the inside’, ‘We are sinking through the earth and all is silent’. They could lie like that for a long time, and when they rose from their graves it was as if the world had become more alive.

Theres said it was good, but not right. When Teresa asked what she meant, the reply was that Teresa already knew.

Yes. She knew. But it was not the kind of knowledge she could share with the others. Irrespective of how much she valued their affinity, she dared not trust them in the same unconsidered way that Theres did.

Teresa would have liked to tell them, talk about her own experience and show them the scar on her stomach. How she had come to life and how her senses had been heightened, how ever since she had lived in a present that had not been accessible before. How this allowed her to sit in the group and really be there, to leave the group and still feel the quiver of life in the rustle of the leaves, the smell of exhaust fumes and the play of colours.

But she dared not tell them. The others were not in the same place as her. When they met it always took a while before they found their common voice, before the fear was driven out. The other six days of the week were stuck firmly to them, and in spite of everything they were just other people with parents and classmates.

So difficult to stay alive! She often thought about it, and remembered what she had been like. Never really