She throws her arms out.
“Everyone wants to be heroes, Alice! Everyone wants to run around fixing everything, but this isn’t a movie! It isn’t one of your grandma’s stories! Just because we’re in Silvertjärn doesn’t mean we know how the story ends. Tone blew up our vans. You say she isn’t violent, that she’s sick, and I buy that she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but you have no idea what she’s capable of right now! What do you think is going to happen? That if you whisper softly and sweetly to her, appeal to her inner goodness, that she’ll just snap out of it? That isn’t how it works!”
Emmy runs her fingers through her hair in frustration. I get to my feet and open my mouth to reply, but she starts again:
“I’m just trying to be pragmatic, Alice. I’m trying to be an adult. Because one of us has to be, OK? One of us has to have a foot in the real world.”
“Yes,” I spit out, seven years of poison in my voice. “Pragmatic and adult. That’s always you, isn’t it? It’s never worth fighting for anyone, sticking your neck out. Trying to save them. No, way better to just give up and move on—right?”
Emmy is staring at me.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” she asks.
“I knew this was a mistake,” I say, chuckling impotently, hopelessly, to myself. “It’s my fault, I know. Because I knew what you’re like. I knew, and still I asked you to be part of this project. I thought the worst that could happen would be you doing a bad job. Look, I get that you don’t give a shit about this movie, and I can live with that. But I can’t sit back and let you try and make us abandon…” My voice cracks. I shake my head and try to go on, but for a moment my vocal cords betray me.
“But that’s just what you do, isn’t it? You abandon people when they need you most. I don’t even know why I’m so surprised. But you can’t make me do the same thing, Emmy. You can’t make me be like you.”
It should feel good to finally say this. But all I feel is tired, tired and sad, and when I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand I realize I’m crying.
When Emmy speaks, her voice is dry.
“Is that really how you remember it?”
I shake my head.
“How else should I remember it?” I whisper. “Please, tell me. Tell me about this real world of yours. You were always good at that—at telling me whatever I felt was wrong.”
Emmy shakes her head. When she looks at me, her eyes are glistening.
“What do you think I should have done, Alice?” she asks. “Please. Tell me what I could have done that I didn’t do. I tried everything. I loved you, Alice.” Her lips quiver as she says it. “You were like a sister to me. Do you have any idea how painful it was to see you like that? To see you contract, shrink down until you could hardly get out of bed? Do you even remember that you slept in my bed for three weeks, refusing to shower because you said the water hurt your skin too much?”
“Are you really telling me it was hard for you?” I ask, half laughing, abrasive.
“Of course it was!” she says, an outburst that bounces off the walls in the small room. “OF COURSE it was hard for me, too! You were my best friend, and you were wasting away, and I didn’t know what to do! I booked you appointments at the health center, but you refused to go! I spoke to the student counselor to stop you getting kicked off the program! I did everything I could, but it was never enough. Nothing worked. You didn’t want to talk to anyone, didn’t want any medication. You didn’t want to get help. Didn’t want to … live.”
She stumbles over the last word, as though it’s too big for her mouth.
“Alice, the first time you said you wanted to die, I called my mom and just cried. I couldn’t even speak. I just cried. I was so tired. I was only twenty-two. I was so tired, and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to save you. Mom said you were drowning, and that I was getting pulled down with you. She told me I couldn’t help someone who didn’t want to be helped. But I tried anyway. Because I loved you. All I wanted was for you to get better.”
She shakes her head. Her thick, hennaed locks graze her shoulders.
“But in the end I just couldn’t go on,” she says. She dries her eyes with her arm, a big, sloppy motion. “OK? And I’ve never forgiven myself. Never. Clearly you haven’t, either. I get it. But when you contacted me about this project I was so happy, because I knew how much it meant to you. I thought that you wanting me to be involved meant that maybe you’d forgiven me. That you wanted to let me be part of your dream.”
She shakes her head again.
“Mom told me not to take the job. But Robert said he could tag along as a cameraman, and I—I wanted to believe I was right. I wanted to believe you meant it as an olive branch.”
She swallows.
“But from that very first meeting it was clear you still hated me. So I tried to keep myself to myself. Do my job.”
She shakes her head. And then she smiles, a shaky smile with tear-stained lips, one so unlike her.
“I really believed in the film, Alice. Just so you know. I think it would have been fantastic. We could have made something really special.”
My mouth tastes of blood and salt. I
