Fire, page 21
To do the same thing as a lot of other people gives a special feeling of strength. It is almost irresistible.
She can feel the energy in the room increasing. It has nothing to do with magic and that makes it even more sinister.
The tempo speeds up, faster, faster, faster until it turns into hysterical clatter. A cry goes up from the rows in front. Its volume grows and hands reach into the air.
‘There, enough!’ Helena shouts.
Vanessa lowers her hands. Looks disbelievingly at them.
She finds it hard to meet Evelina and Michelle’s eyes when they all sit down again.
‘Many of you know who I am,’ Helena says. ‘I used to be the vicar here in Engelsfors. Some will perhaps know me as Elias’s mother.’
She pauses. The hall is completely silent once more. Vanessa remembers the school assembly after the death of Elias. The weeping and charged atmosphere before everything fell apart. She is certain that everyone who was here then will be thinking about the same thing.
‘It is almost exactly a year since he died,’ Helena continues. ‘I felt swallowed up by a huge darkness. I thought I would never be able to carry on. But then I saw the light.’
Vanessa hears a sob from somewhere in the hall.
‘My insight that bitterness and grief would not bring Elias back opened up, for the first time, a source of strength inside me. I realised that I, no one else, had the power to direct my own life. I understood that I myself must take control in order to become the person I wanted to be. I had to rethink and get it right. That is why I can stand here today and tell you that it really does work. Scientific evidence proves that the essence of our lives is of our own making. If you believe that life is all about misery and disappointment, then misery and disappointment will come your way. But if you believe that you are happy, doing well in school, loved by the boy or girl you love – then it will happen. That is guaranteed.’
Evelina rolls her eyes. ‘Good news for those boys and girls,’ she whispers.
Vanessa can’t argue with that.
‘I decided that Elias’s death must be in some sense meaningful,’ Helena continues. ‘That is why I stand before you today and tell you that you can achieve anything you want if you are determined. And if you change your way of thinking.’
Vanessa tries to make sense of what Helena is actually saying. Is the idea that, before she changed her ways, her own thinking accidentally brought about the death of Elias? Or was it Elias who thought himself to death?
Helena steps forward to the edge of the stage. It feels as if she is looking into everyone’s eyes at the same time. As if her every word, her every gesture is imbued with enormous significance.
‘At your age, you are so busy sorting each other into boxes. Who is good-looking, who wears ugly clothes, who is popular and who is not. But all that is unimportant. Superficial. All you need to keep in mind is that there are two types of people.’
‘The ones who buy all this crap and the ones who don’t?’ Linnéa says loudly.
Vanessa giggles for a moment, proud to know Linnéa. She senses how, all around the hall, everyone catches their breath. But Helena just laughs.
‘I actually meant those who have a positive attitude. And the others, who have a negative attitude,’ she says and points at Linnéa.
The audience bursts into relieved laughter.
Vanessa turns round. Linnéa’s face is immobile. But Minoo is blushing bright red.
‘I do understand it can be difficult to believe what I tell you,’ Helena continues smilingly. ‘Some of you may even find it hard to dare to believe. But you mustn’t judge anyone. Instead, you should focus on yourselves. I want you to remember the meaning of four letters: WSOL. We Shape Our Lives. Keep them in mind. We shape our lives, for better or for worse. It is up to each one of you. But Positive Engelsfors will help you to see the opportunities ahead, not the obstacles. You can become exactly that person you dream of being, if only you make the effort and stay focused on that goal. Just look at me. I would have sunk if I had clung to what I had lost. But I chose something else. What I chose was the future.’
She carries on with her lecture. Vanessa understands perfectly why her mum fell for Helena.
Everything she says sounds so obvious. So simple. One part of Vanessa would like to believe her. She is aware of a faint but nagging anxiety that maybe she does have the wrong attitude. Maybe she will lose out on all that is good in life, all those things which Helena says she can offer. Helena, who seems to have more precise contours than anyone else in the hall.
‘I hope to have an opportunity to meet you all again. The Positive Engelsfors Centre is open from nine in the morning until nine at night. You are always welcome. And, remember: smile and the world smiles with you.’
The applause breaks out from the front rows, washes over the hall like a flood wave and rises to a thunderous boom. Vanessa thinks it feels as if the floor is shaking and then, in the next instant, realises that it actually is shaking. Hundreds of feet are stamping. And her own feet are moving to the same rhythm as the others.
Ida gives Erik a push to make him move on. They still haven’t managed to get clear of the row they were in.
‘Come off it, there are masses of people ahead of me,’ he says.
‘But can’t you even try to get somewhere?’
Ida sighs, annoyed that he won’t answer her. She casually examines the group of yellow-shirted pupils that has gathered at the stage.
‘Did you know that Kevin had joined that lot?’ she asks.
He shrugs.
‘So what, the entire football team joined. It isn’t that odd.’
G didn’t, Ida thinks.
‘What do you think?’ Erik asks.
‘It’s got to be good if people stop feeling sorry for themselves all the time.’
‘That’s precisely it.’ Erik sounds as though he really means it. ‘We ought to invite Helena to the hockey club and get her to give a pep talk to the team. All sports stars have coaches who’ve taught them to set goals and think of themselves as winners.’
At last, the blockage ahead of them gives way. Once in the aisle, Ida starts to edge towards the doors when she feels a hand on her shoulder. She turns round and sees Helena behind her.
‘Ida Holmström,’ Helena says. ‘Such a long time ago.’
Ida manages to smile. She always feels uncomfortable about meeting Helena, even though she has never shown any sign of knowing how Elias got on at school. Some people put it around that it was Ida and Erik’s fault that he felt so bad about everything, but Ida insists that it was Elias’s own problem if he got bullied. He had chosen not even to try to be more normal.
‘Oh, hello!’ Ida says and hears her voice go shrill in the way she detests.
‘And Erik Forslund. As handsome as ever.’
‘Thank you,’ he laughs.
He is clearly not the slightest bit concerned about what Helena might know about what they did or didn’t do to Elias. It calms Ida a little.
‘Really nice to see you again,’ Helena says, turning back to Ida. ‘I haven’t met Carina for ages. I’m really looking forward to seeing her, now that she’s asked Krister and me to your autumn party. Usually, it’s your mother and my husband who have dealings with each other.’
‘Of course, that’s how it often turns out,’ Ida says and smiles.
‘It is people like your parents who carry Engelsfors on their shoulders,’ Helena goes on. ‘I do very much hope that they will become involved with us in PE. And you two, as well. You would be such important role models. After all, your generation will shape the future of our town.’
Helena hands them two round yellow stickers. The text says ‘I AM POSITIVE!’ In the centre, a happy purple sun.
‘Thank you,’ Erik says. ‘It was very inspiring to listen to your speech.’
‘It means a lot to me that you felt that, Erik. I do hope we will meet soon again and have another discussion. And bring your friends!’
Helena looks warmly at them both once more before she leaves them and disappears into the yellow sea behind her.
Linnéa hears that Minoo and Vanessa are calling her name, but she ignores them.
Inside her, a small quiet voice, which sounds suspiciously like Jakob’s, tells her that this is a textbook example of the kind of situation she should avoid. That she must think first, not react impulsively, not be confrontational, that she must behave properly in school and especially now when the social are on the alert.
She refuses to listen to all that. Another voice is much stronger.
Elias’s.
Elias, who cried when he spoke of how Helena and Krister didn’t let him talk to them about being bullied. How he had known ever since he was a little boy that they were ashamed of him in front of their friends.
They were ashamed of him because he was not happyclappy enough, not good enough at sports or academic work and didn’t go around with a large enough group of the right kind of friends. Later on, they were ashamed of the way he dressed and dyed his hair black, and his use of make-up. The person he was did not sit easily with their idea of a successful Engelsfors family.
They didn’t want to know about how badly he felt, didn’t even want to see the scars on his arms. It was after Linnéa’s phone call to tell them of his failed suicide attempt that they reluctantly opened their eyes for the first time and saw to it that he was given help.
And it was also the time when they began systematically to blame her for all his problems.
Some type in a yellow polo shirt grabs hold of Linnéa’s arm, but she keeps going, almost gets there. And then Helena suddenly turns round.
‘Hi there, Linnéa,’ she says with a brittle smile.
Linnéa would dearly like to read Helena’s mind but she doesn’t dare to take the risk in case Viktor is hovering nearby. ‘Anything else you want to tell me?’ Helena asks and some of the yellow shirts laugh.
‘The couple you were schmoozing with, do you know who they were?’ Linnéa asks. ‘Ida and Erik, who made life worse for Elias than anybody else. It wasn’t any kind of negative energy that ruined everything for him, but people like them.’
Helena’s face is still lit up by her 10,000-watt smile, but she tilts her head a little sideways and sighs, as if steeling herself to cope with a stroppy toddler.
‘I am sorry for you, Linnéa. You do let your destructive emotions run your life. Sadly, your approach infected my son’s mind, too. If he had not kept company with friends who pulled him down, he might still have been alive today.’
The blow is too heavy. Linnéa can’t utter words, hardly draw breath. Of course she had guessed that Helena would think along these lines, but to hear her say it is something else.
Helena stretches out her arms in a gesture to gather her flock. They all move off towards the main door. Linnéa just stands there. Tries to persuade her heart to start beating again, her lungs to remember how to breathe.
‘Linnéa …’
Vanessa’s voice breaks the spell that turned her into stone.
Linnéa looks around and sees her standing there. Minoo is with her. None of them speaks. There is no need.
31
When Minoo steps out from the assembly hall, together with Vanessa and Linnéa, Anna-Karin is waiting for her.
‘I was thinking, perhaps we’d better talk,’ she says.
‘You’re right. But not here,’ Minoo replies.
The pupils slowly drain away from the main lobby. Most people are dragging their feet as they drift along to their classrooms. Minoo feels a pang of anxiety about being late for her biology lesson, but the feeling is mostly an old conditioned reflex. Besides, Ove Post, the biology teacher, is so batty he’ll probably never notice that she isn’t there. He still believes that her name is Milou.
They walk downstairs to the girls’ toilets and check that they are alone.
‘What’s going on?’ Minoo can’t think of anything else to say.
‘Something is up,’ Vanessa says. ‘But I didn’t sense any magic. Did anyone else?’
Anna-Karin and Linnéa shake their heads. Minoo shrugs.
‘I was in their centre yesterday,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Somebody who knows Mum took us along with her. I didn’t pick anything up there either. Though it can be hard to work out what the difference is between what she’s doing to people and actual magic. Do you know what I mean?’
Minoo understands very well what she means. She, too, had felt how easy it was to be carried along by the mass hysteria in the hall. After this, Gustaf will surely realise that Positive Engelsfors is a cult?
‘There’s something very fishy about all this,’ Linnéa says. ‘Last Friday, Adriana is sacked. Today, Tommy Ekberg is principal and is already collaborating with Positive Engelsfors.’
‘I saw him in the centre,’ Anna-Karin tells them.
‘Do you think that Helena is behind the action to get rid of Adriana?’ Minoo asks.
‘Perhaps it’s the Council,’ Anna-Karin suggests.
‘Why should the Council want her kicked out?’ Vanessa asks.
‘Perhaps they suspect her of acting behind their backs,’ Anna-Karin says. ‘Like that time when she phoned Minoo.’
‘I don’t know,’ Minoo says. ‘But, if it had been the Council they would hardly have picked Tommy Ekberg as acting head. They would have wanted to control the school. Which is meant to be the seat of evil and so forth.’
‘Fuck!’ Linnéa says. ‘I’m so fucking thick. Elias’s father is the town hall super-boss. Of course it was no problem for him and Helena to fix it so that Adriana got the sack.’
Minoo feels that she has been just as dumb. Krister Malmgren is the local authority’s ‘strong man’ and known for getting his way at all costs.
‘That’s so true,’ Minoo says. ‘They were saying to Adriana that it had been a local authority decision. And that the basis for it was what happened to Rebecka and Elias.’
‘But Helena really wants to help people,’ Anna-Karin says.
‘How can you be so bloody naive?’ Linnéa snaps.
‘Calm down,’ Vanessa says. ‘Anna-Karin doesn’t know what happened after the meeting.’
Minoo tells Anna-Karin. It is hard to have to repeat what Helena had said.
‘Why can’t something that seems good actually be good, just for once?’ Anna-Karin mumbles.
Perhaps because we live in Engelsfors, Minoo thinks.
‘It must have been Helena that Matilda warned us about,’ Linnéa says.
‘Could be,’ Vanessa says. ‘Or else the Council. Or both one and the other. Or something else altogether that we haven’t even caught a glimpse of yet.’
‘Do you think one can see that this is me?’ Olivia says and holds up her drawing.
Their task is to capture their mood on the paper and, as usual, Olivia has drawn a self-portrait. The face has only one set of features, two large eyes weeping black tears. A razor blade is suspended above her. The blade has slashed bloody lines across the sky.
‘I’m sure. Only you would draw stuff like that,’ Linnéa says.
Olivia looks at her in her typical Olivia way. It’s as if she pauses briefly to work out if she’s to laugh or get angry.
This time, her face opens up in a big grin.
‘Let me see yours,’ she asks.
Linnéa pushes her drawing across, wishing she didn’t have to, hoping that Olivia won’t ask what it means.
She has drawn a heart-shaped flower arrangement, a romantic gift. But among all the flowers lies a bleeding, anatomically correct heart, as if just torn out of the body.
So maybe it’s over the top, but it is how she feels when she thinks of Vanessa.
‘Wow, you’re so good,’ Olivia sighs. ‘When I see your work I never want to draw again.’
Linnéa rolls her eyes heavenwards.
‘How did that assembly hall session go?’ Olivia asks and starts colouring in the hair on her self-portrait to make it look like flames of blue fire.
‘Be pleased you weren’t there.’
Olivia doesn’t speak for a long while.
‘I’ve been thinking about something,’ she says without taking her eyes off the paper. ‘It feels as if we’re slipping apart.’
Linnéa lowers her ink pen and looks at her.
‘How do you mean?’
Olivia mixes the watercolour to get a darker shade of blue. ‘We don’t seem to care for the same things any more.’
‘Are you cross because I wouldn’t chuck school and go with you?’
‘It was the last straw.’ Olivia looks up. ‘I’ve given you loads of chances, Linnéa. Now I feel I can’t carry on. I’ve got to learn to set boundaries. I don’t mean we would be enemies or anything like that. But perhaps stop socialising.’
‘Maybe it hasn’t occurred to you, but we haven’t actually socialised since the end of last term.’
‘Precisely,’ Olivia agrees seriously.
‘Right. Let’s decide to do what you say.’
‘Listen, you two. Try to keep your minds on the job,’ Backman calls from the teacher’s desk.
Linnéa registers that his eyes are caressing Olivia’s breasts and carefully avoids picking up any of his thoughts.
‘I must go to the loo,’ she says, picks up her bag and walks out.
It is always a kind of liberation to leave the classroom during a lesson, even just for a few minutes. As if you have managed to steal a little time for yourself, to take a break from reality.
Linnéa hurries upstairs and along the short passage that leads to the toilets near the door to the attic.
She started to go up there again after the toilets were reopened in the spring. She didn’t want to keep being afraid to go there. It had been Elias’s and her place during the few weeks when they were in senior school together. Now, she has come to regard it as the place where he lived, not where he died.
She opens the door. A half-dead bouquet of flowers and burned-down candles on the windowsill. A photo of Elias in a cheap frame. Linnéa knows that Olivia and a few others from their old gang got together up here on the day Elias died to honour his memory. She had honoured him in her own way by spending hours when she listened to his favourite songs and read through all the letters he had sent her when she was in the care home. She has saved them, a whole boxful. Long, funny, sad, page after page tightly filled with writing and with drawings in the margins.
