The End, page 24
“I don’t want to know why you’re asking,” she says. “But yes, he was one of the people we brought in.”
“And he was here all night?” I just need it confirmed.
“Yes,” Maria says. “We let them sleep it off and released them the next day.” She leans forward with her elbows on her knees, shaking her head slightly. “This is all I’m doing nowadays. Babysitting.” She looks as dejected as I feel.
We’ve hit a dead end. I’ll never know how Tilda died or why. But somehow, it feels even worse to know that I misunderstood everything while she was alive. I thought she started taking drugs when she heard about Foxworth—that it was a way of “living life to the fullest in the time we have left”—but Foxworth just made her stop hiding it.
Tilda was on drugs the entire time I knew her. And I didn’t even notice.
All those nights she couldn’t sleep. All those times I felt her heart beat hard against my chest. I just thought she was stressed.
Hypocrites.
Maybe she’d been talking about Caroline and Tommy. But they were with each other that night. So yes, they’re hypocrites, but they didn’t kill her.
I can’t go home. I can’t stand it.
Now I know what she meant.
I need your help, I think, she wrote in the letter to Lucinda.
Lucinda was the only one who could understand. She knew what it was like to sacrifice everything for swimming. She knew Tommy. She practically grew up with Caroline.
If they had talked to each other, would it have helped? Would things have been different?
No point dwelling on that now.
Tilda walked alone through the chaos, high and angry and sad. Maybe she saw something she shouldn’t have, said the wrong thing to the wrong person, gave someone the wrong look. Anybody could have killed her. And we’re never going to find out who it was. Trying to figure it out was ridiculous to begin with.
“How are you feeling?” Maria asks.
I look at her and feel like I’ve just woken up.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly.
I study the short hair at the nape of Maria’s neck, her short nails, her polished boots. Her uniform is perfectly ironed.
“Why do you do it?” I say. “Babysit, I mean. Why do you come here?”
She smiles. “That’s a good question.”
I wonder if she would have kept going to work if Judette had chosen her instead.
I wonder if it was a difficult choice for Judette.
“Thanks for trying to help me,” I say. “With that Facebook post.”
“Thank your friend. She’s the one who convinced me.”
“You really thought I did it, didn’t you?”
Maria sips her coffee. “I was hoping you hadn’t.”
“For Judette’s sake?”
Maria glances at me. “Yes,” she says.
Her straight-to-the-point approach reminds me of Judette. They’re more alike than Stina and Judette.
“You haven’t got any other clues to follow up on?” I ask.
“No. Neither do you, I hope.”
I shake my head.
“Good,” Maria says, and it occurs to me that I like her.
“What would have happened if you’d found who did it?”
She appears to contemplate this. “I don’t know. Whoever did it . . . that person has loved ones, too. Their lives would be ruined.” She sighs deeply. “Let’s hope the guilty party feels really fucking bad about it. I suppose that’s the only punishment left for us.”
We get to our feet at the same time. She holds out her hand, and I shake it. It feels oddly formal, considering how much we have in common.
If it hadn’t been for Foxworth, she might have been a part of my life now, a part of dinners and vacations and walks with Boomer.
“Take care of yourself, Simon,” she says.
“You too.”
“Say hi to Judette from me.”
I promise her I will.
When I reach the car, I see that Lucinda has fallen asleep in the passenger seat. I carefully close the door behind me. Start up the engine. Lucinda frowns, but doesn’t wake up.
Her phone is in her hand. I wonder if she’s been writing on TellUs.
Lucinda looks so much younger when I can’t see her eyes; the golden evening sunlight softens her features. I drive as gently as I can until we reach her block, taking a detour past Tilda’s house, where I see Tommy’s car parked in the driveway. I turn onto Lucinda’s street, stopping a little way down the road, where her father won’t be able to see us if he’s at home. Then I put a hand on Lucinda’s shoulder. She looks up, perplexed. Blinks.
“Oops. I must have fallen asleep,” she says.
Our eyes meet.
“What did she say? Was Lars there?”
“Yeah.”
She leans back against the headrest. “So what do we do now?” she says.
But she’s not expecting an answer. We both know there’s nothing we can do.
Will she also disappear from my life when she steps out of the car?
Maybe Tilda was the only thing keeping us together. And now it’s over.
Lucinda opens the car door.
“Hey—”
“Sorry,” Lucinda interrupts. “I can’t talk anymore right now.”
1 WEEK, 4 DAYS LEFT
SIMON
It’s the final soccer game. Fifty thousand people are crowded into the arena in Stockholm. The prime minister is giving a speech; the audience is full of famous faces. The queen waves from the stands. Now and then, the commentators choke on their words. So far, three people have run naked across the field.
Judette’s next to me, and Emma’s sprawled on the other sofa. Despite that, I’m alone. I feel like a prisoner in my own head. Numb, just like that morning in May. My family can tell that something’s wrong, but I can’t share that we were looking for Tilda’s murderer, and now we’ve given up.
Someone scores a goal and there are roars from the TV, from the apartments around ours, from open windows on the other side of the street. Boomer lifts his head, whining.
“This, if anything, is opium for the people,” Stina says from the doorway of the kitchen.
“Huh?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
She returns to her laptop. I catch a frustrated groan before her fingers start hitting the keys again.
Sirens wail outside the window. I wonder if Lucinda hears them, too. If her body’s as tense as mine. Even if they’re not showing the game on big screens, the streets will be chaotic tonight. How many people are going to get hurt? How many new Tildas are out there?
I get to my feet. Boomer looks up from the floor. His gaze tracks me as I walk to my room, where I sit down on my bed. Close my eyes.
“Tilda?” I say, listening hard.
I should have asked Stina how to talk to Tilda, and how I’d be able to tell if she responded.
“Tilda?” I say again. “We really tried to find the person who did it, but we failed.”
Drunken laughter echoes from the apartment downstairs.
I force myself to focus on Tilda, trying to see her in front of me. I think about our first date at the café on Storgatan. Waking up together in this bed. Picnics in the park with Johannes and Amanda. But Tilda’s features are blurred and vague, as if I’ve already forgotten what she looked like.
“People thought I killed you. I tried to make them understand . . . so I could spend more time with them. I was so afraid of being alone. You know all about that, don’t you? But I don’t care anymore. I don’t need them.”
The words connect as I speak them out loud. This is the first time I’ve fully accepted the thought.
I don’t need them.
I haven’t for a while.
“You said the person I was with maybe never existed. But, Tilda, it wasn’t like that. You were wrong. There were things I didn’t know about you, but I knew who you were. And I loved you. I really did.”
More shouting through the walls. It goes straight into me. Makes me feel like I’m dissolving. I take a deep breath.
“But you were right about one thing. . . . No matter how much I loved you, it was also . . . I couldn’t think of anything other than getting back together with you. I think that was easier than thinking about the end of the world. At least it was something I could hope for. . . . Just like I hoped I’d find who killed you.”
For a moment, I see her clearly. She’s at the window in her room. The sun makes her hair shimmer like copper.
“There’s only a week and a half left. I still don’t know how to handle this.”
She turns around, looks at me with those eyes that could shift color to match their surroundings. Like water.
“So we were pretty alike this summer,” I say. “You were my drug, Tilda.”
1 WEEK, 3 DAYS LEFT
SIMON
Iwalk down the grassy slope. Fog hangs heavy over the lake. The hills on the other side are swallowed up by a white nothingness. The waterslides look like tentacles against the pale sky, making me think of alien creatures.
I couldn’t breathe when I woke up. My skin felt hot and tight, like it had shrunk overnight. It squeezed my flesh. My own body was making me claustrophobic. It had been Emma’s idea to go for a walk. It was my idea that we come here.
No Lucinda on the swimming dock. I wonder how she’s doing. What she’s doing.
She hasn’t replied to any of my messages.
Boomer impatiently pulls at his leash, and I let him loose as we approach the beach.
“Do you feel better?” Emma asks.
“I think so.”
“Good.”
She picks up a stick and throws it. Boomer rushes away, his wide bottom swinging wildly from side to side. Emma laughs.
I don’t know if it’s actually possible, but her stomach seems to have grown visibly in the last couple of days.
Boomer skids to a halt in the sand when he reaches the stick. He takes it in his mouth and turns around to receive praise.
“Fetch!” Emma calls.
Boomer spits the stick out and sniffs it, discovering another scent in the sand, which he starts to follow. The stick is left behind, already forgotten.
“Well, at least he found it,” Emma says.
We start walking along the trail. Now and then, Emma stops, puts a hand on her hip.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“Like I’m eighty years old.”
Emma is experiencing SPD, a term I learned today. Her body is preparing for the baby. Cartilage is softening. Parts of her pelvis are slowly detaching from each other.
“But I guess this is nothing compared to squeezing out a whole human being,” she says.
A few crows caw at one another from the trees. The streets on the way here were full of trash, smashed bottles, and shattered windows. Groups of people who were still drunk after the game yesterday were roaming around. But down by the lake, everything seems normal.
I wonder if Lucinda’s dad worked at the ER last night. They’ve been talking about alcohol poisoning, extensive damage, murders, rapes, and fights on the news. The pictures from Stockholm’s streets looked like scenes from a zombie movie. At least soccer is finally over for good.
“Imagining myself as a parent is so weird,” Emma says. “I have no idea what I can teach another human being about the world.”
A new wave of panic makes me feel like the ground is going to swallow me up. I stumble, but Emma doesn’t notice it.
“I asked Mom if she felt ready when she was expecting me,” Emma says, “because I sure as hell don’t.”
I look down at my feet, concentrating on trying to keep my balance.
“She said she still doesn’t feel like a grown-up. Sometimes, it’s like she’s just pretending.”
I unzip my track jacket and look out across the lake, trying to focus on the mist drifting across the water.
“It felt good to hear her say that,” Emma goes on.
The air around the lake is unnaturally warm and damp; it feels oxygen-deficient. Is the comet affecting it?
No. Foxworth is still far away. It won’t be until after it’s entered the atmosphere that the air will heat up. And then we’ll only have minutes left. But not yet. We have more than a week until the end.
Breathe.
“I’m so scared, honestly. But Micke doesn’t want to listen when I try to bring it up. He says it’ll be fine, but that’s easy for him to say. He isn’t giving birth.”
It feels like I’m sucking down the same air over and over again, like it’s already been used.
“I know I sound like I’m complaining. I’m looking forward to being a mom. It’d just be so much easier if he came home soon, so the two of us could deal with it together.”
“I get that,” I mumble.
I trip again. I have to focus on not falling off the world’s edge.
Emma stops and turns toward me. I stop, too.
I have to leave. I have to get out of my own head. But I have nowhere to go.
Boomer comes running and stops at my side; he leans against my legs, wanting to be scratched. His fur is too hot.
“Simon, I know you’ll always be in Tiny’s life. You’re going to be an amazing uncle. Which is why I was wondering . . .”
Emma looks at me, and I don’t understand how she can’t see that I’m dying. Black spots gather at the edge of my vision.
“Would you like to be the baby’s godfather?”
I stagger. Move away from Boomer’s body. Breathe faster, hoping to scatter the black spots.
“Are you okay?” Emma asks me.
I can’t deal with this anymore. I don’t give a fuck what my moms say.
“Am I okay?” I say. “You know the comet is hitting us in ten days, right?”
Emma shoots me a questioning look. “Of course.”
“You’re not going to be a mom. You understand that, don’t you? I’m not going to become a godfather. Micke is never becoming a dad.”
Emma just stares at me, like I’m the crazy one.
“You don’t have to worry about giving birth,” I continue. “It doesn’t matter what your body’s telling you, it’s never going to happen. If you stopped pretending, maybe Micke would come home. I wouldn’t have been able to bear it if I were him, either.”
I breathe more easily.
My sister had to pay the price, but something’s been shaken loose inside of me now. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
Boomer licks my hand.
Emma walks up to me, and throws her arms around me.
“I can’t stop planning just because the comet’s coming,” she says. “You get that, don’t you?”
“No. I don’t get it.”
“We can’t just stop living,” Emma says. “We’re not dead yet.”
We remain where we are. Above our heads, the crows start screaming again.
1 WEEK, 2 DAYS LEFT
SIMON
The lights switch on with a click when I step into the fabbric softener-scented laundry room. I throw the rustling blue Ikea bag onto one of the benches, start sorting items of clothing in the sterile light, think about what to say when I call. If I call.
The ceiling is low, and I can feel the weight of the building above me. The floors that will soon be burning ash.
I’ve decided: I need perspective on everything that’s happened. I need to leave. Not just the building, but town. And I have to see Johannes one more time. I refuse to let that evening when he sat on the edge of my bed be the last time I see my best friend.
There’s a train to Stockholm the day after tomorrow, and I can be back the next day. I just need one single day of freedom. I’m not going to ask my moms for their blessing. They would never let me go. But I don’t want them to worry for no reason. I feel bad enough for what I said to Emma yesterday.
As I fill two machines and pour in detergent, I’m struck by the thought that this is probably the last time I’ll wash my clothes. I’ll have enough clean underwear to last me until the end.
I start the machines, sit down on the bench, and take out my phone. I don’t want my sister to be as lonely as I am. But do I even have the right to make this call?
I get his number out and call anyway. He picks up after the first ring.
“Hello? Is Emma okay?” Micke asks.
“Yeah, she’s fine. But I am calling about her.” My voice echoes back to me in the bare laundry room. “You have to come home. I’ve checked. There’s a train from Luleå.”
The phone is perfectly silent. I lower it and watch the seconds tick away on the screen.
“Hello?” I say.
The washing machines start spinning almost simultaneously.
“I don’t think you understand,” Micke says.
“What don’t I understand?”
“You’re young, Simon. You don’t know what it’s like.”
One of the machines starts humming as it fills with water. I turn up the volume on my phone.
“Sure,” I say. “I’m younger than you. But we’ve got the same amount of time left to live.”
“That’s not what I mean. When I was your age, I thought everything was simple, too. But it’s not all black or white.”
“Maybe it is sometimes.”
“It’s too difficult. You don’t know how long I’ve fought for everything we had. We had it all figured out. . . . We had a plan. And then it just disappeared.”
“That happened to everyone.”
“But Emma . . . When she talks like everything’s like it used to be . . . I can’t. I can’t fucking take it.” His accent has become more pronounced after his weeks up north. “I can’t do it, Simon. I understand that it upsets you, but I can’t. I love Emma, but it’s too hard.”
“Too hard? Tilda was killed, and people thought I did it. That’s also pretty hard.”
Micke clears his throat.
“The world is one hundred percent fucked up,” I go on. “And I know I’d do anything to be with someone who loved me until the end. Someone who needed me and who I—”
