Page 36 of The Living and the Dead

She laughed. Felicia had a unique laugh. It was loud and shrill and it made her nose crinkle irresistibly, almost like an invitation to joinin.

“You know,” he said, as if she had asked him a question, “I’m going to leave here. I’m moving away after this summer.”

“Where to?”

“Stockholm.”

“What are you going to do there?”

“Go to school.” He smiled. “Live. Live my life. Maybe I’ll even get an umbrella.”

“What are you going to study?”

“Law. At Stockholm University. Juridicum, it’s called. Then I want to travel. Like, as a corporate lawyer, probably. For a big company.”

“What, like IKEA?”

“Oh hell no. Not IKEA.”

Walking across the schoolyard, through the falling snow, they saw Filip. He had big headphones on. In his hands he held a notebook, and he was scribbling frantically in it even as he tried to protect it from the moisture.

“It’s so awful,” Felicia said softly. “Did you see the paper today?”

“Yeah. Did they come talk to you all? The police, I mean?”

“For hours, both yesterday and on Saturday. It was our car, after all.”

Sander felt he should say something, but no words would come out—all he could think about was touching her. Her straight brown hair fell over her shoulders. It looked so soft.

One day, long after he left Skavböke and became a different person, years after he met someone and had a kid or two, maybe they would meet again in town, during one of his visits to Halland, and he would think: it could have been the two of us. A little sentimental and, what was the word, bittersweet. Things would work out for him, and all of this, stuff that meant so much right now, would seem childish and silly.

At last, the question fell from his lips: “How were things between you and Mikael?”

“Between us? Oh, fine, I guess. What do you mean?”

He opened his mouth and wished an answer would come as easily as the question had. But nothing happened.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

Felicia looked at him intently. “What were you thinking?”

“I had the idea that he liked you. I mean,like-liked you.”

“Did he?” A furrow appeared in the smooth, soft skin between Felicia’s eyebrows. “If he did, I never knew it.”

“Maybe it was only a rumor.”

“Was it a good party?” she said, a weird question in this context, but he understood what she meant.

“Yeah, it was good. We had a fun time; too bad it ended the way it did.”

That sounded weird too. All the words were strange now, as though what had happened over the weekend had twisted them, making it hard to speak without slipping and falling.

“I wanted to go, but I had to stay home with Mom.”

“Yeah, I heard. Lucky you did, in the end.”

“By the way, I’m sorry.”