Page 50 of The Living and the Dead

Sander’s mom was staring vacantly at nothing. She had put down her silverware. “What do you want us to say? Thanks for telling us?”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“This is all great to hear, Sander.” His dad smiled, but only his lips moved. The rest of his face was stiff and firm. “I’m sure we’re just a little surprised, is all.”

“You don’t have to help me,” Sander said.

“But we want to, of course. When will you leave, if you get in?”

“I don’t know, exactly, yet. In August, I assume, but I suppose it depends on housing and stuff. We don’t know anyone in Stockholm, do we?”

“We hardly know anyone outside Skavböke,” his mom said helplessly, and the words landed nowhere, not with anyone.

—

Afterward, he tried to assess how it had gone. About as he’d expected, he decided, and he felt the walls of the house starting to move, pulling closer to him.Away,he thought once more.I have to get away.

37

Passing through Oskarström, you will see signs showing the way to Halmstad. Once you reach the city, there are similar signs but with an even bigger destination: Gothenburg. Few of the kids had gone that far north up the E6 highway unless it was for a school field trip, but one time, when Sander’s class visited Gothenburg to enjoy a day at the amusement park Liseberg, he had seen even more new signs pointing hopefully toward Stockholm. From Stockholm, a brand-new train would take you to the airport in just twenty minutes. Twenty minutes to get to the rest of the world. There was always something bigger out there. To Sander, at the end of 1999, the world outside felt remarkably close and infinitely far away at the same time.

When he walked into the hall, his mom asked if he wanted to help decorate the Christmas tree.

“Yes, join us,” his dad said from the kitchen. “We’re just about to start.”

“I’m going out,” Sander said.

All movement in the kitchen ceased.

“Now?”

“I just want to take a walk.”

“On the night before Christmas Eve?” Eva said. “Can’t you stay home? Considering everything that’s happened? And next Christmas won’t be the same.”

“But I’ll be back in a little bit.”

“Where are you going?” Erik said.

Sander opened the front door and let in the cold. “Just out.”

The evening fell around him in heavy curtains, and all at once he was far away from all of them. He had nothing more to say, nothing in common with them, aside from the house he lived in and the place where he’d grown up. It was an unfamiliar thought: here were the people closest to him, the only ones he really belonged with, yet it felt like they were on the other side of a wall he couldn’t pass over again. Or didn’t wantto.

Deep down, in the part of himself Sander seldom let anyone reach, he had begun to crackle and spark. The world was his. It was waiting for him. He was ready. Not tomorrow, not in a week—Sander was ready to get away.Now.

This was how it had to be. As he turned his back on his parents and walked out into the dark, he felt his ferocity like a huge black bird clinging to his back.

—

Ice-cold. The moon was ice-cold, and it shone like a single spotlight across forests and fields. It reached all the way to the outskirts of Skavböke, to the old spruce forest that strove dense and tall for the sky. Not far into this forest was an odd clearing, a place where the trees seemed to have shifted over to make way for grass and rocks, like a half-finished soccer field. Surely more was supposed to have happened there, but what? No one knew. Some things were bigger than humankind.

The single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling in Killian’s cabin emitted a pale-yellow glow that made the small window shimmer as Sander approached. It looked warm and welcoming.

It took only a second to make sense of what he was seeing. But it would take a very long time, maybe almost the rest of his life, before he could form an overview of the consequences it would bring.

A blanket was spread out on the floor, and Killian was on his knees atop it. He was buck naked, his blond hair mussed likesomeone had just had their hands in it. His back was covered in sweat and Sander could see the well-defined muscles in his shoulders tensing and releasing. One hand was stroking his cock. It was long and thick and glistening with saliva, or something else, and it was a lot bigger than Sander’s. In Killian’s hand, it looked almost threatening, like a weapon.

On her back before him lay Felicia; at first holding ridiculously still, but then her hips rose as if they were searching for something in the air, and she grabbed for Killian’s free hand and he squeezed it hard. When he pressed into her, her gaze was steady on him and her expression didn’t change. As though what they were doing absorbed all their focus.