Max Hansen was so angry that his voice was breaking, and it was impossible to work out if his screams were rage or just distress.
‘But it doesn’t matter,’ said Teresa.
It was rage. Max Hansen roared with a fury that made it difficult to hear what he was saying, and Teresa had to hold the receiver away from her ear.
‘You have no fucking idea! You think all you have to do is record a song and next week you’re on Tracks and you get to be on TV, you’re so fucking stupid I could kill myself! Let me tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to go into your account and take down that fucking video right now, because otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to-’
‘Bye,’ said Teresa, and put the phone down. When it rang again she pulled the jack out of the wall.
The Christmas holidays arrived, and ‘Fly’ continued to grow exponentially. As more people watched they told others to watch, and when those people had watched they mentioned it to others. Soon the video was also on YouTube, attracting even more hits.
At first Teresa had tried to follow all the comments, lapping up the praise and delighting in the fact that so many young girls found consolation in the song and thought the lyrics were ‘fantastic’, but ignoring the sexual allusions and derogatory remarks from boys and girls who somehow felt threatened by Theres’ appearance.
But it all got too much.
One day when she was sitting reading yet another post along the lines of wasn’t she the girl who was on Idol and why does she look so peculiar and who is she and what are the words really about, she suddenly realised that was enough. She just couldn’t read one more word.
A large part of her life and her thoughts had begun to focus on the lyrics she had written, the little video they had made in a couple of hours, and she couldn’t help it: she regretted it.
She had finally done something that would show those bastards, and her name wasn’t even there. She tried to convince herself that it wasn’t important, that she didn’t care because she was above such things. But it wasn’t true. Even if she had no desire to stand in the spotlight, she wanted people to know. Know that it was her, Teresa Svensson, that girl there, that little grey girl, she was the one who wrote ‘Fly’.
She felt as if her brain was boiling to the point of disintegration as she read all the positive comments that were about her, but without one single person being aware of that fact. She just couldn’t cope anymore.
Göran and Maria had decided to try something new, and had booked a chalet in the mountains for a week over Christmas. Teresa hadn’t wanted to go and had tried to come up with a good reason why she had to stay at home, but a couple of days before they were due to leave, she changed her mind. She needed to get away. Away from the computer, away from the regrets.
After only two days she had withdrawal symptoms. Since she didn’t like skiing, she had nothing to do apart from reading the poetry books she had brought with her, listening to music and playing games on her mobile. She loathed the whole environment, with all these outdoor types packing their skis into their roofrack capsules in the mornings, her contemporaries with their over-sized snowboard clothing and something unbearably sporty about the way they moved. If she was an outsider at school, she was a complete alien here.
Her brothers soon made friends and hung out with them, while her parents set off on cross-country skiing expeditions. On the third day Teresa decided the only way to survive mentally was to get out her notebook and start writing a couple of new songs.
One evening when the family had had dinner in the hotel and were passing reception on the way back to their chalet, Teresa heard the song. A group of young people aged about seventeen or eighteen were sitting on the sofas around a laptop. She could see Theres’ face on the screen, and ‘Fly’ could be heard through the small external speakers. The teenagers sat motionless, staring into Theres’ slightly blurred eyes as she sang.
Olof nudged her shoulder and nodded over towards the group. ‘Have you heard that? It’s brilliant.’
‘I wrote it,’ said Teresa.
‘Sure you did. You and Beyoncé. Why the fuck are you saying that?’
‘Because it’s true.’
Olof grinned at Arvid and twisted his index finger at his temple, and the family headed for the exit. Teresa stayed where she was, her fists clenched, staring down at the floor. The song faded away and the teenagers began to make comments. One girl said it was like the best song ever, and another wondered why there weren’t more. One of the boys brought the discussion to an end by playing a clip where a drunk fell out of a window.
Teresa sat down in an armchair a little way off and picked up a discarded copy of the evening paper, Aftonbladet, in order to distract herself. On page seven there was a feature article with the headline, ‘Who is Tesla?’ pointing out that the song ‘Fly’ had now scored almost a million hits, despite the fact that nobody really knew who the artist was.
Suddenly and without warning, Teresa’s head caught fire. The next moment a thick fire blanket was thrown over her. Darkness enveloped her, and she could hardly breathe. Her lungs contracted and lost all strength. Searing pain sliced through her still-burning head and she was pressed down in the armchair, incapable of moving.
That was how Göran found her fifteen minutes later. He walked into reception, looked around and spotted Teresa, slumped in the armchair. ‘There you are. Where did you get to?’ Teresa opened her mouth to reply, but her tongue refused to co-operate. Göran leaned over her, tugged at her hand. ‘Come on. We’re all going to have a game of Yahtzee.’
Teresa had felt bad many times, been unhappy and spat out the word angst without really knowing what it meant. Now she knew. If she had been capable of thought she would not have referred to the state she was in as angst, but would have believed that some latent illness had suddenly and violently struck her down. But angst was what it was. Pure, sheer panic, paralysing every muscle in her body. Göran had to more or less carry her back to the chalet.
Teresa hardly slept that night; she lay staring into the darkness until the grey light of dawn brought the frost patterns on the window into focus. She didn’t want any breakfast, and Maria forced her to take two painkillers before the family set off on their respective adventures.
Only when they returned in time for dinner did Göran and Maria start to worry. They found Teresa in exactly the same position as they had left her, lying on her side in bed, her eyes fixed on the sign that said waxing skis inside the chalet was not permitted.
Maria placed a hand on her forehead and established that she didn’t have a temperature. ‘What’s the matter, sweetheart?’
Maria’s voice sounded strange to Teresa’s ears. The volume was normal, but it didn’t sound as if it was coming from somewhere nearby. This was probably because the person who was speaking was far away, and the voice was electronically enhanced. So there was no point in responding, and in any case the question didn’t make any sense.
‘Has something happened?’ asked Maria.
Same again. The question had nothing to do with her. It was being directed out into empty space, and the room Teresa took up in that space was insignificant and shrinking. She was slowly being crumpled up like a sheet of paper covered in writing, weighed down by words of no value. Soon she would be a white ball, and would roll away out of sight.