But even emptiness has its topography, its smell and its taste. This was a different emptiness. It echoed with Theres, and it hurt. Sometimes it felt as if Teresa consisted only of pain and absence, as if they were what kept her upright.
She tried out what remedies she could think of. She tried self-harming. Sitting in the old cave where she used to spend time with Johannes, she cut herself with pieces of glass she found in the forest. It gave her a moment’s relief, but after a few days she gave up. It didn’t last.
She tried starving herself, hiding away the food served up at the kitchen table, until she was found out. Then she started sticking her fingers down her throat in the bathroom after she had eaten. That brought no relief either, and she gave up the experiment.
She tried taking more tablets, eating more food, drinking more soft drinks. The soft drinks helped a bit. The moment she put a glass of cold Trocadero to her lips everything felt OK, and went on feeling OK for the first few gulps. She drank more fizzy drinks.
While all this was going on, she kept up with her school work. She developed the trick of creating a tunnel from her head to the teacher or the book. As long as she managed to keep the tunnel intact, she could maintain her concentration.
At the end of March there was the class party. Not the kind that’s arranged by the school, where the adult gaze damps down the festivities, but a real class party. Mimmi’s parents had gone to Egypt for a week and she had the house to herself. Perhaps the party was a kind of revenge; Mimmi would have liked to go with them but she had to stay at home because of her poor grades.
The whole class was invited, along with a few other people, and it didn’t occur to anyone to exclude Teresa. Jenny might have her hangers on, but not everyone thought it was a bad thing that her nose had been rearranged, and despite the fact that Teresa didn’t have anyone she could call a friend, a few people at least had a silent regard for her as the dark point that allows the rest of the picture to shine. She could come to the party.
Teresa went to the party for the same reason she did everything these days. Because she could. Because it was there. Because it made no difference what she did in any case. She might as well sit on a sofa at Mimmi’s house as on a chair in her bedroom.
As she approached the house she heard ‘Toxic’ pulsating through the walls, and through the living room window she could see a couple of Britney clones moving slowly, like water weed in an aquarium. Jenny and Ester. Teresa felt neither unease nor anticipation, but an exhaustion came over her. She just didn’t have the strength.
She put down the plastic bag containing a bottle of Trocadero and two cans of beer and sat down on the steps. ‘Toxic’ was followed by that song by The Ark that everybody thought was going to win Eurovision next weekend. Teresa sat listening, surrounded by cheerful pop songs about angst, then got up to go home. She heard a whistle behind her.
The light was on in the garage and the door was open. Micke was sitting just inside, waving her over. He had a cardboard box next to him. As Teresa went over, he pointed at her plastic bag. ‘What have you got?’
Teresa showed him her cans of beer and her Trocadero. Micke shook his head and told her to sit down, then took a bottle out of his box, opened it and handed it to her. Teresa looked at the label. Bacardi Breezer with melon.
‘I thought it was only girls who drank this stuff,’ she said.
‘What the fuck do you know about it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Exactly.’
Micke clinked his bottle against hers, and they drank. Teresa thought it was delicious, even nicer than Trocadero. When they had emptied the bottles, Micke said, ‘Okaaay. So are you ready to partaaaay?’
‘No.’
Micke laughed. ‘OK. Let’s have another then.’
He gave her a cigarette, and this time Teresa didn’t even have to make an effort not to cough. The alcopop had smoothed a soft channel in her throat, and the smoke slid down without prickling.
‘You know what, Teresa,’ said Micke. ‘I like you. You’re kind of weird. You’re completely different from…Chip ‘n’ Dale, for example.’
‘Chip ‘n’ Dale?’
‘You know. Jenny and Ester. Chip ‘n’ Dale. With their bunches and all the rest of it. Bling-bling and the whole fucking Christmas tree thing going on.’
Teresa hadn’t thought it could happen; she was so completely unprepared for the laugh that burst out of her that she started coughing as it collided with a swig of alcohol on the way down. Micke thumped her on the back and said, ‘Nice and calm, nice and calm now.’
They finished their cigarettes and emptied their bottles, and the incredible thing was that that was exactly how Teresa felt: nice and calm. Bearing in mind all the different kinds of alcohol Göran had at home, it was strange that Teresa had never considered it as a drug to ease her troubles. She looked at the bottle in her hand. Strange, bordering on idiotic. This actually worked.
She didn’t feel drunk, just elated; she couldn’t remember when she had last felt like this. When they got up to go in and join the party, Teresa grabbed hold of Micke’s hand, and he moved away with a grin.
‘Get it together,’ he said. ‘You’re cool aren’t you?’
No, Teresa wasn’t cool. But it didn’t really matter. She stayed a little way behind Micke as they went up the steps and into the party, then they split up. Five minutes later Teresa sneaked into the garage and quickly knocked back another Bacardi Breezer. Then she went inside again.
Johannes was sitting on his own on the sofa, and Teresa flopped down next to him.
‘Hi. Where’s Agnes?’
Johannes folded his arms. ‘She’s coming later. I think.’
‘Why isn’t she here now?’
‘How the fuck should I know? I don’t know what she’s doing.’
‘Of course you do. You’re an item.’
‘And what if we’re not? Are you pissed, by the way?’
‘No.’
‘You sound pissed.’
‘I’m just a little bit happy. Aren’t I allowed to be a little bit happy?’
Johannes shrugged, and Teresa grabbed a handful of cheese puffs out of a bowl, munching them as she sank back on the sofa and looked around the room. With a few exceptions they weren’t too bad after all, the people in her class. She looked at Leo and remembered the time he helped her fix her bicycle chain when it came off. She looked at Mimmi and remembered they’d quite enjoyed doing a Swedish project together. And so on.
For the first time in ages a faint longing stirred inside her. She wanted to join in, if only a little bit. Get closer, be part of things, do what the others did. A part of her knew that she actually didn’t want to and couldn’t anyway, but right now that was the way she felt and because it was pleasant, she stayed with the feeling.
‘I sometimes wonder,’ said Johannes, who hadn’t spoken for a while.
‘What?’
‘What would have happened if I hadn’t moved house.’
Teresa waited for him to go on. When he didn’t, she helped him out. ‘You turned into a bit of a dude after that.’
Johannes gave a stiff little smile. ‘Not really. I just did what I had to do to fit in, kind of. Sometimes I think…shit, if only I’d been able to stay there. We had fun sometimes, didn’t we?’
‘Do you really think about this?’
‘Yes. Sometimes.’
Teresa swallowed a lump of soggy cheese puffs. Then she swallowed again and said, ‘Me too.’
They were sitting close together. By this stage Teresa was so familiar with every form of sorrow that she could pick the different kinds with the precision of a car spotter. As soon as they got close, she could identify the model. This was melancholy. Grieving for something that has been and can never be again.
But it was a pleasant sorrow, a Moomintroll sorrow so unlike the one she carried around in her everyday life that she welcomed it like a warm, woolly blanket. There was an ache in her breast, and when Johannes put his arm around her, she leaned her head on his shoulder.