A Nearly Normal Family(75)

Then I do a few rounds of chins and dips. My strength is the resilient sort. On the handball court, I loved catching the ball with a defender or two on my back. I was at my best when they were hanging on me like backpacks, struggling to keep me at the six-meter line. Five years in a row I was our internal high scorer.

Sometimes I miss it. I miss the sense of community, and the competition—setting a goal and fighting hard together to achieve it. But in the end I couldn’t handle how planned it all was, how the coaches determined every step you took, every pass and shot. I felt like a game piece that was being guided by other people, and all the joy of handball disappeared.

After the workout I stand in the shower for an extra-long time, standing as straight as an arrow, letting the water envelop me in a deafening tunnel. I can honestly feel the smell running off me.

I think about Thérèse and Laurent in the book. Anyone is capable of murder. Is that what the writer was trying to say? No doubt he is right. If a person is violated deeply enough, there is no limit to what she might do. This is something I know from experience.

I step out of the shower like a freshly lit sparkler, then dry off and get dressed before the guards tug at me.

“You almost smell good,” Jimmy says, a nasty grin on his face. “But remember, you’re still a murderer whore. You can’t wash that off.”





66


Amina, best friend that she was, immediately came to my rescue.

“This isn’t normal, Stella. It’s not healthy.”

We were sitting in the living room, our feet on the edge of the sofa, and I had just told Amina about the things I found in Chris’s drawer. Mom and Dad had gone to an Italian food festival and were going to spend the night at a castle in the countryside.

“Lots of people like that stuff,” I said. “Bondage and S&M. Tying each other up and things. It’s more common than you think.”

“But honestly. Could you do something like that?”

“Not me.”

The very thought of not being in control, of being restrained while having sex, made me shaky.

“Why did Linda want you to see those things?” Amina wondered.

I didn’t know. In the locked drawer I had found a black leather gag with that ball thing that gets stuffed in someone’s mouth. A plastic bottle full of transparent liquid, a dark-gray rag, and a pair of sturdy metal handcuffs. At the bottom was a jackknife, its blade glaringly sharp.

“I suppose she wants to scare me off. It’s not exactly proof that Chris is a psychopath.”

“But the knife. Why does he have a knife?”

“You tell me.”

I hardly dared to think about it.

“Are you going to ask him?”

“What the hell would I say? That I happened to find the key to his locked drawer?”

He’d already sent three messages I hadn’t responded to. I didn’t know which way was up anymore.

“He lied about his age,” said Amina.

“It was only a white lie.”

Amina sighed.

“Can’t we do something else?” I asked. “Go somewhere?”

Too many thoughts were buzzing in my brain.

“Jerker Lindeberg’s having a party,” Amina said, swiping her thumb across her phone screen.

“Lindeberg. Doesn’t he live in Bj?rred?”

“Barseb?ck.”

Even worse. That was like fifteen kilometers away.

“I guess we could borrow Dad’s car,” I said. “They rode with some friends.”

Amina’s nose wrinkled.

“Just for a little while. If it’s lame we’ll leave right away.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d “borrowed” Dad’s car. It’s one of those big cars, unnecessarily big if you ask me; it feels like driving a delivery truck. I really prefer to practice for my road test in the driving school’s little Fiat.

I drove us through town, past Nova Mall, and toward the coast. Amina plugged her phone into the stereo and turned the volume to max. We were ironically digging some sax-heavy dance-band song about high mountains and low valleys when out of nowhere a tiny but flashy Audi TT pulled out in front of us.

I rammed the passenger side of the little German car, sending it flying off the road into a strawberry field. The driver was a wrinkled man in a toupée who rolled up his pant legs to keep from getting strawberry stains on them before chewing me out and informing me that he’d always said women were horrible drivers and, why, here was proof.

Dad and Mom had to drop everything to leave the party at the castle. They met us at the police station. Dad’s expression was dark and I sobbed inconsolably.

Luckily enough, it never went to court. I signed an order of summary punishment and had to pay a fine, and went home to curse at my own fucking stupidity.

The incident with the car, Dad called it.

The police called it driving without a license and reckless driving. Increased insurance premiums and income-based fines. Thirty thousand kronor right down the drain.

I was so furious at myself that I locked myself in my room and cried. Thirty thousand. That was half of my savings. There was no longer any chance I’d get away in the winter.

I was back to being stuck.

I lay in bed with music on my headphones, reading about psychopaths and sex. I knew I had read more or less the same stuff before, but I had to refresh my memory.