My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(24)

She’s never seen him before, but she knows from his sheer size that it must be him. He glides across the snow like an animal, a beast from one of Granny’s fairy tales. Elsa knows very well that what she’s about to do is both dangerous and idiotic, but she runs down the stairs three steps at a time. Her socks slip on the last step and she careers across the ground-floor vestibule, smacking her chin into the door handle.

Her face throbbing with pain, she throws the door open and breathlessly churns through the snow, still only in her socks.

“I have mail for you!” she cries into the night. Only then does she realize that her tears have lodged in her throat. She’s so desperate to know who this person is that Granny secretly talked to about Miamas.

There’s no answer. She hears his light footfalls in the snow, surprisingly agile considering his enormity. He’s moving away from her. Elsa ought to be afraid, she should be terrified of what The Monster could do to her. He’s big enough to tear her apart with a single tug, she knows that. But she’s too angry to be afraid.

“My granny says to tell you she’s sorry!” she roars.

She can’t see him. But she no longer hears the creaking of his steps in the snow. He’s stopped.

Elsa isn’t thinking. She rushes into the darkness, relying on pure instinct, towards the spot where she last heard him put down his foot. She feels the movement of air from his jacket. He starts running; she stumbles through the snow and catapults herself forward, catching hold of his trouser leg. When she lands on her back in the snow, she sees him staring down at her, by the light of the last streetlight. Elsa has time to feel her tears freezing on her cheeks.

He must be a good deal more than six feet tall. As big as a tree. There’s a thick hood covering his head and his black hair spills out over his shoulders. Almost his entire face is buried under a beard as thick as an animal pelt, and, emerging from the shadows of the hood, a scar zigzags down over one eye, so pronounced that it looks as if the skin has melted. Elsa feels his gaze creeping through her circulating blood.

“Let go!”

The dark mass of his torso sinks over Elsa as he hisses these words at her.

“My granny says to tell you she’s sorry!” Elsa pants, holding up the envelope.

The Monster doesn’t take it. She lets go of his trouser-leg because she thinks he’ll kick her, but he only takes a half-step back. And what comes out of him next is more of a growl than a word. As if he’s talking to himself, not to her.

“Get lost, stupid girl. . . .”

The words pulsate against Elsa’s eardrums. They sound wrong, somehow. Elsa understands them, but they chafe at the passages of her inner ear. As if they didn’t belong there.

The Monster turns with a quick, hostile movement. In the next moment he’s gone. As if he’s stepped right through a doorway in the darkness.

Elsa lies in the snow, trying to catch her breath while the cold stamps on her chest. Then she stands up and gathers her strength, crumpling the envelope into a ball and flinging it into the darkness after him.

She doesn’t know how many eternities pass before she hears the entrance porch opening behind her. Then she hears Mum’s footsteps, hears her calling Elsa’s name. Elsa rushes blindly into her arms.

“What are you doing out here?” asks Mum, scared.

Elsa doesn’t answer. Tenderly, Mum takes her face in her hands.

“How did you get that black eye?”

“Soccer,” whispers Elsa.

“You’re lying,” whispers Mum.

Elsa nods. Mum holds her hard. Elsa sobs against her stomach.

“I miss her. . . .”

Mum leans down and puts her forehead against hers.

“Me too.”

They don’t hear The Monster moving out there. They don’t see him picking up the envelope. But then, at last, burrowing into her mum’s arms, Elsa realizes why his words sounded wrong.

The Monster was talking in Granny and Elsa’s secret language.

It’s possible to love your grandmother for years and years without really knowing anything about her.





8





RUBBER


It’s Wednesday. She’s running again.

She doesn’t know the exact reason this time. Maybe it’s because it’s one of the last days before the Christmas holidays, and they know they won’t be able to chase anyone for several weeks now, so they have to get it out of their systems. Or maybe it’s something else altogether—it doesn’t matter. People who have never been hunted always seem to think there’s a reason for it. “They wouldn’t do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them.” As if that’s how oppression works.

But it’s pointless trying to explain to these people, as fruitless as clarifying to a guy carrying around a rabbit’s foot—because of its supposed good luck—that if rabbits’ feet really were lucky, they’d still be attached to the rabbits.

And this is really no one’s fault. It’s not that Dad was a bit late picking her up, it’s just that the school day finished slightly too early. And it’s difficult making oneself invisible when the hunt starts inside the school building.

So Elsa runs.

“Catch her!” yells the girl somewhere behind her.