The End Page 4

  4 WEEKS, 3 DAYS LEFT

  NAME: LUCINDA

  TELLUS #0392811002

  POST 0003

  This is what the Swedes care about at the moment, at least if you believe the news: soccer and food.

  Soccer has been an ongoing obsession all summer. There’s not enough time left to finish the season, so this year’s Swedish champions are going to be crowned at the end of a national tournament. Tonight is the first semifinal. Everyone wants their team to be the last winners in the history of humanity. Cities all over the country have decided to show the game on giant screens. On the news, all they’re talking about is the “festivities.”

  Dad has been called in to do an extra shift at the hospital. They’re expecting Hieronymus Bosch–type scenes as thousands of people—who all need to vent feelings of fear and anxiety and rage—gather in the center of town.

  I’m the one who told him to go. I promised him that it was fine. I’ve kept him from work long enough.

  Back to the news. People are bitter about the “bland food” now that we can’t import anymore. A cheerful food blogger shares “inspiring tips” on how to spice up that chicken casserole with Swedish lemon balm to give it a hint of “the Thai kitchen.” Cut to a thirty-second segment about the millions of people in refugee camps who have nowhere to go.

  They’re either starving to death or dying of diarrhea.

  But how are those of us who miss our lemongrass going to survive?

  I should stop watching the news so much. Observing the world at a distance isn’t healthy. I lose all sense of perspective. But now that our days are numbered, it feels more important than ever to find out what’s going on. To be brave enough to see how it ends, and to try to understand.

  SIMON

  I’m jostled between the bodies in Ali’s cramped kitchen. The music from the living room is so loud that the floor is shaking under our feet. Any moment now, we’re going to crash into the apartment below. No one lives there anymore. In this part of town, a lot of apartments stand empty.

  Moa from my science class is dancing on the table. She’s found Ali’s grandmother’s jewelry and wrapped it around her neck and arms. A pair of black bedazzled sunglasses hides half her face. Hampus slams into me, holding out his phone; I can see that the TellUs app is recording.

  “Say something to the aliens!” he yells.

  I push the phone away. Closing my eyes, I listen to the music, swaying with the movements of other bodies.

  Everyone is here except Tilda. My only consolation is that Sait is in the living room, so he isn’t with her, either. It shouldn’t matter. Tilda still isn’t with me. But it is a consolation.

  I take a big gulp of moonshine mixed with blueberry juice. We weren’t able to get any soda tonight. When I open my eyes again, I see Oscar on the other side of the table. He digs in his plastic cup, fishes out an ice cube, and pops it into his mouth, grinning as he looks around.

  The ice game. I don’t know when we started playing it, but it’s become a must at every party. Oscar turns to a girl I’ve never seen before with a bleach-blonde pixie cut. They kiss and she accepts the ice cube, keeping it between her teeth while she looks up at Moa and tugs her hand. And Moa gets on her knees. I hear the necklaces jingle and clink against each other over the music. They make a show of it, laughing when people cheer. When their mouths finally separate, Moa turns to me. She crawls to my side of the table. Her lips form a soft O around the melting ice cube. She wraps a hand around my neck. Her mouth is cold against mine. Our tongues play with the ice cube from opposite directions. It’s nearly hollow in the middle. Filled with saliva. Someone grabs my shoulder; when I turn around, Johannes is standing there.

  My mouth is the cold one now. Johannes’s lips feel hot against mine. He manages to get the ice cube, but we don’t stop kissing. I try to take it back. He laughs, sucks on my tongue, holding it in his mouth for a second before pulling back. Then he laughs again as he chews on the ice cube.

  Someone in the living room changes the music, turning the volume up even more. Johannes’s sweaty cheek brushes against mine. He whispers something. I can’t quite catch what. I’m just about to ask him to repeat it when something in his eyes makes me change my mind.

  He’s nervous about something. And suddenly, I know that I’m not capable of dealing with whatever he wants to say right now.

  Amanda appears out of nowhere and tries to pull Johannes out of the kitchen.

  “What’s your problem?” I ask her.

  “You’re the problem,” Amanda snaps. “Can you come here, Johannes?”

  She storms out of the kitchen without waiting for a reply.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I shout.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Johannes says. “I’m the one she’s mad at.”

  I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t have the energy to figure it out.

  My phone vibrates in the pocket of my jeans. It’s a message from my mom Stina: PROMISE ME YOU WON’T GO OUT AND WATCH THE GAME? THERE’S ALREADY FIGHTING.

  I type out a promise. When I look up again, Johannes is gone.

  I drink more. At least the quality of the moonshine is better than the stuff we had at the pool. Now and then, new ice cubes pass through my mouth. In the living room, “Save the World” comes on and everyone cheers.

  It’s so hot. I’m so drunk. Someone is watching me. The bleach-blonde girl. She’s perched on the kitchen counter now, getting a glass of water, waving at me to come over. I move toward her, squeezing past a couple who seem to be having sex in the middle of the floor. The bleach-blonde girl hands me her glass and I drink it down. Water trickles down my chin, and she laughs. When I put the glass back down by the counter, she says something—I assume it’s her name—and I put my hand next to her hip, say my name into her ear.

  “I know,” she says, and smiles.

  The vibrations from the bassline travel up my legs. My body starts throbbing in time with the music.

  I really only want Tilda. I only want Tilda to want me.

  But Tilda isn’t here. And I need the closeness of another human being. I want it so much my skin aches.

  I should let go. Everyone else does.

  My lips brush against the unknown girl’s lips. They’re thinner than Tilda’s; they feel so different. She shifts so that one soft breast presses against my arm. One thigh ends up between my legs. And my body responds immediately.

  She takes my hand. We push our way into the hallway, sneaking out to the stairway without turning the lights on. On the landing above Ali’s apartment, she kisses me again. A red light glints next to us like a staring eye. I fumble to get her skirt up over her hips, touch her like I used to touch Tilda. She gasps in my ear.

  It feels like Tilda is here with me in the darkness. As if she’s the one I’m entering. The music from Ali’s apartment booms through the stairwell, drowning out the sound of our bodies moving against each other. We should hurry up before someone catches us, but I don’t want it to end. I know that the moment it’s done, reality will come rushing back into my head.

  She’s breathing faster now.

  Ali’s door is thrown open with a bang. The music in the stairwell is even louder. Someone turns the light on, and we’re suddenly bathed in light. The spell is broken. The girl giggles while we rush to put our clothes back on.

  Voices and laughter drift out from the apartment, bodies falling over each other as they try to find their jackets in the hallway.

  “Are you guys done?” Ali says, and grins at me from the doorway. “The game is about to start.”

  NAME: LUCINDA

  TELLUS #0392811002

  POST 0004

  My little sister, Miranda, is sleeping in my bed. She’s eleven years old, but this summer she started sucking her thumb again. Her speech has regressed. She’s become afraid of the dark. Now, she’s finally snoring in the tangled mess she’s made of my sheets, but I can’t sleep. I can barely breathe. It feels like I’m falling throu
gh a bottomless black pit.

  I try to remind myself that the anxiety will pass. The body can’t sustain it for too long. I know that, really.

  The game has started. The roars from town can be heard all the way here. They rise and surge in waves that echo between the buildings. Echo inside my body. Multiply into new waves of panic. Right now, I just want to call the ER and ask Dad to come home. Miranda isn’t the only one who needs to be comforted tonight.

  She and I watched a documentary about the rainforest. (It was her choice—she loves anything to do with animals.) The camera tracked a frog, blue and gleaming and poisonous, and I stared at it and realized for the first time that it’s going to be gone. It’s not just us humans; it’s the animals, too. Not even bacteria will survive. Nothing. Scientists say that the planet will be “sterilized.”

  Outside the windows, the sky is dark. The moon and the stars are hidden behind thick clouds. Foxworth is up there somewhere, incredibly far away, but on its way, closer with every second that passes.

  Miranda asked me so many questions tonight; so much is going on inside her head. She wondered what was going to happen after the comet, and I said something cowardly and pointless about how we’re going meet in heaven afterward. Miranda wondered how we’d find each other there, considering heaven must be a big place if we were all going to fit. My lovely sister, who’s been so neglected this past year when everything’s revolved around me—how long has she been wondering about these things?

  She didn’t want to sleep alone, and honestly, neither did I. Her heart pounded hard against my arm as she lay next to me in bed. And I thought about her heart, and mine, and the almost eight billion hearts that will cease beating at the same time.

  And now my heart is pounding so hard it hurts, as if it’s trying to make up for all the beats it’s going to miss.

  SIMON

  Ican barely see what’s happening on the screens, but I roar when everyone else does. I scream like I’ve never screamed before. Let out all the darkness inside of me.

  There must be thousands of us gathered in the square. Our voices become one voice; our bodies turn into one creature. It feels like I’m dissolving, and I find myself liking it. Together, we’re strong. Invincible.

  And then it’s all over. Östersunds FK has won at home, and the screens shut down. We become individuals again, and we’re all moving in different directions at the same time. I land in my own body. Only now, I’m aware of a cold drizzle falling from the dark sky. The droplets are so small they look like rippling mist in the glow from the spotlights. The smoke from the flares is heavy on one side of the square. I can smell the stench from here. I try to stay close to Ali and Hampus, but other people keep pushing between us. Someone screams—in rage? Pain?—and panic swells like a mushroom cloud in my chest when I realize I can’t move. I’m trapped.

  Someone slams into me. All of a sudden, blood is pouring from my right eyebrow. I’ve been headbutted, but can barely feel it. Ali shouts; I can’t see him anywhere. I wipe the blood away as best I can, and spot a fight by the fountain in the middle of the square. Flushed faces, hateful glares. Everyone around them is trying to get away, shoving anyone who stands in their way. A few seconds later, the domino effect reaches me. I stumble backward, accidentally planting my elbow in someone’s chest, but manage to stay upright. If I fall, there’s no way I’ll get up again.

  I set a course for the H&M sign, trying to focus on getting there, but moving in a straight line is impossible. Bodies press against me from every direction. I have to walk around people who won’t let go of one another’s hands, swerve past glowing cigarettes, duck so I don’t get my eye poked out by an umbrella that someone has, unbelievably, opened in this mess.

  Screams are echoing across the square now. I don’t know how long I can keep myself from just charging forward, not giving a shit about who I trample, and not giving a shit about getting trampled myself.

  “Simon!”

  Tilda’s voice. I spot her a few feet away. She’s high again, looking around confused.

  “Tilda!” I shout, and try to move toward her. “Take my hand!”

  She reaches for me. Just when we touch, she’s pushed aside, but she doesn’t fall. She reaches for me again, and I twine my fingers with hers. Squeeze her hand hard.

  “You’re bleeding,” she says, her glassy eyes fascinated.

  I put an arm around her, taking in the blood that’s splashed across my jacket. We stick close together while we move through the crush. Tilda’s laces have come undone, and people are stepping on them, but we finally reach the edge of the square.

  Tilda crouches by a shop window and starts to clumsily tie her shoelaces while I make sure no one trips over her. Her shoelaces are black with dirt. They smudge her fingers.

  The naked mannequins in the window stare out at the square, where the chaos is only growing. The pounding in my eyebrow makes me realize how quickly my heart is beating.

  Cautiously, I touch the wound and watch the blood mix with rain on my fingertips.

  Tilda gets up unsteadily, using the window to keep her balance.

  “I met Amanda and Elin,” she says, “but I don’t know where they’ve gone.”

  “I lost Ali and Hampus. And I haven’t even seen Johannes since we came.”

  My voice is hoarse and scratchy from all the shouting. A police van with its lights flashing drives into the square. People beat their palms against it, roaring excitedly. I take my phone out of my pocket, relieved when I see a message from Johannes.

  WENT HOME EARLY. COULDN’T DEAL WITH AMANDA’S DRAMA. TALK TOMO.

  At least he’s okay. I look up at Tilda. She’s tilted her head to one side, watching the police officers as they pour out of the van and attempt to break up one of the fights.

  “Something terrible is going to happen tonight,” she says in a singsong voice.

  My skin crawls. I look at the officers. There are so few.

  Tilda is right.

  Suddenly, I feel completely sober.

  “We have to get out of here,” I say.

  She just grins when I take her hand again. Her head droops oddly.

  “Tilda, what did you take tonight?”

  She giggles. It sounds creepy, like the echo of someone long gone. She’s here, and yet she isn’t.

  “What’s so fucking funny?” I ask.

  She goes silent, seeming to ponder the question.

  “I don’t know.”

  I give up, and squeeze her hand tightly. “Hold on to me so we don’t get separated.”

  At least she doesn’t protest. We stick close to the walls until we reach Storgatan, and follow the crowd, stepping over glass shards and cigarette butts, broken umbrellas and plastic bags.

  Somewhere nearby, a kid is crying. I look around. I can’t spot the kid, but another fight has broken out behind us. I speed up, almost dragging Tilda behind me. We pass the broken shop windows of the florist where Judette used to work, the café where Tilda and I spent our first date. A different time, a different world, where everything frightening seemed so distant.

  Tilda was someone else back then. So was I.

  The girl you were with . . . she doesn’t exist anymore.

  Maybe she never did.

  “How are you doing?” I ask.

  Tilda smiles sleepily, stumbling along behind me.

  “One hundred percent.”

  “One hundred percent what?”

  She tilts her head back, looking at me from under hooded eyes.

  “One hundred percent fucked up.”

  Then she laughs and pulls herself free from my grasp.

  “I’ll be fine. You can go now,” she says.

  A part of me wishes I could. It hurts too much to see her like this.

  “Go,” she says again. “I can’t stand it . . . when you just look at me with those . . . puppy dog eyes.”

  I yank her back by the arm. She almost falls over.

  “What are you doing?” she sn
aps.

  My grip around her arm tightens. I want to shake her until the glassy film disappears from her eyes.

  “I’m not going to leave you here. You can barely fucking stand.”

  “Let me go!”

  I hear running footsteps, and when I turn to look, I see a few men in their thirties coming toward us. They’re neat and tidy—sober—dressed in identical black windbreakers.

  “Is everything okay?” one of them says.

  Fear seeps into me like a poison.

  “Yeah,” Tilda says. “We’re just talking.”

  “Are you sure? We can walk you home, if you want.”

  The others come closer. Glare at me. I know what they see: the black guy with a bleeding eyebrow and the girl who’s trying to escape him.

  “It’s fine,” Tilda says.

  “You can tell us. We’ll protect you.”

  “I don’t need your protection. Leave us alone, assholes!”

  The men don’t move. Someone shatters a window farther down the street, but the guys don’t even turn to look. Their spokesperson seems disappointed. He wants something to do. He wants to be Tilda’s savior. For that to work, he has to save her from something, whether she wants him to or not.

  He takes a step toward me. The pounding in my eyebrow speeds up. I haven’t been in a fight since I was a kid, and it’s three against one.

  “Come on,” Tilda says, and now she’s the one dragging me along behind her.

  I stare straight ahead. Say nothing. The fear only drains away when I’m sure they’re not following us, leaving behind space for the rage. And when that dies down, shame.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  But Tilda doesn’t respond. I’m not even sure she hears me.

  Glass crunches under our shoes as we pass the smashed shop window. It’s the place where my moms and I used to get candy every Saturday when I was a kid. The shelves are tipped over. Empty plexiglass bins lie strewn across the floor.

  I hear running steps behind us again. Turning around, I’m sure I’ll see the men in black jackets, but this time it’s a topless guy with a balled-up polo shirt pressed against his bleeding nose. Our eyes meet before he rushes on.