Anna-Karin trying to get them to do something, one by one, while they try to block her. She was surprisingly reluctant but eventually let herself be talked into it. ‘But I’m only going to do harmless things,’ she said.
Then she directed her power at Minoo, who was seized by an irresistible urge to sing a schmaltzy song from a musical. She had belted out an entire verse and chorus before she’d managed to block the rest. ‘That was not harmless,’ Minoo said, bright red in the face.
Since then they’ve been keeping the exercises simple. Anna-Karin might order them to pick up a pen from the floor while they resist doing it.
So that Anna-Karin also had a chance to practise resisting, Nicolaus has suggested this morning that Vanessa make herself invisible and Anna-Karin try to see her. Eventually she succeeded, covered with sweat from the effort. Vanessa was noticeably shaken. ‘That makes me feel so secure when I’m supposed to be secretly following a guy who’s in league with demons,’ she said, as she was leaving to do just that.
Minoo and Anna-Karin went straight from Nicolaus’s apartment to the fairground for a reunion with the principal.
Now Minoo’s head is throbbing. She just wants to lie down and sleep in the middle of the dance floor. The principal drones on about the Book of Patterns, while Minoo, Anna-Karin and Ida twiddle their Pattern Finders and flip through the infuriating book.
‘Minoo?’
For a moment Minoo is unsure whether she’d dozed off. She looks up and meets the principal’s eye.
‘How are you getting on? Do you see anything?’
Her enthusiasm never wanes. Minoo twists the Pattern Finder and shakes her head.
‘It’s incredibly important that you make an effort,’ Adriana says. ‘I wish I understood why Vanessa and Linnéa aren’t taking this seriously. Do you know why they haven’t been coming?’
‘No,’ says Minoo.
She shouldn’t have to explain why Linnéa isn’t coming – the principal herself is the reason – but she comes close to launching into an hysterical spiel about how Vanessa seemed ill the last time she saw her, really ill, and besides, she usually goes to stay with relatives in the south over Christmas – um, Spain, I think it was.
Once she had seen a TV programme about how to catch someone in a lie: their explanations are always too involved and they’re a little too interested in explaining every detail. Now Minoo tries to swallow the words that are trying to get out of her mouth.
Luckily she’s cut off.
‘I think I see something,’ she hears someone say.
Ida is sitting on the floor cross-legged, peering through the Pattern Finder at the open book in her lap. ‘At first they were just a collection of symbols and then … I get it now.’
‘What can you see?’ Minoo asks. ‘I mean, is it an image or words?’
But no one’s listening to her. Instead the principal moves next to Ida in what seems like a single stride and slams the book shut.
‘What are you doing?’ Ida shouts.
‘Open it again,’ the principal says. ‘Open it and concentrate on what you’re looking for. Once you’ve seen something in the Book of Patterns, you’ll be able to find it again.’
Ida pouts but does as she’s told. She furrows her brow in caricatured concentration and flips through the book with the Pattern Finder pressed to one eye. She twiddles it and flips through the pages, twiddles and flips.
‘There!’ she cries.
The principal looks at her with almost reverent attention, which makes Minoo envious to the depths of her soul.
‘But it’s still just symbols. It doesn’t appear as text I can read, but I can still, like, understand somehow what it says,’ Ida says.
‘That’s usually how it works,’ the principal says patiently. ‘What does it tell you?’
Minoo pulls out her notepad and listens intently.
‘Okay. Here’s sort of what it says. That it’s, like, built for one. Then it works just great. But if more people try to get in, someone is always left out. And if the one who’s outside disappears, the next one ends up outside. And then the next. And the next. And the next. Until everyone’s gone.’
Minoo lowers her pen. It had made no sense to her at all.
‘What exactly is it?’ Anna-Karin asks.
‘It’s, like … this thing. It’s something to do with us.’
‘But what sort of thing?’ Minoo asks, irritated.
‘It’s like a … I can’t explain! Some kind of atmosphere or something.’
Minoo is about to explode with frustration. ‘Atmosphere? Come on, Ida, you must be able to explain it better