The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,117
told anyone. She’s so ashamed that she can’t bear to think about it. How could she ever explain something like that? As soon as she even considers telling the others, she sees Linnéa’s look of contempt.
I suppose you and Rebecka weren’t such good friends after all.
To top it all, Nicolaus had a go at her this morning. He’s refusing to let them use his apartment unless they invite Ida to their training sessions.
‘She deserves the same chances as you. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If you don’t tell her soon, I will.’
I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her today, she thinks. No matter what the others say.
She reaches the frozen stream when she catches sight of something black moving along the ground. She knows who it is before she looks down.
Cat mews glumly and Minoo looks at it with a warmth that takes her by surprise. Nicolaus didn’t want to come, but his familiar is here. A part of him.
‘Let’s go,’ Minoo says.
They’re such a motley crew, Minoo thinks, as she walks through the fairground gates.
Vanessa, who looks as if she’s freezing in her far-too-thin jacket; Anna-Karin, like an overgrown child, with her brightly coloured woollen hat pulled low over her forehead; Linnéa, hidden inside a leopard-print fake-fur coat; and Ida in her white down jacket.
Minoo puts her backpack on the stage and pulls out some sheets of paper she’s printed from the Net. She’s nervous. But when she catches sight of Cat, who jumps up and lies down next to her –she feels a little stronger. She meets Ida’s gaze.
‘Ida,’ she asks, ‘have you found anything in the book?’
Ida shakes her head and smacks loudly on a piece of gum – Minoo gets a whiff of synthetic watermelon. ‘Nothing about G and a mysterious twin anyway,’ she says, with a secretive smile that’s intended to hint she’s found other things – things she has no intention of telling Minoo.
Minoo swallows her irritation and looks down at her papers. ‘I may have found something,’ she says.
The others wait. It’s quiet, except for the wet smacking from Ida’s mouth.
‘So, the question is how could Gustaf be in two places at the same time?’ Minoo begins.
The smacking stops.
‘No,’ Ida says. ‘The question is why we don’t go to the principal.’
‘You know the answer to that,’ Linnéa says. ‘Because she won’t do anything, except stop us.’
‘Maybe she can help us if we just as—’
‘We have to help ourselves,’ Linnéa says.
She gives Ida such a look of contempt that Minoo can’t help but be impressed. But Ida just scoffs and starts chewing her gum again. ‘Can you imagine what the principal would do if she found out about this?’ she says.
‘But she’s not going to,’ Linnéa says. ‘Is she?’
Ida doesn’t answer, just goes on chewing.
‘Is she?’ Linnéa repeats.
Ida shrugs her shoulders. ‘I guess we’ll have to see about that.’
Minoo fingers her papers. She’s already lost control of the situation. She clears her throat. ‘Ida,’ she says. ‘We have to know we can trust you.’ Even though we lie to you, she thinks, and feels sick.
‘I’ve no reason to feel any loyalty towards any of you.’
‘We promised each other we’d work together and look out for each other.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Ida says, throwing out her hands. ‘But I’m going soon if you don’t get started.’
‘God, we’d really miss you,’ Linnéa mumbles.
‘As I was saying,’ Minoo breaks in, before they start squabbling again, ‘I’ve tried to find an explanation for how Vanessa and I could have seen Gustaf at the same time. I started searching under “doppelganger” on the Net and it turned out you can find them in pretty much all mythologies.’ She looks up, as if to make sure that the others are paying attention.
‘I thought the principal’s Soviet-style censorship machine had removed all truth from the Internet,’ Linnéa says.
‘But she also said that traces remain,’ Anna-Karin counters.
Minoo looks at her in surprise.
‘Well, that’s what she said,’ Anna-Karin mumbles.
‘Exactly,’ says Minoo, feeling like a teacher giving praise. ‘Doppelgänger is German, meaning literally ‘double-walker’. The old Irish myths mention a creature known as a fetch. There are Norse myths about vardøgern, a kind of ghost-like premonitory apparition of a person who hasn’t been there yet. In the far north of Finland it’s called an etiäinen. All the mythologies agree that the appearance of a doppelganger is a bad omen. If you see your own doppelganger it’s usually a sign that you’re going to die.’