The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,22

Elias. How he did it. The girls who found him.

‘Look, there she is,’ a few older kids whisper, as she walks past.

She pulls her backpack hard against her as she goes into the school. She lowers her head, trying to make herself invisible as she pushes her way through the bustling entrance hall. The entire school has been told to assemble in the auditorium to observe a minute’s silence for Elias.

The looks and whispers follow her. Her ears grow redder with each step she takes. Minoo can’t take it any more. She runs down the stairs to the cafeteria in the basement. At this time of the morning, no one is there except the kitchen staff. She heads for the girls’ toilets.

Only once she has shut the door can she breathe normally. She looks at her watch. If she waits a few minutes, sneaks into the auditorium as the ceremony is about to start and sits at the back, perhaps no one will notice her.

She walks up to a mirror and stares at her face. Is this how Elias was standing before he … did it? She shuts her eyes and opens them again. She tries to see her face from outside, as Max would see it.

It’s become an obsession every time she looks at herself in the mirror.

If my spots cleared up, I might be pretty, she thinks. Or all right at least.

Then she’s unsure again. How is it possible to spend so much time in front of the mirror every day and still not know what you really look like?

She thinks of when she was alone in the classroom with Max. The warmth from his hand. She feels it again and it spreads throughout her body. Why did she run away? What would have happened if she’d stayed?

The door is thrown open with a bang. Minoo spins around. Linnéa’s standing there.

‘Hi,’ Minoo says, wondering if what she was thinking might be printed across her forehead.

‘Hi,’ Linnéa answers, and walks in.

She’s wearing black jeans and a long black hoody. She looks Minoo up and down. ‘Hiding again?’ she asks, with a hint of a smile.

Minoo ought to be angry with her, but she can’t be. The harsh words that were said yesterday don’t count: too petty in view of what happened.

‘Can we forget what I said yesterday?’ Linnéa asks, as if she had just been thinking the same thing.

‘Sure.’ Minoo tries to shrug with a degree of indifference. ‘How are you doing?’ she blurts out. Not the most sensitive question to ask someone who had found their best friend dead in a toilet.

Linnéa looks as if she’s about to say something sarcastic, but then her face softens. ‘I wasn’t going to come in today,’ she says quietly, ‘but I felt I had to, for Elias’s sake.’

Minoo thinks of her own selfish reasons for not staying at home, and is happy that Linnéa isn’t looking at her. Her gaze is directed somewhere else, almost as if she’s looking inside herself. She nibbles the tip of her bright pink thumbnail.

‘I wish more people had known him,’ she says. ‘He could be so funny. And considerate.’

Minoo is uncertain how to answer. ‘Shall we go?’ she says, after a moment’s hesitation.

Linnéa nods and walks out ahead of her.

The entrance hall is now empty, except for a few stragglers hurrying towards the auditorium.

‘Are you all right?’ Minoo asks, before they go in.

The murmuring from the auditorium sounds like a gigantic beehive.

‘No,’ Linnéa answers, with her hard little smile. ‘But I never am.’

8

REBECKA AND GUSTAF are sitting next to each other in the penultimate row. The auditorium has remained essentially unchanged since the school was built: a big hall with a raked floor leading down to a wood-panelled stage. The sun falls in through the high, dirty windows and casts a shadow pattern on the opposite wall. A lectern has been placed on the stage, and the rows of seats are packed with students.

Rebecka turns her head and sees Minoo Falk Karimi and Linnéa Wallin slip in and sit in the row behind her. She smiles at them uncertainly. Linnéa doesn’t appear to see her, but Minoo smiles back.

Rebecka has always liked Minoo but it’s difficult to get close to her. She comes across as so grown-up that she makes Rebecka feel childish and at a disadvantage. Besides, Minoo is so damn smart. She was unstoppable during class discussions last year. She would put forward one crystal-clear argument after another. No one stood a chance