The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,25

across the stage from the lamps as they shatter.

Ear-piercing feedback screeches from the speakers, and everyone claps their hands over their ears until the caretaker pulls out the plug. Then everything is quiet. Deathly quiet. People drop their hands, but no one says a word.

Linnéa and Ida stare at each other, stock still. Eventually Ida loses the wordless battle. She flees the stage and runs for cover in the front row among her friends.

The murmuring begins again. The principal tries to speak to Linnéa, but she steps down from the stage and runs towards the exit.

Rebecka looks at the dust that is still floating in the air, at the glass scattered across the floorboards.

I did that.

It’s an insane notion, but she doesn’t doubt it. She had caused it to happen. It was impossible and yet it had happened. It had happened in front of everyone.

‘Keep calm,’ the principal shouts from the stage. ‘The front rows leave first, then the rest of you. We’ll assemble outside in the playground.’

Rebecka can’t take her eyes off the metal beam. She’s never believed in the supernatural, never been able to take ghost stories and horoscopes seriously.

Now she doesn’t just believe. She knows.

Anna-Karin is among the last to leave the auditorium. She’s been sitting at the very back, as far away as possible so that no one will notice her. It felt especially important to do so on a day when she had decided to leave Pepper at home. Or maybe Pepper had made the decision: just as she was about to pick him up, he had shot under the sofa and holed up in there until she had to leave for the bus.

She had felt hurt – and frightened. Anna-Karin has always had a way with animals. They love her.

But now reality seems to have gone haywire, when she considers Pepper’s behaviour and her mother losing her voice mid-sentence –it hadn’t come back by the time Anna-Karin had left – her strange dreams and the fact that she’d woken up two days in a row with her hair smelling of smoke. Somehow the chaos on the stage is connected with all of that.

She moves robotically down the stairs and outside. Through a gap in the throngs of students, she sees the caretaker go up to the flagpole. In the background she glimpses the principal. Her face is taut.

The flag is slowly raised, and then lowered again. It comes to rest two-thirds of the way up the pole, hanging limply.

They stand there for a few minutes, uncertain what to do. A few start crying again, but it all feels a little half-hearted after the drama in the auditorium. The principal says something and those closest to the flagpole start to disperse and head inside to where classroom discussions await them with teachers and psychologists. ‘It’s important to gather up all the emotions experienced when something like this happens,’ the principal said in her speech. As if negative emotions were as easy to tidy away as litter in the playground.

Anna-Karin gazes at the flag. Poor Elias, she thinks. But at least he had some friends like him.

Anna-Karin has never been part of a group. She’s never liked any particular kind of music or had any particular style. There’s nothing to distinguish her at all.

‘That little bitch Linnéa …’

The voice to her right is all too familiar. She turns. It’s Erik Forslund, with Kevin Månsson and Robin Zetterqvist. The boys Linnéa said attacked Elias with a pair of scissors.

‘We should teach that fucking dyke a lesson,’ Robin hisses.

The others nod.

Anna-Karin’s anger starts to build. She stares at them until Erik Forslund notices her. Anna-Karin realises that this is the first time she’s looked him in the eye since primary school. Back then she hadn’t learned to stare at the ground wherever she went, that that was how you got through life in one piece.

‘What the fuck are you looking at, BO Ho?’ he jeers.

It’s as if all those years of rage wash over her. Only this time she doesn’t direct it at herself. She’s not angry with herself for being ugly, worthless, fat, disgusting and pathetic. She’s angry with Erik instead. She hates him – a nice feeling: it fizzes up through her like soda.

Piss in your pants!

She’s gazing straight into Erik’s eyes when it happens. Something shifts in them. Suddenly a dark spot expands across the crotch of his jeans.

He glances around in a panic. So far no one has noticed. There’s still time for Erik