The Circle (Hammer) - By Elfgren, Sara B.,Strandberg, Mats Page 0,28

their lives. People who think that what they’ve just eaten for dinner or what they’re wearing is so important that they have to share it with the world.

When somebody complains too much about their non-problems, she gets so annoyed that she has to write something nasty. Then she lies awake for hours, terrified that the blogger will manage to track her down.

Now she’s checking a blog by Evelina, Vanessa Dahl’s friend. In her latest entry she’s written how sad it is that a guy in her year just committed suicide. In the entry below it she’s posted a picture of herself with Jari Mäkinen. Their faces are pressed together so tightly it must have hurt. It looks as if she’s holding on to his back. Anna-Karin thinks she looks like one of those hot music video girls.

Me and my boy Jari … 2 hot 4 school!!!:P

Anna-Karin’s cheeks feel hot in the glare from the screen. It’s so fucking ridiculous the way Evelina clings to the senior boys. But Anna-Karin would like nothing better than to be Evelina in that picture.

Alone in her room, she studies every pixel in Jari’s face. She’s looked at him often over the years. Looked, peeked, even stared, when she’s been sure no one could see her. Jari’s father helps her mother and Grandpa on the farm sometimes, and when Jari was younger he used to come too. Each time Anna-Karin would hide in her room until he’d gone home.

She is about to write something nasty to Evelina in the comment box when her legs tingle, as if they’ve fallen asleep.

Then she stands up so forcefully that her chair skitters across the room. That wasn’t me, she thinks, in horror. That wasn’t me.

When Minoo wakes up she’s standing in the garden in her pyjamas. She’s wearing her slippers. The last thing she remembers is lying on her bed, studying. She must have fallen asleep.

Panic bubbles inside her as her feet begin to move with a will of their own. She walks through the garden and out on to the street.

Is this a dream? No. She’s sure it isn’t. She tries to stop, turn around, run the other way, but her body moves forward inexorably.

The streets are empty, the night silent. All she can hear is the plastic soles of her slippers scraping along the tarmac and the sound of her breathing. She tries to scream, but can only produce a whimper.

It feels bizarre to try to think logically in a situation that is so completely absurd, but that’s all Minoo can do to quell her panic. She tries to remember if she’s read about anything like this, but her thoughts keep heading off in directions that terrify her even more. Mental illness. Possession.

In the end she tries to stop thinking altogether.

Minoo reaches the national road and sees a lorry hurtling towards her from the left. Her body doesn’t slow down but steps on to the tarmac. The lorry blasts its horn. Minoo screams inside herself. The ground vibrates beneath her feet as they continue marching resolutely forwards. She steels herself for the moment of impact, when her body will be crushed and smeared across the road.

But it never comes.

She can’t work out whether it’s the metal monster or just its backdraught that buffets her. The vehicle lets out a prolonged blast of its horn without slowing, but Minoo is safely on the other side of the road.

Her feet start climbing the steep embankment that runs alongside the national road. She slips on the damp grass and loses a slipper. The ground feels cold against the sole of her foot as she continues her ascent. The moon is glowing in the black sky. It is an unnatural red.

That can’t be right, she thinks.

When she reaches the top, she starts walking along the train tracks. After a while she loses her other slipper.

The forest closes in around the railway, the harsh moonlight illuminating the lines. Minoo thinks it’s strange that the moon is red, but its light seems normal.

She listens nervously for an approaching train.

The line is seldom used at night, but sometimes long freight trains come through that she can hear from her house.

She catches sight of a little stream and alongside it the old dirt track. It’s almost never used now because the national road was built through Engelsfors. Only a few stray mushroom pickers or horse riders ever make their way out here.

Suddenly Minoo changes direction. She slides down the embankment and on to the