any blood moon.’
Anna-Karin glances at Grandpa. She’s aching to tell him about all the incredible stuff that’s happening, about how her life is changing, but she can’t forget the warning: don’t trust anyone.
When Anna-Karin enters her room, she goes up to the mirror. She knows she’s no beauty, but she has nice eyes – they’re large and an unusual green – and her mouth has a pretty shape, especially when she smiles. She tests it out in front of the mirror. Her teeth are white and even. That’s something at least.
She grabs a regular bra instead of the one she usually wears to make her breasts look smaller. Most girls want bigger breasts, she reminds herself.
But when she buttons up her jeans, her self-confidence falters again. She must have the most disgusting rolls of stomach fat in the whole school. She chooses a T-shirt that is several sizes too big and pulls her tracksuit jacket over the top of it. She feels secure again.
Anna-Karin smiles hesitantly into the mirror. From now on she’s going to smile more often.
Minoo is approaching the school just as one of the school buses pulls up outside the front gate with a loud hiss. From a distance she sees Anna-Karin among the students that pour out of it. Their eyes meet for a brief moment. Anna-Karin smiles, so fleetingly that Minoo almost thinks she imagined it, then looks at the ground again, her face hidden behind her veil of hair.
‘Minoo!’ Rebecka shouts, walking towards her.
Amazing to to think they’d seen each other just a few hours ago. In such extraordinary circumstances.
‘I thought we weren’t supposed to let on that we know each other,’ Minoo says in a low voice when they meet.
‘But we’re in the same class.’
‘That doesn’t mean we should be talking to each other, does it?’
Rebecka gives her a strange look and Minoo realises she’s being silly. ‘Sorry. That was excessive,’ she says, when they start walking together. ‘Everything just feels so strange.’
‘I know, my mum said that A&E was full of people last night, that a lot of weird things had happened. Did your father hear anything? From the newspaper, I mean.’
‘He’d already left for work when I got up. Or when I pretended to get up.’
‘You haven’t slept either?’
Minoo shakes her head. She almost blurts out how she threw herself at her chemistry book as soon as she’d got through the door, but stops herself in time.
‘The weirdest thing is that some of the patients said the moon was red,’ Rebecka continues, and stops at the playground entrance, ‘but when my mum and the other nurses looked outside, none of them saw it. And when we looked at the moon together this morning I could see it was still red, but she couldn’t.’
‘So, not everyone could see it?’ Minoo asks.
‘Looks like it. And my mother didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned Kärrgruvan. It was as if she’d forgotten it even existed.’
A shiver runs down Minoo’s spine. ‘Maybe that’s what makes it a protected place. I read a book once where there was this tree you couldn’t see unless you knew it was there. Maybe it’s the same sort of thing—’ Abruptly Minoo stops and blushes. She’s been babbling again. ‘Of course, it was just a children’s book.’
‘Can you believe we’re talking seriously about this?’ Rebecka asks.
Minoo laughs. No, she can’t. They continue to walk and pass Vanessa, who follows them with her gaze but says nothing.
‘It looks like something’s happened,’ Rebecka says.
Only now does Minoo see how many people have congregated in the playground.
Gustaf comes up to them and kisses Rebecka so intimately that Minoo has to look away. Luckily it’s over quickly. Gustaf and Rebecka are like one of those perfect couples you see on TV, and try to make yourself feel better by deciding that no one looks like that in real life.
I wonder what the first boy who kisses me will look like.
That thought flutters through her mind in various forms almost every day. Late at night, as she’s about to fall asleep, she sometimes allows herself to believe that it will be Max. But in the clear light of day that idea seems childish and absurd.
‘Have you seen it?’ Gustaf asks.
Minoo and Rebecka exchange a look.
‘Seen what?’ Rebecka asks.
‘If you had, you wouldn’t be asking. Come on!’
He takes Rebecka’s hand and gestures to Minoo to come too. Minoo follows them. The students are standing in two loosely formed groups, with a fair distance