10. Casandra
Past - One year ago
The evening sun over Lake V?nern is a brilliant, mocking streak of gold, but I have the heavy curtains of my apartment drawn so tight that not a single ray can slice through the dark.
I pull the thick wool blanket tighter around my shoulders, shivering so hard my teeth click together. It’s June. It’s nearly twenty degrees celsius outside, the peak of a gorgeous Swedish summer, and I am freezing to death in a room that feels like the inside of an industrial freezer.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. The screen’s glare hits my retinas like a physical blow, sending a sharp, agonizing spike of pain straight to the back of my eyes. I groan, burying my face in my pillow as the throbbing behind my eyelids intensifies.
For the past two weeks, my body has been playing some sick, inexplicable trick on me.
It started as a phantom chill I couldn’t shake, and now it has evolved into this—a bizarre, bone-deep coldness and a sudden, violent allergy to the very sun I used to spend hours soaking up.
Every time I step outside into the fresh air, my head pounds as if my skull is being squeezed in a vise.
The phone buzzes again. I blind-swipe across the screen and press it to my ear, keeping my eyes firmly shut.
“Tell me we are still on for tomorrow,” a cheerful, sing-song voice commands.
It’s Linnea, my classmate and the closest thing I have to a best friend in this country.
“If you cancel on your own twentieth birthday brunch AND your first Midsommar party, Casandra, I will personally drag you there by your hair.”
“Linnea, please don’t yell,” I mutter, my voice sounding raspy and hollow, even to me. “My head is exploding.”
“Still?” Linnea lets out a dramatic, irritated huff through the line. “Cassie, you’ve been sick for two weeks. Who gets a flu in June? You don’t even have a cough. You’re just... lurking in the dark.”
“I’m not lurking. I’m resting.”
“You’re pale, you’re freezing in the summer, and you’re literally hiding from the daylight,” Linnea says, her tone shifting into a tease.
“Honestly, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re finally turning into a vampire. It’s very fitting, don’t you think? Capitalizing on the whole homeland brand?”
I roll my eyes so hard the back of my eyes thrum with pain. Of course. The vampire joke.
“Ha, ha.” I say, flat and entirely unamused.
If there is one thing that drives me absolutely insane, it is the fact that the entire world seems to think Romania consists of nothing but Gothic castles and bats.
Ever since I moved to Sweden to study marketing and communications at a university in Karlstad, it’s the default joke I get.
It doesn’t help that my skin is naturally so pale I look less like a sun-kissed European student and more like a Victorian ghost.
“I’m serious!” Linnea chuckles. “You just need some sun, Cassie. Come out tomorrow. You can’t spend your birthday acting like Dracula’s long-lost roommate.”
“I’ll try,” I sigh, shifting under the heavy layers of my duvet, desperately wishing the fabric would generate even a fraction of heat. “I really want to go, Linnea. I’ll see how I feel in the morning. I’ll text you.”
“Fine. But take some ibuprofen and drink some water. See you tomorrow, birthday girl.”
The call clicks off, and I let the phone drop onto the mattress, grateful for the return of the silence.
I stare up at the shadowed ceiling, the silence of the small apartment wrapping around me. Despite the strange sickness, a wave of fierce pride washes over me as I look around the space. It’s small, but it’s mine.
It took me seven grueling months, but I finally landed a part-time student job at a local logistics firm last month. When the university term ended two weeks ago, my parents assumed I would pack my bags and fly back to Romania for the three-month summer break.
I told them no.
They didn’t understand. My parents are successful business owners back home—by Romanian standards, we are incredibly well-off.
They made it clear from the moment I got accepted in the university that they would fully bankroll my life here.
They paid my rent, my tuition, my groceries.
I knew I was privileged. I knew I didn’t need to work a grueling shift after lectures just to afford coffee.
But I valued my independence far too much to let myself become a permanent parasite on their bank account. I didn’t want to live a life where every krone I spent had to be approved by a wire transfer from Romania. I wanted to build something that belonged strictly to me.
Besides, there was nothing left for me back in Romania.
The moment I announced I was leaving the country to study in Scandinavia, my high school friend group evaporated.
The group chats went silent; the invitations dried up.
They looked at my departure as a betrayal, or maybe just a sign that our worlds were splitting.
They all jumped ship before I even boarded the plane.
If I went back for the summer, I would just be sitting with my grandma in my parents’ large, empty house, pretending a past life still fit me.
No, I was staying in Sweden. I was going to keep my job, build my resume, and live the life I chose.
My mind drifts back to the day I left. My parents had been busy coordinating the luggage and complaining about the airport traffic, but my grandmother—the woman who had practically raised me while my parents were away for work—had pulled me aside.
She was a tiny woman, weathered but fierce, with eyes that always seemed to see right through whatever front I was putting up. She grabbed my hands, her grip surprisingly tight, almost desperate.
“Casandra,” she had whispered, her voice intense enough to make me freeze. “Promise me. You go to this new country, and you enjoy every single second of it. You taste the air, you see the world, and you live while you can.”
“I’m just going to university, not to war,” I had joked, trying to lighten the heavy mood.
But she hadn’t smiled. She had squeezed my hands until it almost hurt.
“You never know what tomorrow brings, Cassie. The world changes in a heartbeat. Make the best out of today. Right now, you are young. You have no responsibilities, no burdens. Put yourself first while you still have the luxury to do so. Promise me.”
At the time, her intensity had unnerved me. It felt like a warning wrapped in a blessing, a heavy, dark shadow cast over a bright new beginning. But I had promised her anyway.
Now, lying under three blankets in the dark, sweating from the room’s trapped warmth but freezing from the inside out, her words echo in my mind. Put yourself first while you still have the luxury.
I close my eyes, trying to block out the throbbing pain behind my eyes. Tomorrow, I turn twenty. A whole new decade. No more teenagers, no more excuses. I just have to get through this weird, endless cold.
I pull the blanket over my face, praying that when the sun rises on my birthday, the light won’t hurt quite as bad.