Chapter 107
He couldn’t see very well as he stood up, leaving the backpack on the floor. His vision was misty. He tucked the last photograph into his pocket.
Belongings. Maybe they don’t say much about a person, really, not much and not the important stuff. Or at least, you can tell yourself that, if you need to.
Sander needed to. Because now he remembered.
—
He’s back at ground zero. It’s December of 1999. A party like so many others. He witnesses the instant before everything begins to distort. The needle of the compass still untouched. It’s one o’clock when he and Killian leave the party.
Is it obvious, to look at Killian, what he’s about to do? Maybe. Love is strange, and the heart is a fickle thing.
They go their separate ways in the night. Nothing hurts.
—
A bag of rice dropped onto the roof from up in the tall tree. That’s what it sounds like.
You have to climb pretty high up the nearest tree, scoot as close to the end of a branch as you can get, and hang down from it.
Then let go and land on the roof of the garage.
From there, you can climb up to the roof ridge and boost yourself—this is the hardest part—over the edge and onto the ledge closest to Sander’s window.
As a kid, Killian could do this almost silently. That was how he got into Sander’s room unnoticed, so they could read comic books and play games long after the lights went out in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. But it’s been a long time; he hasn’t done it in years.
Probably never will do it again, a thought that dissolves and fades into memory: the sound of his friend, grown way too big and heavy for this, letting go of the branch and falling to the roof with a thud; Sander himself going to the window and unlatching it, opening it so Killian could climb in.
But it’s happened again after all. It’s nighttime, the same night as the party, but Sander is already home and in bed when a sound outside the window wakes him from a heavy, dreamless sleep.
He sees his friend dart by like a shadow on the roof.
On the other side of the windowpane, Killian’s face is alight with terror. He’s panting as though he’s being chased, and streaks of blood on his face look almost black in the dark.
The Advent candelabra in the window tips as Sander opens the window.
“What—”
“I need you. Help.”
“But—”
“You have to help me, Sander.”
He follows his friend through the woods. The cold makes his lungs ache. Branches and brambles, icy and sharp, scratch at his arms. They come to a clearing in the black night, and the forest opens.
They’re on a small hill. A narrow gravel road winds around the foot of it. On the other side is one of Skavboke’s many vast crop fields. They’re close to ?stholm’s place.
“Down there.” Killian catches his breath. “See?”
Not far down the gravel road he can make out the shape of a car.
It’s an old Volvo 240 with rusty fenders. The front has run into something nasty and unyielding; the back hatch points to the sky. Smoke or steam hisses from the crumpled, busted hood.
“But…” Sander hears himself say. “That’s—”
“I know.”
Killian snuffles. His nose is bleeding badly as they start down to the car. The words trickle into silence, out into the night. He stands near the back of the Volvo and stares at Sander.
“It’s…Sander, I…”
He was on his way home, he says, tired and drunk, and he saw a car on the side of the road.
It was unlocked and the key was in the ignition.
He didn’t think about whose it was—cars all look the same in the dark.
And, like he said, he was tired and drunk.
So he got in and started for home, but then he lost control on the ice and drove straight into one of the big trees on the side of the road.
He tried to keep going but couldn’t; he’d hit his face really hard and he thought his nose was broken.
His eyes kept tearing up too much. And besides, the car would only cough when he tried to start the engine again.
“When I got out, I saw that the back gate had flown open, I think it must have been because of the crash, because it was closed when I first saw the car.” He blinks. “I think. I’m not sure, but…yeah, it had to have been. Anyway, I walked around and—”
“Where was the car when you found it?”
A sound nearby. A bird. It bursts into the night sky, like it just learned something important and needs to pass it along to the powers that be.
“I don’t remember. Not at their house. I didn’t get that far. It was on the side of the road somewhere.”
Sander walks around the car, comes to stand by Killian, and bends down to see what’s in the trunk. He smells something weird. Then he sees.
Something grows inside his chest. He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t recognize it. A cloud of heat and smoke. It has to get out. Here it comes, a wave: Sander screams.
—
A single night, almost half a life.
He had trusted Killian, had even lived his life according to what Killian told him. Who killed Mikael? Sander didn’t know; he only knew that it wasn’t his best friend.
He’d been wrong all along.
As he stepped out of Felicia’s house, the rain that fell over him felt fresh somehow, as if it would wash him clean of deeper things than blood.