Chapter 5
I try to rest my forehead on the desk with my arms as a pillow, but it’s impossible to relax while my mind is racing. I have no idea how much time has passed when the door opens again. I sit up abruptly.
A tall man with a black beard nods hello.
“You’re Tuva, right?”
He has a booming bass voice that sounds like it’s coming from deep down in his chest. His colleague is a little shorter, with hair and eyebrows so blond they’re almost transparent.
They enter the room, and the shorter policeman shuts the door behind them. The black-haired man pulls out a chair and sits opposite me, blocking the exit.
What do they think I’m going to do? Make a run for it?
Axel was in the woods, says a voice in my head. And now he’s gone.
The knot in my stomach clenches tighter.
“My name is Officer Henriksson,” says the black-haired man. “And this is Officer Berggren.” He points to his colleague, who has sat down next to him.
“Shouldn’t my parents be here if you’re going to question me?” I ask, trying to sound grown-up, as if I have the faintest idea how this sort of thing works.
As if I’m not terrified of them.
Officer Henriksson smiles softly. It looks more genuine than Ms. Granberg’s grin.
“We’ve called them,” he says. “Your mother is on her way. We thought we could get started while we wait for her.”
“Get started with what?”
“Nobody is suggesting you’ve done anything wrong, Tuva,” says Officer Henriksson. “We just want to know what happened today.”
“So you’re not going to interrogate me?” I ask. I’m speaking louder than usual and clenching my jaw so hard it hurts.
Officer Henriksson shrugs.
“There’s no need to define our conversation as anything in particular,” he says. “We just want to know what happened in the woods. Anything you can remember. Call it an interrogation if you want.”
That’s not much of an answer.
“Why did you close the curtains?” Officer Berggren asks.
The question takes me by surprise. I can’t exactly tell them the truth: that I’m afraid of the sea. That it feels hostile, threatening, that the mere sight of it through the window cuts right through me.
What can I say?
“I wanted to take a nap,” I reply after a pause. “I’ve been sitting here for, like, three hours. I don’t even have my phone.”
Is it obvious how dishonest that sounded?
They exchange a glance, as if they’re both thinking the same thing.
“You haven’t found Axel yet, have you?” I say.
As soon as the words escape my lips, I want to bite my tongue. It sounds like I know for a fact that they haven’t found him. Like I know they won’t find him.
Officer Henriksson hesitates, then shakes his head. “No, we haven’t,” he admits.
“Most of the islanders are out searching for him as we speak,” Officer Berggren adds.
“Maybe he got lost in the fog,” I mumble.
That sounded even less convincing.
Officer Henriksson leans across the table. He looks quite young, but he’s a big guy, with thick, dark eyebrows.
“Can you tell us everything right from the beginning, Tuva? What happened?”
I pull the blanket tighter around myself and look down at the table.
“Have you spoken to Rasmus?”
The classroom is so quiet.
“Just start from the beginning,” Officer Henriksson repeats calmly.
I bite the inside of my cheeks hard.
This morning I was anxious about nightmares and imaginary monsters. This is so much worse.
“We had this orienteering test,” I begin. “In the woods. We’ve been practicing for a few weeks, but today we were being graded.”
Officer Berggren is sitting with his legs wide apart. He doesn’t move a muscle.
Officer Henriksson nods encouragingly. “Go on.”
“It was foggy. I could barely see a thing. I had found the first checkpoint and was about to go on to number seven because that was closest—”
“Who was your partner?” Officer Henriksson interrupts. “We were talking to your PE teacher, and he said all the students were working in pairs.”
I take a long pause. Too long.
“I was working alone,” I say at last. Then, reluctantly, in a soft, sheepish voice: “None of my classmates like me.”
A few seconds of silence. Then I continue speaking, mostly to avoid their awkward, unspoken pity.
“I was on my way to the seventh checkpoint when I saw Rasmus.”
“How far away were you?” Officer Berggren leans forward.
“From Rasmus?”
“Yes.”
I shrug, look down. My fingers are intertwined. “I don’t know. Kind of far, maybe twenty yards.”
“But you’re sure it was him?” Officer Berggren asks. “Despite the fog?”
“I recognized his hair.”
It sounds stupid when I say it out loud.
“So, you saw Rasmus,” says Officer Henriksson. “Was Axel with him at this point?”
I shake my head. “No,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” repeats Officer Henriksson.
“It was the fog. It was so dense. He might have been there, farther away, but I didn’t see him.”
“Could you hear him?” Officer Berggren asks.
“No.”
“Did you shout to him?”
“No.”
I wait for them to ask why, but the question never comes.
“What was Rasmus doing when you saw him?” Officer Henriksson says after a long pause.
I open my mouth, but no words come out.
Everything I’ve said so far has been true. But I can’t tell them about that stench or about Rasmus’s lurching, stumbling steps.
And I definitely can’t tell them about the tiny dancing beings that hypnotized Rasmus and tried to lure him away.
“He was going in the wrong direction,” I say at last. “He was moving strangely, and he looked nauseous or something. I thought he might have been sick.”
“Why did you think that?” asks Officer Henriksson.
“People can get seasick in the mist. The school nurse said something about it when she handed out our whistles. I thought maybe he wasn’t feeling well.”
It doesn’t sound all that convincing, even to my ears.
“Seasick?” says Officer Berggren.
“He just looked weird, okay?” I say stubbornly and cross my arms.
I hear the way my voice sounds. Too childish and defiant. A little kid with something to hide.
The tension in my stomach intensifies. Pressure is building behind my forehead, and my heart is pounding.
I want my mom.
“Then what happened?” Officer Henriksson asks.
“I called out to him,” I whisper. I have to wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “I called to Rasmus, but he didn’t seem to hear. I tried tapping him on the shoulder, but it was like he didn’t even notice I was there. I was scared. I pushed him over to make him stop. Then I blew the whistle.”
I force myself to look Officer Henriksson in the eye. “That’s all that happened. I swear.”