Chapter 9
I sit at the back of the classroom doodling on a piece of paper, drawing spirals and more spirals.
We were supposed to have Swedish class, but Mrs. Lindgren, our homeroom teacher, is showing a documentary instead.
Maybe she can’t bring herself to pretend that everything is normal.
Not that this documentary is making anyone feel better.
It’s about the acidification of the Baltic Sea and shows image after image of areas discolored to a dirty green, where nothing lives anymore.
Figures and statistics flash up on the screen. Oxygen depletion is worse than ever, and the pH values are at record lows. There is a “dead zone” the size of Denmark, where the seabed has severely deteriorated. Life is slowly dying beneath the surface, and no one is doing anything about it.
I’m trying to pay attention. I know this is important—this summer the yellow-brown scum floating around the dock was worse than ever. But I just can’t focus.
It feels like I didn’t sleep at all last night. I drifted off a few times only to jerk awake with a pounding heart and cold sweat. I was plagued by nightmares.
Something was moving around outside my window.
From the sea. I could hear it through the walls. In the sighing of the waves and the muffled splashes of the surface being broken again and again.
There, in the darkness, it felt like someone was watching me, whispering words into my ears that I couldn’t quite understand.
My pen continues making the same shape, a spiral in a closed circle, until suddenly I can’t take it anymore.
I put down the pen, shift in my chair, and make an effort to focus on the narrator’s voice, speaking solemnly about eutrophication, the increase of phosphorus and nitrogen in the Baltic Sea that risks destroying all aquatic life.
Mrs. Lindgren looks exhausted, with big bags under her eyes and her hair in disarray. She is clutching a tissue in one hand.
I wonder how late she was out looking for Axel last night. It seems that everyone on the island joined in with the search party. I heard someone say it went on all night. On the radio this morning, they said that an official police search has been launched as well.
I wanted to ask Dad to take me to school this morning so I wouldn’t have to see Axel’s brothers or the others. But we were running late and I was in a rush. There was no time to ask.
Axel’s younger brothers weren’t on the boat anyway.
Not that it made the journey any easier.
Hanna was sobbing dramatically the whole time, as if she wanted everyone to know exactly how devastated she was.
Isabelle put her arm around her and wiped her own eyes every two minutes.
?sterman drove the boat with a steely expression.
When we got to Rasmus’s island, I kept my eyes glued to the floor. I didn’t even look up when Rasmus stepped on board. Then he sat down next to me. I froze.
As ?sterman set out from the dock, Rasmus asked, quietly enough so that no one else could hear: “Are you okay, Tuva?”
I didn’t respond.
He didn’t speak again, but for the rest of the journey I could tell he was waiting for me to answer. Instead, for the first time in my life, I jumped off the boat as quickly as I could and hurried into the school building without looking back.
The documentary is over at last. The teacher turns off the projector and looks around helplessly, as if she has no idea what to do next.
Eventually, she turns to face the class. It feels like she’s avoiding me on purpose. I hope it’s just my imagination.
“It’s quarter past eleven,” she says. “Shall we just break for lunch?”
No one says anything, but the screech of chairs being pushed back is answer enough.
“Okay, then,” Mrs. Lindgren says in a raspy voice, then clears her throat. “We’ll meet back here in an hour.”