Minus Me (22 page)

Olga smiles at the picture in her lap. Then she hands it to Linda, who walks over and puts it back on top of the piano.

For a moment Linda stands with her back to Olga.

‘I told you a lie,’ she says, with her gaze still fixed on the picture. ‘We’re not doing a school project at all. I was on my way to see a boy called Axel. We’ve known each other forever. And last summer I did something really stupid.’

Linda closes her eyes. Not that it helps to close them, since what she’s seeing is inside her head. She sees herself in Axel’s room, sitting in there alone. She gets up from the bed and goes over to the desk. She opens the drawer. It’s the drawer where Axel hid the notebook that he hadn’t wanted her to see. And even though she knows it’s wrong, she takes the notebook out. She sits down at his desk and reads it. It is full of poems:

There’s a girl I know who glides through the sea.

Like a dolphin she darts, bringing summer to me.

Soon she’ll be here, in my heart I feel sure.

I hope and I wonder, are we friends or more?

Linda leafs on, and finds another poem.

‘What are you doing?’ says Axel.

Linda freezes. She hadn’t heard him come in.

‘Do you write poems?’ she says.

She can hear that her voice is so harsh that it sounds like an attack.

‘Give me that book,’ says Axel.

‘No,’ says Linda, reading aloud from it sarcastically:

Cowboys and Indians was the game we’d play,

And we played together every day . . .

Axel walks towards her. But Linda is quick, and climbs up onto the desk and reads on scornfully:

It was always summer when you were near,

In the winter the snow came, and . . .

Linda stops. She’s frightened that he’ll grab her and pull her down from the desk. Her stomach is churning madly. But he doesn’t move. He just stands there and looks up at her.

‘Do you think I’m daft for writing poetry?’

She hasn’t got an answer. So she just laughs. And then laughs some more, to cover up the horrible feelings of shame she feels inside.

‘I thought I could trust you,’ says Axel, as he walks away.

‘Well, my dear,’ says Olga, rescuing Linda from her embarrassing memory. ‘We all do things we regret.’

‘And that’s why we came. We need your car,’ says Linda, pointing at the car in the picture, with her gaze fixed on Olga. ‘We’ve got to get to the south coast quickly. I have to see Axel. A few weeks ago I found out that I might not live as long as I thought, so I don’t have much time.’

‘Are you hoping Axel will be your sweetheart?’

‘Yes. I think he will be. And it would be such a great help if you could—’

‘Do we get the car or not?’ Zak interrupts.

Linda looks at him. Oh my God! He’s probably ruined everything now!

Chapter 46

It is late afternoon and beginning to get dark. Zak and Linda are now driving along in their own car, and fast approaching their goal. Zak’s outrageous cheek had resulted in Olga fetching the car keys. And then he’d laughed disdainfully all the way back to the barn: as if he didn’t know how to hotwire a car!

‘How did you learn to drive a car?’ asks Linda.

Zak doesn’t answer. He just swings into an open space, puts the car in neutral and pulls on the handbrake.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Linda.

‘I’m not doing anything . . . you are,’ he says.

He gets out of the car, and leaving his door open runs to the passenger side.

‘Come on out,’ he says, opening her door.

Linda gets out, and Zak sits in the passenger seat. As she stands hesitating, he rolls the window down.

‘Do you want to get there, or what?’

‘Well, yes.’

‘Well, get a move on. We can’t leave the engine running. Think about the environment,’ he says sarcastically, winding the window back up.

‘Alright,’ Linda says, mostly to herself.

She walks round the car and sits behind the wheel.

Zak helps her to adjust the mirror. Then he shows her the brakes and the clutch and the accelerator.

‘We’re in neutral now,’ he explains. ‘To start driving you have to press your foot down on the clutch, put the car in first gear, put your foot on the brake, then take off the handbrake and gently press on the accelerator.’

Linda follows his instructions. The car lurches forward and stalls.

‘Try again. On with the handbrake, in with the clutch, turn the ignition, foot gently down on the accelerator, and now take off the handbrake, and bring your foot off the clutch – slowly.’

This time the car starts rolling. Not fast, but she’s driving! Oh my God! She’s got butterflies in her stomach. Zak says she should move into the next gear. And that goes like a dream too.

‘I’m driving!’ she says, looking at Zak.

‘You certainly are,’ he says, turning on the radio.

‘Now try to move into third gear,’ he shouts through the music.

Linda obeys. Driving is easy. It’s going brilliantly. A car comes towards them, and Zak brings his hand up to the wheel and helps her steer.

‘You have to fix your gaze on the approaching car, then you’ll steer better.
Yeah, yeah, sweet baby, gotta live life
!
’ sings Zak.

‘It so strange that they keep playing that song on the radio,’ says Linda, turning towards Zak.

Suddenly the car swerves towards a ditch. Zak grabs the wheel and helps her to pull the car back straight.

‘You mustn’t turn the car and your head at the same time,’ laughs Zak.

He suddenly grows very serious.

‘Turn into that road into the forest,’ he says.

‘Which road?’ she asks.

‘That one.’

This time he grabs the wheel with both hands and turns it so violently that, in spite of the loud music, Linda can hear the wheels screech. There’s a smell of burned rubber. Stones hit the belly of the car, and it shudders. Linda screams and shuts her eyes. Instinctively she lifts her feet, bringing her knees up and protecting her head with her arms. Despite the seatbelt digging into her right shoulder, she is thrown into the wheel and then back into her seat. She brings her hand to her nose, and feels warm blood running through her fingers. It’s trickling down into her mouth too. She’s in such pain, she can’t even scream. There are stars in front of her eyes. It’s silent, after the crash, apart from the wheezing of the engine. And as the stars in front of her eyes begin to disappear, she looks straight into Zak’s face.

‘Damn!’ he whispers.

‘Ow,’ she whimpers.

‘Are you mad?’ he yells. ‘You can’t just take your feet off the pedals like that!’

‘I’m sorry,’ says Linda, on the edge of tears.

When she sees that they’ve crashed into the trunk of a tree, the tears start rolling down her face. There’s smoke coming from the bonnet, which is completely smashed.

‘We could have died,’ Linda says, and as the words come out of her mouth the bonnet flies open, making her jump.

‘Stop whining, you stupid little girl!’ Zak yells.

Linda gets the urge to whack him over the head, as he leans forward to open the glove compartment. He is totally callous and vile. She’s the one with the injuries. He hasn’t got a scratch on him. Besides, he was the one that grabbed the wheel and turned it. It’s as much his fault. Zak rummages around. He finds a pair of sunglasses and a roll of tissue paper. He takes them and gets out of the car, slamming the door so Linda jumps again. She tries to wipe the tears and blood away with her sleeve. Zak kicks one of the tyres and stares at the bonnet. He shakes his head. Then he walks around and opens the door on the driver’s side. He leans in and undoes Linda’s seatbelt, before grabbing her legs and swinging them out of the car.

‘Are you alright?’ he asks gently.

He tears off some tissue paper and carefully wipes the area around Linda’s nose.

‘Thanks,’ she says.

Zak doesn’t answer. He just strokes her cheek. Then he twists a little bit of tissue into a point, and very carefully pokes it up her nostril.

‘Relax completely,’ he says, putting a hand on either side of the bridge of her nose.

‘What happening?’ she says, feeling frightened.

‘Shh. Just relax,’ he says, looking deep into her eyes.

Suddenly Linda can feel his gaze making her very calm. So calm that she barely shudders when he wrenches her nose so hard it cracks.

‘It was a bit crooked, but now it’s straight again,’ he says.

Zak takes one hand away from her nose, but let’s the other rest there. Linda closes her eyes. A soft warmth replaces the pain.

‘What . . . ?’

‘Just sit calmly,’ says Zak, placing his free hand in hers. ‘It’ll be alright.’

‘Okay,’ she whispers.

‘There now,’ he says, giving her hand a squeeze,

She feels herself getting sleepy. Zak puts her in the front seat of the car and adjusts it to a lying position.

‘You just rest, Linda, and I’ll watch over you,’ he says.

Linda has barely closed her eyes before Zak shakes her and says that she’s got to get out of the car.

‘What? Why?’ she says, looking round.

Linda lifts her hand to her nose. Amazingly it only feels a bit sore. She sits up and tries to look at herself in the driver’s mirror, but it’s too dark. She fumbles in the car roof for the light switch, but nothing happens when she presses it.

‘How do I look?’ she asks.

‘Here, put these on,’ says Zak, handing her the sunglasses he found in the glove compartment.

‘Do I look that bad?’

‘No worse than usual,’ Zak jokes. ‘I hope you’ve got enough money for the bus,’ he says, suddenly bounding up to the main road and starting to wave his arms. At first, Linda just sees two lights. Then she sees a bus coming round the corner. It’s driving so fast, she’s scared Zak will get run over. But it swerves into the opposite lane and stops.

‘Come on,’ Zak shouts.

‘But my bag,’ Linda shouts back.

‘Forget the stupid bag,’ yells Zak.

Linda doesn’t want to go without her bag. She packed it with lots of useful things for the trip. She flings the back door of the car open and grabs it before running up to the road. She arrives just in time to find the bus driver shouting at Zak.

‘What the hell are you doing? You can’t stand in the middle of the road like that!’

‘I’m sorry, but it was an emergency,’ says Zak. ‘We’ve had a car crash and we need a lift.’

‘A good thrashing, that’s what you need. But you’d better jump in.’

‘Thanks. My sister will pay,’ says Zak, going to the back of the bus and sitting down.

Linda rummages for her purse in her bag. She can’t see anything with these dark glasses on. But she doesn’t dare take them off, since she doesn’t know how bad she looks from the crash.

‘Just go and sit down. You can pay at the next stop. We can’t stand here in the middle of the road,’ says the driver.

‘Okay,’ says Linda, surprised that the driver doesn’t seem to have noticed anything unusual.

She moves to the back of the bus to join Zak. He is resting his head against the window with his eyes closed. Linda takes off the sunglasses cautiously, so she can see better. She opens her rucksack and finds a pocket mirror in her make-up case. Steeling herself, she flips the mirror open. She gasps. Her face looks completely fine! Her reflection gives her goosebumps. What did Zak do to her? She’s about to poke him and ask, when she sees that they’re driving past a couple of policemen that have pulled over a car. They seem to be writing out a speeding ticket or something.

‘Oh my God,’ she exclaims, feeling her heart gallop inside her chest.

‘What?’ says Zak, opening his eyes.

‘We just drove straight past a police checkpoint.’

‘Really?’ says Zak, peering over his shoulder. ‘Wow. That was lucky! We could have been stopped for driving too fast – or, even worse, too fast and with no licence.’

He gives a short giggle and then rests his head against the window and closes his eyes again.

‘Did you know?’

‘Know what?’

‘That the police were there?’ says Linda.

‘How would I know that?’ answers Zak, without opening his eyes.

Linda thinks she sees the corner of his mouth tremble. Yes, how could he possibly have known? Why has their journey been a series of so many lucky coincidences? Is there something she should have understood by now?

Chapter 47

Zak and Linda took another bus on from Stavanger and finally reached the summer cottage late in the evening. Nobody recognized Linda or suspected she might be the missing girl, because of her new blue hair and spiky cut. Zak insisted on coming with her beyond Stavanger. He made some excuse about wanting see where she spent her summers. He has avoided discussing his sister again, even though Linda has asked several times. Another subject he carefully avoids is what he did to her after the accident. There’s a bit of a yellow-and-blue patch around Linda’s nose, but by rights it should look much worse. Zak brushes her question off, saying it was because he’d wrenched her nose back into place so quickly. But he’s been pretty grouchy and irritable most of the day. It’s as though the confident, laid-back guy she met back in Trondheim, the guy with a philosophical answer for everything, has gone.