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Linnea half formed the word, “Wha—?”
“It’s true!” someone hooted.
“Hey Ev, you were in on this?” another howled.
“Threesome!”
Linnea wheeled back to Everett. His face was stone as if calculating his next move, and then her vision moved over the wall of giddy faces, having just witnessed Mora’s biggest fodder for gossip. Lesbians! “She’s—she’s drunk,” Linnea whispered to herself, stuttering. A rush of blood ballooned her head.
Ulla sneered at Linnea. “Tell Everett we were doing it long before you two were,” then to Everett, she said, “actually, Lin and I kept doing it the whole time you were fucking her.”
Linnea swung back to Everett, silently pleading. Everett threw back, “You’re wasted, Ulla. You think I’d sleep with a dyke?”
At that, Ulla’s impassioned face chilled. “Don’t give me that. Especially after what you did to me.”
“I did nothing.”
“Your face healed up pretty nice,” she said in a low accusing tone. “You piece of shit.”
Linnea’s memory of that night came unbidden. Of Ulla crying through her lucid dream. He tried to kiss me, Lin. I hate him. She contrasted that with Ulla now: You promised me a royal fuck. Linnea spewed at her, “You’re the liar.”
Ulla fired, “Go to hell.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Linnea
Linnea watched Ulla stumble out of the party that night to who-knows-where, leaving Linnea alone with classmates’ stares, cold and jeering as they shrunk away from her. Linnea, too, stumbled into the frosty air. Her coat was locked in Everett’s car, and there was no way she was going inside to ask for the keys. It was six miles from Fish Lake to her house.
Once she made it onto the highway, she stuck dangerously close to the shoulder. It was too much work in heels to hug the muddy perimeter of the lake. She rubbed her bare arms. She’d not been on the highway long, just crossing over the bridge that jetted across the lake’s narrowing, when two glaring beams fixed on her and slowed, coming to a stop just ahead of her.
It was Mora Police. An officer silently stepped out of the vehicle.
“Hi, Oscar,” Linnea cried. Oscar had a blanket ready. He wrapped it around her, guided her into the backseat, and drove her home.
She wondered if he’d completed the same route moments before.
Her house was dark except for the glare of the television that had been left on to a local program highlighting ice fishing. She didn’t bother to see if anyone was still awake. At least no one was partying.
The sobs she’d been caging now escaped with ferocity, and she buried them in her pillow. Sobs that broke her body, until finally, she labored to a sitting position. She examined the makeup stains on her pillowcase and her wrinkled dress.
Go to hell.
Linnea went to her closet and found their memory box, mementos she’d kept to make a scrapbook for Ulla when they graduated and kissed Mora good riddance. Now what? She sifted through the movie stubs and tore Back to the Future into tiny shreds. The Polaroids were harder to rip. She saw the one from Halloween 1981, the night they first kissed. The night they thought they would never see each other again.
And there, nestled at the bottom, as if feeling as abandoned as she did, was Beskyddaren, with those shiny jewels that now looked fake. As stupid and tacky as the giant Dala horse in the middle of their town, nothing but a tourist trap. She clutched the horse, her lips curling in scorn, and hurled it at the wall. It bounded off and landed on the carpet by her dresser with a chip in its hoof.
She wanted—needed—Ulla to suffer. And Linnea, the keeper of Ulla’s secrets, her deepest wounds, knew exactly what to do.
In the middle of the night, she grabbed a thick, heavy Twin Cities white pages from a stack her parents collected for bonfires, and swished through the house in her filthy Homecoming dress. One by one, she dialed every Peter Johansson that was listed.
Chapter Fifty-Five
September 1986 – July 1987
Linnea
Linnea stayed home the entire week after the Homecoming fallout, too mortified to show her face at school, but then Everett appeared on her doorstep and asked her to the dance club in Minneapolis. She accepted, but only to return his silence. To test him. Except it seemed he was prepared for this. Armed with compliments of her beauty, how much he’d missed her, flowers pulled from his back seat, tickets to see Motley Crüe this summer. This summer? That had to mean something.
