The Lost Village by Camilla Sten (best fiction novels TXT) 📗

the same prickle along their spines that I feel as I stand here.

I turn and take a few quick shots of the station façade. With its rounded cornices and sand-colored stucco, it looks like a gingerbread house that’s been left to the elements.

“At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about,” I add. “We can get out of here whenever we want.” The words leave a sour taste in my mouth.

Max hears what I want to say. He knows me that well, at least.

“Tone said she didn’t want to go to the hospital,” he says, his tone of voice clearly meant to sound calming. “She said she wants to stay.”

“Yeah,” I say. “So she said.”

But her eyes had been heavy from the tiredness, pain, and alcohol, and she had looked at me long and hard before she said it. I wish I could say that she hadn’t seen the tension in my face, the quiet prayer in my rib cage.

Truth is, this is the only chance we have at this. We’ve only hired the equipment for five days, and despite the money Max has invested, our budget is already being squeezed. Even if I stayed here, if Max were to drive Tone to the hospital it would mean losing two people for at least twenty-four hours. And going from five people to three would bring the production to its knees. We would never be able to keep to schedule.

Tone knows that, too. And I know she knows. So the razor-sharp relief I felt when she said: “It’s a sprain. Let’s stay,” was tinged with something shameful and ugly.

“It’s just a few days,” says Max. “Tone’s an adult. If it gets any worse, she’ll say.”

“I hope so,” I say, not entirely sure if I mean it.

I climb back up onto the platform and go back inside the station. From here I notice a big clock hanging over the doors out into the village. The hands have stopped at nine minutes past three, and an ugly crack has cleaved the clock face in two. I automatically take a look at my watch—seventeen past five—before taking a picture of the clock on the wall.

“That production girl seems kinda bossy,” says Max behind me, and I turn to look at him.

“Emmy?”

“Yeah,” he says. He squats down on the dusty stone slabs, gets his water bottle out of his rucksack, and takes a big gulp.

“It felt like she was trying to take over,” he goes on, wiping his mouth.

“Really? I thought I was just imagining things,” I say, and Max shakes his head.

“Nope,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

“She’s always been like that,” I can’t help adding. “She just … she likes to be the one calling the shots.”

“Always?” Max asks. “I thought she and the camera guy were just people you’d found for this project?”

Hearing the surprise in his voice, I hesitate. I haven’t talked about Emmy to anyone but Tone—not for many years, at least. But the creeping discomfort I feel in my gut makes me swallow any resistance and say:

“Yeah. Or, they are, but we—I know Emmy from before. That’s how I could get her for this. She’s overqualified, really, she’s done loads of great projects. She has some drama series for C More lined up after this.”

“How do you know each other?” Max asks.

I sigh, rub my forehead with the back of my hand, and sit down on the floor next to him. My pants are going to get filthy, but right now I don’t care.

“We studied together,” I say. The words are sluggish, reluctant. I take a swig out of his water bottle to try to make it easier, to wash the resistance back down.

“She was my best friend,” I say.

The unwelcome, overpowering memories come flooding back. Late nights and early, hungover mornings, in-jokes and peals of laughter. I used to always paint her nails, despite her complaining that she’d only ruin them. And she’d mix drinks for us to take to pre-parties: sour, foaming potions that tasted nothing of alcohol but had me soaring off into the stratosphere after only a few sips.

“You’ve never mentioned her before,” says Max.

“No,” I say. “I guess I haven’t.”

In my first and second years at college, I slept on Emmy’s sofa more than my own bed.

But the third year I don’t remember so well. What I do remember are blackened lights, darkness outside; silent tears streaming down onto the pillow; Emmy making toast and tea, rubbing my back with unpainted nails until I’d fall asleep, exhausted.

“We were very close,” I say, slowly. “I more or less lived with her in the first two years. We were always talking about what we’d do after we graduated, about how we’d work together, revolutionize the Swedish film industry. You know. As you do.”

I swallow again.

“You know that I had … problems … when I was at college.”

I look at him, and he gives a quick nod.

“That I had depression—severe depression.”

The word seems to hulk in my mouth. I hate saying it, hate how it sounds. It’s a shapeless, gray word that implies something sad and pathetic. Someone who’s lost control.

“When it started Emmy was there for me, but she got bored pretty quickly. I guess it can’t have been much fun having a friend who just lay around crying instead of wanting to go out and party. After a while she couldn’t take it. And then…”

The memory tastes bitter, a hum behind my forehead. My eyes start to burn, but I refuse to let it out.

The water coursing under the bridge.

My phone pressed against my ear.

“Please.”

The laughter, the music in the background—“Hjärta,” by Kent:

And by the riverbanks I left my tracks

Wrote my name in the water

So you’d know where I am.

I still can’t listen to that song.

“I tried to kill myself,” I say, quietly, so quiet it’s barely more than a whisper. “I tried to jump off a bridge.”

“Shit,” says Max, softly. He reaches for my hand, but I move it away.

“I called Emmy,” I say, “when