As Black as Ebony Read online

  “What’s a whore?” Lumikki asked.

  “It’s a girl with lots of boyfriends,” Rosa replied with the assurance of a wise older sister.

  Jennika glanced at them wearily.

  “Take care of your sister,” Jennika told Rosa, pointing at Lumikki. “Try not to kill each other for a few minutes.”

  Then Jennika went upstairs so she could talk in peace.

  There was too much strawberry jam for the small pancakes, so the plates were covered with the excess.

  “Let’s play death!” Rosa suggested.

  “How do we play that?” Lumikki asked.

  “Like this,” Rosa explained and rubbed strawberry jam on the front of her white nightshirt. “This is blood.”

  Lumikki did the same. The jam was slippery and it dripped on the floor. Her hands got sticky. Lumikki laughed. Rosa wasn’t satisfied, though.

  “There has to be a weapon for blood to come out,” she said, walking to a drawer.

  Lumikki was startled to see a knife in Rosa’s hand.

  “We’re not allowed to touch the knives,” she whispered.

  “Mom and Dad aren’t here. And besides, this is just a game,” Rosa said.

  “Okay,” Lumikki whispered uncertainly.

  “I’m so sad. I just want to die,” Rosa explained.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe my boyfriend just left me. And now I don’t want to live anymore!” Rosa lamented in a dramatic voice, waving the knife in the air. “I’m going to kill myself!” Then she pointed the tip of the knife toward her stomach. In the air, of course, a safe distance from her nightshirt.

  Everything happened quickly. Rosa slipped on the jam on the floor. She fell forward, holding the knife, which sank into her stomach. Collapsing on her face on the floor, she didn’t get up. Lumikki ran to her sister’s side and nudge her shoulder. Rosa did not react. Blood began pooling under her.

  “This is a stupid game,” Lumikki said. Rosa didn’t answer.

  “Talk to me!” Lumikki demanded, shoving Rosa over on her back with all her strength.

  Her sister’s eyes were open, but they weren’t looking at Lumikki. Blood trickled from her mouth.

  Lumikki realized that something was very wrong.

  She ran and ran and ran upstairs. She screamed for Jennika. Jennika was in the bathroom. She was crying and yelling.

  “I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you!”

  Lumikki pounded on the bathroom door.

  “What is it now?” Jennika snapped through the door.

  “Rosa. Rosa. It’s a stupid game.”

  “Well, tell her you want to play something else. Leave me alone for a few seconds now, will you?” Jennika said in a tearful voice.

  Lumikki was crying too, but no tears were coming out.

  She ran to the medicine cabinet in her parents’ bedroom and took out a package of Band-Aids. If you’re bleeding, you need a Band-Aid. She grabbed the ones with Mickey Mouse on them. Rosa liked those.

  Then she ran back downstairs. Rosa was still lying on the floor. There was so much red blood. The knife was sticking out of her stomach. It looked wrong. A knife wasn’t supposed to be like that. Lumikki tried to take it out, but she failed. She put Band-Aids around the knife, but they were instantly soaked with blood. Rosa’s white nightshirt was all bloody. The Band-Aids didn’t help. The owie didn’t go away.

  The blood was slick like strawberry jam, but it was warm, not cold.

  Finally, a red-eyed Jennika came down sniffling. She stopped in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Oh my God . . .”

  “We were playing death,” Lumikki said. “But it’s a stupid game. I don’t like it.”

  Lumikki knew the memory was true. She hadn’t imagined it and it wasn’t a result of the drugs. That was how it had all happened. And the memory explained every one of the strange flashes and nightmares Lumikki had ever had. She had a sister who had died. But it had been an accident. She wasn’t a killer.

  Did her mom and dad think she was? Did they think that Lumikki had taken the knife out of the drawer and stabbed Rosa in the stomach? Was that why they had hidden her sister and everything that happened? Lumikki had to talk to them. Right now. She had to get out of this stupid glass coffin.

  Carefully, Lumikki tested whether the weakness and heaviness in her arms and legs had faded at all. It hadn’t. Breathing felt more arduous now too. Her oxygen was running out.

  “Everyone thought you were so small you couldn’t understand what you did. They considered it an accident. Things like that happen sometimes when normal children are playing. But what normal child wouldn’t have immediately run to get the babysitter? And according to the child psychologist, you were uncommunicative, even angry. You kept repeating how stupid Rosa was. When I read your files, I saw deep into your soul. I saw that it is just as black as mine. As black as ebony. And that was when I began to fall in love with you.”

  No, no, no.

  Lumikki shook her head. It didn’t happen like that. Jennika lied. She remembered being surprised about it even then. She had hated Jennika for lying, and she had hated her mother and father for being away from home, and she had hated Rosa who had wanted to play a game that turned out real. She had hated her sister because she died. She had hated Rosa because she had loved her so much and because, suddenly, she was gone.

  Lumikki tried to breathe more sparingly. She was beginning to feel the lack of oxygen as an increasing faintness and blurring of her eyes.

  Was this glass coffin going to turn into her actual coffin?

  Lumikki searched her clothing for anything she could use as a weapon to get out. She didn’t have a belt with a buckle to use. Not even a hairpin. One hand groped in her trouser pocket. Something metal. Something cold. Something whose surface felt very familiar against her fingers. Her own personal dragon.

  It was a brooch, and brooches have pins. What if Lumikki could scratch the glass with the pin and weaken it? She squeezed her fingers around the dragon. She searched for the clasp and opened it. The pin was sharp. Slowly and carefully, she brought her hand out of her pocked. The shadow was on the right side of the glass coffin now. Lumikki pressed the pin against the left wall of the coffin as hard as she could and scraped it down the glass.

  The thin pin gave out instantly, bending beyond any use.

  Tears of fear and frustration welled in Lumikki’s eyes.

  She was never getting out of this coffin.

  Perhaps you’re wondering why you.

  Because you are special, my dear Lumikki. There is light and darkness inside of you. You aren’t like all the others. You’re stronger than anyone else I’ve seen, even though you’re also so fragile and vulnerable. You aren’t afraid to be alone. You know that the others aren’t quite as valuable as you. There are so many facets and layers to you. You have depth at eighteen most other people will never have.

  You have experienced sorrow and hate. You aren’t only good.

  I knew that we would meet as equals because the same black blood runs through us. That’s something no one else can understand.

  When I saw you for the first time, I knew instantly. It’s been years since then. You didn’t know then how deeply and truly I saw you. Someone had just left me, someone who had never been able to value my ideas and my deepest inner self. After she left, I thought I might never find someone like me.

  Then you came.

  You came like a quiet storm. The others didn’t understand your power, but I felt the wind and saw the thunderclouds and the lightning and all the magnificence and beauty that only exists in the most violent storms. Riders on the storm.

  That’s what we are. Riders on the storm. The laws and norms of this world and society don’t apply to us because we are exceptional creatures.

  I’m so happy that you will soon be mine. Only mine.

  Lumikki felt as if her heart would stop when Florence and the Machine’s “Breath of Life” began echoing in the auditorium
.

  “This is your favorite, isn’t it? Don’t look so surprised, my dear. I told you I’ve been following your each and every step. I know what music you listen to. And I thought this would be a good fit for the occasion. You’re longing for a breath of air to save you. You need oxygen. You’ll get it soon. I just have to ensure first that you really love me too and understand that we have to be together, the two of us.”

  The shadow’s voice had grown tenser. Lumikki’s brain still couldn’t quite get a grip on it. She couldn’t put it in the right box and attach the right nametag to it.

  What was this lunatic? And what did he intend to do to Lumikki?

  Lumikki knew that she couldn’t just wait and see. She had to do something.

  Lumikki could still feel the scales of the dragon against her fingers. Holding the pendant comforted her even though the pin was bent. She stroked the surface of the skin with her finger—its head and ears, the wings lying along its back, the tail that ended in a sharp point. So sharp that it hurt Lumikki’s finger.

  The tip of the tail. It was clearly stronger, more substantial than the pin.

  Lumikki calmed her racing pulse. She had to stay calm. The harder her heart pounded, the more oxygen she would need. And she was out of that. Hypoxia. Oxygen deprivation. Lumikki refused to think about what would follow and how quickly.

  She furtively pressed the tail of the dragon against the glass, strained with all her might, and pulled. She felt the metal bite into the glass. The dragon would leave a mark. How deep? Would it weaken the glass enough?

  Lumikki knew that she would only have one chance. She had to succeed on the first try.

  The pendant left a scratch. Lumikki’s hand trembled as she slipped the dragon back in her pocket. For a moment, she collected all her strength. She had to hold on. Her oxygen had to last a few more seconds.

  Lumikki filled her lungs with all the oxygen she could still get inside the coffin. Then she slammed her elbow with all her strength right into the scratch she had made. Such intense pain shot through Lumikki’s elbow that her vision flashed red.

  But the glass shattered. The wall of the coffin collapsed, and Lumikki rolled out, shielding her face. The sharp, jagged glass tore at her clothing and arms. Tiny shards of glass penetrated her skin. Lumikki didn’t care.

  The shadow was at her side in a second. Lumikki had expected as much.

  “I should have guessed you wouldn’t wait patiently . . .” he said, bending over her.

  Again with her elbow, Lumikki hit him straight in the nose and when the shadow stood up howling in pain, Lumikki succeeded in lifting herself up enough to strike the shadow in the crotch with her other elbow.

  It worked. The stalker bent over double.

  Lumikki rolled to the edge of the stage and off. She tried to fall as softly as possible, but the hard floor hurt. Her legs still felt like two heavy bars of lead. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stand. Not yet, at least. She started dragging herself across the floor with her arms.

  She had to hide somewhere quick. Hide. But where?

  Her Finnish classroom was next to the auditorium. Lumikki began hauling herself that way. She covered the distance with painful slowness. Her elbows hurt. The glass shards felt like they were digging deeper into her skin.

  Somewhere behind her, the shadow groaned. He would recover from her blows soon enough. Catching up would take him no time at all.

  The door to the classroom was open a crack. Lumikki could already hear the shadow moving. Lumikki pushed the door open, dragged herself inside, and managed to lever herself up high enough to grab the handle and push the door shut. Immediately, she felt the shadow tugging at the door handle from the other side. Lumikki clenched her teeth together in pain and, with other hand, stretched up to turn the lock.

  Then her strength gave out and she collapsed with her back against the door, panting.

  “Oh Lumikki. My poor little Lumikki,” the shadow laughed through the door. “Do you really think I don’t have a key? Of course I do. You just wait here while I get it from the locker room. Then we can chat some more.”

  Lumikki felt like she couldn’t breathe all over again.

  The fear of death was a wondrous thing. The survival instinct pumped Lumikki’s muscles full of strength they didn’t otherwise have. Suddenly, Lumikki’s arms and legs worked again. Her brain issued commands to her muscles so quickly that she didn’t have time to clothe her strategy in thought. She just acted.

  As many desks and chairs in front of the door as possible. Those would slow him down. Collect everything loose she could throw. Open the window.

  Already the key turned in the lock.

  “Help!” Lumikki shouted out the window as loud as her lungs could manage.

  She didn’t see anyone outside. But there had to be someone in the park, a dog walker or someone on their way downtown or to the library?

  The door slowly opened a crack. The legs of the desks and chairs screeched on the floor as they moved.

  “You’ve built up barriers between us, my love. I would have thought we would be past all these worldly obstacles by now.”

  The shadow grunted as he struggled to open the door. A couple of desks and chairs fell. Their clatter echoed in the classroom and down the hallway.

  “Help!” Lumikki screamed again.

  Outside, it was snowing. Light, soft, white snow. The first real, beautiful snowfall this winter.

  “No one will hear you,” the shadow said.

  But there was uncertainty in his voice. That gave Lumikki’s lungs additional strength. The shadow pushed his way into the room, but didn’t turn on the light. He wanted to remain a shadow in the darkness.

  But Lumikki recognized him anyway. The fog swirling in her mind parted, and Lumikki realized who her stalker was.

  Henrik Virta. Her psychology teacher.

  This realization startled Lumikki. How could Henrik have gotten so much information about her? And how could such an empathetic and friendly seeming teacher be so insanely cruel? Lumikki didn’t have time to mull these questions over, though, because Henrik was shoving the desks and chairs out of his way in a rage.

  “You fucking temptress!” he yelled. “Why are you doing this to me? I only want to love you and protect you. To keep you safe from everything. We are the same soul, you and I.”

  Lumikki grabbed a stapler and threw it at Henrik with all her strength. He managed to dodge at the last second and the stapler clattered against the wall.

  “You missed,” Henrik said, satisfaction in his voice.

  “Just like you missed in your psychological evaluation of me,” Lumikki couldn’t help saying. “There isn’t anything that’s the same about us. You have never known me and you never will. And that isn’t love anyway. That’s just a sick obsession.”

  Lumikki’s fear was gone. It had disappeared the instant she recognized Henrik and knew that he had never seen her deepest thoughts and feelings. Lumikki’s core, her heart, was beyond this man’s grasp. He would never reach her.

  “If I can’t have you, no one else will either.”

  Henrik’s voice had turned quiet and low. Lumikki knew he was serious. He would kill Lumikki if he could.

  A three-hole punch. Lumikki hurled it at his head. This time, it was too big to dodge and the sharp corner of the hole punch hit Henrik in the temple. He raised his hand and touched his face in surprise.

  “Now blood is flowing from somewhere besides my heart,” he whispered.

  The melodrama was nauseating. It was as if Henrik believed he was in some kind of play where he had to deliver the darkest, moodiest lines he could invent.

  “Help!” Lumikki shouted again, her voice now hoarse.

  Henrik pushed the last desk out of his way. He could have his hands on Lumikki with a few short strides.

  “You can’t get away,” he growled. “I don’t understand why you don’t give in to me.”

  Never, Lumikki thought and climbed onto the window
sill.

  “What are you doing?”

  Henrik suddenly sounded frightened.

  Lumikki scooted to the edge of the windowsill. Then she lowered herself down the outside, hanging from the cold ledge. She glanced down. It was a long way down. Too long. But she didn’t have any other options.

  “Don’t be crazy!” Henrik exclaimed.

  “You’re the crazy one here,” Lumikki replied.

  Lumikki felt Henrik’s hands grabbing at her fingertips, but she had already let go and was falling toward the earth with snowflakes swirling all around. She tried to relax as much as possible when she landed on the stone pavement below.

  As she lay on her back in the newly fallen blanket of snow, Lumikki marveled for a moment that she didn’t seem to have broken anything. Snowflakes swirled around in perfect minuets, dancing on her face and melting on her cheeks.

  Then the pain came.

  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, TWO WEEKS LATER

  First, Lumikki only moved her arms. Slowly, with long, patient strokes, she swept them up to her ears and then back, almost to her ribs. The snow was fluffy and soft. It moved as easily as she did. Then she remembered you were supposed to move your legs too.

  It had been so long since she had done this. Since she was a child. Before she started school? Probably. During elementary school, the bullies had dumped her in snowdrifts so many times that the thought of lying down in the snow voluntarily wasn’t the slightest bit appealing.

  Snow angel.

  The name was beautiful even though all it really meant was the depression her body left in the snow. Wings that the movements of her arms had formed. The gown her legs had shaped.

  Snow angel. Lumikki and Rosa used to fill the yard with them. Before going to sleep, Rosa would tell Lumikki a bedtime story about the flock of angels that would descend from heaven during the night to sleep in the beds the girls had made for them. Rosa had said she was going to stay up to see the arrival of the glowing beings. Lumikki had made her sister promise to wake her up. Rosa promised and took Lumikki by the hand. And so Lumikki slipped into sleep with Rosa’s warm hand gently holding hers.