Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name Read Online Free PDF Page A

grip on mine. “I picked something up when I went into the Diesel store.”
    I tried to think what it could be—a hat? a vest? a better-looking sweater?
    “They give out free condoms there.” He opened his hand like a magician at the end of a trick, displaying his surprise. “I learned from last time I was with someone like you.”
    “Like me?”

    “Yeah,” he said. “Enough like you. She wasn’t American, she was Finnish.”
    I laughed in his face. “Ready?” he asked.
    I nodded. I needed to leave.
    When the check came, we split it. From his pocket, Kari pulled out a folded but crisp five-euro bill and left it for the bartender. It was the same bill I had given Kari earlier, when he had driven me to the hotel. I was glad to see him get rid of it. It felt wrong to go to bed with a man who had your tip in his pocket.

18.
    “No one else is on this floor,” Kari said as I unlocked the door to my room. “I made sure you were private.”
    I stepped into the room and was again surprised by how small it was. Kari sat on the bed and handed me one of the two beers he’d brought up from the refrigerator behind the reception desk. He drank his quickly. He got up to pee; when he returned, he reeked of beer and urine.
    I checked the closets for a blanket. I stood on tiptoes to reach the top shelf. A force came from behind me, and at first, I thought I was falling. Kari’s hands were below my ribs, and he was lifting me. When I pulled the blanket out from the shelf, it fell to the floor—I wasn’t prepared for its weight.

    Kari sat down on the bed with me in his lap. He cupped a hand over my breast and blew into my ear. He removed his hand from my breast and stuck two fingers into my mouth. Bite , I thought. I fought the instinct and sucked on his wide fingers. They tasted like coins.
    He pushed me onto the bed, his belt buckle digging into my belly. I peeled off his sweater and shirt. He tugged my blouse over my head, scratching my nose with the second button.
    He flipped me over onto my stomach and traced my spine; I knew he would. It surprises everyone, the dark hair that lines the center of my back. I’ve had it since I was fourteen and underweight. Lunago , the doctors called it—the same fur that lines a fetus’s body in the womb.
    Everything I knew about my body I had learned from the four men I’d been with. I knew that my nipples were large for such small breasts. That my flat stomach was my best feature. That my arms were shapeless. If someone told me they liked my arms, I knew they were lying.
    Kari was no longer touching me. I assumed he was mas-turbating.
    I rolled over on my back and looked at him. His face was pale. He put his head on my breast, suckled at a spot a few inches away from my nipple, and then bounded off the bed and into the bathroom. He didn’t bother closing the door.
    He threw up twice—once near the toilet, once inside. A part of me was relieved that what had started had ended. I tried

    not to act too cheerful as I filled a glass with water from the sink. I held it out to him, and he knocked it away.
    He passed out on his stomach, one hand on the base of the toilet. I removed a sheet from the bed and draped it over him.
    I was tempted to call the front desk. “He’s one of yours,” I’d say.
    I could leave, but where would I go?
    I considered calling Virginia. I hadn’t told her I was going to Lapland, that I was going anywhere at all. Virginia and I had become friends in high school, drawn together by our unconventional home lives. I had a mother who had vanished; Virginia’s mom lived with two men and was romantically involved with both. When we were fifteen, I gave Virginia a key to my house, which she wore around her neck the way coaches wear whistles. She lost her virginity on our front lawn, as I stood guard from my bedroom window.
    But at some point, Virginia and I had switched places; she had become the responsible one. She now worked as a counselor at a clinic for