The American Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

kind of raincoat she never used to use, too.
    “Would you save my life?”
    Yes. But obviously he had not been very good at it.
    “She drowned. She just sank and sank and sank. Like she was sucked up. Slurp. She disappeared.”
    But first, nuances, before everything happened. How it started, that which was the change. And after the beginning the end came very quickly.
    Sometimes Bencku waited for her in the boathouse if she was not there when he came. Maybe she was with the baroness in the Glass House, or out running errands. She did not say exactly what she was doing during the day, and Bencku had not asked. It was not important after all. The important thing was the boathouse, what existed when the two of them were there.
    One night he waited in the boathouse in vain. For hours. He even had time to doze off on her bed and when he woke up it was almost dark and still she was not there, that had not happened before. He strolled off, in the twilight. Not angry, but certainly disappointed. He walked back over the Second Cape, through the end of the woods to the cousin’s house, and he immediately noticed something was new and different.
    Two orange spots in the opening to the barn, low voices. Music in the background, Björn’s music. Bencku recognized itimmediately but there was still something keeping him from walking up right away or calling to Björn from the dark.
    He remained standing at the edge of the woods and he had seen. And when he realized what he had seen, whom he had seen, he wished of course that he had hidden himself completely.
    “Who’s there? Bencku! We can see you. We know you’re there! Come here!”
    And he walked over to them where they were standing with their arms around each other, smoking their cigarettes, almost swaying with the music. Eddie tried to make eye contact with Bencku, her shirt was red, he would remember that, and when he cast a quick glance at her she did not look the slightest bit embarrassed or apologetic.
    Bencku sat at the desk and drew in the light of the desk lamp until late in the night. Björn finally came.
    “Are you still up? What are you doing?”
    “Drawing,” Bencku said without looking up.
    Björn dropped down on his bed.
    “Aren’t we going to turn the lights out?”
    “Yeah.” Bencku got up, carefully rolled up his map and placed it under the bed. Then he got undressed and put on his pajamas, crept under the covers and turned off the lamp on the desk next to his bed.
    Björn was just lying there, still dressed, in the light of the bed lamp staring at the ceiling.
    “Are we turning the lights out then?” Bengt asked.
    “Mmmm,” said Björn.
    And added, suddenly with a loud and important voice, in a tone which, at the same time, was filled with both tenderness and amusement.
    “Now she’s here. The whore.”
    “What?” Bencku avoided looking in his direction.
    “Well. The woman,” Björn added. “In my life.”
    . . .
    Bengt had not even said, “She isn’t a whore,” before he attacked Björn. And they fought. For real. Bengt had the upper hand at first because Björn did not take him seriously, but then, when he understood that Bengt was not giving up he got angry for real. The cousin’s mama finally came up and separated them.
    The next day no one spoke about the fight.
    After the fight it was the three of them.
    Eddie, Björn, AND Bengt.
    And that was it.
    The conversations with Eddie. Eddie came to Bengt at the marsh. She laid her hand on his shoulder: “What’s happening to you?” And he felt how he was falling, literally. Into her, back inside. And they went back to the boathouse together
.
    The conversations with Eddie. Bencku and Eddie walked over the cliffs on the Second Cape, there was a hard wind. The sea was gray and foamy, it was cold and Eddie shivered in her short-sleeved blouse. Her sweater, she had left it behind somewhere else. Bencku walked after her with his hands in his jacket pockets, she was talking. Her mouth was