My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

“The main character and the hero. They aren’t the same thing.” Louisa glares at him as if he’s talking complete nonsense, but she will never forget that. Something very, very small but very important changes inside her then.

“And you were in prison when… Kimkim got sick?” “Yeah.” “Did you see much of each other before then?” “No. We only met one single time after that summer when we turned fifteen.” “What? Why?” His grin wanders sadly from one ear to the other. “It’s a long story.”

“I believe in you. I trust you. I’ll never trust anyone again the way I trust the three of you.” “Me neither,” Ted said. “Me neither,” Kimkim said. “Nerds,” Joar said. “You’re a nerd,” Ali said, and held his hand. They lay there like that for several hours, next to each other on the floor of Joar’s room. Then they framed Kimkim’s painting.

Disappointment is a powerful thing. Used correctly, it is stronger than fear, more terrible than physical pain, if you see it in the eyes of the one you love, you’ll do almost anything to make it stop.

Those were little winks from Heaven. It was Christian playing hide-and-seek with me, the way we did when he was little. So every time it happens now, every time I see him out of the corner of my eye, I whisper: ‘Peekaboo.’ ”

Children aren’t responsible for their parents’ happiness, but they still try.

She wrote to him that she had never felt so happy as when she was paddling out to sea, straight into the sunrise. Then she felt like she knew what she was doing on Earth, she wrote. How many people find something that makes them feel like that? How lucky was she?

“What is that thing you always say? About people living quietly…?” Joar whispers. “That’s Henry David Thoreau,” Ted whispers back through the darkness. “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Joar nods slowly. “Well, you can say a lot of things about Ali, but that’s one damn thing she definitely didn’t do. She wasn’t quiet for one single damn day of her life.”

“How do you cope with death?” It’s Christian’s mother who answers: “It’s art that helps me cope. Because art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield. Vincent van Gogh wrote: ‘I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.’ ” “It’s cool that we happened at all,” Louisa whispers. “Something like that,” the mother smiles.

But Kimkim said it was never like that for him. He said he painted the way we laughed.”

Ted came there every day. There was a comfortable chair, a safe place, and shelves filled with imaginary friends. That was why he became a teacher. Because he wanted to give that security to other children, teach them how to have adventures without moving.

“That won’t work. If I see this painting as money, then I’ll see all paintings as money. Then I’ll never be able to paint anything.”

Christian’s mother is sitting beside her, and there is such a long silence that she feels that perhaps they’re expecting her to say something, so she does what she usually does and quotes a poet: Tomas Transtromer: “Don’t be ashamed to be a human being—be proud! Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly. You’ll never be complete, and that’s as it should be.”

Not because it’s perfect, but because it isn’t. It’s one of the most human works of art I’ve ever seen. I was pleased to hear that it’s hanging in a museum now. Some works of art shouldn’t be owned by anyone. They should belong to everyone.”

but she makes friends. Some are classmates, but most of them are men and women who have been dead for hundreds of years. She goes to art galleries, she cries, she finds out how hard her heart can beat. She grows up, she paints every day, she tries to learn to be a human being.