My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Lucky children often ask what the most dangerous animal in the world is, but all other children already know. It isn’t the lion or the hippopotamus or the snake or the spider or the shark. The most dangerous creature on the planet is, and has always been, a young man. And the worst thing about a young man? That until very recently he was just a boy. No one gets any warning when he stops being one.

“I thought I heard Christian’s voice in the supermarket, or saw his favorite sweater disappear around a corner, but when I ran after him it was someone else. Oh, I hated it! I was furious! Until one day I realized that it wasn’t a curse, it was a blessing. 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.’ ”

“No, thank goodness, you haven’t had any training! No one who’s had any training paints like that! Art doesn’t require training, dear child, art just needs friends.”