Page 170 of Deep End

I nod. “Thank you.” My stomach feels buoyant. For the first time in days, I’m not going to be swallowed by quicksand. “For telling me all this.”

“Thank you for listening, Vandy.”

I watch her step away, and when she’s a few feet from me, something occurs to me. “Actually.”

She turns around.

“Are you going back to California?”

A nod.

I stop fighting my smile. “I’m going to the airport, too. In case you need a ride.”

CHAPTER 67

JAN IS MY ACCOMPLICE, AND I’M PROUD OF MYSELF FOR RECRUITINGhim. Initially, I just hoped to get an address from him. Then I found out that he was visiting Stockholm, and he became my coconspirator.

“I have a hotel booked,” I tell him when he picks me up at the airport.

He looks at my face. Then at my backpack. Then at my face again. “You travel very lightly.”

“He might be angry at me,” I explain. “We didn’t leave off on the best terms. I’m not going to stick around if he doesn’t want me.”

He laughs and puts my bag in the trunk, shaking his head like I’m warning him about the dangers of chemtrails and mind control.

Everyone around me talks in the same beautiful, singsongy way I’ve come to associate with the Swedish language. The colors seem more vibrant than back home, though it might just be because I know that Lukas is nearby. And because, past 10:00 p.m., the sun is still in the sky. “Won’t go down at all,” Jan explains.

It’s early June, just like inMidsommar, and—

Wait a minute. “No human sacrifices, right?”

“What are you—oh. That movie?” He sighs. “Ari Aster has a lot to answer for. And Ingmar Bergman isright there. Anyway, how do you want to play it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you wanted a grand gesture. What’s your plan?”

“Oh. Well. I guess I thought that flying over an ocean and a good chunk of land where toilets are holes in the ground and water is served without ice would kind of be . . . it?”

Jan is unimpressed. “But what will you do once you see Lukas?”

“Oh.” Had I considered that far? No. Yes. I know that I’ll tell him that I—

“Did you bring flowers?”

“I . . . don’t think it’s legal? Fragile ecosystems and such.”

“Then are you proposing to him?”

“What? I’mtwenty-one.”

Jan shrugs. “When you know, you know. Did you learn a complicated TikTok dance?”

“Would he even enjoy that?”

“Who wouldn’t?”

“I clearly didn’t think this through.”

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