Page 76 of The Happiness Blueprint
Then I commit my first act of violence in my twenty-nine-year-long life.
KLARA
How do I even go on?
Google Search I’m Feeling Lucky
It’s been two days since Mateusz ruined my life. I have been in my bedroom for those two days, minus quick breaks for a pee and to rummage through the kitchen for a snack (thankfully discovered that Dad still hides chocolate in the house, despite the only other person living with him being me. Marabou milk chocolate found behind toaster). I wonder if Alex is counting the days too.
I haven’t spoken to a soul apart from Dad, Saga and the lady I called yesterday to complain about breakup ice cream being overrated. The stomachache, blood-sugar spike and extra shot of insulin was not worth it.
I said this to the individual taking my call at the Ben & Jerry’s helpline.
“My sister bought your ice cream, as it was recommended to me in my circumstances.”
“Your circumstances?” The lady was doing that thing when you repeat what the other person has said. Most successfully applied when you want to avoid coming up with a solution and let the other person do it for you.The audacity!
“I used to work in customer support,” I said hoping to instill some respect or, even better, fear in her. “The flavor,Half-baked,was suggested to me during a Google search which landed me on your company’s website. It was said to be the recommended flavor for people having beendumped.” I exhaled sharply at that word.I said it.
“I am disappointed to say the ice cream offered me no relief from my destructive-thought pattern. I followed all the instructions, ate it with a spoon straight from the tub, even though I’m a lady, and watched reality TV at the same time. When it was finished, I still had negative yet unidentifiable feelings.”
The lady suddenly had her voice back.
“Unidentifiable feelings...?”
I let my annoyance over having to explain to her the simplest of things come through in my voice.
“Well. When you’re in love—have you ever been in love?—you get those butterflies in your stomach. See, I used to have them. But when purchasing your ice cream, I had more of a swarm of moths in there. Dark and blind and especially active at night. I’d hoped they’d go away.”
At this point, I decided that the person I am talking to is hopeless and that I would rather not have my 49.99 kronor refunded and ended the phone call.
I closed the blinds and went to sleep.
I find my blood-sugar readings soothing. I look at them when I can’t sleep. The black little dots that form a graph, each one a number and live reading of my blood. The most common number on the display is 6. I sleep better when it’s a 6. An 8 makes me wake restlessly and reach for my phone in the early hours of the morning. When it saysNo data, I feel like I have disappeared from the earth, like I have left my body. Everything is empty, and I hold my breath again and again until I am back there, in the shape of a line of black dots. Then I know I’m still alive. I’ve checked my followers, and there are still five. Alex still follows my blood sugar.
There is a knock at the door.
“Can you open up, please?” I reluctantly get off the bed, duvet scrunched in a mess and a chocolate wrapper somewhere on the floor. A glass of water sits in a dangerous position on the floor next to the bed, waiting for someone to knock it over. An outsider would find it hard to believe that I am the same Klara that styles bathroom projects and has gone viral for her interior finesse and attention to detail. This Klara can hardly brush her teeth.
“I’ll come downstairs soon,” I say, wishing he would leave me alone.
“Can I come in?” Dad could have left the question mark out because he’s not waiting for an answer. Before I can reply the curtains are drawn aside, light flooding the room, and he is sitting on my bed, pushing the duvet to the side and collecting the chocolate wrapper and pocketing it.
“I understand things didn’t go well between you and Alex.”Understatement of the century.Every time I have to relive that morning in the courtroom feels like a punch to the gut.
“At least my time here is up, and my ticket home is booked. I won’t have to see him again.”Homesounds different when I say it now. The word sounds like home as in perhapshome screenrather than a cozy, safe place. A home screen would just hold content together. Not be an actual home.
“I’m sorry that it ended like this. I really thought you guys were a good match by the sounds of it.” I get the feeling that Dad wants to say more but shies away from the words.
“You’ve done an amazing job, Klara. Don’t you see that?” he says instead.
“Really? I crashed a van. Two employees left. Actually I’ve just caused a third to resign.”
“But then you fixed everything. What you have done is not just picked up the pieces, you have managed to turn a successful but aging business up a notch and give it an edge. And as for those two, good riddance. There is no room for sexism in a workplace today, to say nothing of what Mateusz did. As for Alex, he’s the one who should apologize, in my opinion.” He glances at me at the mention of his name, regretting he said it.
“I kept thinking you would have wanted Saga here.”
“I love your sister the same as you, but this was definitely a job for Klara.”
