Chapter Text
“We gain the most hateful things at the hand of those dearest.”
― ephigenia in aulis
i.
Sophie decides to go up to him alone.
Her mother has stopped in front of the reconstructed tree house to talk to Aunt Shiv.
Sophie walks into the VIP area carrying the gift from her and Iverson. They’d painted Kendall’s face on a coffee mug and written the words Go, Dad, Go! underneath. But her brother couldn’t make it to the birthday party. He can't really handle crowds or flashing lights. Sophie is secretly glad. She’s the one who did most of the work on the mug, anyway. She’s put on a nice dress for the occasion and she’s wrapped the present in rabbit paper, in memory of their baby bunny who did not get to live very long.
It’s childish, maybe, but she hopes her father will be glad to see her.
She spots his bedazzled jacket in a nearby booth and smiles. Her dad is kind of a dork. She likes that about him.
Sophie stops in front of him.
“Happy birthday, Daddy.”
Kendall looks up in annoyance. At least, that is the first thing that flashes in his eyes. Then he recognizes her, and his face breaks, his mouth parts. He smiles in confusion.
Sophie didn’t realize he was talking to someone.
The other man is lying in an armchair with a foot propped on the drinks table. She notes that his legs are very long, and this bothers her for some reason.
He looks up from his phone and gives her a bored once-over, eyes lingering briefly on the red checkered dress. Sophie regrets the choice now. It makes her look like a baby.
“Soph!” Her dad gets up from his chair, pulls her towards him. “Hey, I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Surprise,” she mutters in his chest. She puts her hands around him.
“We got you something,” she says when they part. She lifts the gift bag.
“You shouldn’t have,” Kendall says, mouth grinning, eyes slightly out of focus.
“Aww.” The man behind her dad stares at them with mild derision. “What did you get me?”
Sophie feels cold sweat under her armpits. He’s making fun of her. She wishes he’d go away.
“Nothing,” she mutters, peering at him from behind her dad.
The man chuckles at her expense.
Kendall turns to him. “Cut it out, man. She’s my kid. I’ll be right back, okay?”
He takes Sophie by the arm and leads her away.
Sophie looks over her shoulder only once.
The man is looking at his phone again.
When Kendall comes back to Matsson with two fresh drinks, Lukas takes the glass and smiles.
“So, you guys did the whole Third World Kid thing? I didn’t know that was still popular.”
Kendall laughs uncomfortably. “Jesus, dude. I don’t see her that way. She’s my daughter.”
“Yeah yeah, definitely. She’s very cute. Happy birthday, Daddy,” he mouths in a high-pitched voice.
Kendall shakes his head. “Fuck off. You’re just jealous.”
“Of what? I can adopt a kid too. I probably have and forgot about it.”
“Yeah, but you can’t make it love you.”
Lukas raises an eyebrow. He looks like he wants to say something, but decides against it.
When Kendall leaves again to do the rounds, Lukas mutters it to himself without mirth, looking pensively in the distance. “Happy birthday, Daddy.”
ii.
Sophie would’ve been excited about Tuscany and the wedding, but her dad looks glum and depressed and won’t speak more than two words at a time. Sophie knows it’s not her. He’s under a lot of stress with his start-ups and the whole fight with her grandfather.
But still, she feels like she’s somehow making it worse just by being here.
He can’t even look at her or Iverson, prefers to pat them on the head and walk away, muttering to himself.
The two of them are more or less left to their own devices in Kendall’s guest villa. There’s an assistant and a sitter they brought all the way from New York, but they both disappear after a while, because the countryside is gorgeous and Sophie is “old enough” to look after her younger brother.
Sophie makes sure someone from the kitchens brings him his favorite fruit and she settles him by the pool with his animal books.
Then she changes into her bathing suit and swims a few laps. She’s not a very good swimmer, has to paddle close to the edges, but it’s sort of exciting when there are no adults around. She gets out after a while and rinses her hair. Then she walks through the cypress garden behind the pool. It's not strictly a cypress garden,there are fig trees too. She spots them because one of the Italian servers told her about the fichi. That’s a funny word, she thinks.
There are a few steps leading down from the garden to the cliff rocks. She’s a little afraid, at first, but then she sees it’s been landscaped. There’s a bench and dwarf pine trees and a pair of vintage binoculars, tied to a post. The small sign says Ottima Vista.
Guests are supposed to sit here and look at the pretty sight. The gulf of water is dark blue, almost painted on. She can see the cruisers and the yachts, bobbing and dipping like swans in the sun’s glare.
She raises the binoculars to her eyes and looks.
From time to time she scratches the side of one breast. There’s a mosquito bite there. That and the one-piece is getting too small.
She giggles when her binoculars land on the docks below and she spots Grandpa Logan and Uncle Roman climbing down a flight of stairs, preparing to board a yacht. They don’t know she’s up here, watching them. They rarely know about her anyway.
She can see a tall, barefoot man on the yacht deck. He's wearing long slacks and a dark shirt, like he just got out of bed. His hair is sandy blond.
Sophie lowers the binoculars. It’s the man from her dad’s birthday party. She gives an involuntary shudder. Her bathing suit is still wet.
What is he doing here? Is he working with her family? Are they friends? She finds it a little odd that her grandpa is going with him.
When she brings the binoculars back to her eyes, she flinches.
The man has raised his head. He is staring up at her.
Sophie didn’t realize he could see her too. Ottima Vista goes both ways.
He doesn’t have a pair of binoculars, but he lowers his sunglasses. He lifts two fingers in the air. Waves at her.
Sophie drops the binoculars and turns around abruptly.
Her dark hair whips her back angrily as she runs up the stony path, bare skin brushing against tree needles.
The sitter comes to check on them in the evening and two attendants bring them dinner which they leave mostly uneaten.
Sophie sits with Iverson in his room, even though he’s ignoring her, nose buried in his tablet. She just doesn’t want to be alone.
“Do you know what’s going on with dad?” she asks, hoping her brother might’ve overheard something.
“There’s always something going on with dad,” he mutters, unhelpful.
Sophie peels off the skin from her thumb. “Do you want me to read to you from the kitten book?”
Iverson looks up. “Okay, but don’t do any funny voices.”
“I won’t.”
She doesn’t tell her brother she wants to read from the kitten book too. It’s too young for either of them, but it always makes them feel better.
Iverson lies with his head on her ankles. Sophie reads.
“Mog realizes the new kitten is too nervous and doesn’t know how to play. She just needs a little bit of help. She needs to be shown how fun it can be to be stroked and tickled. So Mog pushes the kitten into Big Daddy’s lap. And the kitten is terrified, at first. But when Daddy starts playing with her, caressing and petting her fur, she is even more shocked by the sound she suddenly makes. Mog grins. The little kitten is purring.”
Iverson blinks in time with each word. He groans under his breath, as if he were purring too.
Sophie scratches the mosquito bite under her T-shirt. She doesn’t like Mog. She doesn’t care if Mog is a dead cat and you’re supposed to feel sorry for her. She thinks it’s wrong of Mog to grin like that.
In the morning, she feels better because their father has come back to the villa and he wants to spend time by the pool. Sophie brings her grown-up book with her. Something by Kafka that Kendall mentioned once on a podcast.
She lounges on a deck chair, pretending to read while peeking at her father, sprawled on the airbed with a beer bottle lurching in his hand. His head is turned sideways, away from her, contemplating the water.
Sophie stares at him until she loses focus, until her mind drifts. Maybe that’s why, even though she was looking, the splash still catches her by surprise.
Her dad rolls off the float and sinks into the pool, face-down.
Sophie screams, but her voice doesn’t really carry. She jumps into the pool and wades towards him, but she can’t dive under the surface. She can’t really help him. She clings to the grab bar, churning water helplessly. She hears her brother calling for help. But it feels like a long time until it comes.
Grandpa Logan has them stay at his villa until their dad gets out of hospital.
Sophie tries not to let her feelings show. She knows her grandfather gets easily irritated by certain displays of emotion. She also doesn’t want to cry in front of Kerry. Kerry is nice but condescending. She keeps trying to spend time with them, talks to them in sing-song syllables, as if they were toddlers. Sophie tunes her out.
But she pays attention to her grandpa’s phone calls. She sits on the stairs and listens to the old men talking on the patio. And the names she hears most often are GoJo and Matsson. She doesn’t know how to spell the latter. But she knows about GoJo. She has a GoJo subscription. She watches a lot of K-drama on GoJo. She also has a GoJoin account, which is the social media subsidiary. She doesn’t post there often, but it’s good for keeping up with her prep school circle.
She googles Matsson and the photos that come up make her feel weird, because she has seen this person in the flesh. This tech billionaire. His features are sort of rugged, she supposes, but there’s something flaky about his skin. He looks like someone who shouldn’t spend a lot of time in the Italian sun.
Her grandpa sounds upset about Lukas Matsson. The atmosphere inside the house is strained. Sophie assimilates this hostile air. GoJo is posing a threat to Waystar Royco. Matsson seems to be the enemy. In her mind, that feels right.
She can’t help but associate her father’s collapse with him. It must have been his fault.
iii.
He scrolls through the photos from Caroline’s wedding, mildly amused by the grimaces. The old man looks like he’s bleeding internally, but putting on the proud air of an Atlas, holding the market on his shoulders. The siblings can’t even pretend they’re taking this well. They’ve crumbled under the pressure. Their smiles are sunburned and desperate.
Matsson likes that he had such a crushing effect on them.
He sees the dark-skinned girl in some of the photos, her face buried in her hair. She’s got a different sort of sadness, probably because no one cares about children at these events. They dressed her in something yellow and ugly. Scratchy too, because she keeps touching up her left side, next to her armpit.
He didn’t get to see her tits in the bathing suit very well. She ran away too quickly. But they look big for her age. He zooms in and put his thumb on her chest. Yeah, they could fill up his palm, dusky and tender.
He’s buying them all soon, anyway. They could throw her in as a premium. It’s not like she’s really theirs.
Sophie Roy. She’s got a GoJo subscription. He logs into analytics and finds her viewing history. He spends a few hours watching Korean dramas about sensitive boys who have been placed under various innocuous curses which only mousy girls with poorly trimmed fringes can lift. They hold his interest for a while.
He tries to find more adult stuff, but she only watches age-appropriate material. Her account isn’t kid-proofed so she could technically explore, but she hasn’t. She sticks to very light PG-13 fare. That’s cute. Kind of hot too, that she’s a little girl even when she’s alone.
He finds her GoJoin account too. There’s pics of her at school with her friends. There’s a group photo where all the girls have knotted their white shirts under their bras like Britney Spears. Sophie has hers tucked neatly into her skirt. She’s too shy to try for sexy. But she sticks out her tongue, her only gesture of rebellion.
Matsson hums ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ as he walks into the bedroom. He hums it, lost in thought, when he’s given the blowjob too. The woman lifts her mouth, about to ask him if it’s all right, but he pushes her head down and tells her to keep going. He doesn’t really feel like coming, but he pulls up the picture of Sophie with her tongue sticking out, and he manages.
Grandpa Logan was on his way to Sweden to meet with Matsson. That’s how he died.
That’s what Sophie understands from her mother’s explanations. So, it was him again. This time, he killed her grandfather.
Sophie doesn’t understand why he keeps hurting her family. She wants to hate him, but he’s too much of a stranger, and it frustrates her that he can do all this damage from afar.
She is also ashamed that she doesn’t feel that sad about Grandpa Logan.
She feels sad for her dad. She wishes he didn’t hurt so much. When she calls him to say she’s sorry, Kendall tries to speak, but the words are all blubbery. He moans, in order to swallow a sob.
Sophie would have been spooked, but she has heard and seen her father cry before. It’s not an uncommon thing, she thinks, feeling disloyal.
“We loved him, even if he wasn’t always good,” Kendall says, voice wobbling. “Right, Soph?”
Sophie nods eagerly, forgetting he can’t see her. “Yeah, um, we did.”
He expects the call from Kendall. The Roys are like twitching rabbits.
Kendall hems and haws about the employee list attached in the email, but he leaves the real query for last.
“Hey, uh...why are my kids included on the list?” He laughs, like he expects it to be a prank. “What, you’re gonna do an EVP evaluation on my kids?”
“I just want to see how you handle your children.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, maybe I phrased it wrong. I want to see what you’re like as a father. I’m buying your whole...fucked-up family operation. I want to see you with your actual family.”
“Seriously, dude? I’ll be there with my brother and sister. Isn’t that enough?”
Matsson likes that Kendall sounds so defensive. He chuckles. “Yeah, but...you know, Logan was dubbed the patriarch. The All-Father. I wanna see...if you got that in you.”
He knows what he’s doing with these laborious comparisons. He’s dangling an abstract CEO carrot that he has no intention of lowering, but Kendall’s front teeth are big enough to bite.
“So. Bringing my kids to Norway will show you that?”
“It’s a start.”
He knows by the shift in Kendall’s breathing that he’s willing.
“You’re asking something big, just so you know. I try to keep my kids away from this stuff.”
Matsson smiles. Kendall must know he sounds preposterous. He sounds like he’s already trying to impress him.
“I know. Look, they’re not gonna be involved in any of the, uhh, nuts and bolts. They’ll just have a great time with their dad.”
“Okay...Fuck you, but okay.”
Her mother says no at first. The kids have school. The kids don’t want to go to Norway.
More importantly, she tells him, I don’t want a repeat of Tuscany.
Nothing happened in Tuscany. The kids were fine.
Oh, sure. That was fine. You know, they’re not trading chips you can shuffle around when it’s convenient.
How the fuck is this convenient? You think this is easy for me? My dad’s not even cold yet.
Jesus, Ken...That’s not what this is about.
Isn’t it?
Sophie listens with her ear pressed to her mom’s bedroom door.
When her dad comes out, she has to move away quickly. He calls for her. Sophie pretends she was in the kitchen.
“Come here.” He pulls her into a hug. Then he holds her away from him. He takes her hands in his and squeezes. “Soph, this is… this is really important. I need you and Ive to go on this trip with me. We don’t – I feel like I don’t see you guys enough. We should go on more trips together. Yeah?”
She can see her mother behind him, shaking her head with a bitter, fed-up smile.
Sophie swallows. “Sure. I’d like that.”
Kendall cups her cheeks and kisses her forehead, and she feels like whatever comes next is worth it because at least she made him happy.
iv.
She didn’t really want to go to Norway. In fact, she felt a distinct sense of terror when she heard about it, like an icy finger under her jaw. Maybe because of the weather she pictured in Norway.
But mostly because of Matsson. She doesn’t understand. Why did he want them to come? Why couldn’t he just leave all of them alone?
She sits in her seat on the plane and tries to warm her clammy hands. Stop being afraid, she thinks. But her grandpa died on a plane.
She’s never liked the way the clouds look up here, like white froth over a boiling pot of milk. Her brother went through a phase two years ago where he would only drink milk. She can still smell it sometimes.
She must looks really pale and worried because Uncle Roman pauses in the aisle to talk to her, drink in hand.
“Hey cheer up, kid, it’s not you that has to dance with the Abominable Snowman. You guys will just...frolic with the reindeer.”
Iverson looks up from his phone. “Will we actually get to see reindeer?”
“Uh, sure, look, they’re over the clouds right now. Say hello.” Roman points to the window with a mean smile.
Sophie scowls. “Iverson, don’t look. He’s kidding.”
But her brother looks. He stares out the window for a long time.
She expected snow, but there’s just a lot of rocks and mud. Water rushes down stony hilltops. The slick roads wind around mossy crags and sharp bluffs that make you feel like you’re inside a stone giant’s cavities.
She doesn’t know if she likes it, if this sort of landscape can be liked or just borne.
“There are no other kids here,” Iverson tells her pointedly as they wait to get on the golf-carts. Sophie looks around at the Waystar suits in their woolen vests and the Swedish staff wearing brown aprons. She’s never felt more out of place.
“You guys will have each other,” Kendall says, coming up behind them. “And Jess is gonna make sure you have everything you need. I’ll check in with you a bit later, after I talk to Matsson, okay?”
Sophie watches him get on the cart with his siblings, heads lowered, talking strategy. There’s a closeness there that she doesn’t think she will ever know.
She and Iverson ride with Jess, who is busily updating some sort of schedule on her phone. Sophie wishes she was busy like that, had a life of her own that could make her invulnerable to small hurts.
She’s not sure when they arrive at the retreat, because the place is buried under foliage, carefully hidden inside rock. A blond woman in a brown apron tells them the apartments are built into the bluff wall, hanging over a river. They follow this woman down a wet forest path.
“This one is for Iverson Roy,” the woman tells them when they stop in front of a brown door.
“You mean both of us,” Sophie interjects. “He can’t be on his own.”
“There is always staff nearby if he needs help,” the woman replies politely.
“It’s just that the siblings tend to stick together,” Jess mutters, still eyeing her screen.
“I’m okay being alone. I’m old enough,” Iverson speaks up, stepping away from Sophie. “I’ve been alone before.”
Yeah, we’ve been alone together, she thinks.
She doesn’t feel good about it, but she knows that her brother is prone to throwing tantrums if he doesn’t get his way.
“I’ll stay with him a bit, to get him settled,” Jess tells her, giving her a reassuring smile, one hand gripping the phone.
Sophie nods halfheartedly. She’s already worried, already wondering how she’ll check up on him during the night. But she follows the woman in the apron.
They seem to walk for a long time. At least, that’s what it feels like. She can’t see Iverson’s hut anymore.
“Is it any further?”
“Just behind this tree.”
The brown door is well camouflaged.
The woman gives her a key card and tells her she will find a map and an itinerary, and some mineral water and snacks in the living area. Then she turns around and walks away.
Sophie stands there for a few moments, trying to figure out where she is. She feels far away from the rest of the party. But maybe that’s just the forest.
She goes inside the apartment. She steps gingerly around the plush carpets. There’s mud on her sneakers. She doesn’t know what type of wood this is, but it’s dark and smooth. Probably very expensive. She runs her finger down a panel.
Two sides of the house are just windows. She can see the ravine and the gray water below. But she can’t see any curtains or blinds. She’ll have to undress in the bathroom. She worries Iverson won’t be able to sleep like this. It’s only a few days, she thinks. She finds the itinerary on a coffee table and sees that there will be a barbecue in two hours. She doesn’t relish the idea of walking all the way back to the meeting point and then up a hill to the “buffet house”, whatever that is. She takes out a mineral water and walks to the other window.
The scenery is pretty much the same, except there’s a wooden platform and a flight of steps leading down to the river.
She takes a gulp of water.
There’s someone on the platform. She didn’t see him before because of the trees. He’s wearing a rain jacket with the hood pulled up. But she recognizes him either way.
Sophie steps away from the window. Her body feels cold. There’s nowhere to go inside this place.
Matsson has already spotted her. He’s waving at her, signaling for her to come out. Sophie clutches the bottle. She knows it would be silly to hide or refuse to come out. She’s almost sixteen, she can’t be a baby about this.
She walks out of the house, but doesn’t close the door behind her. She stalks down the road, between the trees, until she reaches the platform.
Matsson has lowered his hoodie and his dirty blond hair sticks to his forehead. He takes one more puff from the cigarette he’d been smoking, then throws it in the river.
He waves for her to come closer.
The thin jacket makes him look bigger, or maybe he’s just too big for his clothes. Her uncle’s voice chimes in her ear. The Abominable Snowman.
“Hello, Sophie,” he says, in a soft, gravelly voice.
“Um, hi.”
“I’m Lukas.”
“I know.”
“I know you know, but I wanted to, uhh, get properly introduced. I mean, before, we just sort of... exchanged glances.” He smiles at her without guile. His face looks completely open. Almost naive.
Sophie hopes he will not bring up Tuscany. She couldn’t bear the embarrassment.
He nudges his head. “Do you like the water?”
Sophie looks down. She didn’t notice that she’d taken the bottle with her. “Um, it’s fine.”
“I bottle it myself. Well, not me personally...but my guys up in Jämtland. It’s supposed to have, like, a fuck-ton of selenium.”
Sophie looks away. She feels stupid for almost flinching at the profanity.
“That’s cool,” she mumbles, noncommittal.
“I’ll, uh, maybe show you some other cool stuff later on,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “Right now I’m supposed to be up there, meeting with your dad.”
He points to a green peak in the distance. Sophie wonders how much of the land he owns. It feels wrong to own a mountain.
“It’s funny. They’re all waiting for me at the top. They had to take a cable car and everything.” He grins. “But I’m down here with you.”
Sophie frowns. “Why... did you do that?”
“Eh, you know. Sometimes it’s good to make people wait.” He gives her a sidelong glance. “And I wanted to say hi.”
She’s not sure how to take this remark, if it’s supposed to be flattering or derisive, but she feels her cheeks growing warm against the frigid air.
“Hi,” she says again, stupidly.
He gives her another clean, candid smile. “Hello.”
She doesn’t return the smile. She looks behind her at the indistinguishable rows of trees. “I should get ready for – for the barbecue.”
“Oh yeah. I hope you have an appetite. There’s gonna be games too.”
He doesn’t mention what games. Sophie feels it’s safer not to ask.
“Fuck, I guess I have to go talk to your dad,” he says, like it’s a tedious, unavoidable chore. “But I’ll be seeing you around.”
Sophie steps aside when he walks past her, even though there’s enough room.
He soon disappears behind the branches.
She walks to the edge of the platform and leans her elbows against the wooden post. She looks down at the river, but she sees nothing but tangled brushwood.
Sophie walks all the way back to Iverson’s hut, but her knocking goes unanswered. Brushing light sweat from her forehead, she treks up the hill, carrying the map with her. The smell of burnt meat soon gives her an inkling. Then the sound of voices and music. A drone zips past her, making her startle. The barbecue area is set up by the river, and there are tents with food and drinks and target practices on the lawn. She can see a few Waystar employees trying to string their bows, while others are throwing axes. The staff is handling the meat, slathering the pork skewers in hot sauce. It all looks and feels like a five-star prison camp.
But what really throws her off is her brother. She spots him immediately. Iverson is laughing and screaming in delight. A burly man she saw earlier at the meeting point is carrying him on his shoulders.
“Iverson, proud son of Iver!” the man cries out as he lifts him higher in the air.
“Son of Iver!” her brother shouts, throwing up his fist.
“Your name is Scandinavian, which means you are one of us!”
Her brother roars happily, only too glad to receive a new identity, as the man bounces him up and down.
Sophie purses her lips. She scans the crowd for her dad, to see what he thinks about all this, but Kendall is standing away from the tables with Shiv and Roman, no doubt disseminating the latest talk with Matsson. He doesn’t look like he cares that a stranger is handling his son like this.
“Don’t worry, Oskar won’t drop him.”
Sophie startles again. A woman comes up behind her, holding two glasses of beer. She nudges her head in Oskar’s direction. “He just really loves children.”
Her slightly sad, puckish face reminds Sophie of a pixie from a book she used to read to Iverson.
“I’m Ebba. You’re too young for beer, I assume?”
Sophie nods.
“That’s a great age. When you have a good excuse not to drink,” she says softly, more to herself. “You are Kendall Roy’s daughter?”
“Yes. I’m Sophie.”
“And where are you from, Sophie?”
“I’m from New York.”
“I see. And where were you born?”
Sophie blinks. It takes her a moment to realize what Ebba is asking. The young woman looks at her expectantly.
“I was born in New York,” she mutters, rubbing the sole of her sneaker against the grass. “I should go find my dad.”
She sprints away from Ebba, trying not to look like she’s fleeing.
It doesn’t happen often in New York. There aren’t many girls like her in her class or in the school, it’s true, but there are enough so that she doesn’t feel like a freak. Here, though, in this cold neck of the woods, no one would carry her on their shoulders and call her Scandinavian. She stands out, like a fly in a glass of milk.
She walks across the green lawn, trying not to look at anyone. But her eyes stray.
Lukas Mattson is sitting at a table near the barbecues. Ebba has brought him a beer. He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater. He looks up at Sophie and his lips twitch, but he doesn’t exactly smile. He seems pleased to her.
Sophie turns away. She’d like to go up to her dad, but she knows he would mind the interruption. She goes to sit next to Uncle Tom and Cousin Greg instead. They don’t notice her behind them, which is why they don’t bother with the language. Or maybe they simply don’t care.
“...Norway, Sweden, what’s the difference?” Tom muses, contemplating a pickled radish. “All descended from the same rapists.”
Greg snickers. “Yeah, the annual rape retreat.”
“That does have a ring to it.”
“Where do you think they do the raping? Do you think it happens in the sauna?”
Tom chuckles nastily. “That’s the main rape event, but I bet they squeeze in a few more pillaging sessions between ingesting whole charcuterie boards. Watch out, Greg. No one is safe.”
Sophie buries her nose in her can of soda, inhaling the bubbles. No one is safe. It makes her feel queasy. She envies her brother, who can sometimes scream if he feels overwhelmed. She only has silence.
She scrolls through her phone aimlessly. There’s nowhere to go, not even inside her imagination. She’s bored, but also anxious. The sound of axes hitting wood makes her teeth rattle.
She glances over her shoulder, trying to find a fixed point, something to hold onto. Her eyes meet Matsson’s again. He’s staring at her.
Or – or maybe not. Maybe he’s just looking in her general direction. His head is cocked at an angle, eyes vacant, yet focused.
She can’t say for certain. But she feels watched.
Sophie lowers her head and bites her lip. She doesn’t know if she wants this feeling to stop. There’s something vaguely exciting about his wandering eyes.
She nearly jumps out of her skin when Oskar begins to shout. “Sauna! Sauna! Sauna! Sauna time!”
It’s as if a gun has been shot. Cries and jeers ring from every corner of the meadow and several of the men get up to follow him. Tom and Greg exchange significant glances.
Oskar is still carrying Iverson on his shoulders. He brings the boy back to Kendall. Her dad is slightly unsure what to do with him, but he takes the charge from the Swede.
Sophie watches her father trying to hold Iverson. Her brother squirms. Kendall lowers him to the ground. He kisses his forehead awkwardly. Aunt Shiv rubs his back. Uncle Roman makes a face. What’s the opposite of heart-warming, Sophie wonders. When she goes up to them to take her brother away, they look grateful and relieved.
The cold is so much meaner when you dress for it. She thought the layers would protect her, but she keeps shivering, even in front of the campfire.
I could just go to bed, she thinks tiredly. But she’s kind of afraid to go back to her glass hut. Iverson has already been taken to bed by one of the brown aprons. He’s had more excitement today than in whole months. Whether that’s ultimately good for him she doesn’t know. The truth is she’s tired of worrying about her brother. But she’ll still check on him when she leaves.
She bumps into a few people on the improvised dance floor. She doesn’t want to dance. She doesn’t want to keep moving in this weird, misty weather.
Inside the big glass-and-wood hall it’s still cold. She goes up to the bar to ask for some hot tea, but the bartender misunderstands and gives her mulled wine. Sophie decides not to correct him. She sips from it tenderly, feeling a small frisson of guilt. She has no idea where her family is right now. She thought she saw Cousin Greg dancing with one of the Swedish girls, but she’s not sure.
Five more minutes, she thinks to herself. Then she’ll leave. She takes another sip.
“Hi, again.”
The woman from before – Ebba – puts a cold hand on her arm.
Sophie takes a step back. “Hi.”
“You looked very serious from across the room,” Ebba says, as if explaining her presence. “How are you feeling?”
Sophie frowns. She doesn’t understand why this stranger wants to know.
“I’m okay. A little cold.”
Ebba ducks her head. “Me too. Do you wanna go somewhere warm?”
“Um…sure.”
“Follow me.”
Sophie didn’t know there was a downstairs, but Ebba leads her down a flight of stairs into a basement of some sort.
Finally, no more glass, she thinks, as the woman brings her to a room with four solid walls. There’s a giant TV screen and a big couch with a blanket. There’s soda and snacks too.
“I like to come down here when they start getting loud,” Ebba tells her with a cryptic smile. “I thought you might like it.”
“It’s pretty cool.”
Ebba turns on the TV for her. The GoJo home screen pops up instantly.
“You can watch whatever you like.”
“Whose account is this?” Sophie asks as she stares at the recommendations. Quite a few of them are Korean shows she’s currently watching.
“Just the house account, I guess. I don’t know exactly. But you can browse. Or you can just relax.”
“Um, thanks.”
Sophie pulls the blanket over her lap. She must admit this is nice.
Ebba stands behind the couch and squeezes her shoulder. “I’ll leave you to it. Call me if you need anything.”
Sophie wants to tell her that she doesn’t have her number. But Ebba has already melted away.
Sophie turns her eyes back to the screen. She pours soda into her lukewarm cup of mulled wine. It tastes gross, but she kind of likes it. She hits play on one of her comfort dramas and sinks comfortably into the cushions.
Half an hour later, she’s so engrossed in the events on screen that she doesn’t hear the door click.
She doesn’t hear his footsteps, until he’s right behind the couch. She feels, more than hears, his elbows sinking into the cushions at her back.
Sophie freezes, as if she’s been caught doing something inappropriate.
“I think I’ve watched this one too,” he says sleepily from somewhere above. His breath moves the hairs on top of her head. “I liked the time travel element.”
Sophie keeps her eyes on the screen. Her heart hammers in her chest. She can smell smoke from the campfire on him.
Matsson walks around the couch and sits down at the other end. There’s enough room between them, but she draws her knees to her chest under the blanket.
He leans back comfortably, spreading one arm across the couch. He’s still wearing his turtleneck sweater.
“My favorite is probably the one where…” He pauses, lowering his head in thought. “This guy’s soul is transferred into the body of a queen girl from the fourteenth century. That was so weird and fun.”
“Mr. Queen,” she murmurs, sneaking a glance at his profile.
“Yeah, that’s the one. It’s like the perfect fantasy for me.”
Sophie feels she ought to respond, but it’s so hard to think of anything worthwhile.
“The main actress is really good,” she says at length.
He nods, smile warm and bearish. The dark blond fuzz on his jaw looks oddly coarse. “She’s amazing. I mean, she really makes you believe that there’s a guy inside her.”
Sophie murmurs an assent. They sit in silence for a while, watching the screen together. A beautiful boy and a beautiful girl are riding on a horse together. Half his face is covered by a mask. She is draped in a pink cloak.
Sophie feels embarrassed. She’d like to fast forward or hit pause, but she doesn’t dare.
The silence makes her more nervous. She wants to ask why someone like him watches K-dramas, but he doesn’t give her a chance.
“There’s probably gonna be a market for it someday,” he drawls in the same sleepy voice. “Transferring yourself into someone else’s body…kind of fucked up but also kind of impossible to resist, right? We all want to be someone else.”
Sophie scratches her knees under the blanket. She can’t deny that she wants that sometimes. “I guess.”
Matsson turns his head towards her. Looks her straight in the eye. “What would it be like to get transferred inside you?”
Sophie flinches, as if his blue gaze alone could make the transfer happen.
But she has an answer for this one.
“It would probably be boring.”
Matsson chuckles. “Come on... you’re selling yourself short. I bet a day inside Sophie Roy would be really interesting.”
Something about his wording makes her cheeks feel warm and unwashed.
“I really doubt it,” she mutters.
“You know who’s boring?” he continues. “I’m boring. I’m way more boring than you. I’m also...so fucking bored. Like all the time. Maybe it’s the same thing.”
Sophie is less afraid to look at him now. He has a way of talking that sounds like the other adults around her, until it doesn’t.
“But you have...all this cool stuff and money,” she says. “You can go anywhere...do anything.”
Matsson smiles a wistful smile. “Yeah, that’s how it goes, at first. But then, it’s weird, you sort of realize it doesn’t matter where you go or what you do if you’re still sad. Money only gets you this far.”
Sophie understands, on some level, what he means. She’s seen it enough times in her family. But she doesn’t entirely believe it, because it’s better to be sad with money than without.
“I wouldn’t get bored if I were you,” she says, feeling bold.
“Oh yeah?” He grins at her, eyes flashing in the half-lit room. “What would you do if you were me?”
Sophie thinks of what he was saying earlier. She thinks of transference, of being inside his body. She shrugs. “Anything I want, I guess.”
“What do you want?”
“It – it doesn’t matter. Just the freedom of that ‘anything’ would be nice.”
Matsson’s grin fades into the fine lines of his face. He looks at her with a sobering look. “Yeah. It would be.”
He puts his hand down on the blanket and he rubs a spot next to her foot. “I’m sorry your family kind of sucks.”
Sophie flinches. She didn’t expect that. She thought they were just talking.
“What?”
“I mean they really fucking do. I watched you just...walk around all day by yourself. They...kind of don’t give a shit.”
Sophie looks back at the screen. Her eyes have become hot and blurry. She clenches her jaw.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “Maybe it’s not my place, but I, uhh, sometimes have problems with boundaries. And I feel like...you deserve better.”
Sophie shakes her head, blinking fast. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not, though. You don’t have to be. I’m not fine either.” He says it like it’s a blessing. “My family kinda sucked too. So now I...get involved with the wrong people. You’ve met Ebba, right?”
Sophie nods, sniffing her nose.
“Yeah, so...I got involved with her, which was bad. Take it from me. Never fuck your Head of Comms. It just ends up messy.”
Sophie chokes on an involuntary laugh. The shock of his remark sends pleasant shivers down her spine, distracting her.
“I’ll try to remember,” she mutters, wiping the corner of her eye.
Matsson smirks. “Has your dad ever fucked around with an underling? I mean, is that why your mom and him separated?”
Sophie feels whiplash from his approach, both hurtful and friendly, personal yet detached.
This is the sort of territory she always skirts. She has done her best not to think about her parents’ relationship too deeply.
“Um…no. I don’t think so.” She inhales. The way he speaks to her makes her feel she can say something crazy too, something true. “It was mostly – it was mostly the drugs, in his case.”
It’s not as if it’s a secret. It was all over the press for a while. But Sophie still feels disloyal for saying it.
Matsson looks at her with strangely soft, hooded eyes. “Yeah...that’s why I only do a little, you know. I try not to get addicted. I’m sort of...obsessive by nature.”
His hand which was over the blanket is now under the blanket, touching her foot. He squeezes lightly. As if he were trying to comfort her. Sophie regrets taking off her shoes. But then she also doesn’t. Because it’s scary but exciting, the way he can cover her whole foot with his palm. It sends little bursts of sensations from her sole to her heart.
“Thank you for your honesty, Sophie,” he says slowly, stroking her foot. He rubs his thumb against the flute of her ankle, touching the bare skin between socks and jeans.
Sophie shivers, feeling goosebumps prick her flesh. The feeling is awful and delicious, like going to the doctor and being told to lie down while the doctor touches you.
She lowers the blanket, drawing her foot away. “I think – I think I should go to bed.”
Matsson doesn’t move. He pats the couch. “You can sleep here, if you want.”
Sophie wonders if he’s joking.
“No, I – I want to check on my brother. But thanks for…” She trails off, not knowing exactly why she’s thanking him. It’s hard for her to remember how this night even started.
She swings her feet down, feeling the cold again.
Matsson gets off the couch. “I’ll go with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I can’t let you walk by yourself in the dark. Anyway, my place is next to yours.”
Sophie feels a sudden flicker in her gut. She busies herself with her sneakers. My place is next to yours.
It’s eerie to watch someone sleep through a glass wall. Like they’re a lab experiment.
Sophie can see the tiny bundle of her brother in the bed. Silver shards rain on the bed covers from a light fixture outside.
“I don’t think we should wake him up,” Matsson murmurs at her side.
Sophie knows he’s right, but she wants to linger. She feels safe in the company of her sleeping brother, even if he can’t protect her. Has never really protected her. But he makes her feel strong.
“Come on.” Matsson nudges her. “Down this way.”
The path is narrow and he occupies too much of it. Sophie has to walk close to him. His warmth stings her when he puts a hand on the back of her coat, pushing her forward.
They keep walking. The lights scattered through the trees seem to grow dimmer the further they go. It feels like they’re somewhere off-planet, wading through alien foliage, like he bought a little piece of the dark solar system too.
“Here, look out…” he mutters, taking her hand in his during a portion of the road that’s difficult to make out.
She feels her small hand in his much bigger one like a twitchy, desperate thing, like something he could detach off her wrist.
He doesn’t let go of her hand until they reach her door.
Sophie can’t feel her fingers. She looks up at him, at his strange, lumbering body, huge and graceful, big enough to fit two or three of her.
“I’m just over there,” he says, tilting his head towards the teeming darkness of the forest. “Shoot me a text if you can’t sleep.”
Sophie nods, pretending to yawn. “I think I’ll sleep.”
“Here, give me your phone.”
He doesn’t really wait for her to give it to him. He slips his hand inside the pocket of her coat. Sophie trembles not from the cold, not even from fear. It’s a strange physical reflex, like muscle spasms.
He spends a long time scrolling through her phone, typing something she can’t see. When he’s done, he leans forward to put it back in her pocket and he bends his head. His breath makes her hair stir. Sophie looks up. He presses his lips to the apple of her cheek. She feels his coarse stubble raking her skin.
He lifts his head. “Do you want me to kiss you on the lips?”
He sounds like he’d be doing her a favor between good pals.
“Um, I don’t –”
“Have you ever been kissed on the lips?”
Sophie shakes her head helplessly. She’s embarrassed, feels choked up with the shame of never having been kissed or touched. No boy has ever shown interest. She doesn’t know if she’s tempted to say yes to him because he’s the only one offering, or because she wants to have this experience. Or maybe because he’s so much older. But not that old. If she told her friends, they’d never believe her, but she wouldn’t care because they’d still envy her and – well – she doesn’t like him, she doesn’t think so, but it would be exciting to see what it’s like.
Matsson rubs his thumb against her cheek. “I’m gonna kiss you on the lips at some point. But not tonight, okay?”
Sophie doesn’t know if she’s disappointed or relieved. His thumb traces the corner of her mouth.
“I wanna kiss you when we’re both relaxed. So I can show you things... Not just pecking. I wanna taste the inside of your mouth.”
Sophie shudders violently. Her belly fills up with acid. Her tongue tastes like cold metal. Will he like that?
“Just don’t kiss anyone until then,” he rasps, mellow-sweet and vaguely threatening. “I wanna be the first.”
Sophie’s belly flutters. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it, if he was her first? Just kissing, though. That’s it.
“I’ll let you sleep now.” His teeth flash briefly in the dark. “But maybe I’ll slip in when you’re dreaming and give you a little kiss anyway. Like Sleeping Beauty.”
You can’t tell if he’s joking, if he’s just teasing, just spinning elaborate scenarios to satisfy himself.
Sophie murmurs a small good night. She opens the door only wide enough for her to slip in. Then she presses it shut. And stand there, for several moments, listening.
At length, she can hear his footsteps receding. Then they stop. And she hears a tearing sound, like him pulling his zipper down, followed by the sound of a gushing stream, trickling down into the mud. Sophie moves away from the door and sees his outline through the window. He’s standing in the middle of the path, his back half-turned, peeing.
Sophie looks away quickly.
Why couldn’t he wait until he reached the bathroom?
It’s simple for men, she thinks. They just pull down their pants.
After a while there are no more sounds. The path is empty. Matsson is gone.
And she’s alone in the dark, in the glass house.
Sophie has been alone many times before. She’s used to the feeling.
But not this kind of alone. Where there could be someone watching you being alone.
The glass is like black water, hiding all sorts of movement behind it. She’s inside an aquarium at the bottom of the ocean.
Sophie moves slowly, afraid to make a sound. She can hear the river below, whispering to her.
She undresses quietly in the bathroom with the lights off. She takes a long time brushing her teeth, trying to get the taste of the day out of her mouth.
When she finally patters towards the bed, she fears what she will find there.
The covers look untouched. She pulls the duvet aside and runs her palm over the sheets. She spends minutes like this, just patting down the bed, making herself feel safe. She slips between the covers at length, shivering as her feet brush against the watery cold.
She lies down, face up, staring at the ceiling, which is half-wood, half-glass – a strange coffin. She strains her ears for any wayward sound, but everything around her is an indistinguishable whisper, the river, the branches, the breath of the forest, even the glass, exhaling. Sophie is afraid to close her eyes. She is also afraid to keep them open.
You can fall asleep like that, blinking intermittently. But you’ll think you’re still keeping watch.
Sophie isn’t sure. The shadows look like people. Gathering around her bed.
And then she can feel big hands on her waist and under her knees, dragging her in his lap. He’s stroking her hair. He’s tracing the shell of her ear with his thumb. Her mouth presses against the cold seam of his pants.
She can hear him reading to her.
Mog realizes the new kitten is too nervous and doesn’t know how to play.
She just needs a little bit of help. She needs to be shown how fun it can be to be stroked and tickled. So Mog pushes the kitten into Big Daddy’s lap.
His hands caress down her body, as if brushing fine fur. He tickles her lightly under her tummy and Sophie squirms and giggles, and his palm cups her belly, rubbing it softly. Then his other hand cups a breast too, rubbing it, stroking it, squeezing it over her pyjamas, until the fabric mottles, until it feels damp and dirty.
I knew your tits were nice and big, he says, like the words are part of the story.
Sophie leans her head on his knee with a small gasp.
He keeps reading, and the pitch of his voice brings her back to childhood. It could be either one of them, Lukas or her dad. They sound the same.
And the kitten is terrified, at first. But when Daddy starts playing with her, caressing and petting her fur, she is even more shocked by the sound she suddenly makes.
The hand on her belly glides down between her thighs, rubbing gently, sliding into her slickness, spreading it up and down until she feels damp and dirty there too.
Sophie squirms and mewls. She wants to see the man’s face, but he keeps her head down in his lap. Keeps a hand on the back of her skull. Keeps a kitten down when she’s being given a petting.
She can hear Uncle Tom and Cousin Greg snickering at her bedside, bartering the same nasty gossip. Annual rape retreat. All descended from the same rapists. Pillaging sessions...Charcuterie boards...no one is safe. Uncle Roman makes funny grimaces, narrows his shoulders and tells her, just don’t fellate the Yeti, for fuck’s sake, and she blushes and burns at the thought of doing something so dirty, because her head is in the man’s lap, her cheek is rubbing against something hard and stiff, and her brother is there too, on the other side of the bed, pointing at her like she’s to blame, saying, there are no other kids here, and even her grandpa stands solemnly behind him, spitting the words with ire, you’re too fucking old for bedtime stories.
The only one she can’t see is her father. Where is her dad? Why isn’t he here? He wouldn’t be okay with this.
Daddy, she begs, staring at the men around her bed. Hoping they’ll show her mercy.
The man stroking her body grips her hair, yanking her head up.
“You don’t have a family,” he says clearly in her ear, like she should know by now. “And you don’t have a daddy either.” He kisses the apple of her cheek, and she can feel tongue too.
It sounds like him, her father, or maybe a man she wishes were her father, or maybe the man who offered to kiss her. Maybe they’re all the same.
But when she thinks of Kendall, just Kendall, gripping her hair, pressing her head down in his lap, sliding his fingers between her thighs, Sophie is shocked by the new sound she makes. (Mog grins. The little kitten is purring.) She is shocked by the way her mind conjures the feeling exactly, the way her whole being empties on his fingers, as if she’s been waiting for this since she could come, and she screams for him to stop, for her body to stop – stop – stop – stop – until the glass walls shatter and the night comes in, and the rushing river with it.
I wanna taste the inside of your mouth.
She opens wide.
And wakes up to the green light of morning.
Sophie staggers awake, drenched in sweat.
She forces herself to feel relief that there’s daylight again.
She refuses to remember the fine points of the dream.
There’s nothing there, not even a wisp.
The girls at school sometimes talk about making themselves come with the shower head or their fingers. One of the girls even borrowed her mother’s vibrator. But Sophie never shares such tidbits. She tries not to touch herself often, maybe once a month, and always while thinking of good things. Dreams don’t count.
She pads to one of the windows and stretches her arms, massaging her neck. Today will be better, she thinks.
She turns to go to the bathroom. On the plush carpet, close to the bed, is a faint, muddy footprint. It’s too big to be hers.
Sophie stares at it for a few moments. Then she walks into the bathroom and closes the door. She sits on the toilet, holding her face in her hands. Her forehead is very hot to the touch. Today, today, today, she thinks, like the word could make it all go away.
When she comes out of the bathroom, she looks at the footprint again, but it looks fainter than before. It’s probably hers, it must be hers, in fact.
She must’ve rubbed her dirty foot against the carpet. Like a bad kitten.
Sophie rushes out of the glass house, careful not to look behind her.
She didn’t realize she’d overslept. She doesn’t find many people at breakfast. Karolina greets her with a shuttered smile, still in the process of removing the chocolate filling from a croissant. Aunt Shiv is talking to Tom on the terrace. She looks like she’s smiling, but the smile lasts too long, a half-mouth grin that she can see upsets her husband.
Sophie looks away. Iverson is no longer ‘son of Iver’. He’s playing games sedately on his tablet, half an omelet drying up on his plate. Sophie sits down next to him.
“Where were you?” he mutters.
“When?”
“Last night.” He sniffs. “I woke up and you weren’t there.”
Sophie picks up a cold muffin. “You said you wanted to stay in the hut by yourself.”
“Yeah but...not at night.”
Sophie glares at the muffin. I’m not really your sister, she feels like saying. But then, that would probably make him cry.
“Eat your omelet.”
Hugo strolls by their table a few minutes later, muttering darkly about “terms of agreement” and “kill list.”
In the distance, Sophie sees a cable car coming down.
Her father’s face, when he steps out on the lawn, is strangely dark and solemn. He steps inside the breakfast hall and she can see right away he is also angry. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with that anger.
The strangest part is that he walks straight towards her.
Sophie feels that familiar and almost pleasant pang of anxiety whenever she has to deal with a Kendall who is under pressure and seeking comfort.
“Dad.”
“Soph.” He puts his hand on her shoulder. Cups her face briefly. Gives her a once-over. “Get your brother ready. We’re leaving right now. Heading straight for the plane. Okay?”
Sophie nods. So they’re leaving early. She doesn’t see Matsson anywhere. The deal must’ve gone south.
I won’t get to say goodbye, she thinks stupidly.
But she’s relieved by the abrupt departure too. And she breathes a little easier when they drive away from the glass huts and the dark forest and the stony hills which open like a giant’s mouth in the distance.
“You’re burning up, kiddo,” Jess mutters, handing her the small cup of water and an Ibuprofen. “Try to get some sleep. We still have a few hours to go.”
Her brother is already asleep in the seat opposite hers.
Sophie pulls the blanket over her aching limbs. She leans her head against the window. There’s only a stretch of piercing white-blue, but no cloud anywhere in the empty sky. The air looks like glass.
The adults are talking somewhere in her vicinity. She can hear their hushed voices. At some point, they must think she’s fallen asleep because they no longer whisper.
“...might’ve said some...not very nice things up there,” Uncle Roman mutters. “Might’ve blamed him for dad’s death and called him a dog man for dragging us out here. Which is all factually true.”
“That doesn’t excuse what he said,” her dad interjects. “Like, sure, you pushed him, but he went over the fucking line.”
“Uhh, okay, what 4chan-flavored joke did he make that got you so riled up?” Shiv asks and Sophie can hear the scornful smile in her voice.
“It was unacceptable. Fucking unhinged too,” Kendall continues. “Like, it’s making me reconsider if we can deal with this guy...He’s fucking sick.”
“Okay, to be fair, we knew he was fucking sick from the start,” Roman points out, “but yeah, perhaps sharing his pedo fantasies with us is a sign we should be looking elsewhere."
“What pedo fantasies? What did he say?” Shiv demands.
“Now it makes sense why he asked me to bring the kids,” Kendall mutters. “Fucking cunt.”
“Guys, just fucking tell me.”
“It’s about Sophie,” Roman blurts. “He said...uhh, he said we could get a price bump on the deal and he’d also name us co-CEOs when he owns Waystar if we...well, if Kendall…”
Her father clears his throat. “If I let him fuck Sophie, is how he phrased it.”
There’s a pin-drop sort of silence, horrible and heavy, but also strangely frivolous. Sophie is aware of her shivering body under the blanket. Tries to imagine Matsson making that offer to her dad and fails. If I let him fuck Sophie.
Aunt Shiv speaks first. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah.”
“What – what was his tone like?”
“His tone?” Kendall echoes in disbelief.
“Yeah, like, was it obvious he was making an off-color joke? Cuz he was clearly fucking with your head.”
“I don’t care if he was fucking with me, I’m not selling to this guy. We’re taking this to the board. Right, Rome?”
“Uhh, I – yeah, I guess we have to.”
“Hang on, you wanna tank the deal because Matsson talked shit about sleeping with your sixteen-year old daughter?” Shiv asks, sounding incredulous.
“She’s fifteen.”
“Isn’t her birthday coming up?” Roman puts in.
“You said you guys pushed him. So he was just saying horrible, dumb shit back,” Shiv continues, undeterred. “Like yeah, it’s kind of fucked-up, but Sophie isn’t a kid anymore.”
“Jesus, Shiv, that’s my daughter.”
“Oh right, because Sophie is your main concern right now. You didn't even know her birthday was coming up, but you’re really outraged on her behalf, uh-huh. You’re not using Matsson’s little edgelord routine to tank the deal. No, that’s definitely not your plan.”
“Look, I wanted the deal, we wanted the deal -”
“Sure.”
“But this guy is a fucking psycho. We’re not selling.”
Sophie tunes them out after that. She doesn’t have the energy to keep listening. The shock is partially dented by the fever.
She hates them a little for talking about her this way.
And she hates Matsson for making a dirty joke out of it. Was he joking about kissing her too? Was he actually making fun of her K-dramas and her immature ideas?
Had it all been just – bullshit? Toying with the gullible virgin?
Sophie shivers, not knowing what would be worse. Him making fun of her. Or him meaning it.
But he can’t mean it, she knows that.
The way her father said it, so blunt, so harsh, using Matsson’s idiom, makes the words feel intimate. Like a message to her. If I let him fuck Sophie.
He could have, she thinks darkly. The night before, he could have done something… But he didn’t, as far as she knows, and she knows.
Doesn’t she?
So why...why make this proposal to her father?
To make fun of you one last time, she thinks, feeling tired and betrayed.
Sophie likes to act older than she looks, but maybe she’s just as naive as her brother.
More naive, in fact.
But what if, a tiny voice whispers. She doesn’t let it speak. It’s too stupid to entertain the idea that Matsson might want her in any way.
She doesn’t want him to want her. He’s trying to bury her family. And he might succeed.
Sophie sinks down in her seat, wishing there would be a plane crash, wishing the only casualty would be her.
You don't have a family, his voice taunts in her ear. Lukas' or her father's.