Free My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman Page B

mean the school staff and I, believe that if Elsa could just try to walk away sometimes when she feels there’s a conflict about to happ—”
    Elsa doesn’t wait for Mum’s answer, because she knows Mum won’t defend her. So she snatches up her backpack from the floor and stands up.
    “Can we go now, or what?”
    And then the headmaster says she can go into the corridor. He sounds relieved. Elsa marches out, while Mum stays in there, apologizing. Elsa hates it. She just wants to go home so it won’t be Monday anymore.
    During the last lesson before lunch, one of their smarmy teachers told them their assignment over the Christmas holiday would be to prepare a talk on the theme of A Literary Hero I Look Up To. And they were to dress up as their hero and talk about the hero in the first person singular. Everyone had to put up their hands and choose a hero. Elsa was going to go for Harry Potter, but someone else got him first. So when her turn came she said Spider-Man. And then one of the boys behind her got annoyed because he was going for that. And then there was an argument. “You can’t take Spider-Man!” shouted the boy. And Elsa said, “Pity, because I just did!” And then the boy said, “It’s a pity for YOU, yeah!” And then Elsa snorted in English. “Sure!” Because that is Elsa’s favorite word in English. And then the boy shouted that Elsa couldn’t be Spider-Man because “only boys can be Spider-Man!” And then Elsa told him he could be Spider-Man’s girlfriend. And then he pushed Elsa into a radiator. And then Elsa hit him with a book.
    Elsa still thinks he should thank her for it, because that’s probably the nearest that boy ever got to a book. But then the teacher came running and put a stop to it all and said that no one could be Spider-Man because Spider-Man only existed in films and so he wasn’t a “literary character.” And then Elsa got possibly a bit disproportionally worked up and asked the teacher if he’d heard of something called Marvel Comics, but the teacher hadn’t. “AND THEY LET YOU TEACH CHILDREN?!” Then Elsa had to sit for ages after the class “having a chat” with the teacher, which was just a lot of teacher-babbling.
    The boy and a few others were waiting for her when she came out. So she tightened the straps of her backpack until they hugged her tight like a little koala hanging on to her back, and then she ran.
    Like many children who are different, she’s good at running. She heard one of the boys roar, “Get her!” and the clattering of footsteps behind her across the icy asphalt. She heard their excited panting. She ran so fast that her knees were hitting her rib cage, and if it hadn’t been for her backpack she would have made it over the fence and into the street, and then they would never have caught up with her. But one of the boys got a grip on her backpack. And of course she could have wriggled out of it and got away.
    But Granny’s letter to The Monster was inside. So she turned around and fought.
    As usual she tried to shield her face so Mum wouldn’t get upset when she saw the damage. But it wasn’t possible to shield both her face and the backpack. So things took their course. “You should choose your battles if you can, but if the battle chooses you then kick the sod in his fuse box!” Granny used to tell Elsa, and that is what Elsa did. Even though she hates violence, she’s good at fighting because she’s had a lot of practice. That’s why there are so many of them now when they chase her.
    Mum comes out of the headmaster’s office after at least ten eternities of fairy tales, and then they cross the deserted playground without saying anything. Elsa gets into the backseat of Kia with her arms around her backpack. Mum looks unhappy.
    “Please, Elsa—”
    “It wasn’t me that started it! He said girls can’t be Spider-Man!”
    “Yes, but why do you fight?”
    “Just because!”
    “You’re not a little kid, Elsa. You always