Free A Faraway Island by Annika Thor Page B

spends recess in a corner of the schoolyard, among a crowd of girls that includes Sylvia. Sometimes Stephie senses them looking at her. She wonders what they’re saying.
    Britta, though, seeks her out and asks if she wants to jump rope. Stephie does just fine until she notices Svante staring. Then she gets nervous and misses a step. So she has to turn the rope.
    While Britta is jumping, someone comes up behind Stephie. She turns her head and sees Sylvia’s whole crowd, with Sylvia in the lead.
    “Say something in German,” Sylvia commands.
    Stephie shakes her head and keeps turning the rope.
    “Say something!” Sylvia repeats. “You can talk, can’t you?”
    “Sure.”
    “So say something, then,” Sylvia nags. “We want to hear how it sounds.”
    “Say something,” one of her friends urges. It’s Barbro, the girl who’s always with Sylvia.
    The group encircles Stephie. Vera stays in the background, pulling up a sock and rummaging through her dress pocket.
    “How about a yodel?” Sylvia asks. “You’re from the Alps, after all.”
    Britta misses a step now. She walks over to Stephie’s end and takes the rope from her hand.
    “Your turn,” she says.
    “Stop showing off,” Sylvia says to Stephie. “Don’t think you can butter Miss Bergström up, either. Little Princess from Vienna. Who asked you to come here, anyway?”
    Stephie pretends she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t care what Sylvia thinks.
    She runs in under the turning jump rope, counting silently to herself.
One … and … two … and … one … and … two … and—
    There’s a sudden tug and the rope is pulled tight. Stephie falls down, scraping the palms of her hands on the hard gravel. Sylvia smiles mockingly as she drops the rope and walks off with her entourage.

When November arrives, the island is even grayer than it was over the summer. Only the juniper bushes are still green. It’s dark when Stephie leaves for school in the morning, and it’s dark by the time she returns in the afternoon. She has a long walk. The wind blowing in off the ocean bites right through her coat; her knees go blue with the cold.
    Still, she’s pleased to be going to school. How would she have made the days pass otherwise? The afternoons and evenings with Aunt Märta are long enough. They never just sit chatting as Stephie and Mamma would.
    The minute Stephie walked in after school, she and her mother used to sit down, Mamma with a cup of coffee and Stephie with hot chocolate. Stephie would tell her mother what she had done that day, and what she had seen on her way home. Mamma might tell her a story about her ownchildhood or about when she performed at the opera. They would talk about the books they were reading, or about the trips they planned to go on together when Stephie was older.
    Writing to someone is not the same as talking face to face. A conversation is so much more than words: a conversation is eyes, smiles, the silences between the words. When Stephie writes to her mother, her hand can’t keep up with her mind, so it’s difficult to get everything on paper; all the thoughts and feelings run through her head. And once the letter has been mailed, it can take several weeks before she gets an answer.
    Aunt Märta never asks Stephie any questions or tells her any stories. She makes sure that Stephie does her homework, cleans her room, and helps with the housework. Nothing more.
    In the evenings Aunt Märta sits in the front room and knits. At seven she turns on the radio to hear the news and the evening prayers. But the minute music comes on, she turns it off. “Secular” music is sinful, Aunt Märta tells Stephie, and secular music includes everything but hymns and spiritual songs like the ones the choir sings at the Pentecostal Church. Jazz, popular music, and classical music, it’s all the same to Aunt Märta—the devil’s playground.
    Sometimes when Aunt Märta is out, Stephie turns on the radio. Except for those times, the white