chapter 2

By March of the next year, 2018, now twenty years old, she’d begun university in Södrahem’s capital city of Hestia. This sent her packing 800 kilometers east of home, where she bunked down in student accommodation in the city center, paying her way through the year by working shifts behind a coffee machine at a hardware store. Since Soderhem’s trade workforce was so large at the time, hardware stores were bustling hubs of industry, hi-visibility shirts seething throughout the area. The moment Linda’s barista shift began, it was 100% go-time until she finished, breaks rarely afforded. The stress came swift. At first it was only all the anxiety of a new job, but once she’d learned to operate on her own, the expectations to perform came crashing down on her head, and it was suddenly her fault if anything went wrong. And when things went wrong, the stares she got from angry men up to three times her age felt even more threatening than ever, as if the mere stare of their weathered eyes, unable to stop lingering around her chest, would destroy her in a way no act of sexual assault ever could.

As soon as the second semester of university began in June, the work piled up so high it bolstered the severity of her stress as if it had been wedged under her barista stress somehow. Soon enough she found out her hips pushing out into miniature lovehandles when she leaned to the side. This scared the sh1t out of her so bad she starved herself for a month. When she thought about it, she realised that since being away from home, she was out from under her father’s watch, meaning she’d begun to behave the way she felt she needed. And that involved eating whatever steamed in the glass display cases beside the barista machine– pastries, sandwiches, cakes –all at a worker’s discount. But, as everything demanded her attention, she forgot about it and stopped coming down so hard on herself. Her father and mother weren’t here to mold her.

Then her boss quit, moved onto another job somewhere overseas, and a new boss appeared. Jennifer was her name, as far as Linda was concerned, she was an angel in comparison. The filthy stress left. She began to feel like an uncaged bird, and nearly went binge-eating again and had to keep stopping herself.

By the next year, 2019, she was twenty-one and confident enough to have said goodbye to most of her first-year anxieties. She was near omniscient about where everything was around the university campus, understood the scaffolding of her freedoms, knew what was expected of her, where, how and when. The same went for her shifts at the store. Thing is; at twenty-one, she was also becoming complacent. That is, complacent to the idea that her life was probably going nowhere soon. After the first-year uni student gloss wore off, it became pretty clear to her and her new friends that job prospects have never been that good for post graduates. So instead they splashed their spare money around at hipster cafes and pubs, having conversations and telling stories over cheap lattes and beer. Then Tjockningfest came around again.

It would fall on Wednesday, 8th of May, 2019. The month had kicked off with mass anticipation– big food companies stirring up the population to guarantee maximum sales, TV adverts, radio talks, supermarkets displaying signs and banners like billowing flags… People did various things to prepare. One was to fast. This seemed like a delivery of genius to Linda.

One sunny midday during a break between lectures, she recommended fasting to her friend Jaimie Bejanaro; an aspiring poet with untapped genius and a poverty of ambition, despite so much spare time and intelligence. ‘Maybe you should fast, just to be sure you don’t over do it?’ Linda suggested.

The reaction she got was a, ‘What, are you kidding me?’ from Jaimie, as she blew on a strand of mousy-brown hair tickling her nose. ‘Don’t worry about it so much. Stop clinging. Just let go. You’ll probably find what you were holding onto so bad was never there? It was all fake?’

Linda didn’t want to hear this. The way Jaimie spoke often struck chords of sense, but sometimes it was a sense Linda turned away from.

They walked across the city street choked with traffic, a few blocks from where they’d be meeting the rest of the gang. Linda cast her hazel eyes to the ground, watching her canvas-topped shoes scuff the pavement as they walked. She decided she wanted to drop the subject. ‘Nyeh. I guess.’

But Jaimie cast a sidewise glance. ‘What, so you’re really going to just… fast for the entire festival?’

They came up to a bike stand and waited there, watching the oncoming foot traffic for the familiar faces of friends. In a daydream, Linda looked up, and saw a sky mostly obscured by the flanks of dominant corporate towers.

‘It’s not exactly great to have those kinds of eating habits, you know.’ Jaimie waited, staring at Linda, waiting for her to return the gaze.

‘Exactly,’ Linda said, thinking Jaimie meant the habits of overeating.

‘No. Lindy, I mean *fasting*. It’s not a good habit.’

‘What? Why?’

But before Jaimie could explain, the rest of the uni gang appeared ahead. Baily, a stout little chick with pigtails and pride in being one of the top 10% best Genji players in the world was walking hand-in-hand with Travis, an absolute joker, one of the tallest dudes around, looking slightly stoned. Crimson-haired Patricia, the group bitch was gossipping with Billy, making indignant gestures and no doubt telling a story in which she is whining about someone’s bad glance. There was Theo, the silent-but-wise German exchange student who ironically does not drink, politely tolerating the ramblings of Sebastien, who despite the fact that he can have a good time, believes it’s mathematically certain we all live inside a simulation.

Gathering around beers on a table outside Den Gröna Ankan, discussion found itself coming round to Tjockningfest, now only eight days away.

‘So who’s ready for it?’ asked Patricia.

Theo nodded and put his hand up. ‘Ja.’

‘Actually,’ Travis scratched his head, ‘this is going to be the first year I’ve done it.’

‘Us both,’ added Baily, with a nudge in his side and a smile all affectionate-like.

‘I am,’ Jaimie put in.

‘Here,’ Billy said with a pat of his insubstantial stomach, as if saying farewell to it while he still could.

Patricia snorted. ‘Then again, who ever isn’t?’

Amidst shrugs, Jaimie glanced at Linda, but said nothing. Nobody thought to ask the oddly silent girl about her plans. That was fine– she wasn’t about to tell.

Hours later only Patricia, Jaimie left and Linda were left. Patricia went off to the girl’s room for a moment, leaving the other two alone. Linda caught Jaimie looking at her as if trying to decide on something.

‘You seriously don’t want to do Tjockningfest, do you?’ she asked.

Pressing her lips into a straight line, Linda shrugged. For all the ambiguity in her gesture, she clearly meant “no”.

‘Well if you didn’t resemble such an anglo version of Gal Gadot every day, would you feel better doing Tjockningfest like the rest of us?’

Linda narrowed her eyes. ‘What are you…?’

‘I’m saying, you sound like you’re worried you’ll lose your figure or something.’

‘Well–’

‘Well yeah– you are.’ Jaimie watched her with some kinda smirk of understanding. Though exactly what she understood, Linda had only half an idea.

Something about the look struck her the wrong way. ‘Yeah! Why wouldn’t I be worried!’

Jaimie flinched and shrugged. ‘Can you, like, give me any reason why you should be averse to it? Any reason at all, that I won’t just roll my eyes at?’

She had an answer, but it turned sour just as she was about to say it. Now she had to think. Well… that one gave her pause. Looking aside, brows faintly pressed, she sorted through all her reasons and realised that, no, for now she couldn’t say anything that wouldn’t make Jaimie roll her eyes. Was that her fault? Or was it Jaimie’s? Unable to decide, she kept quiet.