Page 29

Oskar shakes his head. "As much as I love you, I'm too young to leave home, even with you. My parents will miss me and I'll miss them, and besides, I'm having a better time at school than I used to, thanks to you. Please visit me as often as you can."

Eli nods and kisses Oskar goodbye again and they part company.

Two weeks later, his mother looks up from her newspaper and says, "There's an article here you may want to read. I know you've lost interest in murders lately, but this one is particularly interesting because the victim killed several people around here, including those three poor boys in the bath house. The sole witness to that crime came forward and made the identification. She was stabbed to death in her sleep by her boyfriend when he discovered what a monster she was. How clever of him to have concealed his intentions! He's being honoured in Stockholm City Hall tomorrow and I'll bet half the residents of Blackeberg will go there to celebrate. I certainly will. How about you?"

"Nah, I've got too much homework to do," he lies, fighting back tears until he is in his room behind a closed door. If only he had accompanied Eli, as she had asked him to do, he could have protected her as she had protected him! But no, he was too attached to his life here, which is now sweeter than it was, thanks to her. He is no longer being bullied, he continues to make friends, and as he grows older he has his fair share of dates with girls.

Having blown his chance to pay it back to her, he decides to pay it forward instead. Upon graduating from high school, he does not go to university as he originally intended. Instead, he goes to Teacher's College and becomes a teacher in his old middle school, where he initiates a successful program to combat bullying. His initiative attracts the admiration of several other teachers, in particular one who was bullied when she was a schoolgirl. He marries her and they have three children. She names their two sons and he names their daughter Eli "because the name sounds so pretty". He retires at the age of sixty-five and lives for another eleven years. He takes with him to the grave a secret that he never dared to tell anyone, least of all his wife: the murderous vampire, universally hated and feared, was his childhood sweetheart, and as long as he lived, he never stopped loving her.

If you are satisfied with the fate to which you have consigned Oskar, turn to page 43.

If you want to try a different sequence of choices, either turn to page 2 to start at the beginning or return to the page that contains the decision you want to change.