Cover

BY ROSLUND & HELLSTRÖM

The Ewert Grens and Piet Hoffmann Series

Three Hours

Three Minutes

Three Seconds

The Ewert Grens Series

Two Soldiers

Cell 8

Box 21

Pen 33

EARLIER

Chapter 1

I’m five years old.

Almost exactly.

I know that. Five years and a few days and a few nights.

It still feels like it just happened. I was sitting at the kitchen table with Mom on one side and Dad on the other and Eliot and Julia were across from me. And I blew out five candles all at once. They were in the middle of my cake and they were red with a little blue too but only at the very, very bottom, when you looked really close.

A few days and a few nights.

I clear my throat and try to smile, like I always do when I sing. It’s my favorite song. Happybirthdaytoyooou. And if I sing it loud enough, my voice bounces off the ceiling and the walls and comes back to my open arms, where I catch it and hold on tight.

Happybirthdaytoyooou. Happybirthdaytoyooou.

When I sing, I don’t hear the TV. A kid’s show. I’ve been watching it almost all day. Just like yesterday. And the yesterday before that. I didn’t get to do that before. But I do now.

I stop singing, stand up; it’s hard to stay on the floor when my legs want to move, which they do a lot. I hop out of our living room, which is so big. I have to be careful here, the sofa is almost brand new, and the table is made of glass. If I touch it, my fingers leave smudges.

I jump all the way to Eliot’s room, where he’s sitting at his desk chair with his desk lamp on. He’s pretending to read with a book open in front of him. But he can read, I know it, he’s in second grade now. Eliot’s gotten nicer the last few days. Probably because I turned five. I’m not four anymore, I’m big now. He doesn’t even push me away from his racetrack anymore, the one he keeps high up on a shelf so I can’t reach it. And he even let me win twice with the blue car that has a yellow line on its roof. He never did that before.

I always jump on one leg. Just one leg at a time. And if I use two, I go back and do it all over again. I came up with that myself.