It was February, dark out. The lights in the living room were off, and the screen’s gray-blue gleam shone cold. I saw that he had been talking dirty, flirting with girls while we were together. But the redhead had a special place. He had praised her for her cleverness, her beauty, raved about their encounter, and he regularly made plans to meet her. I read through their messages again and again, calculating them against the amount of time we’d been spending together, like lining up pieces of a puzzle. He had been talking dirty with her while I was baking for him, studying, or on the toilet. He repeated over and over how much he loved her. I realized that, on the first night he told me that he loved me, he’d met up with her at the pub, at Kaffibarinn, told her exactly the same thing, and fucked her. If she hadn’t had a boyfriend at the time, he would’ve almost certainly asked her to move into the apartment on Válastígur.

Disapparation

Disapparation

I am such an idiot. How can one person be this much of a failure? I thought I could just wait it out until I was good enough. That he’d come to love me eventually. But he just looks through me. I am transparent. I don’t exist.

Redhead

Redhead

I lay on the sofa, crying uncontrollably. Trembling under the heavy sobs, my body stiffened into a spasm until I passed out. When I recovered my senses, I felt like I was in a fugue state. I knew. I knew what to do. I went to the bathroom and closed the door behind me. Pulled out the razor blade from its hiding place in the medicine cabinet. Crouched down in the shower, I stuck the blade deep in my left wrist, dragged a determined sluice, pin straight. Everything was in a fog, but I cut again and again, watching as blood sprang from the wound. I smeared the blood into my hair, screamed, cried; I would be a redhead too when he came home. I carved five strokes into the wrist of my right arm, but they were less substantial, less sure. I curled up on the floor of the shower and cried until I lost consciousness.

Capulet

Capulet

I felt as if I were aboard a submarine, hundreds of meters under the sea. But out of the deep, I heard him close the front door. Damn it, can’t I do anything right? I can’t even off myself like a proper person. I heard him call me, heard his footsteps as he entered the living room, as he saw the laptop I’d discarded on the floor. I heard him open it, heard the playing of fingers on its keys, the realization that I knew. “Fuck . . . Lilja, where are you?”