The Extraordinaries

Chapter Thirteen: Emilie

There's a beat of panic in my chest before I realize this man's words mean nothing to me. "Not a stranger?" I repeat.

He nods. "We... um, we went to secondary school together. Emmy Martinsson, isn't it?"

The sound of that name hits me hard. I haven't thought of myself as a Martinsson in quite a while, not since I finished university and realized I couldn't keep going with the ordinary path of life. I shake my head. "I don't really... that's..." I don't know how to explain to him that I was that girl but am not anymore, now that I haven't got Kayla to hold me together. "I don't go by that name anymore."

He purses his lips. "I get it," he says softly. "I don't... I stopped going by my old name quite a while ago. Changed it to Kier when I was seventeen."

I smile. "Does it matter what your name was before?"

He shakes his head. "Not anymore. Call me Kier."

I nod. I've never met someone who changed their name before, who felt the need to shed the skin of the past. For a second, I wonder if he might be like me, but then I remember the way he looked at me earlier when I was crying, as if he was afraid of me. The same way everyone else looks at me. Because they don't understand that even when I appear fine, my insides are being torn apart.

"What made you change it?" I ask softly.

He shrugs. "I'm not the same person I was in school. Back then, I thought life was all exciting. Now I'm divorced with two kids and I work in an office. My life means nothing."

I bite my lip. I hear this sort of thing from a lot of people. My sister Svea is always going on about how little she's done with her life, but I've never understood it. What are you supposed to be doing with your life?

He's staring at me, his eyes beady. "I have to be honest with you," he says. "I wouldn't have invited you back to my car if I didn't know it was you. To be honest, I was a little glad to see you."

I tilt my head. Never in my life has someone been happy to see me. Even Kayla seemed to look right through me most of the time. I never took offense, always chalked it up to the fact that they don't feel things the way I do, but somewhere deep down I knew that wasn't right. I saw the way my sister Svea would grin at the sight of her boyfriends coming up the walk. Even if she wasn't splitting apart with elation, she was glad on some shallower level at the sight of someone she cared about. "Really?" I say to Kier, and he nods.

"I know about you," he says.

I widen my eyes. "What do you mean, know about me?"

He shakes his head. "I mean... well, I don't know what it sounds to you like I mean, but..." He looks almost embarrassed, his shaggy hair hanging in his face, and I see something in him that I couldn't see before. There's this eminent sadness surrounding him, a fog. And I can feel the pain he should be feeling, the deep pain of his empty life. It's only then that I see what he means. He's living for nothing. "You're different," he says. "You're... you're just different. I remember you from school. I always wanted to be like you."

I feel like I'm going to cry, suddenly; there's that tugging sensation in my eyes. "No one wants to be like me," I say softly.

He turns, brow wrinkled. "What do you mean?"

I shake my head. I don't want to share things about myself with a man I don't even know, but for some reason I really want to. Maybe it's just that no one's ever wanted to hear things from my point of view before. All my life, people have looked down on me for being different, for having something wrong with me, and now someone actually wants to know about it. I think of how I used to lock myself in the room I shared with my sister Catrine, trying to get a moment to just live with my emotions instead of locking them up again because of the way they scared everyone around me.