And this is what made me contemplate a pact with Satan.

I read every newspaper article and listened to every news cast on the small radio in the kitchen. My internal clock became tuned to the TV news schedule.

At first Juha and Marita denied having had anything to do with the brutal killings. They hadn't even been near that Midnight sun village. Or so they said. Or he said, at least. She was mostly quiet, the papers reported. She was very pretty, I thought. She possessed the kind of delicate porcelain features I wanted for myself. Because as a teenage girl you were painfully aware that there was no power like the pretty power. And that I lacked. I was gifted with wit and brains, but that paled into transparency in comparison to feminine allure.
And this is what made me contemplate a pact with Satan. We had a windowless bathroom, that smelled faintly of mold. It was there I made shaky attempts to get through to Him. But I always chickened out and bolted out into the light before any contact was made.

One day I just decided to write letters to Juha and Marita. Again, it's hard now to remember my exact motivations. It was just an idea I had. I was ruled by impulses and hot hormonal flashes. I sat down first to compose a letter to Juha. He exerted some kind of pull on me. I gravitated towards him and he visited me in my dreams.

There was one that I jotted down in my journal. It took place on a playground. I was sitting on a swing made from a tractor tire. I kept swinging higher and higher, dangerously close to the steel-wool clouds that hung close and blasted me with goose-bumps. Each time the chain went slack and I dropped, my crotch and heart collided in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant. I wanted more. I wanted less. I wanted up in the clouds, even if they would rough up my face. I wanted down, off, home. And then I saw that it was Juha who stood in the sand and pushed the swing with his tattooed arms every time I came towards him.

I wrote my little letter and dropped it in the mailbox.

The following day the newspapers reported that Juha had been getting hundreds of letters from female fans. That's how they put it. I wasn't sure I was a fan, but I was certain that there was now that I would get a letter back from him.