And so it was told that the story of the Mikkola sisters started on the last day of December, on the last day of the millennium, when they were standing in the elevator, heading up to the fourth floor to celebrate New Year’s Eve at Mossutställningar, a temporary freelance-office-slash-art-space run by Hella d’Ailly, who once had been an artist herself, but now was more of a curator-slash-party-arranger. It was Hella who had managed to convince some bureaucrat at Statsholmen that it was a good idea to rent this empty, magnificent space of 1,000-plus square meters, with ornamented wooden floors and a ceiling height of three meters (including two non-working but really impressive fireplaces), to a bunch of artists, freelance journalists, web designers and textile printers. The contract was temporary, but the initial six months were extended to a year, and then another year and now, to celebrate their third or fourth extension, they were having a huge party, open to everyone who worked there, and their friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends.
There were two angry doormen downstairs and the Mikkola sisters had to skip a long line to get in, Anastasia did the talking, she claimed that she was about to start her “DJ set in less than twenty minutes” and that her sisters were joining her as back-up dancers, the doorman checked the list and let them in, despite Evelyn’s suppressed laughter and Ina’s red face. Now they were in the elevator heading upwards, breathing the strong smell of perfume from other guests, three sisters, one incredibly happy to be here, one already longing for the next party, one pushing the button for the fourth floor again and again, antsy to get to a dance floor and let loose some of the energy that she had been saving up during the cab ride.
Whatever happens, we stay together, Ina said as the elevator slowed to a halt. Right?
Evelyn pushed open the door, the sound of the deep bass from the sound system echoed in the staircase.
Of course, she answered and smiled.
Don’t worry, we got you, Anastasia said, and followed Evelyn into the party. Twenty seconds later they were gone. Or not gone, Ina kept seeing them in different rooms as she tried to understand the layout of the huge space. There was Evelyn, in a corner, constantly surrounded by three to five people, everyone hypnotized by whatever story she was telling. And there was Anastasia, first on one dance floor and then on another, and then on top of a bar, then up on a windowsill, arms in the air, hands transformed into parentheses, palms facing forward as if she was pushing an invisible wall in front of her.
Ina did her best to try to approach them, but there was a sweaty sea of people in the way, and it was dark and the floor was covered in drifts of confetti and spilled drinks clung to the bottom of her flat shoes and she was blinded by the strobe and lost sight of her sisters. The music colliding from the two dance floors made it impossible to talk to anyone and still everyone seemed to have someone to talk to, everyone except Ina, and whenever she saw someone else who didn’t have anyone to talk to, she felt pity for them, because they looked so lost and lonely and at least Ina had her backup, she knew that her sisters were here somewhere.
She kept walking from room to room, there was Evelyn again, in the third room to the right, waving from the other side, her hands up in the air, signaling that unfortunately she was stuck here, pointing towards the bar, molding her hand to an invisible glass, in a gesture that Ina interpreted as: If you go to the bar and get us some drinks I will wait for you right here. Ina was not too keen on becoming her younger sister’s waitress, but she knew that it was almost eleven and if she lost sight of Evelyn now, there was a risk that she would need to celebrate midnight by herself, raising a glass to propose a toast to a random stranger, so she swallowed her pride, fought her way towards the overcrowded bar, spent fifteen minutes being ignored by the bartender, then finally got two drinks, took a quick sip from both plastic cups to make her journey back to Evelyn easier, and when she got there, Evelyn was gone.
Walking around a huge party with nobody to talk to was painful enough, but walking around the same party with two full cups was even worse. Especially for Ina, who was so tall that drunk men saw her and pretended to get scared. Of course she had alternatives, she could down one drink and head for the dance floor and try to dance in that special way that she had developed, with her knees constantly bent, to make herself look somewhat less tall than she actually was. Or she could leave both drinks on one of the marble windowsills facing the interior courtyard, and simply go home and fall asleep before midnight. Another, crazier alternative would be to approach someone, offer them a drink, and simply start talking, it wouldn’t be that hard, she had prepared some suitable subjects in the cab ride over here, she could ask what they thought of the rumors that all computers would go crazy when the date flicked over from December 31, 1999, to January 1, 2000, she could talk about the Victorian tradition where they opened a random page of a novel on New Year’s Eve to let the first sentence on the page predict what kind of year it would be, but no, those were the wrong kinds of subjects, they wouldn’t work here, instead she should tell them a funny story about something that happened to her “on the way here” because that was what Evelyn always did, she had tons of stories that happened “earlier today” or “yesterday” or “recently,” and even though Ina would stand right there knowing that this particular thing happened two and a half years ago, and hadn’t even happened to Evelyn, but to a friend of hers, she would keep quiet because she saw that Evelyn brought so much life with her, and if there was something Ina needed right now, it was more life.
But Ina wasn’t Evelyn. And she wasn’t Anastasia. So instead of talking to someone or attacking the dance floor, she just stood there, with the two drinks, not knowing what to do with herself or the slowly passing time. She sipped on one of her drinks, she tried really hard to look like a person who was holding a drink for someone who had left to go to the bathroom, she even started looking towards the bathrooms and then checking the time, to show anyone who was watching her that she wasn’t as alone as she looked, she had sisters, she had friends, they were just not here right now.
With thirty minutes to go to midnight, Ina took one of the cups and started circling the party again, using the same strategy she used when she was a teenager to disguise her loneliness, she entered each room and every corridor with intense focus, trying really hard to look like she was looking for someone, and in a way she was, she was looking for her sisters, but rather than actually looking for them, she focused on trying to look like a person who was looking for someone and she saw herself from the outside looking like a person trying to look like a person who was looking and not fooling anyone. She passed a room with a ping-pong table, she passed an office where people smoked joints and made out on a gray couch, she passed a kitchen where there was a separate party with crappy speakers, maybe because they didn’t like the music being played on the main dance floors, and then, in a corridor, she saw him, his beard, his face, his freckles, as if a cluster bomb of freckles had exploded on his nose. He was standing next to the wall, and even though his size made it difficult for people to squeeze by, he didn’t seem to be uncomfortable being in the way. He looked at her, he looked away, she approached him and asked if he knew where Anastasia’s room was.
Who?
Anastasia, Ina said. She rents a studio here. Is she about this tall, with red hair?
No.
Good, because that person is in there right now puking her lungs out, he said, nodding towards what looked like a conference room.
There was something about his voice, everything he said sounded like a compliment. This place is huge, Ina said, just to say something.
Yes, it took me an hour to realize that it actually covers the whole . . . what’s it called. Våningsplan.
Floor, she said.
So wait, you speak Swedish? he said in Swedish. Then why are we speaking English?
I came here with my sisters, she said, which really didn’t explain anything, but she didn’t feel like telling him the whole story, at least not right now, maybe later, maybe tomorrow when they would wake up together, maybe in a couple of years when they had kids, a bunch of black-haired freckly kids who would have his smile and his height and her nose. They were quiet for a moment, people kept squeezing past them in the corridor.
This place is really huge, Ina said, only to realize that she had just said the same thing twice. He looked at her and smiled.
You need help finding Anastasia’s room? he said.
I don’t even know if she’s there, she said. Both my sisters have disappeared.
I will help you look for them, he said.
Don’t you have to stay here? she said and hated herself for saying it.
Well, I’m not sure if this wall will hold if I let go of it, but let’s see, he said, and he slowly let go of the wall, turned to her, grabbed her hand and started plowing his way through the crowded party. She followed him, thinking to herself that he must have played sports all his life, possibly handball, more likely American football because he kept finding openings, he took her through a packed corridor, he crossed the crowded main dance floor, she saw numerous people trying to cross it who gave up and turned back, it was just too crowded, too dark, the bass was too thumping, the wall of dancing human flesh too compact, but he kept going, he kept looking for her sisters, even though he had no clue what they looked like. He pointed to a guy with his pants so low that half his butt cheeks were shining white in the fluorescent light.
Is that them?
Ina shook her head. He picked up a crushed plastic cup from the floor, signaling to Ina that there was lipstick on it, which meant that they must have been there. Ina smiled. He walked up to people at random and asked if they had seen “Anastasia recently” and they just looked at him like he was crazy, and Ina looked at him and thought the same thing, but it was a craziness that she was growing attached to, even though she had only been close to it for the last five minutes.
Midnight was approaching when Ina realized that she didn’t want to find her sisters, not now, because she knew what would happen when they did. Hector would see Anastasia and understand that there was another version of Ina, not as freakishly tall, not as afraid of life, not as prone to going to New Year’s parties having memorized the timetable of the night bus to be able to leave without saying goodbye, and Hector would fall in love with Anastasia, the fun sister, the crazy sister, the “I have something in my sock, let’s sneak into the bathroom and snort it” sister—and he would agree and then he would be gone for ten minutes and come out a changed man, while Ina would wait outside. And then, all teary-eyed with white powder on his upper lip, he would catch sight of Evelyn and then he would quickly let go of Anastasia’s hand and become transfixed by Evelyn’s eyes, her dimples, her ability to tell the same story for the fourth time that evening, and still give the impression that she was searching for words, trying to show whoever was listening that it was a special honor to hear her tell this particular story at this particular time and it would be Evelyn who took him home, and Ina who went home alone on the night bus, and Evelyn who decided that he wasn’t her type after a few weeks, and that would be okay for Ina, she was used to this, she had been through it so many times, when they were kids, when they were teenagers, now she was twenty-four and Evelyn twenty-one, and Anastasia nineteen, and still Ina wouldn’t blame Hector, because she knew that if she were to choose between herself and her sisters she would also choose them, but for now she just wanted time to slow down, so that she could have a few more minutes with him.
Ten minutes before midnight they found Anastasia and Evelyn in the big room with one of the non-functioning marble fireplaces.
There you are, Evelyn yelled and waved her over.
We have been looking all over for you, Anastasia said and handed her a plastic cup.
Ina reluctantly introduced Hector to her sisters. This is Evelyn.
Evelyn took his hand, smiled and winked her green eyes at him. And this is Anastasia.
Anastasia nodded to him but didn’t shake his hand, she was too busy trying to get the stubborn cork out of the prosecco bottle. Evelyn leaned towards them and started telling Hector a story about the bottle, they had dropped it in the cab, they had smuggled it in, it had been shaken nonstop and now it would probably explode and knock someone senseless and Ina felt herself retreating, she knew it was all over, for a few seconds another world had been possible, but now Hector was hypnotized by Evelyn, still Ina was grateful for the time she had spent with Hector, it had been a marvelous fifteen minutes, she might as well leave now, nobody would notice, but the more Evelyn spoke to Hector, the more restless he looked and finally he interrupted her.
Sorry, he said. But I was just involved in this really interesting conversation with Ina and I can’t stop thinking about it, so I hope it’s okay if we continue this another time?
He came over to Ina and Evelyn looked like a surprised fish and with one minute until midnight Anastasia finally managed to open the bottle and the cork came shooting out and hit a guy in the eye, but luckily he was wearing glasses and Anastasia filled their cups with bubbles and gave her own cup to the guy who was nearly blinded and took the bottle for herself and then everyone started counting down from ten nine eight seven, and when everyone yelled Happy New Year, the guy who Ina had met in a corridor, who had a big beard and shoulders so wide that he had to walk sideways through doors, who sounded like he was singing even though he was speaking, he reached for her and touched the palm of her hand, they didn’t kiss, that would have been too much, besides, Ina was not the kind of person who meets someone at a party and starts kissing them fifteen minutes later, that was not her style, but they looked at each other and she could feel his finger in her palm and it wasn’t until afterwards, when everyone had hugged and kissed and wished each other Happy New Year, that someone double-checked the time and realized that they had been at least one minute early, actually midnight is now, when? In ten seconds! And then they did the whole thing over again, ten nine eight seven, and this time he leaned forward and kissed her.
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Excerpt from Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Sisters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, publishing June 17, 2025). Copyright ©
2025 Jonas Hassen Khemiri.
