be quite unpleasant to fight with that skinny girl. Unlike the other girls in the class,
she never backed down, and she would not for a second hesitate to use her fists or
any weapon at hand to protect herself. She went around with the attitude that she
would rather be beaten to death than take any shit.
And she always got revenge.
Salander once found herself in a fight with a much bigger and stronger boy. She
was no match for him physically. At first he amused himself shoving her to the
ground several times, then he slapped her when she tried to fight back. But
nothing did any good; no matter how much stronger he was, the stupid girl kept
attacking him, and after a while even his classmates began to realise that things
had gone too far. She was so obviously defenceless it was painful to watch. Finally
the boy punched her in the face; it split open her lip and made her see stars. They
left her on the ground behind the gym. She stayed at home for two days. On the
morning of the third day she waited for her tormentor with a baseball bat, and she
whacked him over the ear with it. For that prank she was sent to see the head
teacher, who decided to report her to the police for assault, which resulted in a
special welfare investigation.
Her classmates thought she was crazy and treated her accordingly. She also
aroused very little sympathy among the teachers. She had never been particularly
talkative, and she became known as the pupil who never raised her hand and often
did not answer when a teacher asked her a direct question. No-one was sure
whether this was because she did not know the answer or if there was some other
reason, which was reflected in her grades. No doubt that she had problems, but no-
one wanted to take responsibility for the difficult girl, even though she was
frequently discussed at various teachers’ meetings. That was why she ended up in
the situation where the teachers ignored her and allowed her to sit in sullen
silence.
She left middle school and moved to another, without having a single friend to say
goodbye to. An unloved girl with odd behaviour.
Then, as she was on the threshold of her teenage years, All The Evil happened,
which she did not want to think about. The last outburst set the pattern and
prompted a review of the casebook entries from elementary school. After that she
was considered to be legally...well, crazy. A freak. Salander had never needed any
documents to know that she was different. But it was not something that bothered