Nothing

On the first day of seventh grade in the small Danish town of Tæring, Pierre Anthon stands up in Mr. Eskildsen's Class 7A, announces that nothing matters and nothing is worth doing, and walks out. He climbs the tall plum tree in front of the commune where he lives with his father and begins pelting passing classmates with unripe plums while shouting that everything begins only to end, that a human lifespan is negligible against the Earth's billions of years, and that all of life is a masquerade. The story is narrated by Agnes, one of Pierre Anthon's classmates, who admits that his words lodge inside all of them even though none will acknowledge it. They have been raised with the unspoken expectation that they are supposed to amount to something, and Pierre Anthon's declaration threatens that belief.

Jon-Johan, the unofficial class leader, convenes the group to devise a plan. Various ideas are rejected: the boys refuse to fight Pierre Anthon because he once hospitalized a ninth grader, and complaining to adults is ruled out because the students would have to reveal that they, too, suspect nothing matters. They settle on pelting him with stones. The barrage eventually knocks Pierre Anthon from the tree, but two days later he returns with a Band-Aid on his forehead and fresh taunts. Sofie then declares they must prove to Pierre Anthon that something matters.

The class claims an abandoned sawmill on the edge of town and begins building a "heap of meaning," a collection of objects intended to demonstrate that things do matter. Initial contributions are hollow: a headless doll, a damaged hymnbook, a broken comb. The heap grows but feels meaningless, and the class acknowledges they must sacrifice things that genuinely matter to them.

A chain system emerges: each person who gives something up names the next classmate and what they must surrender. The demands grow increasingly personal. Gerda demands Agnes's green wedge sandals, which Agnes spent all summer persuading her mother to buy. Agnes retaliates by demanding Gerda's beloved hamster, Oscarlittle. A living creature on the heap changes the atmosphere, adding a dimension of meaning the other objects lacked.

The sacrifices escalate. Maiken's telescope, the product of two years' savings and her dream of becoming an astrophysicist, is followed by the Dannebrog, Denmark's national flag, which the class mounts atop the heap while singing the national anthem. Anna-Li, a quiet Korean-born, Danish-raised girl, voluntarily surrenders her adoption certificate, reasoning that its deep significance is exactly what the heap requires. Little Ingrid gives up her crutches. Henrik smuggles a cobra preserved in formaldehyde from the school biology room, drawing suspicion from teachers and earning the entire class daily detention.

Otto makes the most disturbing demand yet: the coffin of Elise's baby brother Emil, who died at age two after a lifetime of illness. A group including Agnes undertakes a midnight expedition to the churchyard. They unearth the small coffin and transport it to the sawmill. An elderly dog named Cinderella, who has been living on her deceased owner's grave, follows the group and refuses to leave, settling beside Emil's coffin.

The demands continue to intensify. Elise insists on Ursula-Marie's six thick blue braids, which are cut off with blunt scissors while Ursula-Marie weeps silently. Shorn and furious, Ursula-Marie demands Hussain's prayer mat. When Hussain resists, Otto and Huge Hans beat him into submission. Hussain disappears for a week and returns covered in bruises with a broken arm; his father beat him for losing the mat. Under pressure, Hussain demands Huge Hans's neon yellow racing bicycle.

Huge Hans's fury leads him to demand something terrible: Sofie must give up her virginity. The class cannot logically argue that a bicycle means less to Huge Hans than innocence means to Sofie. The act takes place at the sawmill. The next day a checked handkerchief sits atop the heap. Sofie walks stiffly but carries a proud, inapproachable air, as though she has found a terrible secret that nonetheless holds a key to meaning. She demands that Holy Karl steal Jesus on the Cross, a revered rosewood crucifix, from Tæring Church.

The statue is stolen in a nighttime operation during which both its legs break. Cinderella, viewing the figure as a threat to her vigil over the coffin, urinates on it repeatedly, making its return to the church impossible. Enraged, Holy Karl demands Cinderella's severed head and insists Pretty Rosa, who cannot bear the sight of blood, perform the killing. Pretty Rosa then demands Jon-Johan's right index finger, essential to his guitar playing. Sofie, cold and changed since the night she lost her innocence, volunteers to cut. Agnes suspects Sofie's motive: Jon-Johan was one of the boys present that night. Sofie severs the finger in four strokes with a carving knife. The class plans to bring Pierre Anthon to the sawmill the next day, but Jon-Johan tells the police first.

Officers find the foul-smelling heap. Most students are grounded; some are beaten. Sofie replies defiantly to their teacher that since no one taught them meaning, they found it themselves. Agnes attracts media attention by calling the local paper, Tæring Tuesday, posing as the priest's wife. The story spreads from local to national to international press. Art critics discuss the heap as a commentary on the meaning of life, while others view the students as delinquents. A prestigious New York museum purchases the heap for $3,620,000, with a collection date of April 8. The world press departs, and Tæring reverts to its dull state. Pierre Anthon, who has refused to visit the sawmill, intensifies his taunts: If the heap truly meant something, they would never have sold it.

As the collection date approaches, existential despair overtakes the class. The students begin wearing the same vacant expressions as adults, becoming what they swore they never would before they are even 15. Only Sofie still yells back at Pierre Anthon, but when he repeats that selling the heap proves it meant nothing, Agnes sees tears in Sofie's eyes for the first time since the night of the innocence.

The day before the museum representatives are to arrive, Sofie snaps at the sawmill, screaming that the meaning is theirs and cannot be sold. A violent brawl erupts as each student attacks whoever forced their sacrifice. Agnes, bleeding from a torn earring, runs to Pierre Anthon's plum tree. He drops down without argument and rides to the sawmill. Standing before the heap, he names each sacrifice and asks how they could sell something that truly mattered. He concludes that if it had truly meant something, they would never have let it go. Then he turns his back.

Sofie lunges first, and nearly the entire class piles on. Agnes describes the beating as messy but, in a disturbing way, satisfying, because it feels meaningful to punish the person they blame for everything: the lost finger, the dead dog, the lost innocence, the lost faith. They leave Pierre Anthon on the sawmill floor with catastrophic injuries. No one says goodbye. That night the sawmill burns to the ground. Pierre Anthon's charred remains are found at the site. The police conclude he set the fire out of jealousy and died accidentally; the students do not correct this story. At the funeral, Agnes cries sincerely, reflecting that they cry because they have lost something and gained something else, and because both losing and gaining hurt.

After the funeral, the class converges on the ruins one last time and collects ashes into bottles, matchboxes, and plastic cups, unable to distinguish sawmill ash from heap-of-meaning ash. That summer they scatter to different schools. Sofie is sent to a residential facility. The former classmates never reunite. Eight years later, Agnes still possesses her matchbox of ashes. When she opens it and looks into the gray mass, she feels a peculiar sensation in her stomach. She cannot explain it, but she knows that something has meaning, and that meaning is not something to fool around with.