Chapter Text
“We’re moving next week. Start packing what you want to keep.”
That was all the warning I got. I was sort of used to it though; we’d been moving every couple years or so for as long as I could remember. I didn’t even bother asking where we were moving to. I didn’t really have any friends to bother keeping in touch with.
I never asked why we moved either. The answer was obvious: we moved to where the money was. What she did to get this money, I’m not sure – don’t care – don’t want to know. We stayed out of each other’s business. For the most part, we stayed out of each other’s lives.
I was fourteen years old, stuffed into the passenger seat of the junky old van, clothes and junk piled around me. She had her window rolled down, letting the frigid wind whip inside and her cigarette smoke dissipate out. I figured this move would be like all the others; just a couple hours on the road, enough to make my long legs ache from the awkward position they were trapped in, but bearable. But after the fifth hour, as we stopped to fill the gas tank, my curiosity got the better of me. The scenery was no longer at all familiar.
“Where are we going?”
“Lillehammer.”
“Norway??”
She grunted in response. I eyed the cigarette dangling from her mouth as she fussed with the gas cap.
“They don’t… they speak a different language there!”
“You’ll be going to school there. You’ll pick it up.”
I could feel my face getting hot. She’d never cared about my education, and I’d stopped caring myself long ago. I hadn’t been to school in years. When I had attended classes, I’d always done poorly. I wasn’t an idiot; I just never saw a reason to try, and certainly no one had ever forced me to. And now I was supposed to start attending school in a foreign country whose language I didn’t speak? I would’ve been lost even without the language barrier!
“What are you gonna do? You can’t speak Norwegian either!” I couldn’t hide the emotion in my voice.
Our eyes made contact ever so briefly. She never, ever looked me in the eye.
“None of your business. I’ll be fine. Now get back in; we still have a few more hours to go.”
Seething with anger, I had to force myself to squeeze back into the van among the piles of shit. Suddenly, I didn’t care about anything I’d brought along with me. I just wanted to lock myself in a room with my guitar and let the frustration out through my fingers. I was not willing to accept a new life of constant embarrassment.
She’d never been a great mother. But this just seemed cruel.
* * *
I quickly discovered her solution to the language problem: a handsome young man – younger than herself, from the looks of it – who spoke both Norwegian and Swedish. I had no idea who he was – her employer or sponsor or I didn’t care to think what – but when he wasn’t at our crappy little apartment, she was undoubtedly off with him. I, on the other hand, was on my own. Three days after our move, I was dropped off in front of a stone building and instructed to be back outside promptly at 3 to be picked up. Kids of all ages rushed up the steps around me, babbling words that sounded like I should have understood them, but nevertheless held no meaning as far as I was concerned. Unenthusiastically, I dragged myself through the entrance.
This is the stupidest thing ever, I thought to myself. I had no direction other than a scrap of paper that supposedly explained my situation in Norwegian, to be given to… someone. I spotted a plump old woman monitoring the morning rush and handed it to her. Squinting both at the note and at my face, she eventually motioned for me to follow her down the hall to the headmaster’s office. We entered, I sat, they exchanged words, and then I was left facing a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a somewhat stern expression. He looked me in the eye and spoke.
I didn’t understand.
And I told him so, the only way I knew how. I folded my arms and leaned back in my seat.
He repeated his question.
I wasn’t in the mood to deal with this.
“I don’t fucking understand!”
He picked up his phone and spoke into it briefly. Then we waited in silence for a few minutes before there was a timid knock at the door. A young woman with shoulder-length brown hair and a tasteful dress entered, exchanged a few more words with the headmaster, and then turned to face me.
“You must be the new student from Sweden?” she asked, and I was taken aback. She had a bit of a strange accent, but I had no trouble understanding her.
“Yes…” It was a pleasant surprise, but I wasn’t about to open up to this woman.
“I am the Swedish language instructor at this school. Perhaps I can help you get settled. Please call me Fru Pedersen. And you are…?”
“Skwisgaar.”
And so began my initiation to normal life in Norway. Fru Pedersen was to be my main instructor, teaching me Norwegian when she wasn’t leading her Swedish classes. The intent was to “continue” my regular education as well, giving me instruction in math and science and all that other bullshit, but I made it immediately clear that I was only interested in learning language. As far as I was concerned, it was all I needed, and as I was a burden enough as it was, they put up little fight about it.
It was strange, being back in school. But for once I didn’t really mind. It was actually kind of fun learning a new language, and I found it wasn’t quite as difficult as I’d thought it would be. However, I did draw the line when they tried to get me to assist the Norwegian students in their Swedish practice. It was one thing for me to mangle their language, but having to hear 30 kids fuck up my native tongue on a daily basis was more than cringe-worthy.
* * *
The following Saturday brought about a rare occasion: my mother and I (and Kristian, Mom’s personal “guide,” of course) were in town shopping together. The weather here was terrible already and I needed a new coat. So after having pestered her enough to give in, she announced that we would go out together. She never trusted me enough to just give me money and the instruction to buy what I needed.
At this age, I wasn’t picky; whatever was long and warm enough and colored black was satisfactory, and soon enough I was able to rid my neck of the hideous striped scarf I’d been wearing all this time. Unfortunately, Mom and Kristian weren’t done shopping as quickly as I was, so I was stuck hanging around town for the next couple hours while I waited.
For the first time, as I walked down the main street, looking into store windows, I noticed people watching me. I couldn’t really figure out why; but I’d always turned heads wherever I went. I didn’t think I looked particularly different from everyone else, and certainly they wouldn’t have been able to tell I was foreign just by looking at me. I did look a bit young for my age, and I was very pale from head to toe – hair, eyes, skin. My cheeks were still full, and I had some impressive curls in my slightly-shaggy hair. In the past I’d been teased by other boys – the nickname I’d earned for my appearance was “cherub.” Sure, it pissed me off, but I was pretty good at making myself oblivious to the world around me.
But here it was again – people just couldn’t pass me by without staring. I frowned and tried to put a tough expression on my face, but soon I realized I’d walked a couple blocks and completely forgotten to check out my surroundings. After all, I was kind of curious to see what downtown Lillehammer had to offer.
I stopped and sat down on a little metal bench in front of an old-timey grocer. It really looked like an anachronism compared to the trendier shops further down the road, with its hanging wooden sign and jars of hard candy on display in the front window. As I sat contemplating the display, I noticed a figure on the inside of the store doing the same. A little kid with shaggy hair and eager eyes was leaning over the window shelf to get a closer look at the brightly-colored candies. Noticing, the friendly store owner walked over and appeared to offer him a piece, but the scene was quickly dispersed when an old crow of a woman dressed in a habit unceremoniously yanked at the boy’s arm and gave the proprietor a fearsome glare. A moment later, the brown-haired boy came tumbling out the door, apparently banished to wait outside until the adults were done with their shopping.
He halfheartedly brushed himself off and pretended like nothing was wrong. I couldn’t help but stare at the kid; he looked about half my age, rather scrawny and wearing only a light jacket and shorts. I felt a little awkward, sitting there in my new fur-lined coat as snow stuck to the boy’s bare legs. Nevertheless, he seemed to take his situation in stride, and he sat down on the bench next to me without hesitation. He swung his legs, sending chunks of snow flying off of his dirty sneakers. I kept my head down, trying to look distant, but my eyes kept darting sideways to look at him. To my surprise, he turned towards me and flashed me a big grin.
What could I do but smile back? There was something infectious about his resilience. But then we sat in silence for a few minutes. I guess he was a bit more timid about speaking, and I’d only had a week of Norwegian language instruction at that point. Out of nervous habit, my fingers needed to be doing something, so I pulled the old scarf out of my pocket and fondled it. I then found myself holding it out to the boy.
He looked at it inquisitively, but didn’t wait long before accepting the gift.
“Takk!” he exclaimed as he wrapped it around his neck. I grinned in response, and, without thinking, dismissed his thanks in the language I was used to. He giggled a little.
[n] “What’s your name?” [/n]
That was something I at least understood already.
“Skwisgaar,” I responded. “Ah… Svenske.” I hoped this would be a sufficient explanation for my situation.
He giggled again. “Toki,” he said, pointing to his chest. “Norsk.”
Yes, of course. He was certainly a funny kid.
Toki then unleashed a flow of Norwegian babble that I couldn’t dream of keeping up with, but I did a lot of nodding and grinning intermittently to be polite. I wasn’t normally this friendly; I guess it was the combination of his enthusiasm mixed with the feeling of displacement I’d had since coming to Norway.
Our one-sided conversation was cut short when the woman in the habit, accompanied by a wrinkled man in similar religious dress, exited the grocer. Toki immediately shut up and jumped to the ground, now wearing a solemn expression. The old woman’s eyes dropped to the striped scarf adorning the boy’s shoulders, and Toki began to explain, pointing back at me to show where the accessory came from. Unsure of what to do, I simply smiled as sweetly as I could and nodded once more. At that moment I could almost feel a heat emanating from the glares both adults gave me, but they did nothing except pull Toki away and herd him off in the direction of their next destination.
Little Toki braved one last glance back in my direction and flashed me another grin before receiving a rough shove on the back to keep him moving forward.
* * *
Mom couldn’t have cared less about the weird little boy or his even stranger parents. Hell, she hadn’t even asked me how school had been going, so I’m not sure why I even bothered to tell her about him. “That’s nice,” she said absent-mindedly as she flipped through a magazine at the kitchen table. I gave up and went back to my room to play with my guitar.
On the way I stopped in the bathroom to look in the mirror. I was tall, but that was the only feature that really gave a clue to my age. My voice hadn’t changed yet, and I still had those stupid cherub cheeks. Fourteen years old with such a baby face; I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t feel like I fit in with the rest of the world. I at once felt older and younger than my age. I hadn’t grown up like “normal” kids did; my mother wanted as little to do with me as possible (I’d never so much as heard mention of a father), I’d dropped out of school early on and I was fine spending all my time alone so long as I had the one possession I really cared about – my electric guitar. It was kind of a no-name brand, and I only had a crappy little amp, but I was fine with that for the time being. I spent hours in my room listening to records and tapes of hard rock and heavy metal bands, and imitating what I heard on my guitar. My favorites were the power solos, fast and precise. Someday I would get the money for better equipment, so I could really do it right.
The days passed rather quickly now that I had somewhere to be during the day. Fru Pedersen seemed impressed with my progress in Norwegian, and I was pleased with myself as well. Outwardly, I had no idea why I was so eager to learn this new language (it’s not like I ever needed to speak that much back in Sweden either), but in the back of my mind I think I was hoping to run into the kid from town again, and actually be able to understand him this time.
It’s a weird feeling, that excitement over seeing a particular person. But I’d never really had any good friends before, and I had this feeling that he could possibly be one.
If I ever saw him again, that is.