The Unpredictability of Being Human

by Linni Ingemundsen

  Then Sigve stood in the doorway. I hadn’t heard him come in.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said.

  “Not much,” I said and put the milk carton on the counter. “I am wondering when Mom will call. From her business trip.”

  “Business trip?” Sigve sneered. “You don’t actually believe that she is on a business trip, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sigve picked up an apple from the counter. “Oh, nothing.” He nodded at the fridge. “Hey, get the juice carton out next, will you? It could use some airing too.” Then he bit into the apple and left the room. Shortly after I could hear him running down the stairs to the basement.

  I put the milk carton back in the fridge and went into the living room and turned on the TV. They were showing an old episode of Prison Break.

  At 5.37 p.m. my dad came home carrying a grocery bag. I don’t think I have ever seen my dad with a grocery bag before.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Hello,” I said. “What time will Mom be calling today?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “She is having a hard time at the moment. She needs some time to herself.” “Why?”

  My dad sighed and stroked his moustache a couple of times. “It is too hard for her to talk to us when she is not able to see us or come home. She just needs some time. It will all be fine.”

  He reached into the grocery bag and took out a microwave dinner box.

  “Chicken curry?” he said.

  I nodded and he disappeared into the kitchen. My mom was having a hard time and she wasn’t able to come home. I thought about what Sigve had said. He’d made it sound like my mom wasn’t on a business trip.

  But if that was true, then where was she?

  I looked at the screen and watched the bald guy talk to some other guy about their plan to escape. Maybe my mom was in prison?

  At 5.47 Sigve came up from the basement and sat down on the couch. I handed him the remote but he waved it away. “It’s fine,” he said.

  Then my dad said that dinner was ready and we all decided that it would be a good idea to eat in front of the TV.

  We watched some of the guys in Prison Break argue about something, but I couldn’t really catch what they were talking about. It is hard to follow if you don’t see every episode.

  “Is Mom in prison?” I said.

  Sigve started choking on a piece of chicken and my dad knocked his glass of water over.

  “What the hell are you saying?” my dad said.

  “Is Mom in prison?” I repeated. “I mean, it would explain why I can’t call her and why she is not allowed to come home yet.”

  My dad exhaled deeply. “No, Mom is not in prison.” He started wiping up the water with some paper towels. “She will be home soon. On the twentieth of April. You know this already. Everything will be fine. Now eat your food.”

  The twentieth of April was thirty-seven days, five hours and forty-six minutes away. I wasn’t sure what to believe, because no one tells me anything anyway. If I knew the address of where she was staying I could have sent her the cigarettes that Hanna left that time.

  Maybe they could be used as currency. Wherever she was.

  31

  Clockwork

  I worked out the actual time of all the clocks in my school.

  I compared them with the clock on my mobile phone to see how much faster or slower they were. Then I noted it all down in the back of my notebook. This is what I wrote:

  My classroom: three minutes and fifty-eight seconds slow

  Science lab: six minutes and forty-two seconds fast

  Arts and crafts room: one minute and eleven seconds slow

  Gym: four minutes and fifty-four seconds slow

  Library: two minutes and fifty-nine seconds slow

  Now, instead of checking my mobile every time I wanted to know what time it was, I could just look at the clock and check the actual time in my notebook. I checked all the clocks during my lunch break so I wouldn’t risk having my mobile taken away from me again.

  Afterwards, I sat down on the floor outside my classroom and took out my encyclopedia and opened it to a random page. It said:

  Slang:

  Deliberate deviations from ordinary language. Very informal and often more metaphorical and playful than regular language. What is considered slang changes over time.

  Then I got distracted because I heard someone laughing. It was a laugh that I recognized, but hadn’t heard in a while. I looked up and saw Ruben. He was talking to that girl again. The one with the blonde curly hair.

  Then someone said, “Hello.”

  And I turned around and looked up at Frida. “Hello,” I said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Reading.”

  She smiled. “Bit hard to read without looking at your book, isn’t it?”

  Frida took my coat, which was lying next to me, and folded it neatly on the floor before she sat down on it.

  “Is it okay if I sit on your coat?” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “So, are you going to the prom?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “But you have to go. It will be fun.” At the prom you need to wear a fancy dress. And there is dancing. I don’t think I would like it.

  I said, “I don’t think so.”

  “This will be your best chance of fixing things with Ruben.” She nodded in his direction. “Boys like girls when they are all dressed up.”

  “But I don’t have anything to wear.”

  “Well, you need to buy a new dress, of course. Everyone buys a new dress for the prom. I have a blue evening gown on hold at Stitch and a silver one at Stusio. I haven’t decided which one I will get yet.”

  I didn’t know either of those places. I wasn’t even sure that I knew what an evening gown was.

  “Oh, and I really wanted to make up for accidentally saying what I said to Ruben. To show you how sorry I am, you are invited to my house before the prom,” Frida said. “Me and Norunn and Julie are all meeting at my place to get ready. And my dad will drive us there.”

  I looked down at my book.

  Snake:

  Any reptile of the suborder Serpentes, characterized by elongated limbless bodies. Can also refer to a non-trustworthy person, i.e. an enemy.

  “So you are coming, right?” Frida said.

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “Good.” She pointed at my book. “What is that anyway?” I closed it and showed her the cover.

  She looked at it and said, “I don’t remember that being part of the curriculum.” “It’s not.”

  Then the bell rang.

  When I got home, my house smelled like food. And not a frozen pizza or microwaved ready meal, but real food. That meant that Aunt Lillian was there.

  My dad came home at 5.43 p.m. and the three of us sat down to eat. Sigve wasn’t there, because he was having dinner at a friend’s house. I wondered if the friend was Katrine. We had pancakes with bacon and potatoes, which I really love.

  Oscar was meowing and begging for food under the table. I slipped him small pieces of bacon when no one was looking. A little fat never harmed anyone.

  “How is the food?” Aunt Lillian said.

  “Good,” I said.

  Aunt Lillian looked at my dad. “What do you think, Leif,” she said. “Is the food all right?”

  “It is okay,” he said.

  “Just okay?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes okay is enough.”

  And then none of us said much more.

  After dinner I went into my room and opened the encyclopedia on a random page. It said:

  Dress:

  Clothing for women with ski
rt and bodice in one piece. A dress can be formal or informal.

  That reminded me. I needed a dress.

  I went into the living room where my dad was watching TV.

  “I need a dress,” I said.

  “What? Why?”

  “For prom.”

  “What prom?”

  “At my school. We are having a prom and I need a dress.”

  “Oh.” He stroked his moustache. “But don’t you already have a dress? What about the one that you wore to the funeral?”

  “But Frida says that everyone buys a new dress for the prom.”

  Then Aunt Lillian came in, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Leif, don’t be silly, of course she needs a new dress. It is her first prom.”

  My dad grunted and turned up the volume on the TV. Aunt Lillian looked at me and smiled. “I will help you pick it out.”

  32

  The Prom Crew

  Frida told me that she and the rest of the prom committee were having one more meeting before the event to get all the last-minute details sorted. And as I was now part of their “prom crew”, as she called it, I was invited too. It was very important that I came so that I got all the information.

  I had been kind of lonely lately and I figured it would be nice to hang out with someone for a change. So I accepted the invitation. My guard was up though. If they asked me to steal anything, I wasn’t going to do it.

  The committee consisted of Frida, Julie and Norunn and the meeting was held at Frida’s house after school.

  We were all sitting in the upstairs living room. The couch in this room was grey and there were tons of cushions on it. Some had pictures of animals like owls and reindeers. And some had quotes on them, like Live, Laugh, Love. One of the walls was covered with bookshelves, and there were candlesticks everywhere. On another wall there was a huge TV.

  But we weren’t there to watch TV. We were there to talk about the prom. The prom was twelve days, three hours and fifty-six minutes away. I had no idea why we needed to talk about it now.

  “Okay,” Frida said, “I have decided on a dress. I’m gonna go for the blue one.”

  “Oh, I was hoping you’d go for that one,” Julie said.

  “Yes,” Norunn agreed. “You looked absolutely stunning in that dress. I mean, you looked stunning in both of them, but, yeah, you know what I mean.”

  “Right,” Frida said. “So no one can wear a blue dress to the prom, okay? It would look really stupid if we all wore the same color.” Frida locked eyes with me just a bit longer than seemed necessary.

  Then she turned her attention to her phone, which had started beeping. And Julie and Norunn looked at their phones as well.

  “I can’t wait,” Frida said. “It will be the most memorable night of our lives.” The others agreed.

  “What are you gonna do with your hair, Frida?” Norunn asked.

  “Well, the original plan was to put it up in a bun on top of my head. But,” she said and took a long pause, “as my hair is much shorter now, I think I will curl it instead. I’ve watched different YouTube videos that show how to do it.”

  Julie turned and looked at me.

  “What are you gonna do with your hair, Malin?” Then there was a knock on the door and Frida’s mom came in. She held out a tray and said: “I’ve brought some cheese and crackers for you girls.”

  Frida rolled her eyes and sighed. “Mom, we don’t want crackers. Bring us some carrots and dip or something.” “But you love these.”

  “No, I don’t. That was, like, two months ago.”

  “Oh,” her mom said and slowly backed out with the tray.

  Then Frida turned to me and said, “So, I haven’t seen you with that girl in ages. What’s her name again?” “Hanna,” I said.

  “That’s it. Are you not friends any more?”

  “I don’t think so. Last time I saw her, she showed me her middle finger.”

  This made them all laugh.

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Frida said. “She doesn’t seem like a very nice person. And she smokes too.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “She quit when she got pregnant.”

  They laughed again.

  Frida looked at me. “You don’t smoke, do you?” “No,” I said. “Do you?”

  “God, no! They stain your teeth. And they are really bad for your skin.”

  Frida’s mom came back in and this time she brought carrots and broccoli and a little bowl with some white stuff that looked like sour cream. “Enjoy,” she said and walked out. The girls helped themselves to the vegetables and dipped them in the white stuff. They were quiet for a while as they dipped and chewed. Frida pushed the bowls closer to me so I could reach them. I helped myself to a carrot and dipped it like the others did. The dip tasted like nothing with an aftertaste of lemon zest.

  “This is really good,” Julie said. The other two agreed.

  “So, did you find your watch?” Frida asked me.

  “No.”

  “It was weird how it just disappeared like that.”

  “Are you sure you brought it to school that day?” Norunn said. “I mean, maybe you left it at home or something.”

  “I did bring it to school. I had it just before swimming class. After class it was gone.” “Super weird,” Julie said.

  I finished my carrot. I didn’t understand why someone would put dip on a carrot, because it made it taste worse. To be honest, I didn’t really see the point of sitting around eating carrots anyway. As soon as I finished, Frida held out the bowl to me again and I helped myself to another one. I was about to put it in my mouth when Frida said, “Wait, you need to put dip on it.” I gently dipped it in the white stuff and tried to get as little as possible on it.

  “When are you going to buy a dress for the prom?” Frida asked me. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’d better hurry. All the good ones get taken early.”

  “Oh God,” Julie said. “Do you remember that dress Emilie wore to my birthday party last year?”

  This made Frida and Norunn laugh. “That was hideous,” Norunn said.

  “I heard she bought it second-hand,” Frida said. Then they all got busy with their phones again. I was starting to feel a little nauseous from the dip. I wondered how I could get rid of the carrot without anyone noticing. And then, out of the blue, Norunn turned to me and said,

  “So what is going on between you and Ruben anyway?”

  “What?” I said.

  “Are you dating or something?” Julie said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Were you?” Frida said.

  “We were friends.”

  “But you wanted to be more than friends, right?” I didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter how I felt about Ruben, because he was upset with me. He thought I found him weird and gross.

  “Don’t worry,” Frida said. “He will change his mind when he sees you in your dress. If you get the right one, of course.”

  She held out one of the bowls to me. “Broccoli?”

  33

  Dress

  Aunt Lillian said that dress shopping would be fun. This was a lie. Grown-ups tell a lot of lies when it comes to things like this. But I did need help picking out a dress, because I had no idea how to find “the right one”.

  Aunt Lillian picked me up at my house at 11.02 a.m. on a Saturday to take me to the shopping centre in Bryne. M44 has more than sixty stores where you can purchase all of your daily needs. That is what their website says anyway. On our way over, Aunt Lillian was really chatty as usual. “So, you must be excited about going to your first prom?” I wasn’t. A part of me hoped that I would get sick so I wouldn’t have to go. But there was also a part of me that hoped I would get to talk to Ruben. Maybe Frida was right.

  Maybe he would like me
again if he saw me in a dress.

  Frida knows a lot about boys.

  “We didn’t have proms when I grew up,” Aunt Lillian said, “but we did have dances in the old barn in Nesvik. Every other Friday night. It was really exciting, getting dressed up, listening to music, maybe dancing with a boy you liked.”

  “Is that how you met Magnus’s dad?” I said.

  And that was when Aunt Lillian almost hit a pigeon and we stopped talking about the dance.

  We pulled up in the parking lot at M44 at 11.21 a.m. and took the escalator up to the first floor, where all the clothing stores are. Aunt Lillian said that we should work our way through all the stores from left to right.

  When we walked into the first store a lady greeted us and said, “How may I help you today?”

  Aunt Lillian looked at me and said, “We are looking for a dress. For a first prom.”

  “Oh, well, we have plenty of evening gowns that can be used for lots of different occasions,” the lady said. She led us over to a section which had several dresses and started talking about the differences between them. I wasn’t really listening though, because a dress on the rack closest to me had caught my eye.

  It was in a tan color, which isn’t really my favourite,

  but it had a nice pattern at the very bottom. It looked like tree branches in different shapes and sizes that were wrapped around the dress. It was beautiful.

  “Want to try it on?” Aunt Lillian said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Above the rack was a poster that showed the price of the dress, and it had a picture of a girl wearing it. She had one hand on her waist and in the other she was holding a clutch bag. Her mouth was slightly open, like she was inhaling. Or exhaling. She couldn’t be much older than me, but the dress made her look mature and sophisticated. Then I put it on and I looked like a sack of potatoes.