The music started playing again and people continued dancing. Frida and Ruben walked out to the dance floor too, but they didn’t dance with each other like I have seen prom king and queens do on TV. They just went back to dancing with their friends like before.
I looked over at Ruben. The crown was a bit too big for his head and he had to keep pushing it back.
The bowl of peanuts was nearly empty when Frida came over to the table.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello.”
“I just wanted to thank you for voting for me.” I didn’t answer.
“Every vote counts in these kinds of situations. Like Trude said, it was a close race. And I know you and me haven’t always seen eye to eye in the past, so I just wanted to say thanks.”
Suddenly, I made eye contact with Ruben. His smile disappeared and he looked the other way.
Frida said, “I could talk to him for you if you want?”
There wasn’t much time left. The prom ended at 9.30 p.m. and it was already 9.23. I watched Frida make her way towards Ruben. I looked at the time on my phone and wished she would walk a little bit faster. I saw her tapping his shoulder and she said something that I could not hear, but he was smiling, so that was a good sign. As the prom was ending more and more people were making their way towards the exit and soon they blocked my view, so I couldn’t see Frida and Ruben any more. Then Principal Skogen came over to my table and said that it was time for the clean-up committee to clear away the tables. I looked at him.
“It is time to leave, Malin,” he said.
I made my way across the room and went downstairs to get my coat.
When I came back upstairs I looked for Frida and Ruben, but they were lost in the crowd and I couldn’t see them anywhere.
I went outside and after a few seconds I heard someone behind me say, “Malin.” I turned around. It was Frida.
She said, “Are you ready to leave?”
“What did he say?”
“Who?”
“Ruben.”
“Oh, that’s right. I almost forgot.” She started looking for something in her bag. “He asked me to give you this.” She held out a note for me.
I opened the note and read it. It said, Meet me in the toilet behind the gym at 9.45. Ruben.
“So are you coming?” Frida asked. “My dad is waiting.”
“No,” I said, “I will go home by myself.”
“Okay,” Frida said. And then she walked down the stairs and she and the girls drove off in her dad’s car.
I sat down on the step and looked at my mobile. It was
9.39 p.m.
At 9.45 sharp I opened the door to the toilets. My heart was beating really fast as I walked in. It was completely dark and it smelled like a mixture of wet metal and a sewer.
“Hello?” I said.
I turned the lights on, but I couldn’t see anyone. I was about to check the cubicles, but then I noticed the envelope that was lying in the middle of the floor. It had Malin written on it.
I opened it in a hurry and took out the note inside. The note said, If you want your watch back, come to the large oak tree in Naerheim Woods, tonight, at 10 p.m.
36
Cut Scene
It felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. Ruben had my watch? Maybe he took it when he was mad at me and now that Frida had talked to him he wanted to give it back? A lot of things were running through my head, but I knew one thing for sure: I was getting my watch back.
I hurried down Torg Street, holding onto my dress to avoid stepping on it. I turned and ran down Valen Street, past Holberg’s shop. My shoes were pinching my toes so I had to slow down for a while. It was really dark outside and even though I know Haasund really well and no real crime ever happens it was a bit scary to be out so late by myself. I was half-walking, half-running up Haugen Hill and only two thoughts were going through my mind:
my watch, Ruben, my watch, Ruben.
And then I thought:
Magnus’s record. Would it still be there?
When I arrived at Naerheim Woods nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds later, I was pretty much exhausted. I tried to calm down and walk slowly so I could catch my breath, but again my heart was beating so fast and I felt really nervous. I approached the oak tree but I couldn’t see Ruben anywhere. I had never been to the woods so late at night before. It wasn’t completely dark because of the lamp posts, but it was still kind of creepy. I pulled my coat tighter around me and waited for Ruben to appear. Apart from the chaperones and the cleaners, I’d been the last one to leave the prom, so he should have been here by now.
Then I heard a rustling in the bushes over by the pine trees and I turned around. It was not Ruben.
It was Frida, and Julie and Norunn. They were still all dressed up. Frida even had her tiara and ribbon on and she was holding something behind her back that I couldn’t see.
“Well, hello,” Frida said.
“Where is Ruben?” I said.
“Ruben?” They all looked at each other and laughed.
“Yes, Ruben asked me to meet him here.”
“You really thought Ruben would actually come to see you?”
This made them all laugh again.
“God,” Frida said, “you are even dumber than I thought.” She smiled, but her eyes were dead. Like two lava stones. Julie reached into her clutch bag and held something up for me to see. “Are you looking for this?”
It was my watch.
“That’s mine,” I said. “Give it to me.”
“Don’t worry,” Frida said. “You will get it in due time. But first there is something else we need to take care of.” She took her hand out from behind her back and revealed what she was hiding. It was a pair of scissors.
“You know,” Frida said, “we all feel really bad that we didn’t get time to fix your hair before the prom.” She turned the scissors over in her hands a couple of times. “So we thought we would help you out now.” She squeezed the scissors and pretended to cut the air. “After all, I never got to truly thank you for helping me out with my hair that time.”
I turned around and started to run. “Get her!” Frida shouted.
Julie and Norunn caught up with me fast and grabbed my arms, holding me in a tight grip so that I couldn’t go anywhere.
Frida moved the scissors closer to my face. I tried to wiggle and shake my head but there was nothing I could do. I heard the sound of the blades in my ear and I felt my brown curls falling down on my shoulders and then onto my feet. I didn’t notice that I had started crying until my tears made it down to my lips and I tasted the salty drops.
“And now the other side,” Frida said and moved the scissors around my head.
That was when I managed to wiggle out of their grip and I started to run away again. I managed to get all the way to the end of the pine trees without them catching me and I thought that I might be able to outrun them. I took random turns to the left and right, hoping they wouldn’t work out which way I went.
Suddenly, I heard someone behind me. They were close. It was hard to see where I was going as I was running further away from the lit path. Then I stepped on my dress and I tripped and fell over. As I tried to get up, someone pushed me down and I fell and ended up on my back. It was Frida. She climbed on top of my stomach and shouted, “I got her! Hurry up!”
Just as she lowered the scissors towards my head again I grabbed her hand. She kept trying to move them closer to me, but this time I was stronger.
“Let go!” she yelled.
I heard the girls running somewhere nearby. “Where are you?” one of them yelled.
I gathered all the strength that I had left to push the scissors away from me. I guess Frida wasn’t expecting it, because all of a sudden they flew full force towards her and hit her in the face.
She screamed and fell back and I jumped to my feet. I looked at Frida. She was covering her right eye with her hand and blood was streaming down her face. And she was screaming.
Suddenly, someone pushed me so I lost my balance.
As I fell down I could see Julie in the corner of my eye.
I landed on my right side and hit the ground really hard. Then I heard something in my shoulder pop.
Epilogue
It’s been three months, two days and four hours, since the incident in the woods.
I will try and pick up from where I left off.
After the incident Frida had to have two stitches in her right eyebrow. They cleaned the blood and patched her up really quickly. She was told she most probably wouldn’t even have a scar.
I had to go to the emergency room too. Since I was wearing a strappy dress it was easy to pull my shoulder back into place without too much fuss. I didn’t need to get undressed or anything.
As the nurse put the sling around my shoulder she looked at me and said, “What happened?”
“I dislocated my shoulder.”
“I mean to your hair.”
I lifted my left hand up and felt my curls. On one side of my head they didn’t even reach down to my chin. I hadn’t seen myself in the mirror yet and I didn’t know what it looked like. But I didn’t need to see myself to know that I looked weird. “Payback,” I said.
When we got home that night my dad asked me what the hell was wrong with teenage girls these days. “It is like you can’t be left alone without running around cutting each other’s hair.”
He said that it was not like this when he was growing up.
The day after he called my mom to let her know what happened and I was allowed to talk to her too. She said that everything would be fine and that I shouldn’t worry. She also said that she was feeling a lot better and that she would be home soon. Soon meant twenty days, one hour and nineteen minutes.
A couple of days later, I had a visit from child protection services. They don’t wait for you to respond to a letter. They just show up on your doorstep.
Unannounced.
I guess me opening the door with my arm in a sling and one side of my hair much shorter than the other wasn’t the best first impression.
The lady was wearing a grey skirt suit, had short brown hair and tiny round glasses resting on a pointy nose. She looked like a character from Postman Pat.
She introduced herself and asked to come in, but it wasn’t really a question, because she asked as she walked into my house. And she didn’t take her shoes off. Her name was Inger Larsen.
Inger asked where my mom was.
“Away,” my dad said.
“She is not in prison,” I said.
Then she insisted on talking to me alone and she asked me a lot of questions. First she asked me about why my arm was in a sling and I told her what happened.
I guess this time there was never really a fear that Frida would report me to the police.
Everyone – my mom, my dad, Sigve and now Inger – said that Frida was the one who tricked me into coming to the woods that night.
She was the one who attacked me.
She was the one trying to use the scissors on me.
I was acting in self-defence.
In fact, Inger asked if we were planning on reporting Frida to the police. I didn’t want that though. I didn’t want Frida as a friend, but I didn’t want her as an enemy either.
I just wanted to put the whole thing behind me.
Then Inger asked me questions about school and about my mom and dad. “Just to get a general overview of the situation,” she said.
I am not sure if it was my school who contacted child protection services or if it was someone in the emergency room, but I heard that Frida had also had a visit from them.
After she was done asking me questions, she talked to my dad. I don’t know exactly what they talked about, but he can’t have told her too much. He normally doesn’t talk about things.
There were a couple more follow-up meetings before it was decided that, in light of everything, it would be good for me to talk to a professional. That meant a psychiatrist.
My dad never wanted us to talk about our business to anyone, which was why he ignored that letter from CAPS. He didn’t want people in Haasund to gossip about us. My mom said that this was because he had so much pride. Sigve said that he was just embarrassed.
Embarrassed that his daughter needed therapy. Embarrassed that his wife had a drinking problem. It was Sigve who told me that mom was in rehab. At first I thought he was messing with me, but I asked my mom about it the next time she called and she confirmed. She said she had had enough of all the lies and that we would talk more when she got home.
My first session with the therapist was meant to be on a Wednesday at 11 a.m., but it didn’t start until 11.08. I sat in the waiting room and watched the minutes go by on the clock on the wall. The walls had different paintings of flowers on them, and in the corner of the room there was a tank with a lot of colorful fish. No matter how much they swam they didn’t get anywhere. I lifted my hand and felt my much shorter hair. My head felt so much lighter now and I hadn’t gotten used to it yet.
Aunt Lillian had given me a new hairdo. She said that I could still go to the hairdresser if I wanted, but she felt strongly that my hair at least needed to be the same length before walking into a salon. My curls are still all over the place and I don’t look better with short hair the way Frida did. But my hair wasn’t that good to begin with. Well, I guess that might depend on what sort of hair you like.
At 11.08 the therapist came out of her office. She had short blonde hair and wore a blue trouser suit. She held out her right hand to introduce herself, but my right arm was in a sling so I held out my left hand instead. “Oh, sorry,” she said and switched hands. “I’m Dagny.”
I shook her hand. “Malin,” I said.
She told me to please come into her office, which I did. The room contained a few bookshelves and a hardwood desk that looked very neat. Apart from a computer there was nothing on the desk. She had a couple of diplomas on the wall and a painting of a house and some trees. There was also a black and gold clock, which had roman numerals on it. In the other half of the room were two chairs and, between them, a coffee table. Dagny held out her arm towards the chairs. “Have a seat,” she said.
“Which chair?” I said.
“Whichever you want,” she said.
I chose the one facing the wall because then I could see the clock.
Dagny sat down in the other chair and said, “How are you today?” “I’m okay.”
“What brings you here?”
“Child protection services told me I should talk to a professional.”
“Why do you think they wanted you to do that?”
“I think because I was jumped by those girls in the woods, as that can be a traumatic experience. And because I had attacked Frida with a pair of scissors on a different occasion. And also, maybe, because my mom went away.”
“Do you want to tell me what happened in the woods?” And I did.
“How do you feel now?”
“I am having trouble sleeping.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“I keep thinking about Frida.”
The image of me accidentally stabbing Frida with the scissors kept appearing in my mind. When I closed my eyes I could see the blood running down her face and staining her dress.
“If the scissors had hit Frida half a centimetre lower I would have pierced her eye. She could have gone blind.”
“But you didn’t pierce her eye,” Dagny said. “She didn’t go blind.”
Dagny taught me that there is no use thinking about everything that could have gone differently. Good or bad. You can drive yo
urself crazy imagining all the different scenarios that could possibly have taken place if you or someone else had made a different choice.
“What if Magnus hadn’t taken his bike out that day? What if I didn’t cut Frida’s hair? What if my mom never started drinking?”
Dagny said that this kind of thinking is not fruitful, because you can’t do anything to change the past. All you can do is change the future.
“Is there anything else you want to talk about?” Dagny said. “Like what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, like Magnus?”
When my mom came home from Oslo we had a long talk. She explained that her stay at the clinic had made her realize that she didn’t actually need alcohol and that she now had a much more positive view on life. She also said that even though she felt perfectly fine towards the end of her stay and did not feel any urge to drink ever again, the day that it was time to leave the clinic she was absolutely petrified. But then, when she did go home, she felt okay. Better than she had felt in years. She was also the one who told me the truth about my cousin. Or, well, my brother.
What happened was this: about seventeen years ago things were not going so well between my mom and dad. They were struggling with money and it was hard to take care of a toddler and make ends meet and they were arguing a lot. My mom ended up having a short affair with another man and my dad moved out of the house for a bit. Around the same time Aunt Lillian was coming out of a bad break-up so they sought comfort in each other. And apparently, the way to do that was to sleep together. By the time Aunt Lillian found out that she was pregnant my dad had already moved back in with my mom. At that point, it wasn’t really possible for anyone to do the right thing because they had all screwed up.
I didn’t know what to say to it all, because it was a lot to take in and my head was spinning.
Magnus once told me that I was like a sister to him, but I didn’t agree. I liked that he was my cousin because brothers and sisters don’t get along. Turns out he was my brother after all. Well, I suppose he was both.
The Unpredictability of Being Human Page 15