by Isa Hansen
Celia had just taken a sip of tea. She laughed, caught the tea in the wrong part of her throat and started coughing and laughing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know. An American won’t be offended if you ask them if they’re Canadian, but a Canadian wont like it if you assume they’re American. Same thing goes for Australians and Kiwis. Always better to be safe.”
“I didn’t know that,” Celia said.
The boy looked pleased with himself. He tapped his fingers against the table. “What are you doing in Sweden?”
“I’m an exchange student. I’ll be going to the high school in town.”
“Sweet. We’ll be in school together.” He gazed appraisingly at Celia, then angled forward as if to let her in on a secret. “There’s a party tomorrow out by the beach house. Wanna go?” He let his hand rest close to hers. “I could introduce you to people.”
Celia half shrugged: “Sure, sounds great.” A Swedish beach party was bound to be fun.
“What’s your number?” he asked. “Oh, and where are my manners,” he added with a cheeky head tilt. “I’m Alex. Who are you?”
“Celia.”
They shook hands across the table and had just swapped numbers when Ebba showed up with a bothered look on her face.
“Oi, Alex. You’re in my seat. Shoo.”
“Hey Ebba, good to see you, too.” Alex swung himself up and gave Celia a wink. “Talk to you later.”
“Ugh,” Ebba grunted, flopping down on the chair. “Don’t mind him. Alex is a brat.”
“I don’t know, he seems pretty friendly to me.”
“His father’s a rich-o and for that reason he thinks he owns everything. You should see his yacht.” Ebba frowned. “What a waste of space.”
Celia wasn’t sure if the last bit was referring to Alex or his yacht. She turned her head but couldn’t see where he’d gone. Ebba, seeming happy to have him out of the way, pushed a plate with a cinnamon roll in Celia’s direction. One look at the fluffy delicacy and her thoughts quickly pulled away from the boy.
“I saw you lusting over them,” Ebba said. “This is for us to share.”
Ebba tore off a piece and Celia followed suit. “Mmm,” she mumbled as she bit into the soft bun, letting the cinnamon and butter and crystalized sugars melt on her tongue.
Ebba chewed her piece and then said, thoughtfully: “Does it bother you that there’s some man out there who knows exactly who you are, but you don’t know who he is or what he wants with you?”
An image of the driver flashed in Celia’s mind. For a happy few moments she’d forgotten about him. With the reminder, she tensed, the sugary taste in her mouth turning metallic. “I hadn’t thought about it like that, but yeah, that does make me nervous.”
Observing Celia’s reaction, Ebba quickly said, “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation. We’ll investigate and find out who he is.”
Celia nodded, but her mind was stuck on what Ebba had just said: there’s some man out there who knows exactly who you are.
“But he didn’t know,” she said slowly.
Ebba brushed a crumb from her cheek. “What’s that?”
“The man at the airport, he didn’t know who I was.”
Celia was thinking it over. The man didn’t recognize her. His eyes passed over her. He didn’t know her to be Celia until she introduced herself. The thought solidified what her mind had only touched upon until this very moment.
That the driver wasn’t there on his own accord.
Someone had sent him.
CHAPTER 3
The more Celia thought about the driver, the less she could make sense of him. The whole situation was bizarre and unwieldy. All she could do was follow Ebba’s suggestion: investigate and find out. Although she had no idea where to even begin looking for Jug ears. Her best bet for clues was the place he’d taken her to: her grandfather’s cottage. Tomorrow she and Ebba were going to check it out.
In the meantime, she had a beach party to attend. As disturbed as she was by the driver, she wasn’t going to pass up on the chance to make friends before school started.
By the time she arrived at the party, the lake house was milling with carefree people. Tanned legs roamed, bare shoulders swayed, hands grasped bottles of lukewarm beer. There was a beat of summer friendly tunes and wafts of cigarette smoke to the backdrop of glittering water reflecting white and silver in the afternoon sun.
The house itself was a tall brick building with a deck on stilts towering over the beach. Celia climbed the stairs to the deck where late teens and twenty-somethings slanted against the railings—drinking, laughing, snapping selfies.
Inside there was a bar at the far end of a wide open room under a high ceiling. A DJ played Swedish pop music: happy synthesized beats that rumbled through the room. Celia zigzagged between dancing bodies while texting Alex.
Hey, I’m at the bar. You here?
She’d just bought a beer when Alex popped up with two other guys in tow. He introduced them as William and Fredde. Celia noticed that the guys all wore the same high-top white sneakers. The four of them attempted to talk, although the music was loud enough that she didn’t catch much of what they said.
“Hey, I don’t think you mentioned—” Alex had to yell straight into her ear so she could hear: “What’s your program in school?”
“Social Science, International,” Celia shouted back.
“No way!” Alex made a happy face.
Celia lifted her brows. “You too?”
“What year?”
“Third.”
Alex pointed to himself. “Me too!”
“Awesome!” Celia met his high five, just as a group of modelesque girls glided in and joined the group. They chatted up the guys and soon a slim brunette pulled Alex away. He mouthed to Celia that he’d be back.
Sipping on her beer, Celia stepped away from the bar to take in the room. She halted at the sight of a familiar face in the crowd.
It took a second for her to place him, but when he peered back at her with recognition, she realized who he was. Without the cap this time but those same electric blue eyes.
Oskar.
He waved and they made their way toward each other. “Hey,” Celia said, then standing on tippy toes so she could speak into his ear: “Good to see you again!”
There were a few passes back and forth of one of them asking a question and the other yelling: What? The music seemed to have become a notch louder. Oskar pointed to the doors leading out to the deck; Celia responded with an approving gesture.
They pushed their way through the crowded hall out to the deck and skipped down the stairs until they hit the sandy beach below. Oskar moved with long strides in that way that tall guys tend to spring rather than walk. Celia said to him, “Hey, thanks again for the ride. That was really cool of you and Ebba.”
“Well, we were just out biking anyway,” Oskar said. His English carried a soft rhythmic intonation. “You must have been really tired from your trip. Or?”
“Yeah, I was pretty tired. It was a long flight.”
She had to grin a little at the “or” tagged at the end of his sentence. She remembered that Swedish quirk from her grandfather. He’d ask a question or make a statement and then leave an or hanging at the end of it. She’d perpetually wait for the rest of what he was going to say, but that was it. Or.
Oskar slowed and sat down on the beach, just a few feet from where the small waves rippled in. Celia perched herself next to him. She spiraled her bottle of beer into the sand. “So, Ebba’s says you’re in the carpentry program at school?”
“Yep, that’s right.” Oskar nodded. “Actually, I talked to Ebba earlier today; she was telling me about you. She mentioned a renovation project. You’ve inherited a house?”
Apparently Ebba hadn’t told Oskar about the strange driver, and Celia didn’t feel like going into the murky details of that. She liked the idea of keeping the evening light. “Uh huh, from my grandfather.
I had no idea until I arrived in Sweden.”
“I’m a little jealous,” he said lightly. “Is that why you came to Sweden? Because of family?”
“That, and to get back into speaking Swedish.”
Like Ebba, Oskar was curious about Celia’s Swedish connection, so she told him about her family’s history.
“I spoke Swedish when I was younger,” she said. “I’ve lost most of it.”
“You’ll get it back.”
“Probably.” She slipped out of her sandals and let her toes wiggle in the sand. “For a hot minute I was thinking about taking an exchange year in New Zealand instead.”
“New Zealand’s at the top of my travel list.”
“Mine too. There’s this show I’m in love with: Flight of The Conchords…”
“He may be dead,” Oskar said with a New Zealand lilt.
Celia laughed. “Aw. That’s such a great scene. You like the show?”
“Love it.”
He took a drink from his beer and set it down, careful to not tip it over.
She paused and watched him where he sat next to her, solid-shouldered and lean, his hair a copper shade of red with summer streaks of blond. “So you renovate houses and do a good Kiwi accent,” she said. “What else can you do?”
“That’s all I do.” He gave her a boyish smile and leaned back, stretching out his arms behind him in the sand.
“You play soccer?” she asked, observing his athletic build.
“Some. More when I was younger. Now I play handball.” He nodded toward her. “Do you play any sports?”
“Softball.”
“Oh, softball.” Oskar’s face brightened.
“Yeah. Since I was a really young kid. Up until this year I was pretty serious about it.”
“We have a similar sport here called brännboll. We play some evenings. You should join us. We’re not very serious, though, and there’s usually beer involved.”
“I’d love to.”
She wasn’t just saying that. Lighthearted sports would suit her just fine. She got so caught up in softball that it stopped being enjoyable.
Celia sat chatting with Oskar for a long while.
There was an easy quiet warmth to him that she liked. She could imagine Olivia or one of her other friends nudging her in the side. He’s hot. Followed by googly eyes: Isn’t he just your type?
The truth was she’d never held enough romantic interest in people to have a type.
Her friends all knew that, but that didn’t stop them from encouraging her.
Back when she was ten or eleven and her friends started crushing on boys and lunging into roller coaster-like highs and lows, she’d felt left behind and unable to relate. Whatever was happening to them, that seemed to happen to most of them when their bodies began to change—the giggles, butterflies, anxiety and excitement—it just didn’t happen to her.
By the age of sixteen she’d gone out on a few unremarkable dates—a few of them ending in even less remarkable make-out sessions. The farthest she’d ever gone was in her junior year with captain of the debate team, Andrew Zilke, in the backseat of his parents’ Kia Soul. After ten minutes of awkward fumbling and heavy breathing that fogged up the windows she’d looked for her shirt and an excuse to leave.
Andrew was a nice enough guy. Most of them were. She just couldn’t get into them the same way they were into her.
At eighteen she wondered if something was wrong with her. She’d experienced a few minor crushes, but they were more like curiosities than crushes, at least compared to her friends who spoke incessantly of their new boyfriends or girlfriends. There were a few people in school who were interesting, but she’d always kept them at arm’s length, never wanting to get too close.
For a while she considered that she might like girls, but it was the same thing there. She could find herself liking a girl; being drawn to her, curious about her, but that’s where it ended.
When it came down to it, she preferred to admire a pretty person from a distance, and she’d never met anyone who made her want to leave the friend zone. You just need to find some sexy Viking guy, her friends had said before she left for Sweden. That’ll get you going. Celia wondered if being abroad really could change the way she felt about romance and dating. She wasn’t going to bank on it.
“Celia!”
Hearing her name, she turned her head to the beach house deck where Alex stood waving his arms widely.
“You know Alex?” Oskar asked.
“Yeah, I met him at a café yesterday. I’m actually here with him. I should go back and hang out.” Celia rose and Oskar did the same. “Do you know him?” She brushed the sand off her shorts.
“Eh,” Oskar said, bending down for his beer. “He and Ebba and I all went to school together from first to ninth grade. I’m happy to not have anything to do with him anymore.”
“Oh,” Celia said, thinking that Oskar’s opinion of Alex seemed similar to Ebba’s.
She took her bottle in one hand and let her sandals swing from the other.
They walked together toward the beach house.
“By the way,” she said when they got close to the patio. “Do you want to see the house? The one I inherited? Ebba and I are going tomorrow.”
“Definitely. Just let me know when you’re going.”
A loud and giggling Ooooo-skar came from down the beach. A willowy, light-haired girl ran in their direction. She flung herself at Oskar in a dramatic motion. He waved at Celia over the girl’s tousled blond head. She returned the wave and went toward Alex on the balcony.
***
Celia stayed at the party until late, dancing and goofing off with Alex and his friends. At the end of the night, Alex had leaned in toward her and said they were having an after party at his place. Did she want to join them? She’d thought about it but decided to not go as some serious travel fatigue was setting in.
The following day she slept past noon, and in the afternoon she and Ebba and Oskar went to see the cottage. Ebba drove up to Erik and Anette’s house in an old blue Volvo station wagon and honked.
Clutching the key that Erik had given her the day before, Celia hoisted her handbag over her shoulder and scooted into the backseat.
“Heyo,” Ebba chirped, and Oskar swung around to say hi.
They chatted eagerly the whole way there. Celia smiled at Ebba and Oskar’s excitement to see the house even though she felt a little apprehensive about it all.
Ebba parked her Volvo to the side of the road. They unbuckled and hopped out of the car, scanning upward at the abandoned cottage.
Evergreens crept up the hill toward the house, collecting in a wooded terrain in the backyard. There was a grassy clearing void of trees in front of the house, then cliffy rocks that dipped down to the beach below.
Celia climbed the stony pathway that snaked its way up to the cottage. The path had long been grown over with weeds and grass. Oskar and Ebba’s padded footsteps were close behind her as she made her way up to the plateau.
Once they were at the clearing by the front porch, they turned to the lake; Torsjön drew their gazes toward itself with a near magnetic pull.
“It’s so nice,” Ebba breathed. “Just think: you could live here!”
The lake spread out in front of them, glistening in deep shades of blue, rimmed by mature trees that were just starting to show hints of gold in the late summer sun. On the other side of the lake, wide-windowed villas and brightly colored cottages sat nestled between the trees. Below the plateau on which the house stood, the sandy beach followed the edge of the lake until it disappeared into a thicket of woods.
“This place has some real value,” Oskar said.
“The view is stunning,” Celia agreed. “I guess the land must be worth something, even though the house isn’t in good shape.”
“Well, you have a really good advantage here,” Oskar said, pointing out toward the water. “There’s a Swedish law called strandskydd that goes back to the 1950s
that forbids houses to be built closer than 100 meters to any waterfront. However, if a house or structure already existed prior to the law, it may remain where it stands.”
“Here he goes—” Ebba poked at Oskar’s arm. “He loves to talk building codes.”
Oskar didn’t appear disheartened by Ebba’s jab; he continued with enthusiasm: “You can renovate your house, make it like new, and you will have waterfront access that few other modern houses have.”
“Oh, wow,” Celia said. “That’s pretty awesome.” She gave Oskar a sidelong glance. He was different from the guys back home. Sure, there were nerds who geeked out over stuff they were interested in, but Oskar wasn’t quite like them.
“Enough standing around,” Ebba said impatiently. “Let’s have a look!”
Celia unlocked the front door. At first it wouldn’t budge. After giving it a shove, the door gave way with a groan.
The cottage interior was tall and narrow, hosting tattered wallpaper, knotted wood floors, and cast iron radiators covered in cobwebs.
A cramped hall ran between the kitchen to the left and a living room to the right. Celia gestured for Ebba and Oskar to go ahead. They stepped across creaky floorboards into the living room where they found a surprisingly well-preserved sofa and a sooty fireplace in the corner. Continuing into the kitchen, Ebba said, “I like this place. It has a good structure.”
Oskar nodded in agreement; he was scanning the ceiling, knocking on walls.
Celia had to admit that while the first glance was pretty rough, the place wasn’t as bad as she was expecting. Yeah, it was dirty and outdated, but everything was more or less whole-looking and sturdy. Looking around she didn’t notice any rot or anything else that pointed to seriously bad conditions. What she did notice was the kitchen window view with the grassy front yard in the foreground and the gleaming blue beyond it.
“This little house just needs some love,” Ebba said. She traced her hand over the cracked kitchen cabinets that were jarringly green against the washed-out yellow daffodil wallpaper.
Celia opened up one of the cabinets where a tea kettle and a collection of mugs were stored. One of the mugs was bulb-shaped and bright orange.
