by Arne Svingen
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My first chapter
It doesn’t matter. These things happen.
I’m lying on the floor. A few seconds ago, I was standing on my feet. The world was on an even keel and I actually felt things were going better than they had been in a long time. Some punches always come as a shock.
The room is sloping around the edges and I feel slightly seasick.
“Are you all right?”
When I nod, it feels like I’m sitting in a washing machine.
“Can you get up?”
Of course I can get up. Just not right now. All I want to do is lie here. A little bit longer.
“I didn’t mean to.”
Of course he didn’t mean to hit so hard. Christian flickers in front of my eyes. As if he was on a badly tuned TV.
I like Christian. I like everyone at the gym. Wouldn’t surprise me if they liked me too.
“Just give him a bit of time.”
It’s the coach talking. The one who says it’s all about believing you can move mountains. That I can be as good as I want to be. And I believe him when he says it. Even though I don’t necessarily believe it as much in the evening. Or the next morning. Or at school. And perhaps especially not when I’m lying here and feeling sick.
The coach and Christian help me up. I’m standing on my own two feet again.
“Take a break, why don’t you,” the coach says.
I don’t dare to nod. Just head off toward a bench and sit there until the world has stopped tumbling and spinning and shaking.
“Boxing’s not about how many times you’re knocked down, but how many times you get up again,” the coach tells us as he takes off my headguard and gives me an ice pack.
“I’m sure,” I reply. “But I think I’ll stop for now, all the same.”
“See you on Wednesday, then?”
“Of course.”
Christian pats me on the shoulder. If it wasn’t that he lived on the other side of town, we’d probably hang out together after school.
On my way home, I feel the pain around my eye. But pain passes and I can still see. I put on my headphones and turn up the music, and the next moment everything is forgotten.
I like quite a lot of weird things, really. Like pancakes and bacon. A glass of ice-cold milk in the middle of the night. A shooting star in the sky that isn’t a plane or a UFO. Or swimming on a warm summer’s day when everyone else has gone home.
And I like it when Mom whispers something nice and her lips tickle my ear. I think she used to do it more before.
But there’s something that beats it all. Something that makes me warm inside. A bit like someone’s turned on an oven full blast in my belly.
And that’s singing. Not the sort that blares out of the radio and iPods of people in my class. I like the kind of voice that makes glass shatter and fills your ears to bursting. Sometimes I forget myself and sing at full volume when I’m walking down the street. Which is a bit embarrassing. And a bit cool.
I live in an old building that could have looked newer. There are often people on the stairs, but if you don’t think about it, you don’t really notice them.
Mom isn’t at home, so I sit down with a couple of slices of bread and do my homework. The doorbell rings, and Mom’s words echo in my head: You must never open the door unless it’s someone you know. Through the peephole, I see a man in work clothes holding up an ID card. It says Hafslund Utilities on the card, and there’s a picture of a face that looks a bit like the man in work clothes.
He rings the bell again. Then he knocks on the door. He’s probably precisely the sort of person I shouldn’t open the door for. But he’s got an ID card in hard plastic and looks so official that my curiosity gets the better of me.
“Is Linda Narum at home?” he asks through the gap created by the safety chain.
“No, my mom’s just gone out.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve come to disconnect the electricity.”
Mom does get behind with the bills sometimes. It can happen to anyone. Every day is so busy and you have to remember so many things that I’m sure it’s easy to forget the bills. Luckily, I remember that I’m dying.
“You can’t,” I say in a very sad voice.
“Sorry, son. But I don’t have a choice when the bills aren’t paid.”
“Don’t you want me to live?”
Sometimes my voice is the saddest voice I know.
“Summer’s on the way, son. You won’t die.”
“Yes, I will. I mean it,” I say, and take deep breaths, as if it’s hard for me to get enough air. “At night, I sleep in an oxygen tent to help me breathe. And it won’t work without electricity.”
The man looks at me.
“An oxygen tent?” he repeats.
“I’ve got a lung disease. Do you want to see the tent?”
I tense my throat so there’s a whistling sound when I breathe in.
“No, no, it’s all right. I . . . well, I don’t need to cut the electricity today, then. But your mom has to start paying the bills.”
“She’s probably just forgotten.”
“For over a year?”
I shrug. The more I say, the easier it’ll be to get caught up in ridiculous lies. So I don’t answer, just look at the man with hound-dog eyes.
“I’ll be back.”
“It was nice of you to come by.”
Once I’ve closed the door, I have to take a deep breath. Because I don’t have a tent. I’m not going to die. And I don’t normally lie, at least not every day.
The world is full of white lies: someone’s got bad hair, wearing strange clothes, or acting stupid, but you don’t tell them that to their face. At least, I don’t. I keep my mouth shut. I quite often keep my mouth very shut.
No electricity would be like staying in a cabin, every day. Or living in the Bronze Age. Best not to say anything about it to Mom. She gets upset so easily.
It’s actually nice being at home alone, when you live like us. I watch a bit of TV before going to bed.
The disadvantage of finding it easy to fall asleep is that I wake up easily as well. Suddenly Mom’s sitting on the edge of the bed, saying something I don’t understand.
“What did you say?” I mumble.
“Hello, lovely boy,” Mom says, and gives me a hug. “You’re so lovely. So very lovely.”
“You too, Mom.”
We give each other a good, long hug. Mom likes me. She really does. And I like her too. Mom tells me over and over how lovely I am. After a while, she lies down on the floor. Then I help her up onto the sofa and put a blanket over her.
“You’re so lovely, my lovely boy,” is the last thing she whispers before she falls asleep.
Outside somewhere there’s an amazing shooting star. I’m sure of it.
My second chapter
When I wake up, Mom is lying on her back with her mouth open. The blanket has fallen down onto the floor.
I try to get out of bed to pick it up. The first thing I register is that my eye hurts. Not much, but enough to make me not want to blink. Fortunately the room doesn’t spin when I finally manage to stagger to my feet, and I tuck the blanket around Mom without waking her.
I make my own breakfast today. I don’t do it every day. Sometimes Mom makes an ome
let and talks so much that I stop listening. Whatever, I do like to let my thoughts go wandering before the day takes over.
Luckily there’s just enough bread for breakfast and my packed lunch. I write a note for Mom: Hope you’ve had a good, long sleep. We need some food. I’m happy to go to the store after school. Love you. From Bart.
Yep, I’m called Bart. Not like the English Bart with a long a. No, the way people pronounce it around here sounds more like Burt, even if I was named after the little yellow guy in The Simpsons. Not that Mom and I watch The Simpsons all day, though we do sometimes, as the TV is on almost constantly. Every time, Mom tells me that she gave me that name so I’d be a funny wise guy who’d get by in life.
“But Bart’s only ten,” I say.
“He’ll be thirteen soon as well.”
“No, he won’t. He’s ten every single year.”
I think Mom wants a son who’s a bit tougher. That’s why I go to boxing. You’ll thank me for it later in life, Mom always says.
Not that I’ve got any plans to become a thug, but someone might try to pulp me. And then I might thank Mom. Depending on who wins.
But I’m no Bart Simpson. I should probably have been called something else, but it’s a bit late now.
It takes me nine and a half minutes to get to school. And today I have eleven.
I stand in front of the school gate and take a deep breath before the bell goes off. New day, new possibilities, that’s what they say. Not everyone who thinks up these sayings knows what they’re talking about, but I suppose this one’s right. The good thing about life is that you never know what might happen. A bit like every day is a present. Unwrap it and see what’s inside. I just need a little extra oxygen before going into the playground. You can’t look forward to everything in life.
Now everyone will be thinking that I get bullied. Well, they’re wrong.
I don’t have any nicknames. No one hides my pencil case or puts my head down the toilet. It’s not me they make jokes about.
Because Bertram is in my class. Yep, he’s pretty unlucky with his name too. I try to distance myself from Bertram. Bart and Bertram doesn’t exactly sound like two friends, more like a couple of clowns.
Bertram gets bullied. Not that the others give him noogies all the time or hold him out the window by the waistband of his jeans, or anything like that. Just little jibes that the teachers don’t notice. A smarting insult, an outstretched leg when no one’s looking, and a missing pencil case. Bertram never tells. He just stays out in the cold and wonders what he’s done wrong.
I don’t know.
I’d like to help Bertram become more popular, but I’m probably the last person who can fix it.
I head straight for my gang. We stand in a small circle and talk about what we’ve seen on TV or found on the Internet.
“You get a thumping?” one of the others in the circle asks, looking at my eye.
“Accident with the sofa,” I reply.
Now, you’d think that someone might follow that up with Did it attack you? Or Did the sofa die?
But no. We’re not that sort of friends.
No one at school knows that I do boxing. No one at school knows much about me. Once when we had to talk about our hobby in front of the class, I said that I collected photos of mass murderers. It’s not true, but it’s the kind of thing that gets everyone to shut up. If I’d told them about the boxing, you can bet that someone would try to check out my skills in the next break.
We sit in pairs in the classroom and I’ve been lucky for quite a few weeks now. Ada sits beside me. She’s possibly the nicest girl in the class, at least one of the top three. Ada’s smile is full of teeth. They’re as white as fresh snow.
So now someone probably thinks that I’m in love with Ada. You only need to say something nice about a girl, and everyone immediately imagines kissing and groping. Well, you can just turn off your fantasies. I’m not going to get together with Ada. That’s just not going to happen. I know the rules. We won’t even be friends. But we can sit next to each other in class. I’m not the one who made the rules.
“Hi,” I say to Ada.
“Hi, Bart.”
The only thing I don’t really like about her is that she uses my name a lot. Bart sounds like a square stone in her mouth.
“I printed this out for you,” she says, and hands me a copy of an article from the Internet about a guy with very bushy eyebrows.
Joe Henderson is his name. And he’s killed at least four women. Maybe as many as ten. It’s not the first time she’s given me pictures for my collection of mass murderers.
“Cool. I haven’t got him.”
I need to keep some kind of list of the mass murderers she’s given me, so I put them in a separate envelope with her name on it. It’s under the mattress at home. There’ll be a bit of explaining to do if Mom finds it, but then, I change the bed.
I put the picture in my bag. Ada’s hobby is dancing. But she won’t be getting any new tights from me.
So now everyone’s thinking that Ada’s interested in me, because she gives me pictures of mass murderers. But no, Ada already has a boyfriend. She’s talked about him loads of times. He lives in a town I can’t remember the name of, but it’s where they’ve got a cabin. And he’s in high school.
“I didn’t understand the math homework,” Ada says.
There you have it. I suppose that’s the reason she gives me pictures of mass murderers.
“You can look at mine,” I say, and pass her my exercise book.
She’s quick at copying it.
“Thanks, Bart.”
The teacher is a wirehaired growler called Egil. Apparently he was once Norway’s mini-golf champion. He’s standing up by his desk with a piece of paper in his hand and seems to be more lively than usual.
“Okay, settle down. I’ve got an important announcement.”
Some of the boys sitting in the row by the window keep on chatting.
“Pay attention, boys. I want you all to listen carefully. Now, as you know, our class has been chosen for the entertainment at the end-of-year show. Our aim has to be that we’re better than all previous years. Last year was catastrophic, after all. We can do better than that! We have to beat Class B, at least. So, anyone who can do something, sign up—then we can put together a suitably fantastic program. Don’t be shy now.”
“I’m going to dance,” Ada whispers to me.
“Great,” I reply.
“I’ll hang the list up over here, so you can sign up,” the teacher continues. “Look, see what a nice color the paper is.”
There are not many things I can be certain of in this life, but here’s one of them: I am not going to be doing anything in the end-of-year show.
The rest of the hour is consumed by world history, another boring one. It’s in the breaks that things happen.
Sometimes I stand out on the edge of the edge. It’s not always easy to say how I end up there, but I’m lost in my own thoughts and then suddenly there I am standing right down by the fence. Which is Bertram’s territory. I do a quick recon to see if he’s hanging around nearby but can’t see him. So I hurry back to my circle and discover that they’re talking about the end-of-year show.
Seems like everyone wants to take part. As if the highway to fame and fortune starts with success in the summer show.
“Are you going to do anything, then, Bart?” one of them suddenly asks.
I should of course use his name. But to be honest, I can’t remember it. Some would say that you should remember your friends’ names. They’ve got a point.
But let me be honest: We’re not the kind of friends who help each other and do fun things together after school. This is a circle for those who aren’t in the in-crowd. As long as we stand in a circle talking, then we’re not on the outside. I’ve christened the circle “No Man’s Land,” though I’ve never said it out loud.
I’m sure that the others have lots of great qualities. I just don’t kn
ow enough about them. If one of them died in a terrible accident, I’d be sad, but I wouldn’t break down. There’s plenty else to worry about in my life. I’ll maybe talk about it later, but not right now. Because right now, they’re all waiting for my answer.
“Eh, no,” I say.
No one asks why I don’t want to. No one asks me to join in some crazy idea. They just nod and keep talking. There’s going to be music, juggling, and yo-yo tricks. It could be a good end-of-year show.
The school day is like most others. No great troughs, no soaring highs. My pants tear in the crease by the crotch during break, but no one sees it. Does it count if no one notices?
* * *
On the way home from school, Ada pops up beside me just as I’m putting on my headphones. Which is a bit odd, since she doesn’t live in my neighborhood. I don’t know where she lives, but I’ve never met her on the way home from school before.
“Your pants all right?”
“Which pants? These? Is there something wrong with them?”
“Forget it. What are you listening to?” she asks, and indicates my headphones.
“A bit of everything.”
“Cool. I like a bit of everything too.”
“Different is good.”
“Is it very different?”
“More different than normal, in this case.”
“Cool. Can I have a listen . . . to some of the different stuff? Just to hear how different it is.”
“Yes . . . of course.”
Challenges should be faced head-on. She wants to test my taste in music. To be honest, I don’t really know how to deal with this.
I’ve got a pretty crappy MP3 player in my pocket. It’s full of big men who sing for opera lovers and probably sound quite similar. I don’t think that different for Ada includes people who can make windowpanes vibrate with their voice alone.
“Oh, my battery’s almost dead,” I say, looking down into my pocket.
“Just enough for me to hear, maybe?”
Who else my age listens to opera? No one, obviously. Okay, I admit that a lot of opera is pretty hard work. They don’t have the catchiest tunes and there’s a lot about death. But I love the voices. Baritones that suck me in and make my ears sweat. Well-oiled vocal cords, great lungs, and lots of stomach muscle—and suddenly the most amazing sound pours out.
