Adventures with Waffles

by Maria Parr

  Chapter One: The Hole in the Hedge

  Chapter Two: Good Old Trille and the Girl from Next Door

  Chapter Three: Dousing a Fox

  Chapter Four: Noah’s Shark

  Chapter Five: Wanted: a Dad

  Chapter Six: The Battle of Mathildewick Cove

  Chapter Seven: Isak

  Chapter Eight: Christmas Carols in the Middle of Summer

  Chatper Nine: When I Whacked Lena on the Head

  Chapter Ten: Summer’s End

  Chapter Eleven: Rounding Up the Sheep—and a Helicopter Ride

  Chapter Twelve: Lena Lashes Out

  Chapter Thirteen: Snow

  Chapter Fourteen: The Saddest Day of My Life

  Chapter Fifteen: Grandpa and Me

  Chapter Sixteen: The Sled Crash and a Flying Chicken

  Chapter Seventeen: Hillside Jon and Hillside Molly

  Chapter Eighteen: Lena and I Play World War II

  Chapter Nineteen: The Fire

  Chapter Twenty: The Midsummer Bride and Groom

  On the first afternoon of summer vacation, Lena and I made a ropeway between our houses. Lena, as usual, had to be the first to try it. She clambered boldly up onto the window ledge, took hold of the rope with both hands, and swung her two bare feet in a knot around it. It looked dreadfully dangerous. I held my breath as she pulled herself across toward her house, farther and farther away from the window. Lena is almost nine years old, and not as strong as those who are a bit bigger. About halfway across, her feet slipped down from the rope with a small ritsch sound, and suddenly she was dangling by just her hands between the upstairs floors of the two houses. My heart began to pound really fast.

  “Uh-oh,” said Lena.

  “Keep going!” I yelled.

  I was told that it was not as easy to keep going as it might look to someone staring from the window.

  “Hang on, then! I’ll save you!”

  My hands started to sweat while I was thinking. I hoped that Lena’s hands were dry. What if she lost her grip and fell straight down from a two-story height? That was when I came up with the idea of the mattress.

  So while Lena held on as best as she could, I heaved the mattress off Mom and Dad’s bed, shoved it onto the landing, threw it down the stairs, pushed it into the downstairs corridor, opened the front door, kicked it down the front steps, and dragged it out into the yard. It was a really heavy mattress. On the way, I knocked down a picture of my great-great-grandmother, which smashed. Still, it was better that she was broken than Lena.

  When I finally came out into the yard, I could see from the grimaces Lena was making that she was close to falling.

  “Trille, you slowpoke!” she huffed angrily. Her black pigtails were waving in the wind all the way up there. I acted as if I hadn’t heard. She was hanging right over the hedge. I had no choice but to put the mattress there, on top of the hedge.

  And then Lena Lid could finally let go, coming tumbling down from the sky like an overripe apple. She landed with a soft crack. Two of the branches in the hedge snapped instantly.

  I collapsed on the lawn, relieved, while I watched Lena in the demolished hedge, scrambling furiously between the branches and the fitted sheet.

  “That was your fault, Trille, you stupid smoked haddock,” she said, getting up uninjured.

  It was hardly my fault, I thought, but I didn’t say so. I was just glad she was alive. As usual.

  We are in the same class, Lena and I. Lena is the only girl. Luckily it was summer vacation—otherwise Lena was so fed up with school that she would have fallen into a coma and “popped her clogs,” as she puts it.

  “Actually, you could’ve popped your clogs when you fell if there hadn’t been a mattress underneath you,” I said to her later that evening, when we were back outside, looking at the hole in the hedge. Lena doubted that. She thought she would have gotten a concussion at the most, and she’s had that before. Twice.

  But I still wonder what would have happened if she had fallen down without a mattress there. It would have been awful if she had kicked the bucket. I wouldn’t have Lena anymore. She’s my best friend, even if she is a girl. I have never told her. I don’t dare, as I don’t know if I am her best friend. Sometimes I think I am, and sometimes I think I’m not. It depends. But I do wonder about it. Especially when things happen like she falls down from ropeways onto mattresses that I have put there; then I think I would like her to tell me that I am her best friend. She doesn’t need to say it loudly or anything. She could just say it hidden behind a cough. But she never does. Sometimes it seems that Lena has a heart of stone.

  As well as her heart of stone, Lena has green eyes and seven freckles on her nose. She is thin. Grandpa sometimes says that she eats like a horse and looks like a bicycle. Everyone beats her at arm wrestling. But Lena says that’s because everyone cheats.

  As for me, I look normal, I think, with light hair and a dimple on one side. It’s my name that isn’t normal, but that can’t be seen on the outside. Mom and Dad named me Theobald Rodrik. They regretted it afterward. It’s not a good idea to give a small baby such a big name. But what’s done is done. I’ve now been named Theobald Rodrik Danielsen Yttergård for nine years. That’s quite a while. It’s my whole life. Luckily everyone calls me Trille, so it doesn’t really bother me, apart from when Lena sometimes asks, “What is your full name again, Trille?”

  Then I answer, “Theobald Rodrik.”

  And then Lena laughs long and hard. Sometimes she slaps her thigh too.

  The hedge that Lena and I made a hole in marks the boundary between our yards. The small white house on one side is where Lena lives with her mother. They don’t have a dad in their home, though Lena thinks there would be plenty of space for one if they tidied up the cellar a bit. The big orange house on the other side is where I live. We have three floors plus an attic, because there are so many people in my family: Mom; Dad; Minda, who’s fourteen; Magnus, who’s thirteen; me, nine; and Krølla, three. Plus Grandpa, Dad’s dad, who has an apartment in the basement. That’s just enough people to keep under control, says Mom. When Lena comes over, it’s a little too many, and then things get chaotic.

  Today Lena thought it would be a good idea to go into my kitchen to see if anyone had decided to have some coffee and cookies. Grandpa had. Every now and then he comes up from the basement to have a cup of coffee. Grandpa is thin and wrinkly and has wispy hair. He is the best grown-up I know.

  Grandpa kicked off his wooden shoes and stuck his hands in his overalls pockets. He always wears overalls, my grandpa.

  “Well, if it isn’t good old Trille, and the girl from next door,” he said, bowing. “It looks like we’ve come on the same mission.”

  Mom was in the living room, reading the newspaper. She hadn’t noticed that we’d come in. That’s because it’s entirely normal for Lena and Grandpa to be in our kitchen, even though neither of them lives here. They just pop in. Lena visits so often that she’s almost her own neighbor.

  Grandpa picked up a flashlight that was lying on the kitchen counter and crept up on Mom.

  “Hands up!” he shouted, pretending that the flashlight was a pistol. “Stand and deliver! Your coffee or your life, Lady Kari.”

  “And cookies!” Lena added, just to make sure.

  Lena, Grandpa, and I, we get coffee and cookies almost whenever we want. Mom isn’t capable of saying no. At least not when we ask for them nicely. And certainly not when her life is threatened with a flashlight.

  We’re a nice bunch, I thought as the four of us sat around the kitchen table, eating cookies and messing around. Mom had been pretty upset about the ropeway, but now she was smiling again, and suddenly she asked if Lena and I were looking forward
to being Midsummer bride and groom.

  Lena stopped her munching. “This year as well? Are you planning to marry the two of us to death?”

  “No,” Mom protested, she was not planning to marry us to death, but Lena cut her off, saying that was exactly what she was doing.

  “You’re trying to finish us off! We refuse to do it,” she insisted, without asking me first. But that was OK. I had a good mind to refuse to do it as well. It’s always Lena and me who have to dress up as the traditional Midsummer bride and groom.

  “Can’t we do something else?” I said.

  Mom didn’t have a chance to say another word before Lena made a dramatic suggestion: she and I could make the decoration to put on top of the bonfire. A big, fat sun-shaped one for Midsummer. I was stunned. But then I felt happy. Minda and Magnus made the bonfire every year. It was only fair to let Lena and me have a try at making something of our own. Lena begged and pleaded, and then shook Mom’s hand while jumping around.

  “Let good old Trille and the girl from next door make their decoration. Another bride and groom will turn up,” said Grandpa.

  And that’s how Lena and I got our first decoration-making assignment. It will most likely be our last too.

  We live in a small bay called Mathildewick Cove, Lena and I. Grandpa says Mathildewick Cove is a kingdom. Grandpa mostly makes things up, but I like to think that he’s right about this one: Mathildewick Cove is our kingdom. Between our houses and the sea we have some big fields, and there’s a gravel track that goes above those fields down to the shore. By the track grow rowan trees, which we climb when the wind blows. Every morning when I get up, I look out my window at the sea and at the weather. When the wind is really blowing, the waves come crashing over the jetty and the spray goes far up onto the fields. When it’s not windy, the sea looks like an enormous puddle. If you look carefully, you notice that the sea is a different shade of blue each day. I always look for Grandpa’s boat too. He gets up at five o’clock every morning to go fishing.

  Above our houses there’s the main road, and above the main road there are slopes to go sledding or skiing on in winter. Once, Lena and I made a ramp so that Lena could try jumping over the main road on her sled. She landed right in the middle of the road and hurt her backside so badly that she had to lie on her stomach for two days. There was a car coming too. It had to jam on its brakes before we could roll her onto the side of the road.

  At the top of the slopes, far, far up, is Hillside Jon’s farm. He’s Grandpa’s best friend. Farther up from there are the mountains, and when you get to the top of the mountains, you can see our little cabin. It takes two hours to walk there.

  Lena and I know everything that’s worth knowing about Mathildewick Cove. And even more. So we knew exactly where we should look to find what we needed for our sun decoration.

  Thank goodness Grandpa has taught us how to make proper knots. It comes in handy every so often, even if we have solemnly sworn not to make any more ropeways. Before you could say “smoking haddocks,” Lena had tied a clove hitch so that our big round sun would stay together. Lena is really fast when she gets going. But it still took us a long time to get the hay to stop sticking out of the old rags we put around it. The sun was a bit lopsided: it wasn’t easy to make it properly round. It was as big as Lena and me, and looked quite impressive. We took a few steps back and tilted our heads.

  “Excellent,” said Lena, smiling contentedly.

  Just when we were going to put our sun in the old stables, along came Magnus.

  “Have you made a scarecrow?” he asked.

  “It’s the sun,” I explained.

  Magnus began to laugh. “That thing there? That’s the worst bonfire decoration I’ve ever seen! Good thing it’s going to be burned!”

  I got quite angry. Lena got even angrier.

  “Buzz off! Just go down to the shore and build the bonfire!” she yelled, so loudly that my sweater quivered.

  So Magnus left, but we could hear him laughing for a long time. I told Lena that Magnus was just jealous because usually he and Minda get all the glory from making the bonfire decoration. But that didn’t help much. Lena snarled and kicked our sun, making it fall over. A bit of hay came out from the middle.

  We went to Lena’s and got something to drink. Lena’s mother paints and makes art out of strange things, so their whole house is filled with all kinds of odd objects. They even have half a motorcycle in their utility room. It’ll be a whole bike when they finish screwing it all together. Lena blew big angry bubbles in her glass as her eyes darted around the living room. All of a sudden she stopped blowing and her face took on a thoughtful look.

  Up on top of a red corner cupboard was a fox puppet with the bushiest tail I’d ever seen. I’d often looked at him. His eyes were different sizes, his nose was a bit twisted, and some of his fluff had come out, but Lena’s mom had knitted him a nice scarf. It was the fox that Lena was looking at.

  I was terrified when I realized what she was thinking.

  “But surely we can’t . . . ?”

  “You’re supposed to put old junk on the bonfire, Trille. Smoking haddocks, that fox is over thirty years old; Mom has said so many times.”

  “Isn’t it too old?” I asked.

  Lena thought that was a good question, even if she did say so herself. The older, the better. She pushed the yellow rocking chair over to the cupboard and ordered me up to get the fox down.

  “My knees are shaking,” I mumbled.

  Lena grabbed hold of them with her lean fingers.

  “They’re not now.”

  It was easier to make our sun with the fox inside instead of hay. We curled him into a ball, nose to tail, and stuffed him inside. With some rays made out of tinsel, as well as sunglasses and an old hat, our sun almost looked alive. Nobody would have guessed there was a fox inside. We hid it under Lena’s bed.

  It took me a while to get to sleep that night. In the end I included the fox in my evening prayers.

  “Dear God, please don’t let him get really burned up.”

  When I came down to the kitchen on the morning of the Midsummer festival, Auntie Granny was there.

  “Well, if it isn’t my young laddie Trille,” she said with a wink.

  Auntie Granny is fat and old, and is Grandpa’s big sister. She lives about twelve miles away and comes to visit us every time it’s not an ordinary day—at Christmas and Easter and on birthdays, and on May 17, the national day, and so on. And at Midsummer. Our real grandmother, who was married to Grandpa, died when she was only thirty-five. Auntie Granny is our substitute grandmother.

  I felt all warm inside when I saw her. Auntie Granny’s face is such a nice shape because she smiles all the time. Everyone in my family is cheerful and makes jokes when she comes to visit, and we play card games and eat hard candies and listen to stories told by Auntie Granny and Grandpa. And Auntie Granny makes waffles. People say that lots of things are the best in the world, but Auntie Granny’s waffles really are the best in the world, seriously.

  It was a beautiful day. Even Dad joined in with the games and waffle-eating. He was supposed to be muck-spreading, but Mom thought that he should wait for another day so that we wouldn’t have to celebrate Midsummer surrounded by the smell of manure. And Dad thought that was absolutely fine.

  At six o’clock, Mom clapped her hands and said it was time for the bonfire. I wished I had a button on my forehead that I could press to make me disappear. Why didn’t God make buttons like that for us? I’d much rather have that than those toes in the middle that don’t do anything.

  We were just about to go when Auntie Granny put her hand on her back and said that she had to have a little rest. Grandpa stayed to keep her company—and to eat even more candies and waffles.

  “I want to stay here too!” I said.

  I wasn’t allowed.

  I hadn’t seen Lena all day, but here she came with our magnificent sun wrapped up in a sheet, and with a deep worry line on her fo
rehead.

  “Shall we just forget about it?” I said.

  Lena glanced at Magnus and shook her head.

  Everyone who lives in Mathildewick Cove was gathered down on the shore. There was my family; Lena’s mother; Uncle Tor, who is Dad’s little brother; and Uncle Tor’s girlfriend. On the pebbles was the tallest and best bonfire setup I’d ever seen. Minda, Magnus, and Dad had built it. My older sister and brother were happy and proud.

  “Well, now all that’s missing is Trille and Lena’s decoration for the top,” said Dad, twirling his mustache.

  Lena cleared her throat and rolled our sun decoration out of the sheet. Everyone stared in astonishment at what we’d made.

  “That’s amazing,” said Minda, impressed, and the grown-ups nodded. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Lena’s worry line had turned into a small crater. I touched my own forehead. There was no button yet.

  Minda took the sun under her arm and clambered up to the top of the bonfire. Her knees didn’t shake in the slightest while she was up there—so many feet above the ground.

  Minda was adopted from Colombia. Mom and Dad adopted her when she was a little orphaned baby. I sometimes wonder if she isn’t really an Incan princess. She looks a bit like one. And on this Midsummer’s Eve, when she was standing on top of the bonfire with her hair fluttering in the wind, I thought she looked more like an Incan princess than ever. I almost felt happy for a moment, until Uncle Tor pulled out his lighter. He was just about to light the fire when Krølla shouted, “Bwide and gwoom!”

  Everyone turned round. There was a couple dressed as bride and groom coming across our freshly cut field. Grandpa and Auntie Granny! I think I went into a mild state of shock. It was the kind of thing you only see in films. Auntie Granny had borrowed Dad’s suit and was dressed as the bridegroom. She looked like a fat penguin. And Grandpa was wearing a long white dress, a veil, and high-heeled shoes. He was using his cactus as the wedding bouquet.

  I didn’t know it was possible to laugh like we did then. Mom’s fizzy pear juice went down the wrong way so much that she coughed until the next day. Uncle Tor had to kneel down, he was laughing so hard. And the best thing of all was that nobody was thinking about the bonfire.