Then only me, Otto Njaa and Sondre Håland were left. Otto has this nervous twitch in his left arm and can be quite unpredictable when handling a ball. Sondre is very tall and skinny and, like me, quite clumsy. He has long limbs that should work well in games like volleyball, but for some reason they don’t.
I don’t really know them that well, but I would guess that PE is their least favourite subject too. Gjermund and Vegard looked at each other like they were facing the biggest problem in their life so far.
“Okay,” Vegard said, “I will take Otto and you can have the other two.” And with that, it was settled. We all went to our teams; Haakon blew his whistle and then the game started.
Most of the time during volleyball I stand in one spot and hope the ball doesn’t come my way. If it does come my way I usually put my arms up to cover my face. Personally I don’t care what happens to the ball, but the rest of my class seem to think it’s pretty important that it makes it to the other side of the net. So if I mess up, people get mad and I don’t like people being mad at me.
I kept checking my watch. It took six minutes and nineteen seconds before the ball came my way. I ducked and the ball hit the floor and bounced outside the thick white line that marks the volleyball court. A collective sigh sounded from my team while the other team cheered and high-fived each other. Haakon blew his whistle and held out his left arm to signal a point to the other team. “Malin, you are supposed to hit the ball!” Haakon yelled.
“We’re not playing dodgeball.”
Then it was my turn to serve the ball. That is the worst part of volleyball, because that is the one moment when I can’t pretend to be invisible. I actually have to try my best to get the ball over the net while all eyes are on me.
I went and stood behind the line with the ball in my hand. I bounced the ball a couple of times like I’d seen the others do. Then I threw the ball up in the air with my left hand while holding my right hand up next to my head, ready to shoot the ball towards the net. But I missed and it just bounced a couple of times on the floor before rolling under the net. My team sighed and moaned and rolled their eyes. They acted like they were surprised.
Then I had to do it again. “Watch the ball,” Haakon said. And I did. I watched the ball as I threw it up in the air and when it was in position I hit it with my right hand. I didn’t miss it this time. Not only did I hit it, it actually went the way it was supposed to go. But as my hand made contact with the ball I heard a pop in my right shoulder. Sudden pain shot down my arm and I dropped to the floor as the ball flew across the room. Then it hit the net and bounced back to our side of the court.
My arm hurt so much. And this time I knew what was wrong. I sat up and put my left hand under my right elbow for support as I started crying. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to go through this again. All the waiting time. All the pain.
Haakon rushed over to see what was wrong. I told him that I had dislocated my shoulder and he ran and got the emergency kit. He took out an instant cold pack, which he squeezed and rubbed for a couple of seconds before holding it out to me. “Put this on your shoulder,” he said.
But I told him I couldn’t because I was using my left hand to support my right arm. So he called one of the other kids over. “Otto,” he yelled. “Come give me a hand.” Haakon told Otto to hold the cold pack against my shoulder and ran out of the room. “I’ll be right back,” he called. I looked at Otto and hoped he wouldn’t make any sudden moves.
All the kids were still staying in their allocated spots on the volleyball court. Some looking at me. Some looking at the floor. But they didn’t move from their spots. They just stood there like they were glued to the floor. I stopped crying, because I knew that if I started sobbing it would hurt more.
After a little while Haakon came rushing back with Principal Skogen. Haakon told me that he had called my parents and that he would drive me to the medical centre. He hadn’t been able to reach my mom but my dad would meet us there.
We went out to the parking lot, Haakon walking in front and holding the doors open. I felt nervous. “Mine is the red Toyota Corolla,” he said. That didn’t mean much to me, but there was only one red car in the parking lot so I headed towards that. I walked very slowly while Haakon nervously jogged in front. I didn’t know why he was rushing. My dad works in an insurance company in Bryne and it takes eighteen minutes for him to drive to Haasund. So I knew we’d have to wait anyway.
Haakon held the car door open for me as I got in the passenger seat. I couldn’t put my seat belt on because I had no free arm, so Haakon leaned over to help me. I held my breath to avoid taking in the smell of garlic he always reeks of. A lock of his greyish hair was sweaty and stuck to his forehead.
He finally buckled my belt and shut the door. Then he ran around the car and got behind the wheel.
On the floor of his car there was a bunch of empty Coke bottles that rolled backwards and forwards over my feet as he started driving. The smell from three air fresheners dangling from the mirror mixed with the smell of garlic – it made me feel sick.
The movement of the car made the pain worse and when Haakon hit a bump in the parking lot, I screamed. Loud.
Haakon looked at me nervously. “I’m sorry,” he said. Then he hit another bump.
The medical centre is a three-minute drive from Haasund Lower Secondary School. It is a ten-minute walk if you cut through the park. I would have preferred to walk.
To get to the medical centre we had to make four turns. One to get out of the parking lot at my school, one at the roundabout, one to get on to Berg Street, and one to drive into the parking lot of the medical centre. At every turn I screamed at the top of my lungs. It felt as if my arm was being ripped from my body. Haakon kept apologizing, which, for some reason, made the experience even worse. If I had walked through the park I wouldn’t have had to deal with any of this.
After three minutes and forty-nine seconds of a hell ride that smelled like garlic, watermelon, vanilla and raspberry car freshener, I could get out of the car – once Haakon helped me unbuckle my seat belt by leaning over me again.
The waiting room was completely empty and behind the desk there was a new receptionist. She was quite young, had brown hair and a nose piercing shaped like a heart. She was pretty.
I went to sit down in one of the chairs and soon Haakon came and sat down in the seat opposite mine. He tapped his foot and fiddled with his keys. “We have to wait until your dad gets here,” he said.
I already knew that.
“What’s your favourite subject in school?” he asked. I didn’t answer, and he didn’t say anything else. After eighteen minutes and twelve seconds my dad walked in. He nodded and smiled at the receptionist before saying hello to me. Haakon got out of his chair and shook his hand. “Thanks for coming in,” he said.
“Of course.” My dad smiled and quickly glanced over at the receptionist. He raised his voice slightly as he said, “No work is more important than your child.”
The doctor wasn’t the same as last time either. He was much younger and didn’t listen to me when I said that I wasn’t able to take my shirt off. “That shirt has to come off, even if we have to cut it off,” he said.
A nurse cut my shirt, and helped me into a hospital gown. Then they took X-rays, even though they knew what was wrong with me. After studying the X-rays together with a nurse, the doctor finally gave me painkillers and pulled my shoulder back into place, before putting my arm in a sling.
Afterwards, the doctor wanted to talk to my dad and we both went into his office. He said that if you dislocate a joint at a young age, in fifty per cent of cases it will happen again. And again. He said that in a few weeks, once I got my sling off, I would need physiotherapy to help me recover and build up muscles in my arm to keep it from happening again. Stronger muscles would help my shoulder to stay in place.
If the problem continued w
e would discuss surgery, but for now physiotherapy would suffice. “How much will that cost?” my dad said.
When we came back to the waiting room, Haakon was still there.
He and my dad shook hands again. “Thanks for sticking around,” my dad said.
“Of course.” Haakon glanced over at the receptionist.
“We always have our students’ best interests at heart.”
Haakon said that I didn’t have to come back to school so my dad said that he would take me home.
“But what about my backpack?” I said. “And my bike. They’re still at school.”
As the nurse had cut my shirt I had to wear the hospital gown home. We stopped by my school and Haakon ran in and got my backpack for me, and my dad picked up my bike and put it in the back of the car. Then my dad dropped me off at home before going back to work.
I took off the hospital gown and put a new shirt on and went into the kitchen. I microwaved a bag of popcorn, and got a can of Coke from the fridge. Then I decided to have a Pirates of the Caribbean marathon.
Jack Sparrow sailed into shore while I ate my popcorn with my left hand. It wasn’t cooked to perfection but it was pretty darn close. The doctor had told me that I needed to have the sling on for four weeks this time. At least now I couldn’t have PE for a while. Then I wondered if Haakon would still fail me for missing his class?
20
It Happened One Day
I think it was a Tuesday. I don’t know for sure, which is weird, because I’m usually very good at remembering these things. But I think it was a Tuesday. The day my mom told me that she was going away for a while.
We were sitting in the kitchen and Sigve and my dad were still at work and she said that she was going away on a business trip. I was very surprised because she has never gone on business trips before.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To Oslo,” she said.
“How long will you be gone?”
“Ninety days.”
Ninety days sounded like a very long time for a business trip and I asked if she really had to stay away for that long.
She said she had to.
I have never been to Oslo and I asked if I could come visit her.
“Of course you can’t, you have school.”
“But maybe I could come for a weekend.”
“No, Malin.”
“Why not?”
“Malin, please, you’re killing me with all these questions.”
I looked at my mom. I wanted to ask her when she was going but I didn’t want to kill her.
Then my mom said, “Let’s get some ice cream.” She clearly wanted to give me a treat to stop me from asking questions. That made me feel like a five year old. And I sort of liked it.
My mom got out the chocolate-chip ice cream from the freezer and put two scoops in a bowl and gave it to me and I ate it with my left hand. Chocolate-chip is my favourite but for some reason it didn’t taste very good.
After the ice cream I felt like getting some fresh air, so I went for a walk. I was crossing the playground at the end of Thorstein Street when I saw a boy sitting on one of the benches, playing with his phone. The boy was Ruben.
He met my eyes and I raised my hand to wave at him, but he didn’t wave back. He just looked in a different direction, got up from the bench and walked away. My heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach. I didn’t understand why he didn’t say hello. I told myself there was a possibility that maybe he didn’t see me, but deep down I knew that he had.
I continued across the playground and walked over to Magnus’s house. He was in the garage, working on his new moped. I didn’t want to talk about my mom or Ruben, so I talked about Hanna instead. I told him that Hanna hadn’t replied to my text and I hadn’t seen her in school and I didn’t know what to do. But Magnus wasn’t listening. He said that the rear brake wasn’t doing what it should be doing and that he probably needed to replace the brake shoe or something like that.
I said, “Hey, do you want to go inside and watch TV or something?”
“Not now,” Magnus said, without looking up from what he was doing. “I am trying to figure this out.”
“Fine!” I said. “Stay here and play with your stupid bike.” And then I went home.
I was feeling hungry so I went into the kitchen to see if dinner was nearly ready. But it didn’t seem like my mom had started on dinner yet. Instead she was standing over the sink and pouring bottles of wine down the drain. Maybe her heart was as good as it could get. “What’s for dinner?” I asked.
My mom turned around. “Oh, hello,” she said.
“Hello,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”
“There is lasagne in the fridge. You can warm it up in the microwave if you like.”
After I had eaten I turned the TV on. NRK was showing an old episode of Bondi Rescue. That made me think of Ruben and how weird he was when I saw him at the playground. I didn’t understand why he had ignored me, because the last time I talked to him everything had seemed fine.
I decided to ask Google. According to one discussion forum, it is not uncommon to meet a boy, hit it off, and then suddenly hear nothing but silence from him. Most people seemed to be pretty certain that this meant he really wasn’t that into you. But some people said it could actually mean that he was just really busy, or that he had something on his mind. One girl gave an example of how she hadn’t heard anything from a boy she had recently started dating and it turned out that he had had a death in his family and was upset and didn’t want to talk to anybody. Apparently, it is hard for guys to talk to girls about emotional things, especially when they don’t know you that well.
I felt a glimmer of hope and realized that I was smiling. And then I felt guilty for hoping that Ruben had had a death in his family.
21
Late
I woke up to the smell of bacon and I knew straight away that something was up. It wasn’t Sunday or my birthday or Easter morning or anything, and still I smelled bacon. It made me feel queasy.
I climbed out of bed and opened my bedroom door. With my eyes adjusting to the light, I went into the kitchen in my pajamas.
There were two pans on the stove, one with scrambled eggs and one with bacon. And at the kitchen counter my mom was making pancakes on the big round griddle that used to belong to Grandma. She added small portions of batter to the griddle with a ladle, until it was filled with small perfectly round pancakes. Then she turned around and noticed I was there. She jumped and dropped the ladle on the floor. “Oh, Malin,” she said. “You startled me. Sit down, I’ve made breakfast.” She picked up the ladle from the floor and put it in the sink as I sat down at the table.
“What would you like to eat?” she asked. “There’s eggs and bacon and I am making pancakes.” She got a spatula from the drawer and starting flipping them over. We have never had pancakes for breakfast. Ever.
Then I noticed the suitcases. I had a direct view into the hallway from where I was sitting and there they were. There was one small suitcase on top of a big suitcase and my mom’s burgundy duffel coat was neatly folded on top of them. That’s when I started crying. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but I couldn’t hold back the tears. They ran silently down my cheeks.
With her back to me, my mom said, “So what would you like for breakfast?” She was using the spatula to put the finished pancakes on a cooling rack. She turned and looked at me. My bottom lip was trembling and a tear ran off my cheek and continued down my pyjama top.
My mom looked at me for a moment. Then she said, “You can eat in front of the TV if you like.”
I wasn’t hungry, so I just had a glass of orange juice while watching Good Morning Norway. “Are you sure you don’t want some pancakes?” my mom said, but I didn’t. I just had another glass of orange juice. Then Sigve came in, wearing his
work clothes. He sat down and told me to change the channel. He ate a portion of bacon and eggs and then he had four pancakes with strawberry jam and sour cream. Afterwards, he went into the kitchen and said something to my mom that I couldn’t hear and then he left.
I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth and got dressed in my room. Then I put the books that I needed for school in my backpack, and put it over my left shoulder.
When I came back to the living room my dad was standing next to the suitcases with the car keys in his hands. He said he was taking my mom to the airport and that he could give me a ride to school if I wanted.
“I want to go to the airport,” I said. My dad said I couldn’t because the airport is forty minutes away from Haasund and I would be late for school. My eyes filled with tears again and my mom said that I could come to the airport if I wanted.
“No one has died from being late for school once in a while,” she said. I wiped my tears away with the back of my hand and put my coat on.
We arrived at the airport at 7.49 a.m. My dad helped my mom take the suitcases inside and then he carried the big suitcase to the baggage drop-off.
I wanted to say goodbye to my mom at the gate but I wasn’t allowed to go through security because I didn’t have a boarding card.
“We’ll say goodbye here,” my mom said.
“Please don’t leave,” I said.
“Don’t make this harder than it already is.” My mom’s voice was sharp so I didn’t say anything else.
And then, in a much milder voice, she said, “I will be back on the twentieth of April. And we can write to each other and talk on the phone. Every day.” I didn’t answer.
The Unpredictability of Being Human Page 8
