One evening she called me.
“Hi, Karl Ove, this is Rita,” she said.
“Rita?” I repeated.
“Yes, you cretin. Rita Lolita.”
“Oh, yes,” I said.
“I have a question for you,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Would you like to date me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“One more time. Would you like to date me? It’s a simple question. You’re supposed to say yes or no.”
“I don’t know. .” I said.
“Oh, come on. If you don’t want to, just say so.”
“I don’t think I do. .” I said.
“Alright then,” she said. “See you at school tomorrow. Bye.”
And she hung up. The next day I behaved as if nothing had happened, and she behaved as if nothing had happened, though she was perhaps even keener to get a dig in whenever the opportunity arose. She never mentioned it, I never mentioned it, not even to Jan Vidar or Kjetil, I didn’t want to be one up on them.
After I had said goodbye to Mom and she had switched the vacuum cleaner back on, I wrapped myself up warm in the hall and ventured out, my head ducked into the wind. Dad had opened one garage door and was dragging out the snowblower. The gravel inside was snow-free and dry, which aroused a faint unease in me, as always, because gravel belonged outdoors, and whatever was outdoors should be covered in snow, creating an imbalance between inside and outside. As soon as the door was closed I didn’t think about it, it never crossed my mind, but when I saw it. .
“I’m just off to see Per,” I shouted.
Dad, who was having a tremendous battle with the snowblower, turned his head and nodded. I half-regretted having suggested meeting on the hill, it might be too close, my father tended to have a sixth sense when it came to deviations from the norm. On the other hand, it was quite a while now since he had taken any interest in me. On reaching the mailbox I heard the snowblower start. I looked up to check whether he could see me. He couldn’t, so I walked down the hill, hugging the side to reduce the chance of being observed. At the bottom I stopped and gazed across the river while I waited. Three cars in succession drove past on the other side. The light from their headlights was like small stabs of yellow in the immense grayness. The snow on the flats had turned the color of the sky, whose light seemed to be enmeshed by the falling darkness. The water in the channel of the iced-up river was black and shiny. Then I heard a car charging down along the bend a few hundred meters away. The engine sounded tinny, it must have been an old car. Tom’s probably. I peered up the road, raised a hand as it appeared around the bend. It braked and came to a halt beside me. Tom rolled down the window.
“Hi, Karl Ove,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
He smiled.
“Did you get an earful?” I asked.
“What a stupid bastard, he is,” said Jan Vidar, sitting in the seat beside him.
“No big deal,” Tom said. “So, you boys are going out tonight?”
“Yes. And how about you?”
“May have a wander.”
“Everything okay otherwise?”
“Yep, fine.”
He looked at me with those good-natured eyes of his and smiled.
“Your stuff’s in the trunk.”
“Is it open?”
“Yep.”
I went around and opened the trunk, took the two red-and-white bags lying among the clutter of tools, toolboxes, and those elastic thingies with hooks to secure stuff to the car roof.