“Do you think Kåre has gone out tonight?” I asked.
“Yes, he has,” Jan Vidar said. “He’s at Richard’s.”
“Yet another reason not to go there,” I said.
There was nothing wrong with Kåre, but neither was there anything right. Kåre had large protruding ears, thick lips, thin, sandy hair, and angry eyes. He was invariably angry, and probably had good reason to be. The summer I began at the school he had been in the hospital with broken ribs and a broken wrist. He had been in town with his father to pick up some building materials, plasterboard, and they had put the sheets on the trailer behind the car, but failed to secure them properly so, as they were approaching Varodd Bridge, Kåre’s father had asked him to get out and sit in the trailer to make sure the materials didn’t move. He had been blown off along with the materials and knocked senseless. We laughed at that all autumn, and it was still one of the first things that came to mind whenever Kåre made an appearance.
Now he had got himself a moped and had started hanging around with the rest of the moped gang.
On the other side of the bend was Liv’s house, Liv, for whom Jan Vidar had always had a soft spot. I could control myself. She had a nice body, but there was something boyish about her humor and manner that seemed to cancel out her breasts and hips. Besides, I had been sitting in front of her in the bus once when she waved her hands at some of the other girls, waved them about madly, and then said, “Yuck, they’re so horrible! Those long hands of his! Have you seen them?” Surprised by the lack of reaction — the girls she was addressing were staring straight at me — she turned to me and blushed in a way I had never seen her blush, thereby removing any doubt that may have lingered about whose hands she found so disgusting.
Below was the community center, then came a short but steep hill down to the shop where the vast Ryen Plain began and finished at the airport.
“I think I’ll have a smoke,” I said, nodding in the direction of the bus stop on the other side of the community center. “Shall we stand there for a bit?”
“Go on, you have a smoke,” Jan Vidar said. “It’s New Year’s Eve after all.”
“How about a beer as well?” I suggested.
“Here? What’s the point of that?”
“Are you in a bad mood or what?”
“Depends what you call bad.”
“Oh come on now!” I said. I took off my rucksack, found the lighter and the packet of cigarettes, fished one out, shielded it against the wind with my hand, and lit up.
“Want one?” I asked, proffering the packet.
He shook his head.
I coughed and the smoke that seemed to get trapped in the upper part of my throat sent a feeling of nausea through my stomach.
“Agh, shit,” I said.
“Is it good?” Jan Vidar asked.
“I don’t usually cough,” I said. “But the smoke went down the wrong way. It’s not because I’m not used to it.”
“No,” Jan Vidar said. “Everyone who smokes takes it down the wrong way and coughs. It’s a well-known phenomenon. My mother has been smoking for thirty years. Every time she smokes it goes down the wrong way and she coughs.”
“Ha ha,” I said.
Around the bend, out of the darkness, came a car. Jan Vidar took a step forward and stuck out his thumb. The car stopped! He rushed over and opened the door. Then he turned to me and waved. I threw away the cigarette, slung the rucksack onto my back, grabbed the bag, and walked over. Susanne stepped out of the car. She bent down, pulled a little lever, and slid the seat forward. Then she looked at me.
“Hi Karl Ove,” she said.
“Hi Susanne,” I said.
Jan Vidar was already on his way into the darkness of the car. The bottles clinked in the bag.
“Do you want to put the bag in the trunk?” Susanne suggested.
“No thanks,” I said. “It’s fine.”
I got in, squeezed the bag down between my legs. Susanne got in. Terje, who was behind the wheel, turned around and looked at me.
“Are you hitchhiking on New Year’s Eve?” he asked.
“We-ell. .,” Jan Vidar hedged, as if he considered that this was not actually hitchhiking. “We’ve just been pretty unlucky this evening.”
Terje put the car in gear, the wheels spun around until they caught up with the engine, and we rolled down the hill and onto the flat.
“Where are you going, boys?” he asked.
Boys.
What an idiot.
How could he go around with a perm and imagine it looked good? Did he think he looked tough with the moustache and the perm?
Grow up. Lose twenty kilos. Get rid of the stache. Get your hair cut. Then we can start talking.
What did Susanne see in him?
“We’re going to Søm. To a party,” I said. “How far are you going?”
“Well, we’re just going to Hamre,” he answered. “To Helge’s party. But we can drop you at the Timenes intersection if you like.”
“Great,” Jan Vidar said. “Thanks. Very nice of you.”
I looked at him. But he was staring out of the window and didn’t catch my look.
“Who’s going to Helge’s then?” he asked.
“The usual suspects,” Terje said. “Richard, Ekse, Molle, Jøgge, Hebbe, Tjådi. And Frode and Jomås and Bjørn.”
“No girls?”
“Yes of course. Do you think we’re stupid?”
“Who then?”
“Kristin, Randi, Kathrine, Hilde. . Inger, Ellen, Anne Kathrine, Rita, Vibecke. . Why? Would you like to join us?”
“No, we’re going to another party,” I said before Jan Vidar could say a word. “And we’re pretty late already.”
“Especially if you’re going to hitch,” he said.
Ahead of us, the airport lights came into view. On the other side of the river, which we crossed the very next second, the little slalom slope below the school was bathed in light. The snow had an orange tint.
“How’s it going at commercial school, Susanne?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said from her inviolable seat in front of me. “How’s it going at Cathedral School?”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“You’re in the same class as Molle, aren’t you,” Terje said, sending me a quick glance.
“That’s right.”
“Is that the class with twenty-six girls?”
“Yes.”
He laughed.
“Quite a few class parties then?”
The camping site, snow-covered and forlorn, appeared on one side of the road; the little chapel, the supermarket, and the Esso garage on the other. The night sky above the rooftops of the houses huddled together on the hillside was riven with flares and flashes from fireworks. A crowd of children stood around a Roman candle in the parking lot, it was shooting up tiny balls of light that exploded in a myriad of sparks. A stream of cars crawled, bumper to bumper, along the road that ran parallel to ours for a stretch. On the other side was the beach. The bay was hidden beneath a white layer of ice that fissured and broke into a sea of blackness a hundred meters out.
“What time is it?” Jan Vidar asked.
“Half past nine,” Terje said.
“Shit. That means we won’t manage to get drunk before twelve,” Jan Vidar said.
“Have you got to be home by twelve?”
“Ha ha,” said Jan Vidar.
A few minutes later Terje pulled in by the bus stop at the Timenes intersection, and we climbed out and waited under the bus shelter with our bags.
“Wasn’t the bus supposed to leave at ten past eight?” Jan Vidar asked.