Page 6 of A Curse for the Homesick

MEET

2013

“You have to tell her,” Kitty said.

“Actually,” I said, “I do not.”

“You do . Reason one—friendship and trust. Reason two—I am tired. Reason three—would it be the worst thing in the world if Linnea realized that being Faerie Queen has consequences? No. Shall I go on?”

We were sitting in the metal stands overlooking the pool. The noise was cacophonous: coaches shouting and bodies splashing and younger siblings having meltdowns by the snack bar, where two mums were selling oatcakes and fudge. The pool was a hulking cement building, one fifty-metre lap pool and one irregularly shaped kiddie pool. The tiles were that yellowish-brownish color where you couldn’t tell if they were supposed to look like that or if they used to be white but had gotten stained.

It was my first swim meet of my last club season—or rather, it should’ve been. My eventual diagnosis, once I’d made it to the hospital, was a fractured scapula. The doctor had told me I’d been very lucky not to have fractured anything else; I’d said lucky was exactly how I felt. There was nothing to give it but time. I didn’t have a sling or a cast, which saved me from talking about it. It had been two months since Midsummer, and I was back in the pool, but only twice a week for easy, slow laps. So the first meet was going on without me. Dan had asked if I’d come cheer on the others. For team morale. For my part, morale was low. Dan had not provided me with any cheerleaders.

It didn’t help that Lukas Fell was in the stands. Soren’s younger brother. He didn’t look anything like Soren, really—Lukas’s hair was brown and curly, and where Soren was lanky, Lukas was solid. The only family member Lukas really looked like was his uncle—Kitty’s dad. When Lukas walked into the pool complex, he looked at Kitty and then at Kitty’s shirt and promptly looked away again.

The shirt in question said Go Tess! Do swimming! Kitty had worn it to all my swim meets since age eleven, and she kept insisting she would stop wearing it when she grew out of it, but that hadn’t happened yet. I was wearing a plain black sweater because when I’d seen my reflection that morning, wearing my Stenland National Swim Club T-shirt, I’d started to cry.

Crying: that was new. I figured it had something to do with my abrupt ceasing of physical activity. Whatever endorphins I’d been relying on to regulate my mood had vacated my body and left me sleeping badly and eating at only bizarre hours. Linnea knew I wasn’t swimming because I was dealing with some obscure injury, but I’d never told her exactly what it was, and I certainly hadn’t told her how I’d gotten it. She had offered to come sit in the stands with me today too, but I didn’t think I could bear it, and Kitty didn’t think she could bear Henrik, so we’d both been relieved when they’d decided to go picnic by the gorge instead.

“You sound bitter,” I said.

“I am bitter,” Kitty shot back. “I am bitter like black coffee spiked with vodka. I am bitter like kale that has not been properly massaged. I am bitter like a woman scorned.”

“Have you been scorned, though?”

“I feel scorned. That counts for something.”

“Speaking of telling Linnea things,” I said.

She gave me a murderous look. “Right. That would go well. ‘Hey, Linnie, I know you’re really keen on your brick of a boyfriend these days, but have you perhaps considered that I am both wittier and nicer to look at? Also, I can braid your hair that way you like, and I already know you snore. Shall we? Become wedded?’”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Sounds pretty good to me.”

“I’m not saying any of that.”

“Why not? If it’s making you miserable.”

“At least this misery is vaguely romantic. If I tell her and she shoots me down, then I’m just the loser who got rejected. No offense.”

The first event was starting. The glare through the windows was so intense, I could hardly see the swimmers. I squinted at the pool and grunted, which was all the response Kitty’s comment deserved.

A grainy voice said over the speaker system: “Take your mark.” My heart upended in my chest in anticipation; I heard that voice in my dreams. A loud beep. I heard that in my dreams too. The swimmers launched off their blocks, and my head seemed to think I was swimming with them. I pressed my palms against the stands.

“Oh, forget it,” Kitty said. “You’re Robot Tess, beep boop. What is love? Cannot compute.”

“If I were not a robot, I would find that hurtful.”

Kitty threw herself back, tossing an arm dramatically across the row of seats behind her. “Why is it that Linnea’s the one who can talk about feelings, but she’s also the only one I can’t talk to about these feelings? And you’re the one who has this whole angry bisexual energy going on—don’t look at me that way—except you have too much of a hard-on for swimming to even figure it out.”

Kitty had told me she was fairly sure she was in love with Linnea last April. She said she wasn’t yet sure if she was gay or bi or just into Linnea specifically but that she would continue to assess the situation and report back in detail. I had felt a stab of panic at the time. There’d been a part of me that had thought I was perhaps too interested in Tana Jonsson’s comings and goings from swim practice, and there had also been a time where we’d been sitting next to each other on a team outing to the movie theater and I had wanted to reach over and grab her hand so badly I’d thought I might die. But when Kitty had told me she was in love with Linnea, I’d felt overcome by the fear that if I could date Kitty, I had to. And I did not want to date Kitty. The thought of dating Kitty made me feel like I was being shoved into a steamer trunk. Although she was indeed very witty and very nice to look at, she nonetheless hated sports and was basically my sister and never fucking shut up. So I’d neatly boxed any feelings I might or might not have had for Tana Jonsson, and I put them on a high shelf with a label that said DO NOT OPEN UNTIL UNIVERSITY.

Angry bisexual energy. I did not dignify Kitty with a response.

“Is this one of the switch-y stroke events?” Kitty asked, squinting at the swimmers. “I could’ve sworn they were just doing butterfly.”

“They are doing butterfly.”

“Are you sure? I thought butterfly was the…you know, whoosh underwater one.”

“That’s breaststroke.”

“Huh. You’d think I’d know all this by now.”

“You would,” I said, “think that.”

“You should sit on the sides and explain more often. This is way more fun than when you’re in the pool. I mean, it’s fun to watch you swim and stuff, assuming you win. Honestly, kind of a buzzkill when you don’t. It was a big relief for all of us when you got good.” Kitty yawned and stretched. “Tess. Tess.” She grabbed my arm. “TessTessTess—”

“What.”

Her eyes were fixed on the doors, and I thought, yes, of course, it was Soren—probably coming to glower at me. But then, Kitty didn’t care when Soren walked into a room, and she had no reason to know that I did, that my heart went TessTessTess when he stepped through a door looking windswept and serious. I followed her gaze to the door, and even as I stared at the person standing there, it wasn’t until she spoke that I processed who it was.

Kitty said, “Your mum is here.”

She was wearing a long camel-colored trench coat and dark sunglasses. Her fair hair was pulled back with a claw clip. She looked, I thought, like a celebrity trying to hide her identity from the paparazzi.

I stood up without knowing I was doing it. I started clambering down the stands, but her gaze was fixed on the swimmers in the water—searching for me, probably. She didn’t look at me until I was right next to her.

“Oh!” she said. “Tess. What are you doing? Why aren’t you in the pool?”

I set my jaw.

“I did email you,” she said, “that I was coming. I thought I’d watch your race, but you aren’t…” I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses. There was a part of me that still flinched when her eyes met mine, like there might still be some remnant of curse lingering there. Also because we had the same eyes. Everyone said so.

“I came all this way,” she said finally.

In the background, I could hear that voice: “Take your mark.”

I gestured to the door with my chin and brushed past her. She hesitated, then followed. Outside, the parking lot was damp. It wasn’t actively raining, but the air still had the feeling of it, and the sky was full of lumbering clouds. Just beyond the lot, the tumbling grass rose into a hill, and from the top of the hill, a dark slab of stone stared down at us. It had a raven carved into one side and Norse runes along the edges. Surrounding it was a half-hearted attempt at a fence. On the whole, it felt like an apt summary of Stenland.

My mum took off her sunglasses and slid them into her handbag. When our eyes met, I flinched, and she regarded me coolly.

“Are you going to acknowledge me at all, then?” she asked.

“Why are you here?”

“I wanted to see you swim. I look at all your race results, you know. You’re good.”

“Well, I’m not swimming. Obviously.”

“Why not?”

“Injury.”

Her frown deepened. “Why didn’t you say anything? Is it serious? You know the doctors here are—Well. If it’s something serious—”

“I’m fine.”

We watched each other. A gust of wind came tearing through, throwing water off the rooftops and splattering my cheeks. The air smelled of chlorine, and I could hear that voice again, “Take your mark.” My mum was waiting for me to say something, but she ran out of patience before I did.

“I don’t know what your dad told you to make you hate me so much—”

“Dad has never said a single bad thing about you.” Heavy in the air was the implication of the reverse: that my mum had said plenty about him.

“Well, what am I supposed to think? You don’t answer my emails, you don’t pick up my calls… I show up here to be supportive, and you act like I’m victimizing you somehow.”

I looked away from her. Fixed my gaze on the Ship of Theseus, parked in its usual corner. A puffin landed on the roof and picked at his feathers.

“Your dad mentioned you were looking at American universities,” my mum said. “I think that’s great. Broadening your horizons. I wish I would’ve done it.” She waited for me to speak, then continued. “Kitty’s mum told me how well you did on your SAT. That’s got to really help. Show the coaches you’re not just a swimmer, you know?” When I still didn’t respond, she added: “I can help you write your essay, if you’d like. I’ve started doing some freelance work, and I’ve edited personal essays. I mean, I can’t do much right, apparently, but at least we know I have a grasp of narrative nonfiction.”

I couldn’t bear the weight of her eyes on me. I just wanted her to look away, at her phone, at anything else. The puffin cocked his head at me curiously.

“You’re behaving like a child,” she said.

“Okay.”

“I don’t know what you think I did to deserve this.”

“You killed someone.” I finally looked at her. “You turned two people to stone, and then you made a career talking about it. And—and telling people how stupid and backward we all are, Dad and me and everyone else. And now you act like we should celebrate you for it.”

“I thought you wanted to get out of Stenland.”

“That doesn’t mean I want you to call Dad stupid.”

“I never said that,” she said. “And you really think that little of me? That I set out to profit off what happened to those people?”

“The Fells.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s not what happened to them. It’s what you did to them.”

“It’s what this island did to them,” she said. “It’s what this island did to me—and to every woman who’s come before us and everyone who’s been turned to stone. You think I’m the only one who’s forgotten to look in the mirror before walking out the door?”

I didn’t answer.

“I should’ve been more careful,” she said. “But I’ve already paid for it. I left so it would never happen to me again.” When I still didn’t say anything, she said: “I just hope, for your sake, you get out of this place while you can.”

Another gust of wind whipped up the hillside, but I felt immovable, stone. I watched my mother cross to a familiar car, and I realized it was Mrs. Sjoberg’s BMW. They were still friends, I supposed. The car was out of the lot with a spray of its tires. I sat on the wet curb and pressed my fingers against my eyes. A car door opened, then closed gently, and I hoped whoever it was would go into the pool without acknowledging my existence. But they didn’t, so I was forced to look up, from muddy shoes to a familiar red sweater, and there was Soren.

I hadn’t spoken to him since the double date that wasn’t. We had most of our classes together, but between his tendencies toward not speaking and mine, we managed to avoid interaction. He had his hands shoved into his pockets, and just like the last time I’d seen him, his hair was damp and curling at the bottom.

“What could you possibly want?” I said.

“I didn’t mean to overhear,” he said.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

“My window was open. I was parked right there.”

And sure enough, there was his truck, just on the other side of an SUV. I pressed my palms against my cheeks and made a low, dejected sound, which made the edge of Soren’s lips turn briefly upward.

“Thank you,” he said. His voice was very level when he said it, and his gaze. I thought about what Henrik had said about Soren, that he was serious, but I thought maybe a better word for him was deliberate . You got the sense that he didn’t do anything accidentally.

“I didn’t know you were there,” I said.

“I figured.”

“Why were you there?”

His eyes moved briefly to the wet stretch of curb beside me, like he was considering sitting, then away again. “My brother wanted to watch the meet.”

“Why?”

“His girlfriend is swimming.”

“Oh,” I said. “And you were waiting in your car?”

Soren nodded once.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to go in.”

“Why?” I asked again.

“Because I didn’t want to see you.”

A beat of silence. Soren scraped a hand up through the back of his hair.

“That’s…rude?”

“You said the same thing to me at Hedda’s.”

I pursed my lips. “Well, take the opportunity to recognize these patterns as they arise.” That earned me a laugh, and I wished I didn’t like the sound as much as I did. Maybe I was still high on adrenaline from the meeting with my mum, or maybe I figured Soren’s rudeness gave me permission to be rude in return, but I found myself saying, “Henrik tells me you either hate me or have been in love with me since we were twelve years old.”

Soren was quiet a moment. “Henrik,” he said finally, “should talk less.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. He raised his right back. Neither of us said anything, though it was quite possible I’d never wanted to say something more. The silence stretched for so long that it became awkward, and then it became funny—because we both had the same trick and neither of us wanted to lose.

I crossed my arms.

He tilted his head to the side.

I checked the time on my phone.

Soren sighed and looked over his shoulder.

“I’ll see you around,” he said finally.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

I wanted to say Then which one is it? but to this point, I could almost play off the conversation as a joke—just two of Henrik’s friends laughing about the ridiculous things he said. If I pressed again, it would be woefully obvious that it wasn’t a joke, really. I didn’t think I could bear to hear Soren say I hate you, actually , but what would be worse was the likelier answer I don’t know where Henrik came up with that; I think you’re very nice; it’s just, you know, your mother killed my parents.

“I’m going to go back inside,” I said, standing up. My butt was wet from the curb. I tried to wipe it off, but felt stupid doing it. “Are you coming?” I realized after I said it that he’d already said See you around.

“Ah. No. I have…errands.”

“I thought Lukas was inside.”

“I’ll pick him up later.”

I waited for him to leave, but he didn’t. Maybe he was waiting for me to leave too.

“I think you sat in some bird shit,” he said.

I looked down at my jeans.

“Bye,” Soren said quietly, “Tess.”

He got back into his car and drove away. I stood in the parking lot for longer than was dignified. When I went back inside, I texted Kitty from the locker room. She arrived a minute later and said, “What happened with your mum?”

“I sat in bird shit, Kitty.”

“Oh. That’s…not good?”

I wanted to tell her about my conversation with Soren in unsparing detail. I wanted her to hear every syllable he’d spoken, and I wanted her to visualize every time he’d swept his hand through his hair. I wanted her to tell me it was obvious he loved me and, thus, that any feelings I might or might not have had would not wind up hurting me. In the end, I couldn’t make myself say his name at all.