Our Own Little Paradise E-Book

Marianne Kaurin

• Herausgeber: Arctis US
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 194

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

na has no plans for the summer. Suddenly, she finds herself lying in front of the entire class, telling them she is going to the Mediterranean for three weeks. And then the lie keeps growing and growing via social media. The only problem is that the new boy in class has moved to Ina's neighborhood and he will easily find out that she is not in the Mediterranean. Perhaps the best summer holiday is the one you thought would be the worst? A warm, believable story about friendship, first love, and social media from Norwegian author Marianne Kaurin.

Leseprobe

Marianne Kaurin

Our own little Paradise

Translated from the Norwegian by Olivia Lasky

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

are from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

This translation has been published with the financial support of NORLA, Norwegian Literature Abroad.

W1-Media, Inc.

Arctis Books USA

Stamford, CT, USA

Copyright © 2022 by W1-Media Inc. for this edition

Text copyright © Marianne Kaurin

Syden first published by H. Aschehoug & Co. (W. Nygaard) AS, 2018

Published in agreement with Oslo Literary Agency

First hardcover English edition published by

W1-Media Inc./Arctis USA 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

The Library of Congress Control Number: 2021944680

English translation copyright © Olivia Lasky, 2022

Cover art and hand lettering by Friederike Ablang

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

ISBN978-1-64690-618-5

www.arctis-books.com

Today’s the last day. Just a few hours left. Then it’s over.

This isn’t the kind of ending you need to cry about. There’s no ax murderer or meteorite or plague. This is a good ending. Most people have been looking forward to it, counting down the weeks on the calendar, packing bags, and buying flip-flops. I’ve been telling people that I’m excited. It’ll be so nice, I say, as I calculate how much time we’re talking about.

I’ve always liked counting things. Days and minutes. Hair ties, pens, friends. It kind of just happens automatically. I have fourteen purple pencils in my pencil case, even though my favorite color is blue. There are forty-eight steps from the third floor down to the backyard and forty-two steps over to the ugly sign that welcomes you to Chaplin Court. I’ve already been alive for over four thousand days. I’ve lived in six apartments, in three towns. I’ve been in six different grades. I’ve had three friends with names that start with the letter m. I don’t talk to any of them now, but m is my favorite letter.

If someone asked me how many steps there are between the gym and the classroom, I’d be able to give them the answer. And now I’m standing right here, right outside the gym, on my way to the classroom. The asphalt is sizzling, and the flag is flying. Olivia and Emma are leaning against the fence bordering the high school like they can’t wait to get started there. They’re standing in the group everyone wants to be in—they are the group. All of them have tight tops and long hair. Emma is holding up her phone, trying to get the whole gang into a picture as they giggle.

I walk past them with my mouth shut. It’s best to count in your head, I think, and see Olivia making a duckface into the camera before turning back to the others.

Marcus is standing with a group of boys by the flagpole. He’s wearing a red T-shirt and his face and arms are already tan. I can hear his laughter all the way over here, even though I’m more than sixty steps away from that wonderful sound. I really should count out loud when I’m walking past him just so he might notice that I actually exist, but then I’d be the weird girl, and it’s already enough to be the new one.

Joanna and some of the other girls from class are standing by the entrance, staring longingly at the swings. Joanna is wearing a windbreaker even though it’s about a hundred degrees out, and she still has her bike helmet on. They’re talking about a Girl Scout camp they’re going to after their family vacations. It’s going to be tons of fun, I hear them say. I might have been able to join this group. Maybe I could have even gone to camp as well. But all I can think about is over by the flagpole and the middle school, where there are people who could really lift me up.

So I do as I always do: I just say hi and speed toward the entrance, up the stairs to the second floor, and into the classroom with the windows facing the playground. The classroom that’s always quiet, like it’s waiting for something.

I’ve just settled in by the window to get a good view of a certain flagpole when the door swings open. A headful of curls pops in—a boy.

“Hi.”

He stands in the doorway, staring at me, only his head in view. I’ve never seen him before, so I just stand there. He smiles. His eyes are big.

“This is 6A, right?”

He takes a step backward into the hallway, closes the door, and then opens it again. He was probably checking the schedule hanging outside. I nod and hurry away from the window. I sit down at my desk and pretend I’m doing something important as I root around in my pencil case.

“What’s your name?” he asks, stepping into the classroom.

He looks around and smiles, like he’s never been in a classroom before, like this classroom is so different and so much nicer than any other ordinary classroom. He has one hand in his pocket and is holding a hat in the other. His T-shirt is from the zoo, and his poop-brown shorts look way too big, sagging in the most uncool way possible. He’s going sockless in some canvas sneakers that were probably white about a hundred years ago. His arms and legs are thin and pale and his curls bounce up and down on his head, even when he’s standing still.

“Nora,” I reply.

“Got it,” he says, smiling even wider. One of his front teeth is crooked.

“I’m Wilmer.”

He doesn’t say anything else—just looks at me like he’s waiting for me to get the conversation going. Like it’s my responsibility somehow. I could’ve asked where he’s from and what he’s doing in our classroom, or whether he likes going to the zoo or about the shorts that are way too big for him, but I don’t have time because now the bell is ringing and after four seconds the level of noise in the classroom is sky-high. The boy named Wilmer leans against the wall in the very back. It doesn’t seem like anyone even notices him. They’re all just laughing and talking and messing around. Because it’s the last day of school—a half-day. Soon it will be over. Three hours with our teacher, Ms. Gustavsen, and then summer break can start.

There are fifty-four days in summer break. I counted on the calendar hanging on the fridge. Fifty-four days is the same as one thousand two hundred and ninety-six hours. Which is seventy-seven thousand seven hundred and sixty minutes. I haven’t calculated the seconds yet, but it’s probably a lot. Millions, even.

Now Ms. Gustavsen is standing in front of us on the very last day of sixth grade. She’s wearing a light-yellow dress for the occasion and quite a bit of makeup. Her lips are a shimmery pink and her hair is gathered in a mushroomy bun on top of her head.

“Welcome, my dears, to the last day of sixth grade,” she says ceremoniously, looking out over the classroom like a queen addressing her subjects.

She takes off her round glasses and puts one end in her mouth, something she does about every other minute. And since she’s always sucking on her glasses and wears so much lipstick, she often has pink behind her ears. There are a lot of people in the class who think Ms. Gustavsen is lame. They mock her waddling walk and make fun of her weird clothes. It seems like Ms. Gustavsen doesn’t care, though. Once she caught Marcus imitating her, waddling around the classroom and cackling like a hen while she watched from the door. Marcus was super embarrassed, but Ms. Gustavsen just laughed.

“You’re a bit of a chicken yourself!” she said as she headed out for yard duty in the neon safety vest that sits a little too snugly on her saggy breasts.

Now she’s pointing toward the wall at the back of the classroom, and everyone turns around. Whispering spreads throughout the room as people spot the unfamiliar boy in the silly clothes. People in this class are very particular about clothes.

“There you are!” Ms. Gustavsen says to the boy who calls himself Wilmer. “It’s so nice you had the chance to come by.”

She goes to the back of the classroom and greets him, pulling him over to the chalkboard at the front of the room.

“We have a visitor!” she announces, grasping his shoulders and the T-shirt from the zoo.

She looks proud, like she’s introducing a newborn baby to her family for the first time.

“And this boy, ladies and gentlemen, will be starting in our class this fall. Today he’s just here to say hi.”

She leans down toward Wilmer.

“You can tell everyone your name,” she continues.

“Wilmer,” he says with a loud, clear voice.

Someone snickers.

“Precisely,” says Ms. Gustavsen. “Wilmer just moved here. Where is it that you live again?”

“Thirty Miller Avenue,” Wilmer says. “Building F.”

He sounds like a little boy who just learned to recite his own address.

“Precisely,” Ms. Gustavsen says again. “That’s Chaplin Court, isn’t it?”

Now there are even more people who snicker. I don’t know what’s so funny about Chaplin Court, apart from the fact that its nickname is Craplin and that it would definitely win first prize if there were a contest for the ugliest place you could possibly live.

“Nora lives in Chaplin Court, too,” Ms. Gustavsen says, pointing at me. “So you can walk to school together after summer break.”

I actually do like Ms. Gustavsen, but right now she’s really starting to annoy me. Why does she get to decide that I’m going to hang out with a guy with big shorts and zoo T-shirts just because he lives in Chaplin Court, too? Why does she have to talk about Chaplin Court at all? It’s nice that Ms. Gustavsen is trying to help me make friends, though. She’s been trying to do that ever since I started here at the beginning of the year. But I need friends who bring me up, not down, and Wilmer seems like he’s definitely the type to bring me down.

Wilmer is finally allowed to leave the front of the room and sit on a chair at the very back. He tries to meet my eyes when he walks past my desk as if we’re already best friends. Just because we live close to each other and met ten seconds before everyone else came into the classroom. I quickly look the other way.

“Ms. Gustavsen!”

Olivia is waving an arm and starts talking.

“Can we go around the class so everyone can talk about what they’re doing over the summer?” she asks.

It seems like a lot of people think this is a great idea. Majorca, Mexico, and France are shouted out. Olivia has gotten halfway out of her chair and is waving her arms to try to organize what apparently so many people want to take part in. Ms. Gustavsen suggests that maybe not everyone needs to participate, but Olivia is so worked up she doesn’t even hear her.

“Vanessa can start!” she shouts, pointing at the desk by the window in the first row.

One of my legs starts trembling and my mouth goes dry. Then Vanessa starts. She’s going to southern Italy for three weeks. Olivia points to Theo so that everyone will understand that we’re moving from front to back, desk by desk. I count to ten and put my hand on top of my leg so it won’t tremble as much. Ten desks until it’s my turn. Theo is going to Croatia. Sara is going to Spain for a few weeks. Simon, who sits behind Sara, is going to Florida. He speaks in a loud, clear voice, and several people sigh enviously. Alexandra, behind Simon, says she wishes she were the one traveling as far as Florida but she’s only going to Denmark.

“But next year,” Alexandra continues proudly, “we’re going to Thailand for four weeks.”

There are six left until it’s my turn. Matt is going to Greece. Vera to Dubai. Everyone has plans for the summer, and everyone wants to tell the class all about them. Everyone is traveling. Abroad. People in this class are very concerned with traveling abroad. There was even a contest for who’d been to the most foreign countries. Emma won with twenty-seven.

I look at Ms. Gustavsen and then down at my desk as I hear that Olivia will be at a resort in Portugal for two weeks. I don’t even really know what a resort is but it sounds nice. Soon it will be my turn. Soon I have to talk. My stomach is pounding, almost all the way up to my heart.

“My goodness,” Ms. Gustavsen says. “So many of you are going out into the world! Do you know what I’ll be doing?”

There are two people left before I have to talk, so it’s fine with me that Ms. Gustavsen takes over for a bit while I can think some more about my own plans.

“I bought a little cabin! By a lake deep in the woods. My own little resort, you might call it. And I’ll be spending the whole summer there, just reading and eating good food. That’ll be nice, too, don’t you think?”

No one responds, but a few people nod and some others grunt a little bit. As though Ms. Gustavsen’s vacation plans stink. I mean, who wants to sit by a lake in the woods and read books?

Marcus is up next. He sits two desks ahead of me. I spend six hours every single day looking at his back. That’s quite a lot of minutes if you add up a whole school year. I know his back by heart—I know exactly how it looks when he coughs or laughs, the small movements between his shoulder blades. I notice as soon as he gets a new sweater. I’ve probably spent two thousand hours imagining how it would be to let my hand glide from his neck down over the back I’m always staring at.

Marcus says that he’s going to their cabin in the south of France first, and that they’re leaving early tomorrow morning. Then he’s spending a few weeks in Spain. He nods at Sara.

“But what I’m most excited about,” he continues eagerly, “is going to London.”

He looks around the classroom to make sure everyone is paying attention.

“Because then my dad and I are going to a Chelsea soccer match. And that’ll be crazy cool, since he’s as big a Chelsea fan as I am.”

He smiles happily and turns around to face Julie. The skin on my face heats up like a kettle. Because I sit right behind Julie. So he’s almost looking at me. There’s just a few inches until his eyes meet mine.

Julie starts carefully, her voice a bit hoarse. Imagine if she doesn’t have anything to tell, that not much is happening in fifty-four days, that she’s just going to be at home. But of course that isn’t the case. Nobody’s just at home when it’s summer.

Julie is going to Cyprus with her mom, and then she’s going to France with her dad.

“That’s what’s so nice about having divorced parents,” Julie says, happy as a clam. “You get two trips abroad, so it’s like double the fun.”

She turns in her seat and looks at me. Everyone is looking at me. Ms. Gustavsen, too. The classroom is silent. Completely silent. I know I need to open my mouth, that they’re all wondering where I’m going this summer, what exciting plans I have with my family, what I’m going to do. I look from one to the other, at the expectant faces, but my mind is blank. There isn’t a single word in there. I gape for a few seconds, clear my throat, and then a weak sound emerges from my vocal cords.

“This summer,” I say, looking at Marcus.

He looks back at me. Now he’s looking at me!

“This summer,” I say once more, waiting to make up my mind.

“This summer, I’m going to the tropics.”

Ms. Gustavsen nods encouragingly and smiles. Marcus is still looking at me. Everyone is looking at me. They want more.

“And I’m really excited about that,” I say, imagining the pools and waterslides and the long white beaches, the parasols and the kids’ club. Which I’m too big for, of course.

“I’m going to swim and sunbathe and relax. Just do . . . tropical things. For weeks. I’m leaving early tomorrow.”

Suddenly I hear a snicker. Or to be precise, two. Olivia is leaning toward Emma, holding her hand over her mouth and whispering something.

“There’s no place that’s called the tropics,” Emma says matter-of-factly.

She’s vice president of the student council and is going to be a lawyer when she grows up, just like her mother.

“It just sounds so lame to say ‘the tropics.’”

My leg is trembling again. Now my left arm, too. Can’t we just move on now? Can’t someone else take over?

“Where are you really going, Nora? ‘The tropics’ isn’t a country.”

They snicker again. Some others laugh, too. Luckily, Ms. Gustavsen takes over.

“It’s quite common to say ‘the tropics’ even though it isn’t a particular country on the map,” she says. “It’s what you call warm places where you can relax and swim and have fun in the sun. Just like Nora’s going to do.”

Ms. Gustavsen points at me in an irritating way, as though everyone in the class is senile and has suddenly forgotten who’s going to the tropics.

“So the tropics can kind of be anywhere.”

Ms. Gustavsen looks at Martina, who starts talking about her vacation plans. Luckily. Enough about the tropics. Martina is going to the mountains and on a bike tour. Patrick is going on a road trip for three weeks. Joanna is visiting her grandparents in northern Norway. Emma is going to the Canary Islands, which are in the tropics. She looks at me when she says “the tropics,” pronouncing each syllable as if she were explaining it to a three-year-old or someone with brain damage.

“But before that, I’m going to Paris for a week to shop,” she says proudly, looking at Olivia.

Ms. Gustavsen takes over when the rest of the class has talked about their summer plans.

“Then let’s move on,” she says, but then she catches sight of Wilmer in the back. “Ah, but we forgot to ask you, Wilmer! Do you have any exciting summer plans?”

Everyone turns to look at him. He smiles.

“I’m going to the tropics, too,” he says, and looks at me.

What did he mean by that?

“Nah,” he continues. “I’ll be at home.”

He looks at Ms. Gustavsen.

“My dad is broke, so there won’t be any vacation this year.”

He shrugs and looks out at the class. Of course there are a few snickers. There’s always someone who snickers.

“No tropics for me,” Wilmer says, smiling.

He says it as though it’s totally fine that he isn’t going anywhere. It looks like he’s actually excited about summer break, even though he’s just going to be at home. With his broke dad. In Craplin Court.

Now I’ve got an idea,” Ms. Gustavsen says when the bell rings for last period.

She looks like a puppy who’s about to be allowed to run free in the woods. Her yellow dress has sweat rings under each arm and her hair is plastered to her forehead.

“I read about something in a teachers’ magazine that I thought sounded like so much fun! I want you all to get a pen, and I’ll come around with a piece of paper for each of you.”

She shuffles around the classroom, the scent of her strong perfume trailing behind her. A piece of paper lands on my desk. I stare at Marcus’s back. He’s sitting completely still with the piece of paper in his left hand.

“Now I want everyone to write their name at the top of the piece of paper you’ve just gotten,” Ms. Gustavsen says, pointing at her paper. “And then I want you to write three sentences—three things you hope will happen over the summer.”

She smiles contentedly and claps her hands together.

“And you’re allowed to dream a bit, too!” she laughs. “You can’t just write things you know are going to happen. There’s no point in that! Be a little crazy. Dare to dream. Then I want you to fold the paper, first once, and then once more.”

She demonstrates with her own piece of paper.

“Afterward I’ll come around and gather all of the papers in this basket. They’ll stay here at school all summer, and then you’ll be able to read what you wrote when vacation is over and you start seventh grade. Doesn’t that sound fun? Then you can see if any of it has actually happened!”

Everyone is sitting bent over their paper, writing. It’s a difficult task. I shut my eyes since it’s easier to think that way. What do I dream about happening? My mind is completely blank. There isn’t even one single dream. I open my eyes again, and the first thing I see is Marcus’s red T-shirt. Then I think of something. I smile as I write, putting my hand over the paper so no one can see. Ms. Gustavsen did say we were supposed to dream. And that’s exactly what I’m doing . . . until someone taps me on the shoulder.

“Can I borrow a pen?”

It’s the kid in the zoo T-shirt.

“I didn’t bring anything with me,” he says, smiling with that crooked front tooth. I can’t decide whether I think it’s cute or ugly.

“I didn’t think there was any point in bringing a pencil case or anything with me when I was just coming to visit.”

I take a pencil out of my case and hand it to him. He smiles and looks down at what I wrote on the sheet. Then he smiles even more. I hurry to cover it up and Wilmer sits back down. I’d had a plan for the last two points, but now I’ve forgotten the whole thing. Just because of Wilmer, who just had to ask me specifically for a pen. I’m still thinking when Ms. Gustavsen says for the third time that everyone has to turn in their papers. I write down some nonsense that will never, ever happen, fold the sheet of paper, and hand it to Ms. Gustavsen. It gets mixed in with everyone else’s dreams. Ms. Gustavsen hugs the basket against her chest like she’s holding a kitten.

“I promise I won’t peek,” she says, laughing at herself.

She probably holds the world record for laughing at herself.

“And then we will see what’s happened next year.”