“What does our legal expert say?”
As luck would have it, I had Mom on my side too.
“Of course she can have wine.”
Not that it mattered much what I drank with my food. It was the principle of the thing.
When we were finished eating, they gave me a card that included a little map I was supposed to follow out the restaurant and around the corner. There stood the pink Vespa with a big ugly bow on the handlebars. I couldn’t believe my eyes! Dad had completely ignored my wish for travel money and instead blew thirty thousand kronor on a Vespa.
“But I said…”
“A ‘thanks’ will do,” said Dad.
I hated myself. Of course I should have been grateful, should have thrown my arms around Dad’s neck, but there I stood, rooted to the spot, my body full of conflicted emotions. What was wrong with me?
After dessert we sat there, quiet and full, staring at each other across the table. At regular intervals I checked my phone. The congratulations were streaming in on Facebook, but I hadn’t heard from Amina yet.
“I think I have to take off soon,” I said.
Dad was annoyed, of course. Here they had organized a birthday dinner for me, and I was just going to leave.
“I’m going out with Amina,” I said, putting on my jacket. “Thank you so much for dinner and the present.”
“Are you taking the Vespa?” Dad asked.
I looked at my wineglass. Was that it? He knew I couldn’t drink if I had the Vespa.
“Don’t worry,” Mom said. “We’ll find a way to get it home tonight.”
She stood up with a melancholy smile and I closed my eyes as we hugged. Suddenly I felt so fucking unhappy. Regret, longing—a deep ache burned inside me, and I held on to Mom for a long time.
Dad didn’t get up from the table. Our hug was an awkward, cold number. I saw how they gazed after me as I left.
* * *
The heat of late summer has a certain smell. When the hot weather has stuck around long enough, it penetrates the air in a way that only a steady rain can get rid of.
I crossed Fjeliev?gen and walked past the sporting fields. It smelled like apples and sauna, and someone was bouncing a ball against the concrete wall of the nearby running track. Cheerful voices and unbridled laughter rose above the monotonous traffic buzz on Ringv?gen.
I didn’t really have any plans at all. When I’d spoken to Amina on Thursday night, I’d said I didn’t feel like doing anything. I would go out to eat with Mom and Dad and then head home and chill.
But now it felt wrong to waste the night. The wine had pepped me up and I had traded my Saturday shift so I could sleep away the whole next morning if I wanted to. I texted Amina, but when she didn’t respond within a minute I called instead.
“What are you up to?” I asked.
There was a crackle. A small thud.
Amina disappeared for an instant, but soon returned with a clearer voice. She was panting slightly and seemed worked up.
“I’m with Chris,” she said.
“Chris?”
Something hardened in my chest.
“What are you doing with Chris?”
She was slow to answer.
“Oh, just … we’re, like, hanging out.”
For a moment no one said anything. What was going on? Were Amina and Chris spending time together without me?
“We were going to surprise you.”
That sounded like a white lie.
“Are you at Chris’s apartment? I can be there in five minutes.”
“Five minutes?” Amina said.
Next thing she hung up on me.
What was going on? I knew Amina would never go behind my back. She would never do anything with Chris, not a chance, not without talking to me first. But I could hear in her voice that something wasn’t right.
I thought of the sick story Linda had told me in City Park and started walking faster, past Polhem, down toward the community garden. For a brief time in ninth grade I was dating a guy who was in his last year at Polhem. Amina and I cut school after lunch a couple times, just to sit on the hidden playground at the corner, chain-smoking and doing away with our teen angst as we waited for the guys with driver’s licenses and their daddies’ cars, which gave them enormous status among kids our age.
My phone rang as I turned onto Chris’s street.
“Hey,” Amina said breathlessly. “Wait outside. I’ll come down.”
“Why?”
I scrutinized the yellow building at the end of the street and saw the flicker in the stairwell before the lights came on.
“I’m on my way,” Amina panted.