You by Zoran Drvenkar Page B

retching, you fight it and fight it and sink back, draw your knees up to your chest and become a warm, pulsating ball.
    … at last …
    Sleep.
    This time it’s a different There. You’re not at the fjord, you’re with your friends, time has been merciful and taken you along. In reverse. It’s right after school, you know the day and the year and it’s reassuring,because you also know what’s going to happen.
It’s absolutely certain
. And right now you would give your soul for a little certainty.
    You’re in a freeze-frame. Your girlfriends are frozen in that moment that has already been and will never be again. You’re sitting in Ruth’s room. You know that Coldplay’s first CD is going to play through the speakers at any moment. Ruth has all their albums, but is only allowed to put on this one, because you’ve decided that
Parachutes
is authentic and everything else is just homespun pop for teenyboppers. Whatever you are, you’ve never been teenyboppers. Or as Nessi once put it:
We’re far too old to be young
.
    You’re lying stretched out on the floor with your head in Schnappi’s lap. Above you is the moss-green ceiling that you painted together; sometimes flakes fall down on your heads because you had to go and apply the paint too thickly. Schnappi looks at you like a photograph that only comes to life when you let it.
    Soon
.
    It’s autumn, it’s a good nine months ago. Your hair was long at the time, then before Christmas you went to the hairdresser and for the next few months your girls called you Frenchie. Yes, your hair has grown since then, but you keep it short because you’ve always thought it ridiculous that you’ve all got the same hairdo. Long, long, long.
    Schnappi with her hair that’s like black silk, Ruth and her blond fringe with which she tries in vain to hide the pimples on her forehead, Stink who’s dyed her mane dark red as long as you’ve known her, and Nessi who looks like an angel and makes you sigh every time she piles up her golden hair and shows her neck. It was a good step on your part to change your hairstyle.
    In a minute
.
    Ruth sits cross-legged on the bed with a magazine in her lap, she’s flicking through it, her tongue peeps out between her lips. Stink sits opposite her on the windowsill with a cigarette in her hand, even though smoking’s forbidden at Ruth’s house, but Stink can’t help it. You remember she actually squeezed out a tear when Ruth told her she couldn’t smoke. Stink is no smoker, but on the other hand she doesn’t like anyone telling her she can’t do something.
    You know what she’s going to say next. She’s going to ask you what’s so funny about her not wanting to have anything more to do with that guy. You know your reaction, too. All thoughts and words are still frozen. Cigarette smoke floats like a charcoal line in the air.
    You breathe out.
    Now
.
    “… so funny about it?” Stink asks defiantly. “Axel’s an idiot, do I look like someone who wants to be with an idiot?”
    “For three months now,” says Ruth.
    “That was never three months!”
    “Then a quarter of a year.”
    You laugh, Stink rolls her eyes and asks what’s so funny about it. You think it is incredibly funny, and if Stink wasn’t in such a stinky mood she’d laugh too, but of course that’s not going to work, it would make the joke less funny.
    A breeze drifts through the window and scatters the smoke around the room. You inhale the smell deeply and wish you were brave enough to have one too.
    “Don’t even think about it,” Ruth says from the bed.
    “I’ll think what I like,” you tell her.
    Ruth holds up the magazine. You all look at it for a moment and shake your heads. You’re evaluating actresses. You’re cruel. Apart from a few exceptions you think they’re all bitches who make too much money. Nessi’s the only one who knows all their names.
    “Cate Blanchett,” she says.
    “Show me,” says Stink.
    Ruth holds the magazine out