"I feel like I'm all grown up,"
I throw my head back and release a laugh that bubbles up from the back of my throat, overflowing like hot water in a neglected kettle, boiling over, splashing everywhere, staining the just-cleaned counters. I run around in circles, fall down, throw up, laugh more.
"I love this. I love this so much," I tell Astrid. She flashes me her signature smile– reserved, lips shut tight. Red-blooded and too cool for you.
"Looks like you do, Izak," she says. I'm so happy I could kill her.
It's July in Sweden– the only month with somewhat decent weather. Time always slows down when July graces town. All the fruits are sweeter. The air smells like earthy pine mixed with wildflowers and the doors are flung open, begging you to enter through them, leave the house, see the world, go go go. True beauty, I think, lies between man and the natural world. And the natural world is true beauty, and what man attempts to craft can be natural, but never part of the natural world. Nature does not seek validation or praise; it simply exists. Thus, can human-made constructs ever be truly beautiful? I don't know. I don't really care, either. My friend from America says everything manmade is ugly. I think that is so very ironic.
Anyway – and that's anyway without an 's' at the end. My friend from America always adds the 's' – despite the Swedish summer's beauty, I never truly find any solace in it. It's the single time of year when my parents fly in from Turkey to visit. I've had the whole house here practically to myself since I was about seven. There were scarce visits from my older brother, but he never really did anything when he was over. It was as if I was being visited by a wet wad of clay every three weeks. I don't really like my brother.
Being all alone wasn't very fun at first but it was all I had. Go to school, come home, hang out with Astrid, solve puzzles, study, read, sleep. Maybe go visit Astrid's grandparents in Stockholm on the weekends. But that's really all there was to it, and really all there still is, minus some useless additions. I've gotten used to being on my own– not in terms of social life but in terms of family. All four of my older sisters are in Turkey, and I only ever talk to one. But my parents are just odd. I'm sure they love me – I hope they love me – and they love each other, but in a weird way. We just don't get along. It's like when they're in the house all of these different minds that have been sculpted out of the most dissimilar rocks are constantly crashing into each other. We're all tossed into a washing machine, tumbling and tumbling.
My mother is from the snow-clad peaks of Northern Pakistan. Landa bazaars, blooming saffron, the harmonious strains of sitar and tabla masterpieces. Within my father resides the warmth of Istanbul's bustling streets , while the muse of Caliph Omar's Basra dances in his blood. Their union is probably a sort of alchemy. Not the sort that makes you live forever, but the sort that's a plain pseudoscientific waste of time. My mother isn't motherly at all; she does not know how to cradle, how to feed, how to hold, how to comfort. My mother is from the snow-clad peaks of Northern Pakistan and her spirit is mountainous just like her homeland. It is not a fault of her making but a fault planted in her by the sun she was raised under. Most days I try not to blame her. Some days I do not have a choice.
My father is absorbed by his work. It seeps into every little pore of his and dissolves into his tissue. He is work and work is him. He's not that bad, if I'm honest.
Whenever they visit, I'm struck by this inescapable feeling of suffocation, like some occult being is clawing at my neck and wringing it with all its might. I can never be in the same room as them for too long or a problem emerges. It's bound to. I would say it's what's written in the stars, but that's pseudoscience, too. So are occult beings. I've been slacking.
This time, when they come around, I can't bear being there for longer than I have to. All I do is shake their hands like they are some employees from Whatever.Co here on business to discuss participating in search engine marketing workshops and not like they are the people that conceived me. They ask how old I am now. I say thirteen, and their eyes grow big and wide like I am a subterranean homesick alien standing before them. I pretend like I did not see the fifth grader boy level toys they brought for me.
When I tell Astrid about this, she frowns in my face. I don't get why it upsets her. It's funny to me.
I say goodnight to them and head to my room – I don't exactly have the freedom to sleep wherever I want like I do when they aren't here – and I don't sleep. I just slip out of the window. The trick is to always be quiet and isolated, so that if you leave nobody will think to check up on you. They won't even miss you. I told Astrid about that, too, and she frowned even harder. But it's hilarious.
The air outside whispers gently and ruffles the leaves of the nearby birch trees. My knees buckle when I land. I stand up, curse under my breath, and dust my jeans. Scattered clouds drift by in the apricot-purple sky, as if teasing the opportunity of downpour. I know where I am going: to Astrid's.
I cross the street, take two left turns, cross another street and then another street and I'm at Astrid's. Her house is one-storey, like ours, and a decaying yellow color. I jump the fence of her balcony and rap on the door till she opens. Her widened eyes shrink and sink back into her face like they've always been when she realizes it's me.
"You scared me, cunt," she spits.
"Pussy. Let's go visit the Ponderer,"
The Ponderer is a crumbling medium-sized statue replicating the Thinker by Rodin, except it's not an official sculpture or anything. One day, Astrid and I and a couple of other friends were walking along some nature trail in the middle of lush green grass, high out of our minds on MD, when we saw the Ponderer. We all laughed at how ugly he was. It was like someone had taken the original sculpture, snipped it's nose off, subjected it to severe physical and psychological torture, waved a magic wand to make it shrink, then fed it to wild boars. After that, visiting the Ponderer always meant going to that same field. Drugs were usually involved.
Astrid and I smoke marijuana with the Ponderer. Everything feels slower and heavier and nicer. I feel my muscles stretch and a soft, fuzzy thing nestle in between my ribs like a little bunny rabbit.
"Astrid," I say, hugging my legs to my chest with my back up against a lonely tree stump.
"The sky looks so sick," she says and gazes upwards. She takes a long hard look at the stars before she takes another drag.
"Astrid,"
"The past couple days my hands have been smelling like lemons. I don't know why. I don't cook with lemon or use any products with it. I think I'm going crazy, Zak. Am I going crazy?"
"Astrid,"
"I think I am going crazy," and then a pause. "What?"
"Will you come to my wedding?"
She passes me the joint and thinks. "If you get married, yeah,"
I frown, but also smile. "What the fuck do you mean if?"
"Like, if you have a wedding, I might come,"
"That doesn't mean anything,"
"You need to stop caring about what things mean."
Silence pervades the air for at least two minutes.
"Yes, I'll come to your wedding,"
"Too bad. Now I'm not inviting you,"
She rips the joint out of my hands and throws a handful of grass at me. "You're never getting married. You're insufferable,"
"Okay,"
"Would you come to mine?"
"Nah,"
"Eat fucking shit, Izak,"
