Somewhere Else

Chapter 4: Where the Heart is (i)

When I get back to the apartment in the evening, Aksel isn't home yet. Which is strange. He gets off work at four-thirty, and is usually back by five.

And then I remember. He's still angry with me, isn't he? Maybe that's why he's not back yet. He doesn't want to come home to me.

Aksel is the only person I really know in this city. And now, he's avoiding me.

It's only seven, and I haven't had dinner, but I crawl into bed. Maybe I can sleep my life away.

But as I lie in bed, huddled under the covers, I find that I can't sleep. I close my eyes, trying to breathe evenly, but I can only feel my breaths speeding up in frustration. There is a sharp pain in my head that won't go away. It's been there all day and the paracetamol tablets I bought earlier haven't done much to mitigate it.

After flipping from my side back onto my stomach, I give up on the notion of sleep. Scrambling up, I reach over to grab my phone off the end table. Maybe I should call Aksel. Or text him.

Text, I decide. If he's still angry, he might ignore my call.

Tapping at the screen of my phone, I pull up the text conversation under his name, my fingers tensing to type out a message. To ask him where he is. But I hesitate. And then, instead of typing on the keyboard, I press top left corner of the screen to go back. A spark of rebellion has started burning within me.

Screw texting him. If he doesn't want to talk to me, doesn't even want to come home to see me, I don't want to talk to him either.

That thought sends a wave of pain crashing through me – so sharp, so sudden, that I almost have to blink back tears.

I sit in the dark, my eyes dry and aching, staring at my messages inbox for a while. I have all my old messages in here. I've changed my SIM card, but not my phone. I bought this phone last year in Germany. It still has all the text messages I've received from the people I know back there.

I open one of the most recent conversations – it's the one with Gabi and Tessa. The last messages were about the cucumber faux pas I'd had at Alepa just earlier this week. I tap 'details' to go into a page with their contact details and I stare for a long moment.

I miss my friends. I miss being able to text them and arrange a meet-up within the next hours or so. I miss being back home with them.

Before I think it through, my thumb has landed on the phone-shaped icon beside Gabi's name. The screen changes, and I watch the phone ring.

Gabi picks up after two rings. She answers her phone the usual way, almost absently saying her surname, before she realises it's me. "Emi? Is that you?"

I sit there speechless for a moment - so good it is to hear a friendly German voice. "Hey," I croak. I'm clutching my phone over-tightly. "It's me."

"Is something wrong?" My oldest friend asks, in her usual gentle way. She can always read me so well.

"No. Nothing. Sorry." I frown down at the bedspread, scuffing my toes against the fabric. "I just..."

"There's something wrong," says Gabi, a pinch of steel creeping into her voice. "You wouldn't sound like this if there wasn't. And you wouldn't be calling at this hour."

Shit. "I know it's late. I wasn't thinking. I'll let you––"

"Stop, Emi. Tell me what's wrong."

"It's cold," I say, cradling my phone between both hands, as if the electrical current running through the gadget could warm me up. But external heating doesn't work, when the cold is coming from somewhere deep inside. "I..." All of a sudden, I feel the tears flooding my eyes. My voice starts to wobble. "It's so, so cold. And it's so dark. All the time." I can't seem to say anything else.