The Goodbye

”You’re what?”

His voice sparkled through my cell phone.

”I’m on my way to my grandparents,” I barely dared to say.

It was quiet for a while, too quiet, I wanted to

By Eline Wærp

say hello just to break the silence, but I didn’t. Then I heard his voice again, not as loud and clear anymore, but somehow more fragile.

”I thought you were leaving tomorrow?”

I could hear the disappointment in his voice, even thousands of miles away. I could picture him in the video store, slowly putting back a film he was holding seconds ago. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain this.

”Well, my parents decided we’d better leave today, so that we can have more time with my grandparents before we leave for the States.”

I realized immediately that it was the dumbest thing I could ever say. The conversation was moving more slowly now.

“So, I’m not gonna see you for a whole year now?”

His voice broke. My heart began beating faster; I knew I had made a mistake. Why couldn’t I just have pulled myself together and said goodbye to him? I didn’t know what to say.

“Why didn’t you call me?”

He suddenly sounded angry.

“You know I would have come to see you right away, if you’d only bothered to call.”

I really didn’t feel like talking to him in the car with my parents and two little brothers, who were most likely eavesdropping, and I had no good explanation to his question.

“It’s not a big deal, it’s only going to be for a year you know.”

Right after I said that, I realized that it would only make things worse.

“Not a big deal? You’re my best friend, of course it’s a big deal! At least for me,” his temper was getting worse.

Did he think it was easy for me? I had to say goodbye to people all the time, not even knowing whether I’d ever see them again.

“You know what, you’re right. It doesn’t really matter. Have a great life, I gotta go. Bye.”

He hung upon me.

I spent the next three hours of the car ride thinking about that conversation. Would that be our last talk before I left? There was still a month before we were going to leave, but he was going to the southern parts of Norway with his family in a few days. Our last chance to say goodbye was today. This was not the kind of goodbye I had pictured one year ago when my parents told me that we were moving. They were invited to be guest professors at UC Berkeley for a year, and this meant that we had to pack up and leave Tromsø, my hometown, for a year. My other goodbyes hadn’t been like that at all– I had already said goodbye to some of my other friends. But Brage had been my best friend since elementary school, and we knew each other better than we knew ourselves. He could walk in to my house without knocking, and I could go to his house and help his mother cook dinner when he wasn’t even home. When we started secondary school he was one of the few people I knew, and even though we made different friends, we still kept in touch. We had gone through so much together and we knew so much about each other that people thought we were the same person. When we started secondary school people actually thought we were a couple, but as they got to know us, they realized that we were just very good friends.

In particular, there is one incident from middle school that is etched into my mind. Brage and I were on our way home from school when we saw a bag left behind at a bus stop. Curious as I was, I walked over to see what was inside. Brage is more cautious and he tried his best to stop me, saying that it surely belonged to someone, and that I shouldn’t be going over some stranger’s stuff. I just ignored him, and as I extracted a deodorant in one hand and toiletries in another, a man stepped up.

“Uhm, is this your bag, sir?” Brage asked, deeply red-faced.

The man stared at us with a look that could’ve killed.

“It sure is.”

“You see, we just saw this bag sitting here alone. We thought we’d better look for some ID in it, so we could return it to its owner,” Brage said in an unconvincing voice.

The guy looked at me while I was still clutching his deodorant and dressing case with a stupid grin on my face.

“ID, is that so?” He asked me.

When cornered, I tend to panic, and unfortunately this was one of these moments. With a scream I threw his deodorant into the snow and ran for my life. Poor Brage was left alone with the furious man. I don’t know what he said to him; I never dared to ask. However, now Brage think it’s hilarious to tell this story to anyone who will listen to it, and, to my embarrassment, he always exaggerates a little bit more when he describes my reaction.

“You didn’t tell him? Why didn’t you tell him that you were leaving?” Marit’s voice sounded shocked over the phone. Maybe my cheap cell

amplified her voice. Wait a minute; how did she know that I didn’t say goodbye to him? Before I even got the chance to ask how she found out, she said:

“ Was it because it would be too hard? Did you think it would be easier not to say goodbye, or just pretend that you weren’t going to leave?”

I had known her for barely a year; it was only in the end of the school year that we became such good friends, yet she already knew me so well.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I guess I panicked,” I answered.

Why couldn’t I have just told him that it was too hard? Instead, I gave him the impression that our friendship didn’t matter to me, and that leaving wasn’t a big deal.

“How’d you know that I didn’t say goodbye?” I asked her.

She paused for a second, before she continued;

“Oh, everyone knows. He’s devastated. You know, I love you Eline, but this time I think you hurt him really bad.”

A couple of weeks earlier Brage had thrown a goodbye party for me at his house with some of my friends. He invited people whom I wasn’t going to see anymore, because they were going on summer vacation. We had planned to hang out again after the party, yet this was the last time I saw him before I left. We were all having a good time, laughing and talking like we normally do. Suddenly he put on some sad music, and declared that he had a gift for me. The gift was probably the best gift I’ve ever gotten in my entire life. It was a photo album with pictures of my best friends and I; with poems and a letter he had written. Two of my friends who were going to be exchange students that year had gotten some albums earlier, and I was so jealous of them. Apparently he had noticed that, and made me one. Even though the album was big and took up a lot of space in my suitcase, I brought it with me.

I never realized how much he cared about me until then. He was one of my busiest friends; with soccer practice and guitar lessons every day, in addition to his political interests. He actually took time to sit down and put in a lot of effort to make me this photo album, and I didn’t even care to say goodbye to him? I started to understand why he sounded so disappointed on the phone. I texted some of his friends who told me that he had stayed up for a whole night working on my album, and that when they talked to him right after our horrible phone conversation, he was a devastated. I realized that I should have called him earlier.

“Elinee, I’m so glad you could make it!” Marit shrieked before embracing me. “How have you been? I haven’t spoken to you since the day you were leaving for your grandparents,” she added in a more careful tone.

She pulled her brown hair back in a ponytail, smiling at me waiting for me to say oh, I’ve been great! How about you?

I heard another scream behind me;

“Eline, you’re here!”

Katrine practically jumped on me. She was wearing black tights under a long, white t-shirt with pink letters that said Pump Up The Jam.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving in a week,” she said in a sad voice.

“Me neither. And she’s going to California, to Berkeley! How cool is that?” Marit said enthusiastically.

“Hm, what’s Berkeley so famous for?” Katrine asked.

“Well, first of all the free speech movement, and--“ I began, but got interrupted by Marit who was jumping up and down.

“Seriously? That’s where the Cohen’s from the O.C. moved back to in season 4. And I heard that Stephen Colletti from Laguna Beach is going to college there!”

Both Marit and Katrine started to jump with enthusiasm. I tried to sneak away, but they held me back.

“Oh my god, you’re gonna have so much fun Eline.”

“Yeah, and when you come home you’re gonna be totally hippie,” Katrine laughed. They looked at each other and giggled like little girls.

Ever since I was born in the Netherlands, I’ve always enjoyed travelling. By the age of 13, I’d been to the USA twice, most of Europe, and China. Travelling had been a great part of my life, and since my parents always took me on summer vacation abroad, it was something I took for granted. Last summer I went on a language trip to Bournemouth with Katrine. A beautiful city on the southwest coast of England. It was a great experience (even though it rained continuously during our whole stay), and I learned a lot about the British culture including chocolate and chips for lunch, tea at noon, and bitchy English girls who despised Scandinavian girls.

This time I wasn’t going to be away for three weeks or on a summer vacation. I was going to be away for a whole year. I wasn’t the only one who was going abroad for a year though; actually most of my friends were going to be exchange students all over the world. Marit was going to Virginia. She had received a letter from her organization earlier with facts about her host family. She was going to stay with a family that had a teenage girl about her age, a boy and two parents. Katrine was going to Cambridge, England. Her school had a coorporation with a school in Cambridge, so every year 30 students from Tromsø are exchange students in Cambridge for a year. She was lucky to go. Many people wanted to go, but either didn’t have good enough grades, or just had really bad interviews. I have friends who now are all over the East Coast of the United States: South Carolina, New York, Georgia, and Michigan. I know girls in Canada, Australia, Malaysia, and New Zealand. I even know twins where one is in China and the other in Egypt.

Brage, however, wasn’t going anywhere. Over the last months of school, when everyone was talking about how excited they were to leave for their dream destination and discussing the pro’s and con’s of studying abroad, he would sit there silently (which is not typical of him). Of course he had friends who were staying, but most of his best friends were leaving-including me. I think the fact that I was going to leave was really hard on him. I had always been there for him, since we moved from Oslo to Tromsø when I was four. We have had our share of fights, some more superficial than others. There had been weeks, even months, when we wouldn’t even look at each other. However, we always became friends again in the end. We had talked about what it would be like when we would go to college and be apart from each other for a long period of time. However, this felt like something so far in the future, so we were not very preoccupied about it.

It had been three weeks since I last talked to Brage. Time had flown by at my grandparent’s house and I had just returned home to Tromsø with my family to pack my bag and to say goodbye to my friends. I had tried to call Brage several times, but he neither picked up the phone nor returned any of my calls. The thing that bothered me the most was that he actually was still in Norway, so he could easily have called me if he wanted to. I guess he was busy hanging out with his family in the southern part of the country, going swimming or whatever one does when it’s over 80 Fahrenheit.

One week later I found myself sitting in my room at the airport hotel in Oslo. We had left Tromsø by plane the same morning, because there are no direct flights from Tromsø to the USA whatsoever. Neither are there any direct flights from Oslo to San Francisco, so we had to change flights again at Newark.

Our plane was leaving at seven the next morning, and I was planning to call it a night. I had nothing better to do the last night in my home country than stare at the wall, trying my best to shut out the voice of my brother who were singing along with the Hannah Montana theme at TV on demand in our hotel room. I grabbed the photo album out of my bag and looked at the pictures. I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes and let the pictures come alive…

It was the last day of elementary school, June 20 2004. My class had ordered pizza and everyone was so happy that elementary school was finally over. I thought that we should do something “wild” since it was our last day together, and I suggested that we’d all eat pizza on the roof. Everyone thought that was the most ridiculous idea ever, and just laughed. Except Brage. So there we sat, on top of the building where we’d been imprisoned the last seven years, eating pizza and enjoying the view of the city, the mountains which still were covered with snow and the woods that had a light green color.

We did so many stupid things when we were in elementary school. We had this game we called “break-in”, that we used to play when there were a lot of kids together. The point was to climb into someone’s house through an unlocked window, mostly neighbors or people we knew, but not to steal anything. Brage was so clumsy, and he always broke a vase or a lamp or something as he tried to get in the window. One example of his clumsiness is that he on my birthday managed to break my basketball net (which I had got as a present that day) while trying to slam the ball into the net.

We also did everything to piss off my neighbor, like having a snowball fight around his car or throwing firecrackers in his mailbox. Maybe that’s why our neighbors started to travel to Gran Canaria or Mallorca when winter came in September.

Suddenly a buzzing noise from my bag pulled me back to reality. I searched my bag for my phone, almost dropping it to the floor. I looked at the display curious to know who were calling me so late: It said BRAGE.

“Hello?” I almost shouted.

“Hey, it’s me. Come down to the reception!”

He answered in a cheerful tone.

“The reception at the hotel? Now? Why?”

I didn’t understand. I’d been calling him for a month, and then he called back the night before I was leaving, telling me to go down to the hotel reception?

“Oh gad, can’t you just do as I say for once?”

He sounded frustrated.

“What do you mean for once? I’m getting ready for bed now, it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.”

I yawned a little to convince him.

“Well, I just thought you wanted a second chance to say goodbye,” he said in a disappointed voice.

“Wait, are you saying that you’re here? In the reception?”

My heart skipped a beat.

“I’m simply saying that you should come down to the reception.”

He was making his voice as mysterious as he could. I threw aside the album and my phone, almost running over my brother, who still was watching Hannah Montana, on my way out of the hotel room and into the elevator.

14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 pling!

I pushed my way out of the overcrowded elevator and ran out in the reception, searching every single person’s face. Then I saw him sitting in a chair at the bar with his father. I approached him slowly, not knowing exactly what to say. He discovered me, and waved me over.

“Did you really think you could escape me?” he said with a grin on his face.

He grabbed me and gave me a bear hug.

“What are you doing here? I thought you were with your family at Jevnaker?”

“I was, but my father drove me here so I could say goodbye to you,” he said pointing at his dad who was sitting in the bar with his back turned to us.

“ But doesn’t that take like, a couple of hours?”

“No, only one. And you know, it was worth it,” he said with a smile.

We sat in the hotel reception for a while, chatting about everything, and how much we could change in a year. My parents were apparently also in the bar, and accompanied his father. After a while of catching up, I thought it was about time to ask whether he was mad at me or not.

“No I’m not mad at you. I was just really disappointed that you just left,” he answered.“ And you know, it’s typical of you to just run away when you panic,” he said with a grin.

I knew he was referring to the bag-episode.

“But why didn’t you return any of my calls?” I asked desperately.

He paused, before he went on telling me how sad he was when I left without saying goodbye, and that he wasn’t ready to forgive me, until now.

The rain was pouring down outside. The trees were blowing in the wind and people were wearing down jackets. Brage noticed that I was staring out of the window, and said:

“You’re gonna miss the weather here though.”

“Oh yeah, definitely, and the seven months of snow!” I said with a laugh. “Not to mention the two months of the so-called summer, where you can wear shorts and t-shirts, but then you’ll be lying in bed for the rest of the summer with a cold,” I added ironically.

“Yeah, and the 60 days of dark is always something to look forward to,” he said with a smile. We looked at each other and started to laugh. We laughed so hard that I forgot about time and place. I forgot about the miserable last month, I forgot about the fact that we were leaving tomorrow. It felt as I had never laughed in my entire life before. I felt as though something on my shoulders that had been pushing me down to the ground since I left him suddenly disappeared.

I felt so relieved. This was how things used to be between us. And I could see in his clear blue eyes that he felt the same way. This was the kind of goodbye I had wanted. This was what I would remember when I thought about him. This was his way of saying I forgive you.

I watched him as he walked out of the reception followed by his father. He was wearing one of his many blue zip hood jackets and his well-used Adidas shoes. He didn’t walk with his back as straight up as he used to though. His body language had changed.