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It didn’t hit her that Sven was dead until a teacher had taken her aside in the middle of fourth period, one of the monastery types who on a typical day made the hairs on the back of Norma’s neck stand on end, and– before she could square off the possibility of another family postcard she had to dodge– said, in a very hushed tone, “I’m so sorry.”
“Excuse me?” In hindsight, had it been a typical day there would’ve been a sequel; several, probably, in ascendingly fake disbelief:
“Is this a prank? Should I be watching out for a hidden photographer? Like, behind that shelf?”
“You’re joshin’ me, Mrs. Jones! You gotta be!”
“Oh, I know already. His lodging’s been rented out to spiders for weeks. If I had to guess, this was his idea of an early holiday present. Since he couldn’t get me that pony and all…”
But it must have been an off-day for her, because all Norma could manage was “Uh… What?”
(Which was so totally lame and would never make it in future retellings. But any thought of revision would come later. Along with arduously picking up coherency from where it had dribbled from both ears into a puddle on the floor. Ugh.)
So, “later” came. She’d flipped past the banal, expository pages– the missus’ upturned face, classmates’ overwrought concern, being led by someone’s hand into a closet-sized room with a chair and table, everyone speaking in tones more fragile than bluebirds’ eggshells the whole time, which she’d have found funny if she hadn’t spent the whole time being so out of it for no reason at all, because it was just Sven– fast forwarded and skipped through the boring part like a beleaguered vinyl disk, right to the relevant bits. Which. “It's just Sven,” she uttered. Right.
She only realized she’d messed up by calling him that when the counselor looked at Norma through her wiry glasses and squinted in a way that impeccably obscured all implication.
Drat.
-
As it turned out, time existed beyond later after all. Norma recognized this keenly because for a while– a blissful period before first hearing of her teacher kicking the bucket in the middle of an island (she was 65% sure that’s what it was) somewhere and the second time it hit her it wasn’t a great big joke after all– she actually felt okay. Regular. Standard. Slept at the dorms, went to class, rinse and repeat. Still smelling of residual fumes from the difficult-kid-you’re-ruining-our-marriage factory her parents had creatively nicknamed her birthplace, no doubt about it. (That stuff doesn’t wash off; she’d tried.)
Until she found herself having to jury-rig her way into Sven’s house through the window, because as it turned out, she was a lousier lockpicker than any self-proclaimed treasure hunter apprentice would ever admit to. And by that she meant former apprentice, on account of Sven being dead and all. And by that she meant breaking the glass.
“Should’ve given me a spare,” Norma groused, shaking off the micro-shards from her skirt (and the not-so-micro scrape on her forearm she'd have to put an adhesive on later), hauling her backpack through the gap she’d created. “What gives, anyway, Master! You usually remember to be stupid enough to never lock your door.”
Speaking was a bad idea, because she got a palmful of dust in her mouth and lungs for all her effort. But a strange jitter had introduced itself, filling her with a restless, nervous energy, right down to her fingertips, and if she didn’t keep talking, she wouldn’t know what to do. And Sven’s cluttered sty of a place made for a booby-trapped cavern as good as the ones lifted straight from her adventurer’s novels. So if she said stupid things to bookshelves and faded maps and piles of random trinkets devouring a corner of his study, so what? It sure as hell beat tripping over his junk and getting herself a concussion.
(Which had happened before. She’d been touched by the ice-pack he’d placed on her forehead, along with the extra-fluffy pillow and warm soup, for all of fifteen minutes until Sven slipped out a joke about her staying over that didn’t bear repeating.)
“I’m just getting my stuff back. I’d say sorry for the window I broke, but… eh. Not that you probably would’ve before, but it doesn’t seem like you’d care about that, wherever you’re at.”
It had been a while since Norma had last stayed overnight in her teacher’s, but she’d amassed quite a veritable collection of belongings unceremoniously left behind in his house, most of which she’d expected to eventually retrieve under different circumstances.
But the fact Sven was gone was probably why she was taking them back in the first place. She rarely stayed over, but her visits had been so frequent it might as well be letting her scattered belongings linger was of little inconvenience to her. A spare sweater of hers, banana yellow, hung in his closet. Sven had kept it apart from his shirts, but it gathered dust all the same in his absence. As she plucked it from the hanger, unsavoury images surfaced in the back of her mind of a buried suspicion he hadn’t been just kidding about wanting dibs on clothes she’d outgrown– the reasons for which he'd relayed with a smirk that soon dropped upon impact with her thrown eraser.
The icebox had been emptied out, no water stagnating inside, and he’d even bothered to leave home with a clean sink for the one and final time in his life. Norma retrieved old keychains, a plushie she’d bought at a school fair, a battered pencil case and brittle stationery, more books than she expected, even a mug (no doubt the victim of much contamination) with a chip on the side just as she remembered.
So many things she had taken for granted she would someday see again. And Sven counted himself in the equation too.
Norma frowned. Something didn’t feel right, or like a piece that didn’t quite fit. She swung one leg forward, her foot kicking at dust and stale air. Once upon a time that had been his shin, and Sven had shrieked like the little girl she’d thought herself too cynical to be, even then.
And now he was dead, and she was getting her stuff back. And she wouldn’t come here again, climbing over the rickety fence (maneuvering past his not surreptitious gaze the whole time) to find him in the front yard, poring over another urban legend map or inside, magnifying glass in hand and bent over the week’s artifact/worthless junk salvaged from someone’s sidewalk.
“Whatever,” she said. Whatever. It was just Sven. She hopped on one of the heavy trunks he’d left behind, getting dust bunnies all over the back of her school uniform skirt, and rested her chin on her hands. Her frown didn't waver. So many thoughts swirling in her head, and she wanted to do with none of them. “At least you remembered to pay for the rest of the semester before you up and kicked it. So thanks for that, Master.”
It was the wrong thing to say, of course, even if it was just to herself. She didn’t disbelieve ghosts as much as she recalled how subtle Sven had never been about listening in or peeping on her, but even if his spirit couldn’t have heard that, all the better things she could’ve said out loud into the dimness lay in her throat, stuck and sticky and stubborn. And it stung.
It hurt.
“You know what’s funny?” she muttered to her lap, then the dark tips of her mary-janes, when she absently stretched her legs out. “The teachers at school and my classmates had totally different ideas about who you were. I guess they just never got the memo, huh? That it doesn’t matter whichever way, because you’re just a loser.”
And an idiot. And crazy.
It wasn’t a kind thing to say, but whenever she’d called him those things, at worst he'd react with fake melodrama. Mostly he would've just smiled lazily at her. It’d rarely occurred to her to wonder what he was thinking about at any point in time. His expression would sparsely change from its usual dopey contentment, but there were times when he’d glow with inspiration, his entire face lighting up as he babbled with his hands as much as his mouth, something about ancient ruins or burnt towers or unmarked territories, where he’d unearthed stones inscribed with a language he could decipher less than half of.
(She couldn’t recall how he’d looked at her when they’d first met. For a long time– and all those times her mind drifted as she lay under his languid green eyes and slanted smile, her hands itching at her sides, squirming to reach out or move, or something– she’d figured it was better not to suspect.)
Now all of that was gone. And what bits and pieces she remembered would stay that way.
“Where’d you say you were heading to, anyway? The Legacy…”
She was trying to remember, but it felt more like clawing at fine sand, digging without shovels or picks or hope. Her throat was closing up. She felt cold.
But now Sven was gone, and so she had to remember. She had to know what it was Sven would do, if he were in her place right now.
Because he wouldn’t ever have told her, even if he could.
Later, a little while longer than just later, Norma got up, and clapped both her hands over her cheeks. Her smile felt jarring and crooked on her face, pink from the impact of her palms, but it was a start. The bag of knickknacks, her forgotten excuse, bumped against her shoe.
She would graduate in a year. But in two weeks, she would be on a boat, clutching a map of the Legacy in one hand and Sven’s dream in the other.
(It was just the kind of stupid thing she knew he’d do in a heartbeat, and would do again. Even if it’d cost him his life, the first time around.)