Originally from 2020

My curtains were supposed to be light-blocking, but every single summer morning at 4am when the sun rose, golden strips of sunlight would melt their way into my room and cover the floor and walls. It forced me awake every morning, and I would have to fight my way back to sleep. Holding my head under the comforter shielded me from the light, but it was hard to breathe and sweat would begin to line my forehead not too long after. 

More times than not, I would give in to the light and stay awake. Rarely was I excited about it, but it meant that I could be alone for a few hours in the apartment before Lukas woke up. Not that he was a nuisance, but something about being the only one awake brought me a sense of comfort. 

One morning, I decided to go outside and watch the sun come up. I put on my brown cardigan and slippers before slipping through the front door and onto the grass lawn. We lived across the street from the lake, and the way the sun would rise behind the water was mesmerizing on the right morning. I’ve seen plenty of sunsets on lakes, which I honestly thought were more impressive than these sunrises, but I enjoyed the homey feeling of my lake sunrises. 

I left the door open. Even though the door didn’t automatically lock behind me, I was always paranoid that I would get locked out if I didn’t leave it open. Lukas still had yet to get a key for me and I was starting to think he never would. He knew I was worried about being locked out. And because of that, I stayed home unless I went somewhere with him. I knew I could knock on the door, but Lukas was deaf in his right ear and it just added to my paranoia–thinking that he wouldn’t hear my knocking. 

What if someone was chasing me? What if I was injured? What if it was freezing out? What if I was hungry? 

The water’s ripples made the light from the sun look like it was alive and twinkling. On windier days, the ripples would move even faster, and you could even hear the tiny waves crashing. 

The grass I was sitting on was frosted and cold and I knew that once I stood up, my bottom would be covered in melted ice, and I’d have to change once I went back inside. But I didn’t mind. Right then, I was too preoccupied with the lake. 

I heard footsteps behind me. For a second, I was scared of who could be approaching me, but when I heard the voice, I could relax. 

“You’re outside?” he asked me from behind. 

I turned around to look up at him. “I’m watching the sunrise. You’re usually not up this early, Lukas.”

He took another step toward me and crouched down. “I heard the door open. I wanted to make sure everything was okay.” 

I nodded. “Don’t you think it’s pretty?” I asked him, turning to look back at the lake. 

“Yeah, kind of,” he replied. “I’ve seen it enough times.”

“Enough?” I repeated. “I didn’t think you could get tired of things like this.”

He shook his head, standing back up. “I’ve been looking at this view for my entire life. It’s nothing special.” He walked back inside through the door without saying anything else. He left it open. 

I looked down into my lap. I’d only been living with him for a year, but every time I watched the sunrise, it felt special to me. I began to wonder when I would stop finding it so amazing. When I would stop finding it easy to space out while watching the waves. When I would start letting the melting frost on my bottom bother me. 

——————————————————————————————————————————-

Lukas walked from the counter to the table I was sitting at with a cup of tea in each hand. The table was against a window, a window that I loved to stare out of. It’s where I spent most of my time when I lived with Lukas. Out of it, you could see mountain after mountain capped with snow and surrounded by foggy clouds that spun around the caps like dancers. 

The table was only big enough for two people to sit at, and of course, there were only two chairs. They were wooden and old, covered in scratches, and squeaked whenever you shifted in them. I had offered to buy Lukas new chairs when I still had a job, but he insisted that they were just fine. So I knitted seat cushions as a compromise. Blue and white to match the mountains outside the window. 

“It’s hot. Be careful,” Lukas mumbled as he set a cup in front of me. 

Inside was the tea he always makes for us in the mornings, rosenrot. I loved it because of how fruity it tasted. It always went well with fresh fruit, too. 

“Okay,” I nodded. “I, umm, have a question, if you don’t mind.”

He tilted his head as he reached for the canister of sugar in the middle of the table. 

“When did you first get tired of the view?” I looked down into my cup. 

His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“…The lake? Earlier you said you didn’t think the view was that special,” I clarified. 

“Oh,” he started. He poured a generous amount of sugar into his cup as he stirred it with a butter knife. “Probably when I realized that I can’t really leave.”

The way he spoke was so void of emotion, I couldn’t decide how to feel. “Ah, umm…I know it’s not exactly the same…but, uh, I don’t think I can really leave, either. But I still find the view special.”

He turned his head to look out the window. “I never said you had to stay.” 

I stared at the sunlight resting on his cheeks and how they made his skin look like honey. “But I don’t want you to be lonely. Or bored.” 

For some reason, I began to feel stupid. When he wouldn’t give me a key because he knew it would keep me here, I was sure he wanted me to stay here. When he refused to go out to the shops and for hikes without me, I was sure he wanted me to stay here. But maybe I was just making it up. The way he said “I never said you had to stay,” just felt so cold and unwelcoming. 

He looked back at me. “I enjoy your company.” That was it. 

“Do you…want me to stay with you?” I asked. I put my fingertip on the surface of the tea to see if it was cool enough to drink yet. My stomach started to turn a bit while I waited for his response. 

“You can go off and do things. You can travel, make new friends, set up home in another country, get a job. You are still young,” he explained. He stopped to take a sip of his tea. “I can’t hold you back from that.” 

Even though all those things were true and would excite someone else, it made my heart sink. Things were okay at Lukas’ house. It was just us and the mountains and lake. I was fine with rotting there. But as I sat there, processing what he had said to me, I began to feel an upsetness with what was outside. I became frustrated with the foggy clouds and the sparkling lake. With the squeaky chairs and rosenrot. Because I knew I couldn’t have them forever. Lukas was right. He couldn’t hold me back.

Lukas, sitting outside in the grass, turned to look at me as I opened the screen door. He had been smoking a cigarette while staring at the mountains behind the house. He liked to sit there a lot and I was torn between believing his head was full of thoughts and believing he was not thinking at all. Sometimes, if you had binoculars, you could see wild goats from far away. They looked like little moving snowflakes. 

I closed the door behind me and walked to sit next to him, holding my cardigan close to my chest. It was cold but not too cold. The sun was bright, but the clouds covered it, making the sky paperwhite. 

“Have you thought about what I said?” Lukas asked me as I took a seat on the grass next to him. 

It had been a few hours since our conversation over tea, and I’d tried not to dwell on it. I spent the rest of the morning reading the Kvinner og Klær to practice my Norweigan and distract myself. I wasn’t very good at it yet, but I was trying. Though I rarely thought about leaving, the one thing I considered doing one day was going back to school, and I’d do it here. I didn’t miss school in England, but I did miss learning things. It was worth a shot in another country. 

Lukas had gone to school in Oslo a few years before, but he never really did anything with his degree. He was lucky that his grandmother left him the house and a few ten-thousands of kroner. He was lucky he could stay here and hide. Otherwise, maybe he would’ve had to face what happened and go from there. 

“No, I haven’t really thought about it,” I replied after letting out a sigh. “I was reading the magazines instead.”

“Well,” he started before taking a drag from his cigarette. “You should.”

I turned to face him. “Lukas, it feels like, umm…it feels like you’re trying to get rid of me.” I felt guilty saying it, but it was on my mind. 

He shook his head. “Maggie, I’m not trying to get rid of you. I just want you to think about maybe not wasting your life here.” 

A cold breeze blew, and I shivered. “Why did you decide that you’ll be here forever? We could go out and do things together.”

“We can’t do that and you know this.” He didn’t bother to say anything else. 

There was a long silence as we both sat there, not having too much else to say. The thing I hated about Lukas the most was how stubborn he was. Once his mind was made up, it seemed like nothing could change it. That didn’t stop me from trying to challenge him, anyway. “But what if we could?” I finally said. 

“Huh?” My breaking of the silence startled him. 

“It’s been long enough since…you know, right? Don’t you think people have stopped looking for you by now?” I insisted. 

He looked me dead in the eye. “Why would anyone stop looking for someone who burned his parents alive?” His tone was suddenly so cold. 

It didn’t even phase me anymore that he’d done that. It was just a matter of fact. I didn’t know if I should’ve cared or not considering he wouldn’t tell me a single thing about his parents and who they were. Murder and arson are horrible things, but for whatever reason, I didn’t let that influence my view of Lukas. He was kind to me sometimes and that was what mattered most in my head. 

“It’s not like they know you did it, Lukas, right?” 

“No, they don’t know. But it’s suspicious that I disappeared immediately after. I’m sure I’m a person of interest.”

I shrugged. “Well, is the case still open?” 

He shook his head. 

“Then why are you worried, anyway?”

“You’ve already asked me this.”

“But, Lukas, if you’re not a wanted suspect, why keep hiding?”
“You’ve already asked me this, too.”

“Because why would you want to stay here if you don’t need to?”

He didn’t answer me. 

I could feel myself getting frustrated, so I decided to go back inside. When I couldn’t understand Lukas, I had to be alone. He was already an enigma, but when he refused to do things for himself or for the greater good, it made me question him even more as a person. 

We met through a mutual friend. The school I went to hosted international exchange students, and I met a boy from Norway named Leif. I, being thrilled by the idea of being with someone from out of the country, wheedled him into a “relationship” that lasted a little over a semester. I spent a lot of time picking his brain and begging him to spend nights stargazing with me instead of going out. He was an artist, but the kind that cared more about perfection than expression. I went with him back home over Christmas break to meet his family, and that is where I found Lukas. Leif wanted to introduce me to his three high school friends.

Lukas was interesting to me immediately. He was the oldest out of the three, having already graduated college, rarely spoke, and always kept his head down. Hands in his coat pockets, thick, furry ushanka covering his head, blue knitted scarf covering his face from the nose down, even when it wasn’t that cold. His gaze seemed dead and aloof. 

The five of us spent some time at Leif’s parents’ house, and afterward, Lukas was the last one to leave. Before he did leave, I got a chance to talk to him a little bit. I learned nothing about him other than the fact that he was planning to run away in the next couple of days. When he spoke, his voice was soft and cold. It was the kind of voice that you could see the breath of even when it wasn’t cold. 

“Why would you tell me that?” I asked him. “Running away is supposed to be a secret, isn’t it?” 

“It is, yes,” he replied. “But it is lonely.” 

It shocked me that someone as quiet and reserved as him was worried about loneliness, but I recognized that he was still a person with feelings like most of us all. And when he talked about “running away,” I assumed he meant for a week, or even a month. In my mind, the purpose of running away was something like an escapist fantasy where you’d come back a changed, clean, new person with a clear soul. I won’t lie, running away had crossed my mind many times because it sold me the idea of leaving the heavy things I carried behind. So, of course, I took his statement as an invitation. 

He told me about this house he owned outside of Steinkjer and how he thought it was the ideal place to run away to. I realized he had the potential to be talkative when he described to me the beauty of the town, the huge lake, all the sailboats, the mountains, fields, sunny mornings… 

Leif didn’t know. And I didn’t know why I left Leif for it. I really just assumed I’d be gone for a short amount of time and I’d return with a crazy story to tell him. Maybe I thought Lukas would tell him. Thinking back on it, maybe I was scared that Leif wouldn’t let me. And maybe I didn’t want Leif to know Lukas’ plan. All I know is that I wanted to satiate that desire to run away and this was a good way to do it. 

I wish I’d asked Lukas why he was running away, though. At least, before we’d been driving in his blue Volvo for a couple of hours into the early morning. I remember the sky getting brighter but not actually being able to see where it was rising from. All I could see were mountains covered in poems of snow and the sunlight reflecting off of everything it slowly began to touch. The radio channel faded in and out, getting fuzzier when buildings and houses were sparse along the road, and getting clearer or even changing when we drove past a town or village. I had never seen anything like it all. The road was tiny and thin and sometimes had no line down the middle. You just had to make sure you were staying to the right. 

My mind bounced between regret and excitement over and over again with every passing building. I had only been out of the country once without family before, and that was simply just to visit Dublin with friends after completing our A-levels. And now, the second time I go, I’m off somewhere with absolutely no clue where I really am, with someone who I know nothing about, with no one knowing where I was going but Lukas. Not even Leif, the guy who was inherently responsible for me. I felt guilty. I knew Leif was freaking out. I started to wish I’d left him a note. But when Lukas finally told me a bit about why he was running away, I realized it might have been a good idea not to. 

“My house burned down,” he told me. “With my parents inside. Three days ago. Right before you and Leif came.” 

“I’m so sorry to hear that. But why wouldn’t you stay and help with funerals and–”

“Because I’m the reason it burned down. And I can’t face that yet.”

I didn’t know what he meant by it, but for the sake of my own sanity, I assumed it was an accident. But you wouldn’t run away without telling anyone if it wasn’t an accident, would you? Or maybe you would. Maybe you’d want to clear your mind before dealing with it. But wouldn’t you tell someone where you were going? I was nervous. The more I thought about it the more I began to panic. Outside the window, the pine trees felt like they were moving faster and faster as my thoughts began to race, and I began to feel lightheaded. Did I want to ask him to elaborate? Did I want it to stay a mystery? I didn’t know what would be worse. So I didn’t say anything, and eventually, we went back to talking about other things. 

We were two missing people taking drags from herbal cigarettes while watching the sun go down. I had spent the rest of the day painting with watercolors and thinking about Lukas. Wondering. Where did his ability to be so complacent and stagnant come from, and why did I pick it up? Reflecting on the person I was when I left Leif with Lukas, I realized I had become so far removed from that girl. It had only been a little over half a year, but the drive I had to go new places and do wild things was nearly completely gone. Where did it go, and why?

The paintbrush felt like a sixth finger as I made stroke after stroke on the large canvas, painting what was outside of my window again. I’d painted it countless times, but I never got tired of it. While I was painting the intricate details of the lake, it came to me. I cared about Lukas, no matter how much he upset me. How cold he could be, how weird he would treat me. I grew to know him, and because it was me and him and only he and I, he was the only thing I could care about. There was no car for me to drive. It was in the lake, and deep in there, just in case anyone was looking for it. I wanted to care about the gray-haired lady at the fruit shop who bags the strawberries or the bald man with the long beard who sits outside the bakery just to smell the bread. But they weren’t the ones I was spending all of my time with. That was Lukas. 

As I began to paint the trees, I thought about leaving. Giving myself up and moving on with my life. But every place I pictured myself in–a classroom in Oslo, a boat in the Mediterranean, a bus in Kyiv, a desert in Egypt, Lukas was there with me like an extremity. I couldn’t shake him, and it’s not as though I wanted to. 

“Maybe I should listen to you,” Lukas said. “Since you won’t listen to me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, flicking the ash off the tip of the cigarette. 

“What if I moved to a different country?” he asked. It was something I never thought I’d hear him say. 

I didn’t know what to say, but that was okay because he began talking again. 

“I could work in Germany.” He put his cigarette out in the ashtray and put his chin in his hands. “They don’t know me there. Austria, too.”

I nodded. “Yes, that’s true.”

“If I leave, what will you do?” he asked me. 

“You’re serious? You’re finally considering, uh, going back out there? And having a real life?” I was in disbelief. 

“Maybe, I don’t know. It’s scary to think about. But I thought about you. I want you to live your life. I want to live mine, too.” He sounded warmer than usual. “We both made mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” I repeated. 

“You made the mistake of coming with me and leaving Leif. Do you think that was a mistake?”

“Umm, no, not necessarily. Well, maybe sometimes. That’s a tough–”

“I made the mistake of taking the lives of my parents.” 

Those are far from comparable, I thought. I still didn’t know why he’d done it, but I knew he was guilty, legally and emotionally. “I guess.” 

“But that doesn’t mean we don’t have lives to live.”

I nodded again. “So, you want to leave.”

“Yeah. I think I do.”

I put my cigarette out and stared into the nothingness beyond the hill the house sat on. It was completely dark outside, and the only light for miles was the one we had on–the porch light. “Then I’ll come with you.”