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  “My dad’s not stuck in anything, and neither am I!” Pierre Anthon yelled, wiping splatterings of plum from his arm. “I’m sitting here in nothing. And better to be sitting in nothing than in something that isn’t anything!”

  It was early morning.

  The sun was beating down from the east, directly into Pierre Anthon’s eyes. He had to shield them with his hand if he wanted to see us. We were standing with our backs to the sun around the trailer on the opposite side of the road. Out of range of Pierre Anthon’s plums.

  We didn’t answer him.

  It was Richard’s turn. And Richard hurled a stone that cracked hard against the trunk of the plum tree, and another that tore in among the leaves and plums and just missed Pierre Anthon’s left ear. Then it was my turn. I’ve never been good at throwing, but I was angry and determined, and though my first shot ended up in the hedge next to Ursula-Marie’s, the second rattled right into the branch on which Pierre Anthon was sitting.

  “Hey, Agnes,” Pierre Anthon shouted down at me. “You’re having such problems believing things matter?”

  I flung a third stone, and this time I must have grazed him, because we heard a howl, and for a moment it was quiet up in the tree. Then Otto threw, but too high and too far, and Pierre Anthon began his hollering again.

  “If you live to be eighty, you’ll have slept thirty years away, gone to school and sat with homework for nine, and worked for almost fourteen. Since you’ve already spent more than six years being little kids and playing, and you’re later going to be spending at least twelve cleaning house, cooking food, and looking after your own kids, it means you’ve got nine years at most to live.” Pierre Anthon tossed a plum into the air. It followed a gentle arc before plunging into the gutter. “And you want to spend those nine years pretending you’ve amounted to something in a masquerade that means nothing, when instead you could start enjoying your nine years right away.” He pulled another plum off a branch, reclined contentedly in the fork of the tree, and appeared to be weighing the plum in his hand. He took a big bite and laughed. The Victorias were ripening.

  “It’s not a masquerade!” Otto yelled, threatening Pierre Anthon with a fist.

  “It’s not a masquerade!” Huge Hans joined in, and launched another stone.

  “Then how come everyone’s making like everything that isn’t important is very important, all the while they’re so busy pretending what’s really important isn’t important at all?” Pierre Anthon laughed and drew an arm across his face to wipe away the plum juice from his chin. “How come it’s so important we learn to say please and thank you and the same to you and how do you do when soon none of us will be doing anything anymore, and everybody knows that instead they could be sitting here eating plums, watching the world go by and getting used to being a part of nothing?”

  Holy Karl’s two stones were sent off in quick succession.

  “If nothing matters, then it’s better doing nothing than something. Especially if something is throwing stones because you haven’t the guts to climb trees.”

  The stones rained in on the plum tree from all sides. The pitching order was forgotten. Everyone was throwing at once now, and soon Pierre Anthon let out a howl and fell out of the tree, landing with a thump on the grass behind the hedge. Which was just as well, because all our stones were used up and time was getting on. Holy Karl had to be off home with his trailer if he was going to make it to school before the bell.

  ————

  The next morning it was quiet in the plum tree when we passed by on our way to school.

  Otto was the first one to cross the street. Then followed Huge Hans, who jumped up heavily and yanked away two Victorias with a handful of leaves and a holler, and when there still was no reaction, the rest of us followed, jubilant.

  We’d won!

  Victory is sweet. Victory is. Victory.

  ————

  Two days later Pierre Anthon was back in his plum tree with a Band-Aid across his forehead and a whole new range of repartee: “Even if you learn something and think you’re good at it, there’ll always be someone who’s better.”

  “Pipe down!” I yelled back. “I’m going to be something worth being! And famous, too!”

  “Sure you are, Agnes.” Pierre Anthon’s voice was kind, almost pitying. “You’ll be a fashion designer and teeter around in high heels and make like you’re really something and make others think they are too, as long as they’re wearing your label.” He shook his head. “But you’ll find out you’re a clown in a trivial circus where everyone tries to convince each other how vital it is to have a certain look one year and another the next. And then you’ll find out that fame and the big wide world are outside of you, and that inside there’s nothing, and always will be, no matter what you do.”

  I surveyed the ground; there were no stones anywhere.

  “Shut up!” I screamed, but Pierre Anthon kept on.

  “Why not admit from the outset that nothing matters and just enjoy the nothing that is?”

  I gave him the finger.

  Pierre Anthon just laughed.

  Furious, I grabbed Ursula-Marie by the arm, because Ursula-Marie was my friend with blue hair and six thick braids, and that was definitely something. Blue, bluer, bluest. If my mother hadn’t expressly forbidden it, my hair would have been blue too. As it was, I had to make do with the six braids, which weren’t particularly impressive given my fine, wispy hair, but at least it was something.

  ————

  Only a few days passed before Jon-Johan again summoned us to the soccer field.

  There were no good suggestions, but loads of poor ones. None of us was listening to Otto anymore, and if he hadn’t been the strongest in the class, at least since Pierre Anthon had left school, we all would have laid into him.

  Just as we were about to break up and leave, not being able to come up with anything anyway, Sofie stepped forward.

  “We have to prove to Pierre Anthon that something matters,” was all she said. Yet it was plenty, for we all knew right away what it was we had to do.

  We set out the very next day.

  V

  Sofie lived at exactly the point where Tæring stopped being town and became countryside. Behind the yellow-washed house where Sofie lived with her parents was a large field with an abandoned sawmill at one end. The sawmill wasn’t used for anything anymore and was to be torn down to make room for a recreation facility the town dignitaries had been talking about for years. Even so, nobody was really counting on that recreation facility, and although the sawmill had gradually fallen into disrepair, with broken windows and holes in the roof, it was still there and was exactly what we needed.

  At lunch recess we all handed over our one- and two- and five-kroner coins to Jon-Johan, who ran the entire way to the hardware store, made our purchase, and ran all the way back again clutching a brand-new combination padlock.

  There was some discussion about what code to choose, since everyone thought their own birthday provided the most suitable combination of figures. Eventually we agreed on the fifth of February, it being the day of Pierre Anthon’s birth. Five-zero-two were the numbers we all concentrated on committing to memory, so much so that we forgot about our homework and about paying attention in class, and Mr. Eskildsen started growing suspicious and asked if our heads were full of sparrows or whether we’d just lost whatever little it was that had been attached to our necks.

  We didn’t reply. Not one of us. Five-zero-two!

  We had the sawmill, we had the lock, and we knew what we had to do. Nevertheless, it was a lot harder than we had reckoned. With Pierre Anthon being in some way right about nothing mattering, it was no easy thing to start collecting something that did.

  Again, it was Sofie who saved the day.

  “We just play along with the idea,” she said, and gradually we all found our own ploys to help us.

  Elise remembered when she was six and had cried when an Alsatian dog had bi
tten the head off her doll, so she dug out the old doll and its chewed-off head from the boxes in her basement and brought them along with her to the sawmill. Holy Karl brought an old hymnbook that was missing its front and back and quite a number of its hymns, but nevertheless ran with no other defects from page 27 to page 389. Ursula-Marie delivered a pink ivory comb missing two teeth, and Jon-Johan chipped in with a Beatles tape that had lost all sound, but that he had never had the heart to throw out.

  Others went from house to house asking if they could have anything that meant something. One or two doors were slammed in our faces, but we were also given the most wondrous things. The old folks were the best. They gave us china dogs that could nod their heads and were only slightly chipped, photographs of parents long since dead, or the toys of children long since departed into adulthood. We were given clothes that had been treasured and worn to threads, and even a single rose from a bridal bouquet, thirty-six years old.

  The rose, however, made us girls somewhat fainthearted, because it really was something we felt mattered, the white bridal dream with the wedding bouquet and the kiss from the man who was to be ours forever. But then Laura said that the lady who had given it to us had gotten divorced only five years later. And since many of our own parents were also divorced, if indeed they had ever been married at all, that dream clearly wasn’t worth our time.

  ————

  The heap grew and grew.

  In just a few days it grew almost as tall as Little Ingrid. Nevertheless, it was still short on meaning. We all knew that none of what we had collected mattered to us, really, so how were we supposed to convince Pierre Anthon that it did?

  He was going to see right through us.

  Squat. Zilch. Nothing.

  Again Jon-Johan called us together, and it wasn’t long before we had to admit that certain things did matter to us, even if it wasn’t much and even if they weren’t all that important. Still, it was a better take than the one we had.

  Dennis was the first. He brought a whole stack of Dungeons & Dragons books he had read over and over and almost learned by heart. Otto, however, soon discovered that four of the series were missing, and he said that Dennis was going to have to give them up too.

  Dennis blew up and told Otto to mind his own business, that we all knew that wasn’t part of the scheme, and we were so mean, all of us. But the more Dennis yelled, the more the rest of us maintained that the books plainly mattered a whole lot to him. And hadn’t we just agreed that it was the things that meant most to us that had to go on the heap if it was ever going to convince Pierre Anthon to climb out of his tree?

  When Dennis had first handed over the last four of his Dungeons & Dragons books, it was as if the meaning started to take off. Dennis knew how fond Sebastian was of his fishing rod. And Sebastian knew that Richard had a thing about his black soccer ball. And Richard had noticed how Laura always wore the same African parrot earrings.

  We should have stopped even before it got this far. Now it was somehow too late, even though I did what I could.

  “This isn’t going to work,” I said.

  “Ha!” Gerda scoffed, and she was pointing at my green wedge sandals that I’d spent all summer persuading my mom to buy me, and that she’d only just gotten me recently for half price in the sales.

  I knew it was going to come. And to be honest, that was probably why I tried to stop the whole affair. It would only be a matter of time before someone got around to my sandals. The fact that it was Giggling Gerda, little bye-baby-bumpkin, only made things worse. At first I tried to pass it off, as if I hadn’t even noticed what it was she was pointing at, but Laura wasn’t letting me off the hook.

  “The sandals, Agnes,” she said, and there was no way out.

  I squatted down and was about to untie them, but then I couldn’t get myself to do it and stood up again.

  “I can’t,” I said. “My mom’s going to ask where they are, and then the grown-ups are going to figure the whole thing out.” I thought I was smart. But I wasn’t.

  “You think you’re any better than the rest of us?” cried Sebastian. “What do you suppose my dad’s going to think I’ve done with my fishing rod?” As if to underline his words, he grabbed hold of the line and fishhook that dangled from the heap.

  “And what have I done with my books?”

  “And where’s my soccer ball?”

  “And my earrings?”

  I’d lost, and I knew it. All I could do was ask for a few days’ respite.

  “Just until summer’s over.”

  There was no mercy. Even if they did let me borrow a pair of sneakers from Sofie, so I wouldn’t have to walk home barefoot.

  Sofie’s sneakers were too small; they pinched at my big toe, and the way home from the sawmill was a whole lot longer than usual. I was crying as I turned into the street and walked the last part of the way up to the house alone.

  I didn’t go in, but sat down in the bike shed, where I could be seen neither from the street nor the house. I pulled Sofie’s sneakers off my feet and kicked them into a corner. The image of my green wedge sandals on top of the heap of meaning wouldn’t go away.

  I looked down at my bare feet and decided Gerda was going to pay.

  VI

  It took me three days to find Gerda’s weak spot, and during those three days I was sweetness itself with her.

  I had never liked Gerda. She had a way of spitting when she spoke, even more when she giggled, which she did almost all the time. Besides that, she would never let Ursula-Marie alone, and Ursula-Marie was my best friend and so very special, not only because she had blue hair and six braids, but also because she only ever wore black. If my mom hadn’t kept on sabotaging it all by buying those garish clothes for me, I would have worn only black too. As it was, I had to make do with one pair of black pants, two black T-shirts with funny slogans in English, and one black woolen undershirt that was still too warm to wear yet here at the beginning of September.

  But now it was all about Gerda.

  I swapped hair elastics with Gerda, whispered with her about boys, and confided to her that I had warmed a bit to Huge Hans (which wasn’t true in the slightest, but though you’re not supposed to lie, this was what my older brother referred to as force majeure, and even though I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, it definitely entailed that right now lying was okay).

  The first two days didn’t yield much. Gerda didn’t seem to be especially fond of anything. Or perhaps she had seen through me. There were some old paper dolls her grandmother had given her, but I knew she hadn’t played with them since we were in fifth grade. At one point she showed me a picture of Tom Cruise, who she was swooning over and kissed every night before going to bed. Then there was a whole stack of romantic novels, with doctors kissing nurses and living happily ever after. I admit I wouldn’t have minded borrowing them occasionally, and Gerda would probably have stifled a tear or two had she been made to hand them over, but it was still just trifles, nothing that truly mattered. Then on the third day I found it.

  It was while we were sitting in Gerda’s room drinking tea and listening to a tape her father had just given her that I discovered Gerda’s weak spot. We’d spent the two previous days at Gerda’s mother’s place, in the room she had there. It was filled with girls’ stuff, all sequins and tinsel. Now we were sitting in her room at her father’s place, where she stayed every other week. It wasn’t the stereo tape deck or the inflatable plastic armchair or the idol posters on the walls that made this room different from the one at her mother’s place, for she had a stereo tape deck and an inflatable plastic armchair and idol posters on the walls there, too. No, the thing that made the room at Gerda’s father’s place special was that in the corner stood a very large cage with a very small hamster inside.

  The hamster’s name was Oscarlittle, and Oscarlittle was what I declared the next day that Gerda had to give up to the heap of meaning.

  Gerda wept and said she was going to snitch about me
and Huge Hans. I howled laughing when I told her it was just something I’d made up on account of force majeure. That made Gerda cry even more and say I was the cruelest of anyone she knew. And when she had cried for two hours and was still inconsolable, I started having second thoughts and thinking maybe she was right. But then I saw my green wedge sandals on top of the heap and wouldn’t budge.

  ————

  Ursula-Marie and I walked Gerda home to get Oscarlittle right away. We weren’t giving her any chance to get out of it.

  Gerda’s father lived in one of the new row houses. They were gray-brown and built in brick, at least the outer layer was, around the concrete, and all the rooms were fitted with large, easy-to-open windows. The row houses lay at the other end of Tæring, where until recently there had been meadows full of gray-brown sheep. The fact that the house was at the opposite end of Tæring made the walk long and exhausting, but the main thing was the large windows. Gerda’s father was home, and Oscarlittle had to be smuggled out.

  Ursula-Marie went with Gerda into her room, while I stood outside ready to receive. Oscarlittle was handed through the window, and I stuffed him inside an old rusty cage we had dug out for the purpose. Gerda herself just stood sniveling in a corner of the room and refused to lend a hand.

  “Shut up, Gerda!” I snapped eventually, unable to take any more of her whining. “Or there’s a dead hamster going on the heap!”

  It didn’t make Gerda stop sniveling, but it did quiet her down enough to make things tolerable again. And for her to leave the house without her father catching on.

  Oscarlittle was mottled white and brown and actually fairly cute with his trembling whiskers, and I was happy not to have to do away with him. The cage, on the other hand, was heavy and unwieldy, and the road to the sawmill unendingly long. We should have borrowed Holy Karl’s trailer. We hadn’t, so we took turns carrying. Gerda too. There was no reason for her not to take her fair share of the aching shoulders Ursula-Marie and I were getting. It took an age to reach the field and the sawmill, and Oscarlittle squeaked the entire way as if I really was going to kill him, but eventually we got there and could put the cage with Oscarlittle down in the half-light inside the door.