The Dinosaur Feather(43)

In the garden, the mayhem had come to a halt and people were sitting around again. Mogens was pressing an icepack against his head. He still looked stunned. An eerie silence reigned.

“Are you all right?” Cecilie asked.

“Yes,” Mogens replied. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yes, you humiliated him,” Cecilie replied.

“Hey, listen,” Jens objected. “That’s not fair.”

“No, I mean it. Not deliberately,” she said, addressing Jens. “I know that. And 99 percent of boys would have reacted differently. But not him.”

“No, it was a real pity,” Mogens said, miserably, and touched his sore head again.


When Troels turned seventeen, he had his tongue and his nose pierced and he started wearing tight trousers and Doc Martens. The skinny boy was gone. Troels was now almost six feet tall, he had large, supple hands and broad shoulders. He had come close to being expelled from high school, but Cecilie intervened and pleaded his case. He didn’t visit them as often as he used to, so Anna and Karen no longer knew as much about what he did or who he was with, but he told them that he sometimes took the train to Århus or Copenhagen to go to a gay club. The girls thought it sounded very exciting.

One day, Troels stopped by to ask Anna if she wanted to go for a bike ride. After riding for a while, he grew hot, pulled his jumper over his head, and bared a torso mottled with bruises.

“What on earth’s happened to you?” Anna was shocked.

“I went home to see my dad and to wash my clothes,” Troels said, giving her a cheerful look.

“He hit you?” Anna whispered.

“Yes, but I hit him back.”

Anna stepped hard on the pedals to keep up.

“And do you know something?” Troels gave Anna a complicit look. “It’s a real pain that I look like this.” He rose up on his pedals with studied indifference.

“Why?” Anna panted.

“I’ve been spotted by a modeling agency in Odense.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, it’s true. They want to make a portfolio about me. They said they could get me a lot of work.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon discussing Troels’s future modeling career. Paris, New York, and Milan all beckoned. Anna promised she would definitely visit him. They ended up on a fallow field where they lay among meadow flowers, gazing at the sky and fantasizing about champagne fountains and silver confetti descending from the ceiling. Or rather, Anna did. Troels sat next to her. His back hurt too much for him to lie down.


In 1997, the year Anna, Troels, and Karen graduated from high school, it seemed the summer would never end. It was so hot their clothes stuck to their bodies, and the nights, too, were warm, azure, and endless. The three friends were euphoric; the world was theirs and they felt that if they exhaled simultaneously the heavens would expand forever. They went to parties in houses owned by people they didn’t know and drank themselves senseless. Houses empty of their friends’ parents who were away on vacation, where neglected houseplants were shoved aside so the windows facing the fields could be flung wide open, where they could crash and sleep under the sky, if they felt like it, or accidentally start a small fire, as happened early one morning in late July. The teenagers watched in contrite silence as the fire engines pulled up, and then stared at their feet while a fireman held up a cigarette butt to their faces and lectured them. Of course, it wasn’t the actual butt that had started the fire, merely one of the many strewn across the garden. The next day, the party carried on as if nothing had happened, houseplants pushed aside and windows thrown open.

Later, when Anna looked back on that summer, she wondered if things might not have ended so badly between them if it had rained. They rarely slept, and when they weren’t partying they hung out in Karen’s small apartment in Odense, eyeing each other like wild animals.

It all happened one night when Karen had scored some cocaine, and they snorted it all at once. Anna went to the bathroom, and when she returned, Karen and Troels had gotten the bright idea that now was a great time to try group sex. Well, why not, Anna thought. Her mouth felt dry like sandpaper, and she went to the kitchen to get a drink of water. When she returned, Karen and Troels were dancing around, naked from the waist up.

“I thought you were gay,” Anna exclaimed. Troels and Karen collapsed in heaps of laughter.

“And we thought you were open-minded,” Karen called out. They gestured for Anna to join them.

They climbed into Karen’s bed, and Anna and Troels started kissing while Karen pulled off his trousers. Troels started laughing into Anna’s mouth, because Karen was fumbling, and temporarily let go of Anna to come to Karen’s aid. Troels and Karen began kissing, and Karen managed to pull Troels’s pants down. His dick was pierced. Anna stared at Karen’s hand enclosing it. Troels closed his eyes, and Anna could hear him gasping with pleasure while he continued kissing Karen. Anna rolled aside. At some point, Karen opened her eyes, looked at Anna and held out her hand to her, but before Anna had time to take it, Troels lifted Karen up and turned her over, so she lay on her back, her curls spilling over the pillow. His dick pointed momentarily at Karen and then it disappeared inside her. They both shut their eyes. Anna sat up. Everything went black. She kicked at their joined bodies and hit Troels right on the hip, sending him rolling with a howl. His mouth opened, his erection subsided, and Karen looked from one to the other, confused. Anna flew at Troels, and let her clenched fists rain down on his face, his chest, and his stomach, as he lay halfway across the bed. Troels’s face went white and his eyes burned.