快播

By:  Alexis DeLancey-Christiansen

Creative Nonficiton, 2017

 

I don鈥檛 have a lot of friends. I can count those I have on one hand, two at most, and three of those are immediate family.

A fourth I married.

I was a bit of an anomaly upon arrival in Denmark. I wore boot-cut jeans, was darker complected than the average Dane, and spoke with such a thick accent that it probably would have been easier for me to walk around with a whiteboard and a dry-erase marker. Still, my spelling was so atrocious, I don鈥檛 know if it would have helped, and on my first day I was introduced to my entire class as the exchange student.

On my first day of school, a classmate pointed him out to me. 鈥淗is name鈥檚 Nickolai and he lives in the same town as you. Follow him, and you鈥檒l get home.鈥� All my classmates spoke English to me, so that marked me as an outlier, too. I was petrified to talk to him as he got on the bus and I followed suit. My Danish vocabulary was about fifteen words, and it seemed rude to just run up to someone and start babbling in English. So I didn鈥檛 speak to him. I just followed him instead.

When he got off the bus, I got off the bus, and a quick survey let me know that I had absolutely no idea where I was, and the only other person in sight was Nickolai. With a tremble in my throat and shivering hands, it was almost like the words had a life of their own when I finally spoke.

鈥淒o you know where I live?鈥� I asked, before wanting to shove my hand in my mouth out of mortification. This is it, I thought. Deport me now. It cannot possibly get worse than this. The Norse gods have seen and forsaken me and now I have to live eight months in this town where this boy lives. This is the worst day ever.

鈥淚鈥檓 sorry?鈥� The question was for clarification, but the heat that rushed to my cheeks was more humiliating than anything I had experienced before.

鈥淢y classmate told me that you lived in the same town as me and to follow you home. He didn鈥檛 tell you that I was following you?鈥� The word vomit was spilling out of my mouth, and any native English speaker would have caught the implications of follow you home. Thankfully, Nickolai was not a native speaker, and simply shook his head slowly, with eyes so wide I could almost have stuck my whole fist into them. 鈥淒o you know the Soerensen family?鈥� I pressed, at this point just wanting the encounter to be over so I could bury it in a bag of candy and maybe some ice cream.

Nickolai lit up. 鈥淥h, Martin?鈥� Martin was my host brother鈥檚 name. 鈥淢artin鈥檚 family lives right next to my best friend.鈥� Nickolai鈥檚 best friend was named, of course, Nicolaj.

The walk wasn鈥檛 more than ten minutes, and I was trying very hard to focus on anything but Nickolai. My blush was still fighting its way away, so my gaze was firmly on the ground. Nickolai did more than enough talking for the both of us and finally we were in front of my host family鈥檚 house. Just as I was getting ready to make the great escape with a mumbled thanks, Nickolai asked, 鈥淪o, do you speak any Danish yet?鈥�

I nodded.

鈥淲hat can you say?鈥�

The only sentence I could string together was, 鈥淓r du gift?鈥�

Nickolai burst into peals of laughter. 鈥淎ll you can ask is if I鈥檓 married? Did you know the word for 鈥榤arried鈥� is also the word for 鈥榩oison?鈥欌��

A little under two years later, we actually were married, and neither of us are poisoned yet.