Solstice

I haven’t seen the sun set for 30 days now. An inflated orange ball hangs ominously in the sky bathing the scissor-needled pine trees and crystal mirror lakes in a fiery glow. Each evening I like to come to my spot on the hill overlooking the town and watch the sun race across the sky – I will it to dip out of view, to defy nature. But these are the days of the midnight sun, when the Earth’s axial tilt teases the sun as it chases the skyline from left to right, the horizon tantalisingly near but always just out of reach.

My face is bathed in a rosy glow and I reach to touch the swollen skin around my eye with nail bitten fingers – it’s still painful and I know, even without a mirror, that the bruise has turned to slatternly purple. Coming to the hill in the evening is the closest I can feel to darkness, to true invisibility. No one is here to judge my background or appearance.

The summer solstice always incites the town into a fever of madness. Parties and boozy picnic echo throughout the night and people swim in the lakes at all hours, creating circular ripples in the lava orange surface as they break the glassy surfaces. But few people come to the hill, the pubs and tourist attractions in the town are far more appealing for most.

People say the lakes are very romantic during the midnight sun. I’ll have to take their word for it. I don’t understand the concept of love. I was born here in the Arctic Circle and I’m a cold creature at heart. During the summer, I long for the veil of darkness. The daylight is unceasingly merciless and mocks me during my sleepless nights.

I cannot reasonably blame the northern climate for my frosty nature though. My best friend, Jenna, was also born here, not too far from Rovaniemi, and she seems to have no problem in letting the light touch her soul. Two days older than me, Jenna and I should never have been friends. It’s our parents’ fault really. Our mums were in the same hospital ward when we were born, eighteen years ago, and they both bonded over having difficult births and being single parents. It marked the beginning of a lifetime of being forced to visit Jenna and her mum, but it soon became apparent that the two of us were very different. Jenna has a disposition as sunny as the June solstice, she enjoys the company of other people and naturally draws others to her with her warmth. I am cold and find most people superficial and irritating. Her smile is as warm and easy as the hearth light on a winter day whereas I am the snowstorm rattling the door frames and howling in the wind.

Nevertheless, my childhood is scattered with memories of Jenna. We played hide and seek together in the forests, taught each other to swim in the lakes (although she could always out swim me) and as we grew older, we compared notes on periods and then share make-up and nail polish. Jenna’s first period started two days before mine, of course. There must be some kind of female synchronicity at play when it comes to the menstrual calendar.

I don’t remember our first ever argument, but I think we were quarrelling before we were old enough to be conscious of it. There was the time when I saw a pair of shoes I liked and was saving up to buy them, and only a week later Jenna turned up wearing them. Another argument ensued when I borrowed her dress without asking and then tore a gaping hole in the sleeve after it caught on the fence. There was also the phase a few years ago when we both befriended different groups at school. Jenna was participated in a lot of team sports whereas I inevitably united with the art students and we all congratulated ourselves on being ‘different’, even though everyone has their own hardships to bear whoever facade they present to the rest of society. I started piercing myself with holes whilst Jenna started frequenting the tanning salons.

The secret about Jenna is that even though she is surrounded by people all the time, in some ways she’s as lonely as I am. We just have different ways of showing our insecurities. And so inevitably we were drawn back together, yearning for a familiar staple we could trust. Until the last argument…

******

It happened on the longest day – although I don’t know why they call it that seeing as the ‘day’ spans longer than 24 hours during the height of summer here anyway. The festival season was in full swing and Jenna had begged me to come to the party by the lake.

‘There’s someone I want you to meet,’ she said with a wicked glint in her eye.

‘I wonder who?’ I replied, forever sarcastic.

There was no mystery. Jenna had been seeing Mika for about three months now. That was a record. Mika was just the latest in a long string of boyfriends, so when Jenna told me she was seeing someone new I hadn’t been in a rush to meet him. None of them really stuck around. Jenna said she just hadn’t met the right guy, but my theory was that she had so many boyfriends for the same reason I was eternally single. She couldn’t bring herself to let them into her world only to leave it again.

The party was in full swing when I arrived. Young, slim-hipped adolescents were splashing around and squealing in the water, couples were necking underneath trees and dance music echoed its beat into the nightless night. There was a chill in the air, but I hadn’t brought a jacket with me. I liked to feel the air on my bare arms. If the temperature dropped I’d just keep moving to warm myself up.

I heard Jenna call my name before I saw her. I turned around to see her dragging a young man behind her by the hand.

‘Meet Mika,’ she announced, as soon as she caught up with me, and thrust the boy forward as though he was a bag of groceries.

Mika had a mop of thick, messy hair and eyes as grey as the lakes in winter. There seemed to a be gentleness about him, a shyness. When he smiled at me, he looked all of six years old. On first impressions he didn’t appear to be Jenna’s usual type. Most of her boyfriends had been sporty, confident types who liked to drink and party. Mika looked as out as place as I felt amongst the crowd of drunken partygoers.

We stared at each other and I wondered whether the chemical connection I felt was real or if it was just the festival spirit playing tricks on me.

He blushed, as it started to become obvious that we’d made eye contact with each other a little longer than was polite.

‘Jenna’s told me lots about you,’ Mika said.

‘She’s told me a lot about you too,’ I said.

Jenna waved the space between our eyes as though clearing the air. 

‘Hello! Jenna’s still here, remember?’ She was smiling but I noticed the subtle pitch of alarm in her voice. Her arm protectively wrapped itself around Mika’s waist.

‘Can I get you girls some drinks?’ he asked.

‘Sure, we’ll both have a beer,’ Jenna said, and pulled me to the water’s edge to sit down. I breathed in the heady scent of the lake. The fresh air was intoxicating.

‘What do you think?’ she asked, once Mika was out of sight. ‘Do you like him?’

‘He seems…. Nice.’

‘Are you sure? You don’t say that like it’s a good thing.’ Jenna’s brow crinkled accusingly.

‘No. It is a good thing,’ I said. ‘It’s just… do you think he’s exciting enough for you?’

She looked at me, with all the superiority of being two days my senior.

‘He’s exciting enough. Sometimes people don’t want to be with someone exactly like them. Where’s the fun in that? There needs to be some sort of balance.’

I nodded and closed my eyes. The light stung and blurred my vision. The slightest twinge of a headache was making itself known and promised to develop into a full-blown migraine later on.

‘I like him,’ I said.

Jenna curled her knees up to her chest and hugged them towards her. It was an unconscious gesture of vulnerability she’d performed since we were children.

‘I’m glad.’­­­

******

The rest of the evening was a blur. I don’t like parties but it is the done thing at parties to drink yourself into mindless oblivion. So what choice did I have?

Mika returned with three large pint glasses and then three more. And three more after that. The midnight sun and alcohol can do funny things to your brain.

‘Why do you always walk up the hill at to watch the sun set even you know it won’t?’ Jenna’s voice was louder than usual. There was a fervour in her glassy blue eyes and her cheeks flushed feverishly. 

I shrugged in an effort to be casual.

‘You used to come with me,’ I said. ‘Until you got too cool for it.’

Jenna laughed at me as though I’d made a funny joke, but both of us knew there was a tension bubbling just under the surface. Unspoken hurts and betrayals still lingered between us.

‘I just don’t like to waste my time waiting for something which will never happen,’ Jenna said. ‘What do you think Mika?’

Mika’s dark eyes widened like a wild animal caught in a snare. He shuffled awkwardly on one foot and refused to make eye contact with either of us.

‘I don’t know the hills that well,’ he said non-committedly.

The music boomed louder and louder, but the daylight addled my brain and I didn’t register that by this point it was already tomorrow.

‘Dance with me, Mika!’ Jenna commanded. She wasn’t usually so militant but equally she was still accustomed to getting her own way. The two of them merged to make one silhouette as they immersed themselves in the crowd.

It was obviously time for me to go home, but for some reason I found myself walking towards the bar and buying a shot of vodka. I downed it, the burn fizzing delightfully in the back of my throat, and I resisted the urge to vomit before ordering another one.

******

My memories are hazy. I remember walking through the trees which seemed as tall and watchful as spindly giants. Couples were hiding in the shadows and the sound of the party was close by. I was lost – or at least I thought I was. All I could see was the sun mercilessly lingering in the sky surveying me from on high. And at some point I came across Mika roaming through the trees too.

‘Where’s Jenna?’ he asked.

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.

‘If you see her can you tell her I’ve gone home?’ he asked. His breath smelled of beer. I had no idea what mine smelled like – my tongue was numb with vodka.

‘I’m leaving now too,’ I said.

Mika put his arm round me. ‘Are you ok? You’re a bit wobbly’.

I just leered up at him with a clown-like smile. His matted, dark hair had formed tiny coils of curls in the moisture of the evening. His eyes reminded me of dark pools, sort of how the lakes looked at night. He was beautiful.

‘Yeah, I’m fine. Just too much to drink.’

‘Me too,’ Mika smiled shyly. ‘The daylight tricks your brain huh?’

We walked through the woodland for a while like that, in comfortable silence.

I can’t remember when we stopped. But I do remember he pulled the hair back from my eyes and that I experienced that wonderful, rare feeling of being wanted. His lips touched mine only for a moment.

And then all of a sudden, the magic was shattered when I realised we were not as alone as I’d imagined. 

Jenna’s eyes glittered with fury and her face was contorted unrecognisably with rage. All the warmth and sunshine had vanished and my normally cheerful, mild-mannered friend was more akin to a foaming thunderstorm. She clenched her teeth like a rabid pitbull terrier, and pulled her fist back swinging it full force into my face.

Oblivion.

I deserve it. 

******

Jenna was my only friend – and so now I have no one. I’m not sure what happened to Mika but my understanding is that he escaped Jenna’s wrath far more lightly than I did. I haven’t heard from him since the party.

I continue to watch the sun mock me with its refusal to go away and give me peace. Unnatural circadian rhythms unbalance my body as it rebels against the white nights. I come up to the hill each evening, partly to be alone and hide from the town who I know are all gossiping about my black eye and split lip – but also because when the sun finally sets, I want to be the first one to see it. This is my celebration. The return of the darkness. I think tonight might be the night.

The sun is as red as blood as it flings a last golden ray on the spires and roofs of the town and lights up the lakes like magic mirrors. Bands of fire streak across the sky and purple clouds bring promises of twilight. I close my eyes and embrace the cool of the approaching night and the hallowed stillness of the darkness to come.

The silence is broken by the patter of feet behind me, and I look round to see Jenna’s face painted in orange sunlight above me. She scrutinises my face, eyeing up the large purple welt on my skin.

‘You look a mess,’ she says and sits down beside me on the grass. It’s not an apology – after all, why should she apologise after I kissed her boyfriend – but it’s an olive branch. Like true friends we tend to show our love through insults and tears, and our animosity with sugar-coated smiles.

 ‘I didn’t think you liked coming here anymore.’

‘I knew you’d be here.’

‘Time for the sun to set,’ I say.

Jenna shrugs and there’s no need to say anymore. We grew up as sisters, both fatherless, both lonely. We are each other’s family. And there are some rituals which cannot be broken.

‘Are you sad to see the sun go?’ I ask.

Jenna nods, a soundless tear rolls down one of her cheeks. ‘But it will be back. Nothing lasts forever.’

She will never forgive me for Mika, but the scars will become part of our fabric and weave themselves into our history. Jenna is one of those rare people who understands that the light cannot exist without the shadows. We would never know what light is unless we experienced the dark. The two of us may clash and cause each other pain but we also need each other in the same way the night needs the day.

‘I really liked him,’ Jenna says meekly. It would be the last time we’d speak of Mika.

I reach for Jenna’s hand and hold it tightly in mine. I know she knows that this is my own unspoken peace offering. There’s no point in voicing apologies for wounds which are still so open and raw. Our flaws are too visible in the cold light of day. We sit there in silence, mesmerised by the luminous sky and wait for the sunlight to drain into the skyline.

The last glimmer of light finally fades from view and the sun sinks below the horizon where it belongs. The town below us starts to swim in shadows as the sky turns midnight blue.

The two of us sit together on the hill for a long time whilst dusk falls. We wait for the darkness to envelope us completely, hiding both our scars.