THE BIG LEAP
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN - A GIRL NAMED JEN
Jen and her friends began their first full day in Denmark (after some breakfast and a few cups of coffee first, it almost goes without saying) by planning out in which order they would be seeing the many items on the list, she´d spent untold hours online putting together back home. Maybe Joey and Jack had been looking forward to this for a long time too, but she didn´t think anything could top how much she´d been dreaming herself ahead to this for the past months. As great as the initial idea of moving home to New York had seemed, she´d quickly started becoming afraid of falling into her old habits again and for that reason, she´d never really allowed herself to fully embrace life there. Now, less than a year later, she couldn´t wait until she graduated, so she could move away again.
Pacey turned out to be a great help, since he knew which attractions were closest to one another and which ones weren´t all they were cracked up to be in the on-line descriptions. They ended up deciding to start off in the inner city, where they took a walk up to the top of The Round Tower, a huge tower from medieval times close to the city center, from where they had a great vantage point to all of the inner city and could almost see as far away as Pacey´s new neighborhood. After a short walk down the first part of the main shopping street, where she couldn´t help herself from buying this totally bitching Bikini Kill t-shirt, she´d seen in a store window, they had brunch in one of the restaurants in New Harbor, while overlooking the picturesque canals and enjoying the morning sun. Since this was also close to where the statue of little mermaid sitting on her rock is, they also used to opportunity to check a big one off of Joey´s list by getting a picture of her posing in front of it, for her little friend back home. Jen only thought that it was alright and while she could have easily seen how her five-year-old self would have gone nuts over it, as an adult she had to say, that it was a little underwhelming to her.
During the afternoon, they went to the Planetarium, as Jack had wanted to and Jen had to agree with him was a very interesting place, that she could have easily spent many more hours in, than they did, before they went to "Ripley´s Believe it or Not" down by city hall square and finishing off by taking a walk through the rest of the main shopping street. As much as she loved the shopping streets of New York, that she practically grew up on, Jen couldn´t help wishing that they could have had something like it back home, with its many street performers and quaint atmosphere to it, that made her feel at home instantly. After all of that hard work being tourists, they went to a small Mexican restaurant for dinner, that Pacey had been to before, where the Huevos Rancheros were honestly to die for!
This was also where they met up with Pacey´s girlfriend and her BFF for the first time and were they just about the sweetest pair of girls, Jen had ever met, or what? She could very easily see how Pacey and Marie would be a perfect fit for one another and from the way that girl looked at him, Jen could tell that this girl had it for him bad, as in the "Can´t live without him, want to have his babies and can never see herself with anyone else, now that she´s fallen this much for him" kind of bad! Her friend Joanna was from moment one someone, she could see herself becoming friends with in a heartbeat and after only the first evening of talking to her, Jen already knew more about her, than she did about close to ninety-nine percent of her college classmates back home. For example, she found out that they´d both had nothing except for rotten luck in love, both of them thought that Limp Bizkit were far more over-rated, than they were talented and they could also agree that while first "Wayne´s World" had the most laughs, "Wayne´s World 2" still had the best laugh, with Garth´s date scene.
Of course, she monitored Joey´s reactions to Pacey and Marie carefully (something that she´d naturally done since she was a kid and couldn´t help herself from doing) and while Joey had kept it entirely civil all of the time, Jen could also tell that there were slight hints of jealousy here and there in her voice, that only someone who knows her as well as she did, would have been able to pick up on. Pacey didn´t look like he did, but then again it could have had something to do with the other main girl in his life sitting next to him all evening, whom it couldn´t escape Jen´s eye kept at least one hand on him, whenever him and Joey started talking to one another. Right before they were about to leave, Marie and Pacey talked a little in Danish (it was so frigging weird for her the first time, she´d heard Pacey being that good at speaking a foreign language!) and from what she could tell, his girlfriend managed to talk him into spending the night at her place.
Not that Jen minded at all, since it gave Joey and her a chance to share Pacey´s bed for the night and meant that they wouldn´t have to lie on their air mattresses. Before bedtime, they watched the news in Danish on TV, while they had fun making guesses as to what the stories were about. Joey and herself were laughing their butts off, after Jack had come up with one of the stories being about how trout were plotting to take over the world, when who should she see pop up on Pacey´s TV, other than her old boyfriend Henry Parker, of all people?
She hadn´t had any communication him, since she´d gotten an e-mail from him right before high school ended, where he congratulated her on her upcoming graduation and filled her in on a little of what had been going on in his life. She couldn´t remember all that much of it, but one thing she did remember was how he wrote that after he´d badly dislocated his thumb in football training, he´d switched to playing soccer and found out, that he was pretty good at it. So good, in fact, that his athletic advisor thought that he could end up playing as a pro, if he decided to put enough effort into it. Since then, Jen hadn´t thought much about it or him to be honest, until that news story came on and from what she could see, he´d been signed by some big Danish club, who were presenting him at a press conference in front of a handful of reporters. Thankfully, what they showed from it was in English and as she sat on that couch and listened to him telling the press about how excited he was to be signing for his new team, she would be the first to admit that it made a whole bunch of old feelings rise up inside of the former partygirl again.
Usually, she didn´t like to waste her time on regrets and considering the sheer multitude of things just from her early teen years, that she wished, she´d never done, that is also pretty much the only tactic, a girl like herself could use. The one exception, that she was willing to spilling the beans on regretting, was letting herself lose touch with Henry. If she had to be perfectly honest about it, there was really only him on the top of the mountain, as far as which guys made her feel complete inside. Something about the way his love for her was pure like freshly fallen snow, always made her think back on the time we were together, before his parents moved away and forced their break-up, as perhaps the happiest, she´d ever been with any guy.
Not that she hadn´t cared for her other boyfriends, don´t think that she didn´t, and she would like to think that she´d been close to being in love a few other times. But, of all of the ones she had tried it with, no one ever really hit the marks of those great months she´d spent with that almost too innocent boy, who had such a huge heart of gold.
It almost goes without saying that fantasies of him and her meeting by pure chance over the next days and falling in love all over again, started racing through her head after his news segment was over. Of course, she didn´t want to get her hopes too far up, since it wasn´t exactly like the odds were on her side. Little did she know that it wouldn´t be long, until it looked like the first part of those fantasies would start coming true.
After a good and hearty breakfast, they started off their second full day in Copenhagen by taking a train trip to the Northern part of Zeeland and going to Kronborg castle, where Hamlet took place in the world of Shakespeare and where she would gladly admit that the sense of history washed though her, as it rarely had before. Plus, it was fun to her to picture herself sitting on that throne, wearing some fancy queenly robes, having that gorgeous crown sitting on top of her head and having gallant knights from across the realm, ready to heed her every beckon call. After a few hours there, they went into Elsinore itself (or Helsingør, as the Danes call it) and had lunch at a classic Danish restaurant there.
Again, and in spite of them having menu´s in both Danish and English, Pacey was a great help. This time in explaining to them what the various dishes consisted of and giving them a head´s up in advance, on what they tasted like. On his recommendation, they got a taste of what smørrebrød is and got a whole lot of different kinds, that they would then all get a small taste of. Basically, what smørrebrød is (and don´t think they didn´t have lots of laughs from Pacey trying to teach them how to pronounce it correctly!), is a piece of rye bread at the bottom with different condiments on top, that as a whole make up for a very delicious bite of food. Jen would say that her personal favorites were the one with fried red herring, a little bit of caviar and this yellow dressing called remoulade on it (a condiment, that they could all agree seriously needed to brought to states ASAP!), and one that had a kind of paté, fried mushrooms and crispy bacon on it. In true Danish fashion, they washed it down with plenty of beer (from a local brewery, no less) and had a few shots of Schnapps as well, to go along with the pieces of smørrebrød, that had herring on it. After drinking them though, she also thought to herself that those will probably be the only shots that she´d ever have of that stuff as well, because it was not to her American taste buds at all!
By the time they left to catch their train back to the city, all of them were in good spirits, it´s safe to say and just to make sure that those spirits were kept that way, they also bought a couple of cold sixpacks at a cornerstore close to the station, to serve as their entertainment for the beautiful trip home. A trip, that seemed (to her, anyway) like they were travelling through one real-life Norman Rockwell painting after another, interspersed with them stopping at a small train station now and again.
To finish off this day, that had already turned into one long drinking binge, they went to Christiania, a place she just had to see for herself, from the first moment she´d read about it! Not to mention that it had the added bonus of being relatively close to Pacey´s loaner apartment and after a handful of days that had already consisted of a lot of travelling, that part didn´t exactly bother any of them.
Jen´s first thought when they got inside was this: If she´d had access to a place like this, when she was a wild at heart fourteen-year-old, then that girl that she was, would have absolutely been in 7th heaven there! To herself, that place wasn´t just a tourist attraction, that they say is different, it really was and she could almost feel the freedom soaring through her, as they walked through streets filled with a mix or normal looking people and the kind of freaky looking people, that her younger and more naive self, instantly would have felt herself drawn towards. She could remember most what happened there up to around midnight, but somewhere around when they´d had those vodka shots with that licorice stuff in it, was where her mind started to draw a blank.
She remembered them sharing a joint, except for Joey, who by that point was looking toasted enough from the alcohol and in all likelihood would have ended up passing out, if she had taken part in it. Then they´d had some more beers and shooters at some outdoor bar, where she was pretty sure that it was because some butch looking girl was blatantly hitting on Jack, that they decided to move on to a different place. Or was it Pacey, she was hitting on? Either way, the end of it was that they went to a different bar and from then on, all she could remember were flashes from the rest of night, like holding Joey´s hair back, while she threw up in their ladies room; some rather adorable, drunk (and probably high too) Danish late-teen girl thinking that she was Drew Barrymore and telling Jen in great detail how much she loved her movies (Jen didn´t have the heart to ruin what was clearly a special moment for her, so she just played along); and most of all Pacey and Jack having some long discussion, that she couldn´t remember ever finding out what was about.
The next morning, they were all feeling completely beat after the night before and it was already silently agreed, from when the four of them woke up, that any major sightseeing plans for the day would have to be pushed forward to the day after.
Pacey had been clever enough to make a fry-up of leftover food from his fridge, when they´d gotten back to his place, but she´d been dumb enough not to eat anything and gone straight to sleep on her old friend, that she hoped never see again after this vacation was over, the air mattress. For that reason, he was already making breakfast, when Jen came into the kitchen, probably looking like something the cat had dragged in and that had been dead for weeks already. She´d only just gotten herself a cup of coffee and sat down, when Pacey placed a newspaper in front of her with a picture of Henry on the page, that he wanted her to see.
"Guess, who´s having a meet and greet with the fans of his new club today? It´s downtown, you can get to there from here in half an hour" he asked and right away, Jen knew what her plans were for that day.
Sure, it was a long shot, but even a long shot sometimes comes through, so who was to say that for once in her life, it couldn´t happen for Jen too?
END OF CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
In the next and third-last chapter of this story, that I´ll post on Friday, we´ll be following the next days of the vacation, as seen through Jack´s eyes.
Thanks for reading!