Broken and Beloved (3)
Phillies and Pizza
"You don't sound like a freshman," Elsa said.
Jack cocked an eyebrow. "I don't?" He let out a light chuckle. "I get that a lot."
Warmed by sunlight dappled by the treetop above, the two sat in content with their half-finished sandwiches. The clouds had dispersed and the sun had come out by noon, a rare occurrence in Philadelphia. Jack and Elsa didn't want to miss out on the good weather. After buying cheesesteaks, they lounged by a coffee table and under a large oak tree.
Despite her serene appearance, inside Elsa was shaking and close to sweating. She was so afraid of getting tongue-tied and saying something stupid. Socializing was Anna's forte, not her's.
She didn't know what possessed her to make that comment about him. Maybe she didn't expect such a deep voice to come out of a baby-faced guy like Jack.
His mother had always taught him that it was rude to stare, especially when it came to gawking at disabled people, but Jack couldn't take his eyes off of her. Elsa carried herself with a delicate elegance, coming off distant and aloof but not haughty. He had watched her taking the time to spread a napkin over her lap before she took a bite from her sandwich. Noticing little things like that only made him admire her more.
Nervous as she was, Elsa enjoyed Jack's company. She couldn't remember the last time she ate lunch with someone. It was the only meal she ate on campus; breakfast and dinner were always at home with Anna. Usually Elsa would keep to herself, munching on something light and reading a book to pass the time.
"Thank you for suggesting cheesesteaks," Elsa said. "This is embarrassing, but...until now, I've never had cheesesteak before. I'm not much of a sandwich person, but you make me want to go back for more sometime." She smiled at him. "I guess I have an excuse, though. I wasn't born here."
"Oh, you weren't? Where did you come from, then?"
"I was born and raised in Norway, until I was eight and my family came over here."
Jack's eyes flew wide. "Wow, Norway? That's so cool." He leaned forward with interest. "Say something in Norwegian."
Elsa stared back at him, lost for a moment.
"No, I'm not the kind of guy that asks for swear words in different languages," he said with a laugh. "Just say hi or something."
"Um...hallo, mitt nvan er Elsa."
She bit her lip and flushed as Jack looked very impressed. "Man, I wish I was fluent in more than one language," he said wistfully. "American public schooling leaves much to be desired. I can maybe name like, five colors in Spanish." He shrugged. "Recently I've been learning some Russian from a friend named North, and a pinch of Thai from Tooth. But honestly, I don't think they'll be much use here in America."
"I feel the same with Norwegian," she replied. "I've been doing my best to hold onto it. Anna doesn't know as much anymore...I think it reminds her too much of our parents..."
Jack took a bite out of his cheesesteak and tilted his head questioningly. "You miss home?"
She shrugged and made a little smile. "It's been a long time since I've been back. I liked it there, and it was lovely. But I don't feel a particularly strong tug in my heart to go back. My father wanted to be at the center of American history, and that's why we moved here. I've been living in Pennsylvania for most of my life. What about you?"
"Oh, me? My story's nowhere near as exciting as yours. I grew up in Burgess, with a single mom and a little sister. It's a tiny town, a couple of hundred miles from Philly. Don't feel bad if you don't know. Trust me, nobody knows about Burgess."
Elsa smiled. "Well, now I know. It must be nice and cozy in Burgess. I came from a small town in Norway, too...I can appreciate the kind of life there."
"Yeah, you get my drift."
When Jack didn't say anymore, Elsa tried to strike up another conversation, but was at a loss with how to do just that. Then she remembered that he was a freshman. "Um…How do you like college so far?"
"Hmm...well, for one thing, I'm really glad I don't have to take math anymore." He gave her an apologetic glance and rubbed his head sheepishly. "No offense, if you happen to like math. But I'm fully convinced that I'm allergic to numbers and equations. There's a lot more freedom in college. I think that's my favorite part about it. I can take whatever classes I want, and my schedule's a lot more flexible. Public school wasn't like that. I had no say in getting the most out of my education, and that was sort of a stinker. I guess I'm grateful for one thing: I was forced to take the boring classes and came away knowing I didn't want to do them anymore in college."
Elsa shook her head. "I can't even imagine being in public school. It must be so hectic."
He was intrigued. "Oh, were you homeschooled?"
She made a soft laugh. "It must be obvious, huh?"
Jack liked the sound of her laugh among many other things. "Yeah, I can kind of tell." The way she dressed and carried herself gave it away. It was amazing how cute she looked even without makeup. So far he had only seen her with conservative clothes and her hair tied in a bun.
"I've been in public schools all my life," Jack said. "Must be nice to be homeschooled."
Elsa nodded. "I loved it. My parents have always been very protective and nurturing." She couldn't tell him the true extent of why they had acted that way. She went on: "They taught me and Anna everything they felt I needed to know. I never really made any friends, though...Anna was all I needed. I'm not sure if I could say the same for her. Ever since she became a freshman in college, she's been such a social butterfly."
"People change."
"I feel like I haven't really changed." Elsa stared down at her hands. "I always keep to myself. I'm never really good around people."
"I haven't known you very long, but I really appreciate the way you listen to me. My friends and I always like to argue and have food fights. Sure, it's fun, but it's nice to just sit down and have a little chat for a change." He beamed at her. "I like having you around."
Elsa felt her face grow warm again as he said that. "Y-you do?"
"Of course. We need to do this more often."
A great gust of wind whipped up, pulling at their hair and making the leaves rattle above them. "Winter's coming up soon," Jack remarked as he casually brushed his white hair back in place. "But I don't mind. The cold never bothered me much."
"It's my favorite season," Elsa said with a soft smile.
Jack's eyes lit up. "You too? I love winter!" His fondness for her increased by exponential proportions. He could talk to her for hours if he wanted. But as he glanced at his watch, his heart sunk. "Yikes, I gotta go. Only crazy people sign up for classes starting at noon."
Elsa grinned. "That makes two of us. I have a class, too." A small part of her felt satisfied as he chuckled at her remark. She began to fold up the crumb-littered napkin on her lap.
"Here, I'll throw that away for you," Jack said.
As he reached out to get the napkin, their fingers brushed for a moment. Just like back in the clinic, the brief touch felt electrifying. "Th-thank you..." Elsa managed to say.
"No problem." Jack balled up their trash and made an underhand toss into a nearby bin. He grinned at her. "I'll see you around, Elsa. Take care of yourself."
Still a little dazed by his touch, she could only smile back and wave before he turned and rushed back to his school.
Her fingers flitted to her cheek, just checking to make sure her head hadn't exploded from sheer heat. She watched him run down the path, though she could've sworn it looked like he was flying instead.
Jack felt like soaring, practically weightless as he sprinted back. 'Elsa loves winter...just like me! Everyone thinks it's a time of doom and gloom...but she'd understand me. She totally gets it.'
Once he got to his next class, Jack knew exactly what he wanted to draw.
The latest assignment called for everyone to move out of their comfort zones. Not completely, but just enough to poke around at other subjects and mediums. Freshman year was about experimentation, after all.
Like with all big art projects, making rough concept sketches was the first step. Jack opened up his sketchbook and went straight to work. He made his lines loose and gestural, resisting the temptation to add more onto his drawings of Elsa. His instructor always told him that rough sketches were like puppies at a pet store. It's easy to get attached to puppies and not get anywhere beyond adoring them.
'It boils down to picking out just one you feel would be best for you,' Jack thought as he drew. 'That, and having the guts to turn down the rest that don't make the cut. It's the same with drawings.'
"Who's that? The girl of your dreams?"
Jack nearly jumped a mile high and quickly covered his sketches. "Not so loud, Bunny," he hissed. "No, she's not the girl of my dreams."
Bunny, who sat across from Jack, leaned back in his chair and chortled. "Sure, mate."
Funny how Bunny had worded that. Elsa did appear in Jack's dream, after all. But he wasn't going to tell that to his friend in a hurry.
"We're supposed to draw something different, right? I don't usually draw people, so that's what I'll do for this assignment."
Bunny peered at what little he could see between Jack's fingers on the paper. "That's Elsa, isn't it? A real beauty, I'd say, from the looks of it."
Jack tried to change the subject as he slyly glanced over at his friend's doodles. "I know it's tempting, Bunny, but you can't draw Easter eggs all the time."
Bunny sighed. "I know...I guess I'll make North happy by doing something Christmas-themed this time around." He patted Jack's shoulder. "I'll leave you to drawing your girl, then."
He slipped his headphones back on, frowning at his sketchbook in concentration as his foot made rhythmic taps on the floor.
Jack worked on his sketches for a few more minutes. After picking out one he liked, Jack took out his Bristol paper, opening to the first blank sheet. He decided to work with Prismacolor pencils. His brow furrowed as he stared at the white page, as he tried to picture it in its final layout.
'She told me that winter was her favorite season...' He tried to remember this as the drawing began to mentally unfold in his head.
His hand hovered and flitted over the page as he lightly hatched in construction lines. Even at its rough stage, he wanted to get it just tight. Elsa's perfect likeness and figure. Then he began to block in colors with broad strokes of his chiseled pencils. Snow was always tricky. To give form to the negative space, other colors had to be used wisely. Jack liked the challenge. Snow was his favorite thing to draw.
He drew Elsa sitting in her wheelchair, with a light smile on her lips and eyes almost closed in content as she tilted her head to the sky, one hand resting on her lap and the other outstretched to touch newly fallen snow. The wheelchair itself was just an outline framing her, partially faded by atmospheric depth and the soft snow. He wanted Elsa to stand out, not the wheelchair she was bound to.
Just as he thought he was on a roll, Jack hit a road block. He was stuck on her hair. He really wanted to draw Elsa with her hair down. The problem is, he had never seen her with it. He spent the next few minutes hunched over his drawing, tapping his pencil on his chin and mentally agonizing over the hair dilemma. To his embarrassment, he had no choice but to leave that space blank.
Still, it didn't detract from his overall excitement. Jack had been dreading this assignment before. Now he was looking forward to every minute of doing it.
Anna helped Elsa into the car after classes were over. Doing that for three years gave Anna a strong pair of arms. Elsa could trust that her sister would never drop her. She remember during the first year she'd apologize profusely to Anna for giving her so much trouble.
And Anna would always say, "Oh it's fine, Elsa. You practically weigh next to nothing. Plus, I need the exercise."
Elsa stared through the window, content and lost in her thoughts as Anna drove the car.
"Sooo, how was your day...?" Anna asked. She looked over and grinned. "Oh, you don't need to tell me. You saw Jack again, didn't you?"
"How did you know?"
Anna shrugged. "Sisterly intuition, I guess. Tell me everything. What did you two talk about?"
Elsa retold her conversation with Jack to the best of her ability.
"Sounds like you two have a lot in common." Anna shot her a sly glance. "Next time will be a date, right?"
Elsa laughed. "Anna, I only just met him the day before. Love doesn't work like that."
"Sure it can." Her little sister pouted, but made no further complaint. She could tell Elsa felt unusually cheerful today, and she was happy for her older sister. It wasn't like her to make friends easily.
Anna was exhausted and didn't feel like cooking dinner when they got home, so she ordered pizza and hit the bed.
Elsa remained in the living room, lounging against the cushions of a chair in front of the TV. A documentary on the construction of the Vietnam War Memorial had her full attention. The architect had been a twenty-one year old student, just like Elsa, when she undertook the project. It galvanized Elsa with inspiration; at the same time it made her feel strangely inadequate. She remembered her professor telling her how she held much potential.
She briefly took her eyes off the screen to stare down at her open palms. 'I've been concealing my powers all these years...what can I do when I actually let it go? What limits could I break through?'
The doorbell rung. Elsa's head snapped up and she straightened in her seat. She leaned back in her wheelchair to call out her sister's name. "Anna? Anna! Pizza's here!"
Anna stumbled out of her room, her voice thick and slurry with sleep. "Wonderful. I'm starving..." She fumbled for her wallet on the counter and went to answer the door.
A tall, young man with unkempt blonde hair waited outside. With his broad and sturdy physique, he looked like someone more fitted to operate a moving van than deliver pizza. When Anna walked up to him, Elsa could see that he easily towered over her by a head.
Anna took the warm box from him. She sniffed appreciatively as the aroma of pizza wafted from the cracks. "Thanks for the pizza!" she said. Then she tilted her head and furrowed her brow as she peered up at him. "I think I've seen you before. Don't you go to Drexel?"
"Yeah. Strange how you remember."
"Were you one of those guys who helped move stuff during freshmen orientation?"
He shrugged. "I hauled out ice and food. Nothing big."
"What's your name? I'm Anna Arendal."
"Kristoff Bjorgman."
Anna flashed him a little smile. "It's good to meet a fellow student." Then when she opened the box, her smile faded and she frowned at him. "Hey, this is pepperoni. I ordered cheese for me and my sister."
Kristoff looked disgruntled. "Look, I'm just the guy who delivers pizza. I don't take orders and I don't make them. Don't shoot the messenger."
Elsa smiled. "Anna, give him a break. It's not a big deal. We can just peel off the pepperoni."
Anna frowned. "But I don't like throwing away unwanted food. Even if I don't want to eat it."
Kristoff rolled his eyes. "If you really don't like pepperoni that much, just put them in a bag and I'll give them to my brother. I've got Sven waiting in the car, and I can't have him alone for long."
"Okay, I'll be quick." Anna dashed into the kitchen with the pizza box. Behind her back, Kristoff rolled his eyes again as he followed her in and shut the door.
Anna slipped on a plastic glove and opened the box. "Wow, you guys really piled up on the pepperoni, huh?"
"You don't have to rub it in."
Elsa suppressed a laugh upon hearing their snarky exchange. She felt slightly uncomfortable at having a stranger in their house, but Kristoff barely spared her a glance.
As soon as Anna finished purging the pizza of pepperoni, Kristoff snatched up the plastic bag and the cash from Anna's hand.
"Thank you!" Elsa called, but he had already left and Anna closed the door.
"Charming, isn't he?" Anna rolled her eyes.
"That was a little odd," Elsa remarked. "Usually you hit it off with boys pretty well."
"I know...maybe he's an exception." Anna frowned thoughtfully. "Kristoff Bjorgman…I think I've heard rumors about him. People say he's a little weird. He doesn't make any friends and just hangs out with Sven instead." Anna lowered her voice to a whisper, despite Elsa being the only one around. "I think his little brother is severely autistic...he's not capable of intelligible speech. Kristoff's really protective of him. He got into a fight last week when some jerk made fun of Sven. I think that's how I heard about Kristoff."
"That's sweet."
"What? Kristoff knocking the teeth out of that guy? You're hilarious, Elsa."
"No, I meant it's sweet how close Kristoff and Sven are. One sibling looking after the disabled one, just like us." Elsa looked down at her fragile legs. "I can't do anything on my own."
Anna's smile faded as she regarded her sister seriously. "Sure, you can. You got into a really good school all by yourself, without any of my help. You tell me that a lot of your teachers have faith in you. I've seen your works and they're amazing." She wrapped her arms around Elsa's shoulders. "I know you don't have legs to stand on anymore, but you're gonna go far, Elsa. I believe in you."
Elsa gratefully returned the hug. "Sorry for moping. We have a pizza to eat before it gets cold."
They watched the rest of the documentary together as they ate, though Anna was more focused on inspecting her pizza slice for any sign of pepperoni. She looked pensive as she stared past the TV screen. "Now that I think about it…if someone ever put you down, I'd knock him out, too."
Elsa turned to give her a half amused, half sad look. "You almost did, remember?"
"Hmm? What do you mean-?" Then Anna's face darkened at the thought. "Oh. Now I remember."
Elsa was referring to that one time she and Anna were relaxing at a park, and some homeless bum curled up on a bench had the nerve to spit in Elsa's direction and call her a retard under his stinking breath. Elsa barely heard it, and she wished she hadn't. It cut her deep like a knife. Anna heard it, too. She got so mad and riled up that she bodily seized him by his patchy trenchcoat and threatened to punch him in the face.
"What did you just call my sister? I dare you to say that to her face, asshole!"
Startled by her vehement reaction, Elsa tried to put a restraining hand on her sister's arm. "Anna, it's fine…just let it go…"
"No, Elsa. This is not okay." Anna looked close to crying. "I won't let anyone get away with insulting my sister. I'm gonna teach this guy a lesson." She raised her voice as she shouted down the startled man. "I'd bet all four years worth of my college tuition that my sister's a thousand times smarter and nicer than you! You think calling her a retard's gonna make your sorry situation any better? "
"Please, Anna," Elsa pleaded. "You're making a scene. I don't want this to get any worse. Let's just go home."
Anna had given the homeless man the most frightening, withering glare before she finally pushed him back onto the bench and wheeled Elsa out of the park. It wasn't until they got home that Elsa started to break down and cry, both hurt by the man's insult and moved by her sister's quickness to defend her.
Anna gripped the back handles of her sister's wheelchair and pulled her in close so she could rest her head on Elsa's shoulder. "I'll always be there for you. If you have any problems, don't hesitate to tell me."
Oh, how she wished she could. Elsa wanted to tell Anna about Pitch, but more than that she didn't want to drag her little sister into her mess. She didn't want Anna to get hurt, too.
'It's okay…when it comes to Pitch, I have Jack.'
Later that night, after she made finishing touches to her thesis paper, Elsa stayed up late to text Jack. She would've called him over the phone if Anna wasn't sleeping next door.
He had texted her first after dinner, saying again how he really liked having lunch with her. Elsa sat in bed, staring at her phone and trying to come up with a reply. She was briefly distracted as she inspected her legs. The bruises now took on a yellowish color. They looked ugly, but at least she was healing. She'll never forget what Jack did for her that day, standing up for her when she couldn't.
Finally she typed, "Since you came over to my school, next time I can visit yours. Maybe sit in one of your classes?" She held her breath as she sent the text.
Jack had been lounging on his bed and doodling in his notebook. Elsa hadn't answered in a while, but then his phone buzzed on the nightstand and made him jolt.
He broke into a wide grin as he read her reply. He eagerly typed back: "Sure! That would be awesome. You can check out more of my drawings that way." Jack wasn't going to tell her about his current project just yet. It would be a surprise. He had to find some way to ask about her hair, though.