Two months earlier
The fjord didn’t look like water. It looked like a slab of cold steel laid out under a bruised, low-hanging Norwegian sky.
At a red light, Raina lifted her Leica camera to her eye and pressed the cold metal frame against her cheekbone. She framed the morning ferry cutting through the grey mist and clicked the shutter just as the light turned green. Then she dropped the camera back onto her lap when Helena stepped on the gas.
“I’m not going in,” Raina said. Her voice sounded flat against the hum of the engine.
Helena glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard. “We talked about this at breakfast, Raina.”
“You talked. I said I wasn’t going.”
“You can’t hide in the flat all day,” Helena said quietly. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I have my first clinical orientation at the hospital at eight-thirty. I can’t leave you sitting in an empty apartment with unmade boxes.”
“I can take the number four bus back on my own.”
“Raina—”
“It’s my final year, Mum. I don’t know a single person in this town. I don’t even speak the language.”
“Everyone speaks English,” Helena countered. Her voice lacked conviction. She slowed behind a line of cars turning toward the school’s drop-off zone. “You’ll meet people. You just have to give it a chance.”
“You said that on the plane from Heathrow.”
Helena let out a long, exhausted sigh but didn’t answer.
Raina flipped her phone face-up on her knee so her mother could see the screen. Her best friend Mia had sent a photo from their old art studio in Surrey an hour ago. Written in bright white chalk across the green board was WHERE IS RAINA? Below it, Mia was pulling a dramatic, tragic face and holding up an empty paper coffee cup.
First day without you, the caption read. Already unbearable. The studio is dead.
“That’s Mia,” Raina whispered and stared at the screen. “My seat next to her is literally empty right now. They’re starting the senior exhibition portfolio today and I’m—” She looked out the window at the towering glass facade of Alpha High. “I’m here.”
“I know, love.”
“I called her last night. I called her the night before that too. It’s not the same.”
“I never said it was,” Helena said. Her knuckles went pale against the leather wheel as she edged the car forward. “Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. Do you think I wanted to pull you out of England for your final term?”
“You could have told me before you accepted the contract.”
“The landlord raised the rent on the cottage by forty percent, Raina! They cut my nursing shifts at the NHS! I couldn’t keep that place without drowning in debt.”
“I know about the rent,” Raina said softly. Her thumb traced the leather strap of her camera bag.
“Then what do you want from me?” Helena broke. Her voice cracked as she slammed her foot on the brake. A student in a heavy yellow raincoat stepped off the curb in front of them with his hood pulled low against the drizzle. When the boy had crossed, Helena pulled into the drop-off lane and put the car in park. “Tell me. What should I have done?”
“You should have let me decide if I wanted to stay with Dad or Gran.”
Helena stared straight ahead through the rain-streaked windshield. “I was afraid you’d choose to stay. And I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you behind.”
The raw honesty of it hung heavy in the damp warmth of the car. Raina swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat and couldn’t look at her mother.
A car behind them gave a short, impatient double-tap of its horn.
Helena reached into the back seat and picked up a creased brown paper bag. “Here. I made you lunch.”
“I’m eighteen, Mum. I can make my own food.”
“You didn’t this morning,” Helena said and held out the bag. “Cheese and tomato. There’s a green apple in the bottom.”
Raina took it and set it inside her camera tote. “Thanks.”
“Orientation might run late today. There’s soup in the red pot on the stove.”
“I saw it.”
“And my night shifts start on Monday so I won’t—”
“I know,” Raina cut in. Her tone softened slightly. “I know you have to work.”
Helena reached across the console. Her hand hovered near Raina’s face as if to brush a strand of dark hair behind her ear but she stopped herself when Raina turned toward the window.
“Please don’t walk me in,” Raina said quietly.
“I can’t anyway. I’m already five minutes late.” Helena pulled her hand back to the wheel. “Text me when you get home, okay? If it’s awful… you can tell me.”
“You’ll be in surgery rounds.”
“I’ll check it the second I get a break.”
The car behind them sounded its horn again and louder this time. Raina opened the passenger door and the freezing coastal wind instantly cut through her wool jacket.
“Love you,” Helena called out over the idling engine.
“Love you too.”
Raina closed the door before her mother could see the sting of tears in her eyes.
The air outside smelled sharply of diesel fuel, wet pine, and the bitter salt spray drifting off the harbor. She waited until her mother’s car vanished into the grey morning fog before turning to face Alpha High.
Inside, the building was a cold, sleek monument to modern Scandinavian architecture. It was all soaring glass, exposed concrete, and pale birch wood. Rainwater dripped from the boots of hundreds of students and their voices echoed off the tall ceilings in a fluid mixture of Norwegian and effortless English. Groups of teenagers laughed near row after row of wooden lockers and moved together in tight, established clusters.
Raina felt entirely invisible yet painfully exposed.
It took her fifteen minutes, two wrong turns past a wall of athletic trophies, and a humiliating interaction with the reception desk to find her final period class Visual Media.
When she opened the door to Room B212, the teacher looked up from a projector screen displaying a black-and-white photograph of a desolate beach. He was a thin man with silver wire-rimmed glasses and a dark ink stain on his sleeve.
“Raina Hale?” he asked in lightly accented English.
“Yes. Sorry I’m late. I got lost.”
“Half the new students take a tour of the boiler room on their first day,” he said and gave her a mild, reassuring smile. “I’m Mr. Solberg. Take the empty stool near the glass wall.”
Raina hurried down the narrow aisle and her wet boots squeaked on the polished floor. She set her camera bag beside the stool and sat down while staring at her hands.
The stool beside her remained empty for twenty minutes while Solberg lectured on spatial narrative and tone in photography. Then the heavy wooden door was kicked open with a loud clack.
A dark-haired girl hurried into the room. She was breathless and carrying an overstuffed navy file folder, a half-empty iced coffee, and a canvas tote bag bulging with magazines. As she passed the front row, a shower of loose prints and silver paperclips spilled out of her folder and scattered across the floor.
“Sorry, Mr. Solberg!” the girl called out and dropped to her knees to scoop up the papers. “The bridge traffic was gridlocked and the local press threw a fit about the layout proofs.”
Solberg took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Did they fix the headline on page four, Ivy?”
“They fixed page four but they spelled the mayor’s name wrong on page five.”
“Of course they did.” Solberg gestured toward the back. “Sit down before you drop your coffee.”
The girl scrambled up and dropped onto the empty stool right beside Raina. Her folder popped open again and slid two black-and-white prints across Raina’s side of the desk.
“Oh come on,” Ivy muttered and tossed her dark hair out of her eyes as she gathered the scattered prints. Raina noticed a smudge of dark indigo ink pressed right into the curve of Ivy’s palm.
“You’ve got ink on your hand,” Raina whispered softly.
“I’ve got ink on my life,” Ivy whispered back and tried to wipe her palm on her jeans which only smeared the blue stain further. She caught Raina’s eye and gave her a wide, bright, unapologetic smile. “There it is. I’m Ivy.”
“Raina.”
“Right! Solberg mentioned we were getting an English transfer.” Ivy tucked a stray strand of dark hair behind her ear and her brown eyes shone bright with instant curiosity. “Did you survive finding the media block?”
“Barely. I walked past the gym twice.”
“The signs here are useless. I’ll show you the shortcut through the lab after class.”
Raina glanced at the thick stack of page proofs. “Are you on the school newspaper?”
“I run it. Which basically means the local printing press calls me at six in the morning to scream about image resolution and I miss half my morning classes.” Ivy scrubbed at her palm again with a crumpled tissue and gave up after a second. “Where did you move from?”
“Surrey. Just outside London.”
“I went to London once with my older brother, Emil,” Ivy said and leaned her chin on her hand. “We took the wrong tube line and ended up at some industrial estate miles away from our hostel.”
“He sounds about as good with maps as I am.”
“Oh he was convinced he was a genius right up until we hit a dead end.” Ivy laughed. It was a warm, throaty, infectious sound that seemed to instantly cut through the cold air of the classroom. “What brought your family all the way out to Fjordvik?”
“My mum took a nursing contract at the regional hospital.”
“Did you want to come?”
“No.” Raina caught the sharp, bitter edge in her own voice and softened. “Sorry. It’s just… it’s been a rough day.”
“You don’t have to apologize. Moving across the ocean in your final year sounds completely brutal.”
“My best friend back home is putting together our portfolio exhibition right now,” Raina said and looked down at her camera strap. “I was supposed to co-host it with her.”
“That’s heavy,” Ivy said and her expression shifted into something genuinely sympathetic. “Are you still shooting for it?”
Solberg walked down the aisle just then and placed a worksheet on spatial narrative between them before pacing back toward the board.
Ivy waited until his back was turned then leaned closer to Raina and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “What does this prompt even mean?”
Raina glanced at the paper. “'Analyze how the desolate horizon evokes internal isolation.'”
“Translation: Find a picture of an old wooden boat and pretend it made you cry,” Ivy whispered back and her eyes danced with mischief.
Raina let out a sudden, startled laugh before she could stop herself. Solberg turned around and raised an eyebrow. Ivy immediately smoothed her face into an expression of intense, academic focus until he turned back to the screen.
“Do you have any shots on your camera yet?” Ivy asked quietly under her breath. “I’ve taken six photos of the harbor breakwater for this assignment and they all look like depressing grey soup.”
Raina switched on the digital display of her Leica. The photograph she had captured from the car filled the screen. It showed the heavy grey ferry cutting through the icy fjord, the jagged mountains looming in the background, and framed faintly in the rain-speckled passenger window the soft, melancholic profile of her mother looking out at the water.
Ivy leaned in close and her shoulder pressed lightly against Raina’s. “Wait. Is that someone’s reflection in the glass?”
“My mum,” Raina murmured. “I didn’t even realize she was in the frame until I looked at the preview.”
“Don’t crop her out,” Ivy said and her voice dropped into quiet awe. “Keep her in when you print it.”
“You think so?”
“Everyone in this town takes photos of that damn ferry,” Ivy said and looked up at Raina with sharp, discerning eyes. “It’s boring. But adding her reflection? It turns a cliché postcard into a story. It makes you wonder where she’s going or what she left behind.”
Raina stared at the small screen and looked at her mother’s reflected face through Ivy’s eyes. “We had a fight right before I took it.”
“Oh.” Ivy softened and leaned back slightly. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Raina tapped the screen and switched off the display. “What are we supposed to write for the caption?”
Ivy pulled the worksheet toward herself. “Let’s write something short. Solberg hates when people try too hard.”
For the next twenty minutes they worked together. Ivy slashed through Raina’s first caption for being “too poetic” while Raina rejected Ivy’s attempt for being “too blunt.” By the time the final bell rang they had drafted a caption both of them liked and Solberg collected their sheet with a nod of approval.
As the rest of the class began packing up, Ivy pointed at Raina’s Leica. “Can I buy that shot off you for The Current? We’re doing a feature on the new ferry fare hikes and the staff photographer gave me a picture where his own thumb covers half the frame. I’ll give you full photo credit on the front page.”
Raina blinked in surprise. “I’d have to ask my mum. Her face is in it.”
“Of course! If she’s camera-shy no pressure at all.” Ivy gathered her proofs and shoved them back into her overflowing tote. “We have an editorial meeting on Thursday afternoon in Room B214. You should drop by.”
“I’ve only been here for four hours, Ivy.”
“So what? You’ve got a better eye than half our senior staff.” Ivy paused and flashed a quick, self-deprecating grin. “Though I probably shouldn’t tell you that before you’ve even seen the office.”
A small, genuine smile touched Raina’s lips. It was her first of the day. “I might come.”
“I’ll take a might.” Ivy pulled out a cracked iPhone with a screen shattered in a spiderweb pattern across the top corner. “Hand over your phone. I’ll give you my number so I can text you the room code. I sent a new writer to the janitor’s closet last week by mistake.”
Raina handed over her phone. Ivy typed her contact details in with practiced speed and sent a quick text to herself so she had Raina’s number in return.
Outside the classroom, two students from the school magazine waited in the hall and waved a sheaf of blue paper proofs at Ivy.
“I’m coming!” Ivy called out to them then turned back to Raina and guided her down a narrow service passage behind the science lab that led straight into the bright, open atrium. “Bakery’s down those stairs,” Ivy said and pointed through the glass to a quaint wooden storefront on the street below. “Bakeriet. Get the cinnamon buns if they haven’t sold out.”
“Thanks, Ivy.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Raina!” Ivy gave a bright wave and her ink-stained hand caught the light as she turned and jogged back down the hall toward her waiting staff.
Raina stood in the atrium for a moment and watched Ivy vanish into the crowd of students. The heavy, suffocating weight that had rested on her chest all morning felt just a fraction lighter.
The flat was cold and silent when Raina got home. Helena was still stuck at the hospital and had left only a yellow sticky note on the Formica kitchen counter. Soup in the red pot. Lift the door before turning the deadbolt!
Raina locked the door, pulled her camera from her tote bag, and sat on her unmade bed. She transferred the ferry photograph to her laptop, framed it carefully, and sent it to her mother with a brief text.
A girl at school wants to use this for the front page of the paper. Your reflection is in the window. Is that okay?
Her phone rang three minutes later.
“Raina? I’ve only got two minutes before rounds,” Helena’s voice came through the speaker accompanied by the distant chime of hospital pagers. “Did you make it home all right?”
“Yeah. I lifted the door like you said.”
“Good. That picture you sent… is that really me in the reflection?”
“Yeah. Ivy—the girl who runs the paper—thinks it adds narrative.”
“My hair looks awful,” Helena murmured though there was a soft, affectionate thread in her tone. “Use it. It’s a wonderful shot, love.” She paused as a door closed in the background. “Who is Ivy?”
“She’s in my media class. She gave me her number.”
“So you met someone.”
“I met her,” Raina corrected and rested her chin on her knees. “She’s nice.”
“That’s wonderful, Raina. Truly.” A voice called out Helena’s name in the background. “Listen, I have to go. There’s soup—”
“I saw the note, Mum. Go.”
“We’ll talk when I get off shift at eight, okay? Love you.”
“Love you.”
Raina hung up then forwarded the high-resolution image file to Ivy’s number. She heated a bowl of soup, ate it at the small kitchen counter, and sent Mia a photo of her media syllabus. For the first time since landing in Norway, she felt like she had something to anchor her to this place.
Her phone buzzed against the counter as she was rinsing her bowl.
Ivy: Photo received! It looks incredible on the layout. B214, Thursday at 3:30. I double-checked the door code—definitely not the janitor’s closet this time.
Raina: I said I might come.
Ivy: Then I might see you there.
Raina set her phone down and a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. But before she reached her bedroom the screen lit up again with two consecutive messages.
Ivy: Sit with me at lunch tomorrow. There’s someone I want you to meet.
Raina stared at the glowing blue text on her screen and her thumb hovered over the glass.
Raina: Who?
Three typing dots appeared. Vanished. Appeared again.
Then Ivy sent one final message.
Ivy: You’ll see.
Aksara