I

’m going to tell you a story. A romantic story, one 
including star-crossed lovers, international travel 
and defying odds and cultural barriers. However, I 

will warn you now, the end of this seemingly perfect story 
is yet to be determined.

The scene opens on an island on the west coast of 

Norway, a few hours south of Bergen, the country’s 
second-largest city. An American girl arrives with four 
11-year-olds in tow, nervous, but ready for the month-
long adventure she’s signed up for as a leader at a utopic 
international children’s village. Romance is the last thing 
on her mind. The hugs and kisses of 11-year-olds seem 
like all she will ever need to feel full and loved.

Enter Fredrik. The Norwegian leader from Bergen. 

The sole male leader in a group of 10 strong women. Tall, 
blonde-haired, blue-eyed, great with kids — a real Prince 
Charming. He meets the American girl, but it wasn’t love 
at first sight. As she would later discover, he didn’t think 
he’d enjoy her company at all — she seemed so American 
and “too happy” (whatever that means). But isn’t that 
how all good love stories go? Two totally different people 
from totally different worlds, magnetized by fate despite 
the odds stacked against them?

It certainly wasn’t easy for these two, this 

modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Although mutual 
feelings (or at least attraction) developed almost 
immediately, both were drawn into the vortex of 
rumors and drama that only a group of almost 
50 preteens can create. She was sure that he 
preferred the Brazilian leader (of course), 
and he was quite positive she had her eye on 
the only other adult male at camp — another 
Norwegian, this one a staff member — who 
the kids were already trying to couple 
with our unwilling heroine. One night, in a 
horrific and embarrassing twist of fate, while 
the adults played a game aimed at revealing 
deep, dark secrets, the girl made a costly error. 
After spending a promising stomach-butterfly-
filled day walking in the mountains with the 
only boy on her mind, she made a mistake 
during the game that led to the widely held 
belief that she had feelings for the wrong 
Norwegian. She spent the rest of the night 
with a pit in her stomach, telling anyone who 
would listen that it was a mistake, hoping it 
would make it back to Fredrik, but all in vain. 
He spent the rest of the night fuming, telling 
himself that he would stop his feelings for 
her in their tracks.

They went on like this for many weeks, “coincidentally” 

sitting next to each other at every meal, volunteering for 
the same activities, the same groups. They had separately 
reached the same conclusion: It simply wasn’t meant to 
be.

Until Gala Night, that is. The second to last night of 

camp. Everyone dressed up, the girls flaunting fancy hair 
and makeup, the boys pretending to shave their baby-
smooth faces and spraying on enough cologne to drop a 
horse. Fancy dinner, games, dancing. Fredrik’s station, 
coincidentally, was right next to the girl’s, and they spent 
all night making moon eyes at each other and wishing 
they were together, knowing that their time was short. 
Soon they would once again be a million miles and worlds 
apart, back to their normal lives like the other had never 
existed.

Later that night, with the kids put grudgingly to bed, 

the leaders had a little farewell party of their own. They 
took a few bottles of wine down to the rocky ledge of the 
fjord, and talked and played games under the Norwegian 
midnight sun, enjoying each other’s company, squeezing 
as many memories as possible into their few remaining 
hours.

The girl had conveniently forgotten to bring a raincoat, 

and who came to her rescue? Fredrik, of course. He 
offered her a seat next to him, and when it began to drizzle 
allowed her to share his raincoat, protecting her from the 
cold and the damp of the Norwegian summer. Their legs 
pressed together under the table, their heads leaned in 
towards each other ever so slightly, both hyper-aware of 
the electricity moving between them, but neither willing 
to believe the other was feeling the same.

The middle of the night came and went, and the 

leaders made their way back to the campsite cold, wet 

and just drunk enough on wine and laughter to make it 
impossible to go immediately to bed. Our star-crossed 
lovers sat together once more. He gathered every ounce 
of bravery and drunken abandon he could muster, and he 
gently took her hand under the table. Everything went 
still and silent in her mind, her focus lasered in on how 
his hand felt in hers. She couldn’t believe it, but it was 
real. One by one the others trickled off to bed, and the 
two were finally left alone.

On the morning of her last day in his country, they 

woke up in each other’s arms for the very first time, not 
quite able to believe what had transpired. He said, “Can 
this not be awkward today?” and she responded, “ … I 
sure hope so?” He laughed and clarified: “I mean, maybe 
this could happen again?”

And it did happen again. After an exhausting blur of 

a final day, filled with teasing, loaded eye contact, and 
constant blushing, they were able to escape once more. 

To be alone for a few more hours before their tearful 
farewell. And it was so tearful — they both cried and 
cried, and held each other so tightly before she walked 
away toward a car ready to whisk her away from her fairy 
tale, bound for the airport and her real life.

***

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I am the girl in the story. 

(Surprised? Me too.) This is what happened next in my 
personal little love saga: I went home, sad and expecting 
to have to somehow forget this boy, the first to intrigue 
me in a very long time, because how could anything ever 
come of our short-lived international summer romance?

But then an impossible message pinged onto my 

cracked iPhone screen: He didn’t want it to end, he 
wanted to come visit me. And I said yes.

After months of anticipation and the horrors of long-

distance and a six-hour time difference, he was here. 
Fredrik, my Norwegian fairy-tale prince, here in Ann 
Arbor. Tailgating a Michigan football game decked out in 
maize and blue, sitting across from me at Zingerman’s, 
cooking breakfast for me in my kitchen. It was perfect, 

it was a dream. Too perfect, in fact, because how is it 

fair that someone who makes me so wonderfully, 

blissfully, happy can also be so impossible, so 

unattainable? He lives 3,714 miles away, I’ve 

looked it up. How could anything ever come 

of this? Is it stupid to keep investing my time 
and energy, to keep trying?

I don’t have good answers for these 

questions. And I’ve obviously realized 
that this is not a perfect fairy tale story, 
because those don’t exist in real life (at 
least not mine). But I’m travelling to 
Norway again this Christmas. Fredrik and 
I have a Skype date every week, the most 
recent lasting five perfect hours. Maybe I 
am crazy, but the way I see it, relationships 
at this stage in life tend to be hard and 
hit barriers no matter what. Perhaps less 
dramatic, concrete barriers than the Atlantic 
Ocean, but college students struggle to find 
what they need in a relationship, graduates 
move to different parts of the country (or, 
ahem, world), people find that they grow 
in different directions, young professionals 
find that they have different goals for their 
lives than they once imagined.

The way I see it, any relationship at 

this juncture, or maybe ever, is going to 

be fraught with difficult decisions and uncertainty. 
The future simply is uncertain for me right now. I am 
careening toward graduation with very few ideas of 
where I will be next, a prospect that is both intoxicatingly 
exciting and completely terrifying. Nothing is out of the 
realm of possibilities, so I won’t discount any possible 
future, no matter how unexpected or unrealistic it may 
seem at face value. It’s the same with my crazy, odds-
defying and frustrating long-distance relationship: I have 
no idea where it’s going to go, if anywhere, but why reject 
it as impossible when the world is only just opening up 
its possibilities to me? Why end a story before it’s even 
begun? My life is not a perfect fairy tale, it’s much more 
exciting — anything could happen.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016 // The Statement
6B

Star-Crossed Lovers

by Emily Campbell, Copy Chief

ILLUSTRATION BY ELISE HAADSMA

