Part 5: Finishing School

Part 4 made you have some extra respect for the supporting characters... but not Birger! Oh no! You realized exACTLY why Birger's mummy and daddy dearest kicked him out. But in this next part, Birger will attend a school of respectability.
Yeah, unfortunately for him...

My Name is Birger... Part V: Finishing School
I was the last one to get to the beach. Axel and Rudolf were whispering and Randy was sitting on a rock blankly as if that was good conversation.
I walked over to Axel and Rudolf.
“Secrets, secrets, are no fun unless they’re shared with everyone!” I recited.
They rolled their eyes and Axel whispered, “Who told Randy where we were meeting?”
“Me,” I replied proudly, waiting for my medal of honor.
“Birger!” Rudolf hissed. “You realize that Randy was the one that held us captive on that ship!”
“Wha?” I asked.
“He kept us on that boat and wouldn’t let us leave!” Axel said.
“Oh, you guys, you are so silly. Randy was just worried we would get separated, so he locked us in a jail cell,” I replied.
“Exactly,” Rudolf replied.
I thought for a second. “… And the problem is?”
“Birger…” Rudolf said. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but… Axel and I think that Randy is a stalker.”
I wrinkled my nose. “You people are just being mean because Randy is my needy BFF and you can’t be with me!”
“Um… you might want to rephrase that,” Axel replied.
“No! You know what? I am going to bet you both that Randy gets us out of the next icky situation we get into!”
They shook their heads.
“Well, Randy! Do we have a plan?” I asked.
Randy glared and pointed at a ship.
“The Stalker Squad, I mean, uh, some friends of mine,” have commandeered that vessel and I am now the captain,” he said evilly.
“I told you!” I whispered to Axel and Rudolf.
“Come,” Randy said.
We started walking towards the ship and soon, we were walking aboard the fine vessel.
“But… won’t people think we’re pirates since we’re dressed in these grubby clothes?” Axel asked.
“Well, what other clothes do we have?” Randy replied. Suddenly we heard a scream!
“I can’t do it! I can’t wait around for them to murder us!” a girl’s voice screamed. “I’m leaving!”
A girl ran out of the cabin and off the boat. She was followed by seven others.
“You forgot to get rid of the passengers?!” Axel screamed.
“Hey, I didn’t know they were there,” Randy replied.
We went into the cabin and looked around. There was a bunch of girly stuff, including dresses. They were pretty.
“Cast off!” Randy screamed. We were sailing in an awesome ship that a bunch of stupid girls had abandoned!
But after a few hours, like on all ships, life got boring. So I had an idea!
“Let’s dress up like girls!” I said.
Axel looked up from his fingers he had been twiddling. “Excuse me?” he asked.
“You heard me. This is boring!” I said.
Rudolf and Axel avoided my eyes.
Awkward silence.
“I’ve got rum!” I coaxed.
That changed things! Before you knew it, we were all playing house and dressed up like girls!
Axel was an incredibly butch girl. I looked sort of like a fat girl who couldn’t fit into her corset. I was basically a fat girl who couldn’t fit into her corset. But I was a… guy.
Randy was an evil girl. He looked like a girl that would murder me in my sleep. But Randy just sort of emits that feeling. It’s normal.
Then we looked at Rudolf. He really did look like a girl. It was really creepy.
“You look like a girl!” Axel laughed.
“You look like a butch girl!” Rudolf retorted.
“No, but you really look like a girl!” Axel replied.
CRASH! The boat had run aground!
We all ran up on the deck. The guy at the helm had fallen asleep. Are you kidding me?
“I don’t understand! He’s been at the helm for a few days but I’ve been making him chug coffee!” Randy said.
We looked up on the shore. A bunch of old women were running down the beach.
“Ladies! What’s going on?!” they cried. They took one look at D.J. Owens passed out at the helm and jumped to some incorrect conclusions.
“You’ve been kidnapped by drunken pirates!” she cried. “Here, come. We run the finishing school just up at the top of the hill. You can stay there for a little bit.”
We looked at each other. Finishing schools were kind of a girl thing, but then again, we had just spent the past half hour pretending to be girls. Plus we were all tired and hungry and thought it would be cool to be fed and given an actually bed! (That rhymes!) We had been sleeping on mats for many, many years.
We walked up and Rudolf told us, “That’s not what girls walk like!”
“How do they walk?” I asked.
“Like this,” he demonstrated.
“Are you sure you’re not a girl?” Axel laughed. Rudolf punched him.
“Ladies! Please! I know you’ve been through a lot, but let’s not get violent!” the old woman leading us up the hill said.
Alright, now I’ve been on a ship with beer brawls every day and I’ve spoken gibberish to Lenape Indians, I’ve landed on desert islands called McNuggit, and I’ve been trapped in a jail cell made of palm trees, but I have never been in a situation this weird.
We entered the dining hall and all the girls looked at us. Rudolf curtsied.
I am starting to think that he’s gender confused.
We all curtsied, but I fell down. Axel kicked me. Randy did too. Rudolf looked at us with a face that said, You could not pass for girls if your life depended on it, but you know what? I thought I was pulling it off pretty well.
We sat down and looked at our plates. There were like fifteen thousand forks on each side.
I picked the prettiest one and stabbed my salad with it.
Rudolf slapped my hand and pointed at a different fork. For a homeless guy, he sure knew his silverware.
It went like that for another half hour (my hand getting slapped when I picked the wrong fork.) I was full but my hand was bright red at the end of it.
The old woman led us up to a room. “Now, I’m afraid you’ll have to share a room, but there are trundle beds, so you won’t have to share beds,” she said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Rudolf said.
Axel was about to kiss her hand but Rudolf kicked him. Hard, it looked like, because he started whimpering and was laying on the ground. I pointed at laughed, but then Rudolf kicked me too. I was also on the ground whimpering in a second. A hundred eyes were on us.
The old woman coughed into her handkerchief and I asked Randy if he would help me up. He rolled his eyes and shuffled towards the door.
I decided to help myself up. The old lady led us over to a table with a few empty seats. I sat down and said with a girl’s voice, “Hi, girls! I’m a girl!”
Rudolf put his face in his hands. I patted my mouth very properly with the napkin I found on the floor. Axel put his head in his hands, too.
I thought that must be a girl thing or something, so I put my face in my hands. Randy put his face in his hands, too.
“Um, are you ladies alright?” a girl asked. “What brings you to Queen Christina’s School for Girls?”
“Well, the helmsman passed out and we were all drinking rum and playing house and that fat old lady came running up—OW!” Axel kicked me. “What?! I was just trying to tell them what happened!”
“Actually, our ship got looted by pirates and then they crashed it onto the shore!” Rudolf said in really girly voice. It was actually pretty scary.
They nodded gravely and returned to eating their… was that soup? It was green.
“What the heck is this?” I said. “Ow!”
“Cream of broccoli soup,” the girl replied. “By the way, my name is Gotilda.”
What a dumb name! “My name is Birg…”
“Birgitta!” Rudolf said. “Her name is Birgitta. My name is Rosa,” gesturing to Randy he said, “this is Regina,” and gesturing to Axel said, “this is Aurora.”
“What lovely names,” Gotilda said. Yeah right. Birgitta. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
“Actually my name is Elvisa Presleya,” I said.
“No it’s not!” Rudolf said quickly. “She’s a little woozy from the… crash. Not the rum. We didn’t drink any rum on the ship because we’re proper ladies!” He laughed nervously.
Gotilda laughed back. “You are quite hilarious! I do enjoy a good laugh.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Cuz I like laughing too. Only half the time I’m laughing and everyone looks at me kinda funny but their faces are funny so I laugh even more but then I fall down and everyone laughs but it isn’t funny.”
Gotilda raised her eyebrows. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
I tried to make more conversation for the rest of dinner but Rudolf kicked me every time I opened my mouth. Actually, sometimes I just wanted to take a bite of food, but he couldn’t tell the difference and so by the end of the night, my leg was black and blue. But you wouldn’t have been able to tell that since I had some funky pantaloons on.
It was night time and the old lady showed us our rooms. Axel and Randy were going to sleep in the same room and I was going to sleep in the same room as Rudolf. I was getting ready in the bathroom when Rudolf laid down the law.
“Alright, Birger, you can either sleep in the bathroom or in the hallway,” he said. I looked confused.
“Hallway,” I said confidently after a nice, long think. “There’s carpet out there. I don’t want to sleep on tiles.”
“Okay then!” he said brightly, and kicked me out with a pillow and a blanket. I lay down and slept. It reminded me of my days sleeping on a lumpy mat on the Kalmar Nyckel. Since then, I hadn’t had a nice bed since Rocks.
I woke up and Randy was sleeping near me. Good old Randy. Always the guy who would follow me to the end.
“’Morning, sunshine!” I said loudly, forgetting my girly voice.
As if I had called her, the old woman walked into the hallway. “Oh my!” she cried. “You wear a wig?” I looked up. My wig had fallen on the floor during the night.
“I’m afraid you don’t look very much like a girl,” the old woman said angrily. She looked at Randy. “Are all of you not girls?”
“You caught us!” Randy said with relief. “We were just ripping you off.”
The old woman knocked on all our doors and before we knew it, we were out lying on the beach in our stupid pantaloons.
“At least I don’t have to go by ‘Birgitta’ any more!” I said happily. “That was the dumbest name I’ve ever heard!”
“You should talk… Elvisa,” Rudolf said grumpily.
Axel didn’t even look like he was awake.
“Well, I’m just happy to be OUT of that trash heap!” Randy said grumpily. I didn’t understand why he was complaining. He got to go by Regina with is a lot better than stupid Birgitta.
We all sort of lay down on the beach, still exhausted because we were woken up so early. We slept there for a few more hours until a bird pooped on Axel’s head. Axel shot it down and I shook my head.
“Violence is not the answer,” I said.
“Well, what’re we supposed to do now?” Rudolf said uncertainly. “Can’t your stalker squad…”
“Circle of friends,” Randy corrected him.
“…Circle of friends hijack a ship or something? Can we build a dingy?”
Axel sat there sullenly.
“I’m tired of this,” he said.
“Of what?” I asked.
“You know, being pirates. Roughing it. Never having a good night’s sleep ever,” he said. “I want to be noble again. To live the good life. To use the money that my ancestry has to offer. Now that my mother married the man that stole all my money, I’m filthy rich again!”
“I had maybe, ‘Let’s build a boat out of those trees’ in mind more than this…” Rudolf muttered.
“I don’t care! I’m tired of playing second banana to the world! From now on, I’m a noble that lives with his mother and possibly his ex best friend if I haven’t killed him already!” Axel said. “You all can visit me some time if you like. But I’m done with this.” He trudged through the sand, tripped over a log, and then kept trudging away.
I didn’t like where this was going.
“You know, he’s right,” Rudolf said. “I’m going to get an honest job at the Overflowing Pint and make sure no more dads leave their families.”
He trudged away, too.
“Well, Randy, good buddy, looks like it’s just you and me!” I said.
Randy ran away.
Well, my friends have all left me to make it in Sweden. By myself. With no help. And the only thing I know how to do is STILL be a farmhand. So I guess the dreams of the New World were never meant to be.
Sincerely, Birger. A broken soul who must once again be a dumb farmhand. At least I’ve had an interesting past.