Today I found myself watching all of the hei briskeby videos and I just have to say.... we were robbed of balloon squad content (specifically balloon squad + Even 👀) and I miss them a great deal more than I realised.
Hello Nonie that asked for a Even, Isak and the balloon squad having fun. This is Isak and Even having a dance off while Mikael records it, Adam cheers, Elias is snaping Sana all this and Yousef and Mutta are not impressed at all because Isak and Even are just a disgrace at dancing.
“Elias your music is shit,” Adam yelled from the back of Yousef’s car, jammed in between Mikael and Mutta. Elias turned it up louder, flipping his friend off as he did so. Yousef sighed loudly and turned it back down, not taking his eyes off the road.
This had been the tone all trip. They were all so close to jumping down each other’s throats it was as if they were in a pitch-black dynamite factory and someone was walking around blindly with a match. None of them had been in a good mood since the premiere. This was probably due to the severe sleep deprivation the Hei Briskeby boys were facing. The Saturday night they had all gone down to the police station with Even. They had been there all night and all they could get was a “we don’t know” and “we’re looking into it” from the officers. On Monday morning they had decided Even wasn’t going home alone. They had all wanted to be with him, arguing over whose house he was going to stay at. Then, Eskild had shown up. He said that Magnus had called him. Eskild let them know that Noora was gone for the next few days and he would be more than happy to have Even stay with them. The boys knew there was no arguing with Eskild on this matter. When Eskild offered his hospitality, there was no saying no.
They had stayed with their friend at the Collective all Sunday night, taking shifts sleeping, but no one saw Even after they got through the front door. He had locked himself in Noora’s room and refused to let anyone else in. Eskild had made it clear that he could deal with the situation alone after Mikael fell asleep, after his thirty-first hour awake, over a bowl of cereal and almost drowned in the milk. From there, the boys gone to Yousef’s house. Since the moment they had walked through Yousef’s door on Monday, they had been trying to piece together what could have happened but the harder they tried, the more implausible things got. The worst part was that no one would tell them anything. And to them, that translated to no one knew anything.
It was around 3am on Tuesday morning when Elias had loudly exclaimed, “Fuck it! This isn’t working!” He hadn’t really known what would work but he knew he had to get out of the house. They couldn’t just sit around waiting for a phone call that would never come.
Yousef had looked at him with empty eyes, defeated as the rest, “Then what do you want to do?”
“Drive,” Elias replied with the first thing that popped into his head. “We go see where exactly they went missing and we find them.”
“The police are—”
Elias cut Yousef off “The police aren’t doing shit! And we can’t sit around until it’s too late. We have to do something.
No one had argued. No one had the energy to. So, after catching what little sleep they could, the group disembarked on their mission. They had no idea where exactly they were going. They knew the road and that Jonas and Isak had disappeared somewhere between point A and B on a map, but no news coverage had said exactly where. Part of the problem was that the road all looked the same.
“Stop!” Mutta yelled about twenty-six minutes into the trip, startling everyone in the car. Yousef slammed on the breaks. The car behind him narrowly missed crashing into the back of their vehicle. Yousef slunk down slightly as the driver behind sped past, spewing obvious obscenities at him and flipping him off as they went.
“Mutta!” Yousef yelled, turning around. He was giving his best stern dad look. It would have been humorous if they hadn’t almost been part of high-speed collision.
Mutta pointed to a tree beside the road. It looked like all the rest of them, so it took a second to figure out what they were supposed to be looking at. This tree itself wasn’t significant, but the yellow police tape attached to the trunk marked what they were seeking. This was where Isak and Jonas had gone missing.
Yousef pulled over to the side of the road. Everyone got out of the car. The group stood around in silence for a moment. Elias didn’t know what he thought they could find but everything seemed so… normal. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It made Elias sick just thinking about it.
“We’re not going to find anything here,” Adam proclaimed after about ten minutes of the group just standing there. Like the world’s longest moment of silence. They had all been thinking it, but he was the only one brave enough to vocalize it.
“But where next?” Mikael asked.
Yousef turned and walked back to the car. As he opened his door, he called around, “There’s a gas station a few kilometers back. If they stopped anywhere before they got here, it would be there. Maybe they saw them.”
With that, they were off again. Connecting the dots on an empty map. Maybe eventually they’d see the full picture.
***
The gas station was busy. Cars were coming and going faster than Elias could keep up with. Unfortunately, it turned out to be faster than the employees could either.
“Sorry boys,” the attendant at the front counter told them after they had explained the situation, “I just don’t remember your friends. I told the police that too. We see a lot of people in here every day.”
“Please just take one more look,” Mikael pleaded, holding up the photo of Isak and Jonas on his phone once more.
Yousef leaned over the counter, “Do you have a security tape we can check?”
“If I did, the cops would already have it,” the attendant continued. “Ours stopped working about a week ago, before your boys came through here. It just shows static. We have a guy coming to fix it tomorrow, but I guess that won’t help you all that much.”
“Not at all actually,” Elias muttered under his breath. Yousef elbowed him gently in the rib.
“Thanks anyway,” Yousef smiled. He guided his disappointed friends towards the door.
Once outside, all the boys headed in the direction of the vehicle, deflated. Except for Yousef. Yousef walked straight to the road adjacent to the gas station. He didn’t stop and wait for them. He just kept walking. The other boys watched him in confusion.
“Where are you going?” Elias asked, jogging to catch up with his best friend.
“Just because the gas station doesn’t have a camera, doesn’t mean someone else around here won’t.”
“You think someone else saw them driving by?”
“I don’t know. But it’s better than turning around and going home with nothing.”
Yousef was right. Turning back home right now would just make everyone more frustrated and upset. They would repeat the cycle they had been on for the last few days of waiting and hoping. The funny thing about hope was that there was only so much of it one had to run on. Elias didn’t want to know what was left after hope, but he knew that they were all soon to find out if they didn’t find some semblance of an answer.
Elias walked, stride by stride with Yousef down the street. Most of the shops weren’t open yet this early in the morning. They were mostly unassuming mom and pop shops. They weren’t the kind for big security systems. Or most of them weren’t. Yousef stopping in front of the exception: Happily Ever After Wedding Gowns. It wasn’t much, but there was a little camera hanging from inside the window that faced out onto the street. While it wasn’t open, there was a generic looking young man, around their age, steam cleaning a dress inside.
Yousef knocked on the window of the store. The man looked up. He pointed gestured to the closed sign. Yousef took a step back. Elias stepped in, knocking harder this time. The man opened the door.
“Sorry buddy but we’re closed,” the man said, trying to fake confidence that he obviously didn’t possess. He seemed scared of Yousef and Elias. If Elias had to guess, it was racial prejudice showing its face, based on the way he was looking at them.
“Come back in two hours,” the man began closing the door. Elias stuck his foot in it, preventing him from doing so. He didn’t have time for this.
“Look, we’re not here to buy a dress,” Elias said, annoyed.
Yousef explained for his friend, “We think that you can actually help us with a missing persons case.”
“A what?”
Elias pointed to the camera in the window, “The video on that camera may be the last thing to see Isak Valtersen and Jonas Vasquez.”
“I saw them in the paper this morning.”
“Can we please just check.” There was a desperation to Yousef’s question that both boys knew the dress shop man couldn’t ignore.
The man opened the door back up all the way. “Look, the footage from last week is on my laptop at home, but if you want, my fiancé’s there right now. I can get her to show you it. Let me just write you down the address.”
***
Elias and Yousef had gathered their rest of their team and made their way on foot to the apartment complex that the man had written down for them. It wasn’t too far away. The location of the wedding dress shop must have been planned because of the apartment’s location. It couldn’t have been the other way around. It didn’t really seem like the sort of place you would just put a bridal store. To each their own.
Once inside the apartment, the boys climbed up to the second floor. They stopped in front of number 204 and knocked on the door. It didn’t take long for a young woman with blonde hair to open it. As soon as Elias saw his face he recognized her. She was someone who was has always made herself hard to forget.
“Vilde?”
***
The boys sat in Vilde’s living room awkwardly. They had come to find answers to one mystery and found themselves solving another. Elias had never known Vilde well. They had chatted back and forth that one time in high school, flirting a little. He’d always thought she was cute. She still was. But she looked a lot more… tired? Yeah, that was the word he would use. Tired.
Admittedly, he didn’t know much about what had happened between his sister and Vilde. All he really knew is that one moment all the girls were best friends and the next they weren’t. When he had asked Sana about it she just changed the subject. He had asked Even about it once but Even said that he really didn’t know. He knew bits and pieces of gossip from Isak and his other friends, but he couldn’t say any of it was more than just rumours. He also said that what he did know for sure, he couldn’t say, for Magnus’ sake. One thing that was consistent across all the stories that Elias had heard from various people, was that Vilde started drinking a lot more in her senior year. It was getting to dangerous levels. Apparently, alcoholism was something that ran in her family. He remembered Even saying Sarah had helped Vilde get through some of it back before Vilde left. He wondered if she was still drinking.
“Your uh, fiancé seems nice,” Yousef said, trying to alleviate the crushing silence that had a grip on the room.
“Oh, he’s not my fiancé,” Vilde replied quickly. It was almost defensive.
“But he said…”
“He’s asked me a couple times. I’ve never officially said yes. Why put a label on happiness?” Odd.
“But you two own the dress shop, right?” Yousef continued.
“Oh yeah. Well, it was my idea but it’s under his name. And his money too. He’s an entrepreneur.”
“How did you meet him?”
“I don’t really remember,” Vilde replied, holding a steady smile. It was obvious to the boys that she was lying, and they knew she could tell because she changed the subject, “Why did you come here?” It dawned on Elias that she must not know about Isak and Jonas. If she did she would have put two and two together. Or maybe, if she knew, she would come home to her friends.
“Um, it’s kind of a long story,” he started. What do I even say. “Actually,” Elias continued, “it’s about Isak and Jonas.”
“Are they here too?” Vilde looked a little nervous. As if the thought of more people she had known back in her adolescence would see her like this.
“They, uh-” Elias looked over to Yousef. He hated to be the bearer of bad news.
Yousef took the hint, “They’re missing.”
Vilde’s brow furrowed, “Missing?” That obviously hadn’t been what she was expecting. For Elias, it was proof she really hadn’t known.
“Yeah. That,” Elias replied.
“Since when?”
“Friday night,” Yousef replied. “Look, Vilde we think the camera in your shop may have seen them come through here. Then we can pinpoint the exact time it happened. It’s our only lead right now.”
“Why haven’t you told the police?”
“The police haven’t done shit,” Elias said. “It’s been four days and we’ve heard nothing. We don’t have time to wait. Please, Vilde. They were your friends too.”
Vilde stood up and walked into the next room without a word. Elias wasn’t sure for a moment if she was actually intending on helping or running away from answering them. Thankfully, she returned a moment later with the laptop. She set it down in front of them, already on Friday’s video.
“You’ll have to fast-forward to whenever they were here,” Vilde told them. She took a step back but didn’t leave. She was just as interested in what may be on that tape as they were.
Yousef leaned forward, sliding the video bar on the laptop forward. He looked over at Mutta and asked, “What time did Even say that Isak left that voicemail for him?”
“18:16,” Mutta replied.
“It has to be before then, if their car was found after town,” Adam said.
It took just under half hour to reach town from the spot where they had found the police tape. The footage must be in there somewhere. Yousef found the window of time he was looking for. Then, they sat and watched. And watched. And watched. After twenty minutes, they realized it was a lost cause.
“Maybe they took another road,” Mikael offered.
“No,” Yousef shook his head. They wouldn’t have. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”
“Maybe they called before they came in?” Vilde said, from her spot off to the side. Everyone looked at her. The call sounded like that’s where they ended, but if the abruptness of the call’s end was somehow unrelated….
Yousef slid the time bar forward on the video slowly, watching as the frame went by. “There!” Adam yelled as he did, pin pointing the spot they were looking for. There was Mahdi’s car driving past.
“Zoom in,” Mutta said. Yousef did as he was told. That’s when they saw something no one was expecting. The face that popped up on the screen was blurry, but everyone knew it wasn’t Isak or Jonas. Someone else was in the car with their friends. And that someone knew where Isak and Jonas were. “Who’s that in the driver’s seat?”
***
The drive home was much livelier than the ride back. Everyone was on edge, minds racing. Elias was holding a flash drive in his lap with the only bit of hope they had found since their worlds were turned upside down. He checked his phone for the first time since he had got to Vilde’s house. He had a bunch of missed messages from Sana. He needed to tell someone about what had happened, and Sana seemed like the person to tell. He called her.
“Now you call me! What the hell, Elias?” Sana asked.
“Hey, Sana, before you get mad, I really gotta tell you something,” Elias said quickly, trying to get it all out before she stopped him. Yousef took his eyes off the road for a moment, almost cautioning him about what he was about to say. Elias decided to start with the news about Vilde, “I think we just saw your friend.”
“What friend?”
“The ex-one. You know, Vilde.”
“Wait,” Sana asked. “I’m going to put you around speakerphone. Okay, what did you say?”
“We saw Vilde,” Elias repeated. “But that’s not even the biggest thing we found. God, I don’t know how we’re going to tell Even but—”
“Tell me what?” Elias heard a male say on the other end.
“Even?” Elias asked.
“Yeah, I’m here.” Even answered.
Elias moved the phone away from his face. He mouthed to his friends “It’s Even.”
“Don’t tell him,” Mikael replied quickly, leaning forward in his seat.
“No tell him,” Adam argued, pushing Mikael back against his seat. “He needs to know.”
Yousef took his eyes off of the road, turning to Elias, opening his mouth to weigh in on the debate. As he did this, he missed the light at the intersection turning from yellow to red. Elias never got to hear what Yousef was going to say. What happened after was all a blur. Mutta was yelling at Yousef to look out. Yousef jerked the steering wheel to avoid the inevitable impact from the truck speeding towards them from the cross lane. Then, their car spun out into the embankment below. The vehicle rolled once as it descended. It all happened so quick that Elias didn’t have time to process what was happening before the airbags engulfed him. Then, everything went black.
