“I think my mother will let me.” I remembered Angelika only after I’d accepted.
“See you then,” Sergei said. He turned and rejoined Andriy.
Watching the two boys saunter off, I promised myself to tell Angelika. But now that I had an actual date with Sergei, it would be even harder. Boys complicated things, I decided. Oh, how I hoped Mama would let me go.
When I entered the classroom, the last student to arrive, I saw the date written on the blackboard: April 26, 1986. I was never this late to class but Lydia Rybalka, my last year’s teacher, had stopped me in the hallway and asked me to take a note to the office for her.
Although our classroom held about thirty students, my gaze immediately searched out Sergei Rudko. As I headed to my seat, Sergei looked frankly at me. His dark eyes stayed with me as if they were magnetized. When I returned his smile, a sensation of pleasure shot up through my chest from deep in my core.
I sat down at my desk against the wall.
Nina Ivanovna, a tall woman with an erect bearing, was furiously scribbling on the blackboard. She always seemed to want to cram as much into our heads as possible. Today her chalk hammered across the board with a vengeance. I kept waiting for her to mention the accident, but she never did.
After the bell rang announcing the start of class, Nina Ivanovna turned to face us. “Please begin the long division problems that I have written on the blackboard.”
“Yes, Nina Ivanovna,” we all recited.
Normally, math and science were my two best subjects. My father praised me, saying, “Science is the path to a good job.” But today, as I stared at the equations, all I could think about were boys. To the right of me, Sergei made me think of my need to talk to Angelika. When I tried to forget about him, my head filled with thoughts of Vasyl. And then I wondered about Boris and Marta in the woods. And the woods took me back to Vasyl.
I should have known better than to talk to Vasyl or to carry him food in the middle of the night. And although I still had no idea what he really knew, now that the station had experienced a fire, my actions seemed those of a criminal. I worried that I needed to tell my parents the full story, but I struggled to find the courage. I vainly plied myself with false reassurances like, after all, when I met Vasyl in the woods, I didn’t know he was a horrible person, a thief and a liar.
“Papa,” I would say. Before I could even begin practicing my confession, I could hear him shouting, “You did what!?”
I would have rather given back all my birthday presents than disappoint my father. I would rather go a month without food. I would rather…
My gaze happened upon the poster of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin hanging on the wall next to me. He was a loving son and good brother, the best grammar school student, a revolutionary who devoted his whole life to making poor people’s lives better. We all considered Lenin, the founder of the Communist Party, to be a caring father figure.
I looked at his familiar face which was drawn on the May Day banners and represented by a bust in the library. I implored him, Grandpa Lenin, What would you do?
Grandpa Lenin’s yellow eyes just stared blankly back at me.
Chapter Eight
FOR AN HOUR OR SO, I STRUGGLED TO FOCUS my whirling thoughts on my studies. I tried to pay attention to Nina Ivanovna’s lecture about the solar system. I should be memorizing the drawing of the planets on the blackboard, I told myself. She had just finished her crude drawing when a policeman appeared at the door.
“Students, remain silent,” she barked, and she went to see what the man wanted.
From what I could tell from my desk, the policeman spoke calmly. Although most of the students started whispering among themselves, sharing their May Day plans, I knew the policeman was here because of my encounter with Vasyl, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off the pair.
The policeman wore a gray rain jacket over his blue uniform. It wasn’t a normal policeman’s uniform, though, because I caught a glimpse of a gold star above his pocket.
Eventually, the policeman nodded, dismissing Nina Ivanovna, and he marched off. But my relief was short-lived. As if she were a madwoman, my teacher began rushing around and closing all the windows.
When Nina Ivanovna had finished, she rapped her ruler on the blackboard. The class stopped talking. “You students are being sent home,” she said. The tone she used implied we were all bad kids.
Along with the other students, I waited for Nina Ivanovna to provide an explanation for her actions, one that made sense. Alone, I waited for her to single me out for punishment. “The outdoors is dangerous,” Nina Ivanovna warned us. “Go straight home.”
But her instruction was contradictory. If the outdoors were dangerous, why were we all walking home?
“I’ll see you next week,” Nina Ivanovna said, and turned her back to the class.
Watching my teacher clear off her desk, I knew nothing more in the way of an explanation was forthcoming. The school closing must be related to the accident at the station, but how? Nothing added up. Yet since adults’ rules often confused me, I wasn’t overly alarmed. Besides, like every schoolgirl since the beginning of time, I was excited about the unexpected holiday. Along with the rest of my classmates, I rushed out into the hall, already crowded with students, to find a holiday atmosphere. The whole school was being sent home. Not just our grade.
Waiting for Angelika outside the classroom, I caught bits of other students’ conversations:
“They’ve never shut down school before.”
“My dad says there was a fire and an explosion.”
“What does the station have to do with our school?”
“The radiation, stupid.”
Angelika appeared at my side.
Since her parents were both scientists, I thought she might understand the term better than I did. “What’s radiation?” I asked her.
Angelika smiled a superior smile. “Energy that comes in waves.”
I didn’t admit this, but her explanation sounded fantastical to me. And this from a girl who mocked my tales about my forest creatures. “Can you see radiation?” I asked.
“Of course, not. It’s invisible,” Angelika said, as if she were answering a child.
When Angelika and I passed through the door into the brilliant sunlight, Nina Ivanovna’s error was obvious. If the outdoors were dangerous, hailstones would be pummeling us. A tornado cone like the one I had seen in my science book would be swirling around the Ministry of Culture. Or at the very least, lightning bolts would be crisscrossing a dark sky.
Instead, the day was still beautiful. The sky’s blue color was almost as unreal as the eyes of the boy in the woods. But thinking about the boy made me uneasy, and I pushed the memory aside.
I collected my bicycle, and we began walking to Angelika’s apartment.
In front of us, a baby in a stroller started crying. The mother stooped to comfort the child. A sweaty jogger hurried past us. His feet pounded the pavement.
In the distance, I heard the wail of a fire truck, and I thought of Boris. He was probably on his way to the station, and this thought calmed me. Boris would know how to put out the fire.
“Hey, girls!” Andriy and Sergei called, floating by us on their bikes. With his blond hair flowing in the breeze, Sergei looked careless and happy, as if he were off to go fishing or to play soccer. “We’re going to the station.”
“Hey, Sergei,” Angelika shouted after them.
Thinking I had called him, Sergei turned back to glance at me. I shook my head, tried to warn him with my eyes, No. Don’t say it.