I was probably going only fifteen miles per hour. Still, as the wind rushed through my hair, I remembered the night of my birthday so long ago, when Boris had taken me for a motorcycle ride.
I felt a lump in my throat. I swallowed, but it wouldn’t go away.
My dear Papa was waiting for me in front of the apartment. At the sight of him, I started to smile, until I noticed the camouflage khaki pants and long-sleeved shirt that he always wore to work. He changed into his uniform at the station. Thinking of the articles that I had read last night, my feeling of warmth evaporated.
“Thank you, Father,” I said to him with exaggerated formality as I handed him the key.
The happiness slid off his big features, and I turned away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
UNDERNEATH THE DATE, MAY 1, 1990, Tatjana Petrovna had written a series of equations. She was a good teacher with a deep voice that sounded as though it belonged on radio. Although she had many small failings—for instance, her upper arms looked like bread dough, and she rapped the blackboard incessantly with a pointer—it wasn’t her fault that I rarely listened in her math class.
I found much that I’d rather think about. Who would I have become if the accident hadn’t happened? In the future that I should have had…in the future that I deserved… I would be popular in school. Sergei and I would go to dances together. Sometimes, I allowed myself to imagine our first kiss. We’d be standing in a forest glade like Boris and Marta.
Our classroom contained about thirty students. Angelika sat near the front with Sergei. Since I was on the back row, when I daydreamed, my gaze rested on the backs of their blond heads. Lyudmila Pikalova’s desk was next to mine.
Tatjana Petrovna rapped on the blackboard. “Attention, before we start reviewing our math problems for the day, I have some good news. The nuclear power industry has arranged for us to take a very special trip. Our class will go see the Chernobyl Power Station and Pripyat. Photographers will take some photographs. For the good of our country, we need to show that the station is now safe enough for students to visit. I think the trip will be very interesting.”
After our teacher made her announcement, Lyudmila’s eyes, heavily rimmed with blue eyeliner, turned to me. “Oh, Katya,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”
I felt conflicted. I wanted to go, but no one seemed to realize that the station was dangerous. So I just shrugged.
“Other schools take field trips to beaches. We go to nuclear waste dumps,” Mikhail Bazelchuk quipped in the seat in front of me.
Rumor had it that Mikhail’s father conducted questionable business dealings. In any case, there was no disputing that Mikhail seemed to enjoy more material possessions than others in our class. Not even the smell of Lyudmila’s flowery perfume could overcome the stench of the expensive cigarettes that Mikhail smoked in the alley behind the school.
I raised my hand. “Are students required to go?”
Our teacher looked surprised. “Why, no. It’s not required.”
“Why don’t you want to go?” Lyudmila asked me.
“I’ve got good sense, that’s why,” I said.
“Tatjana Petrovna, may I visit my old apartment?” Angelika asked. I remembered how proud Angelika had been of her apartment and felt a stab of love for her.
“Can we go see the Ferris wheel?” Mikhail Bazelchuk asked.
“I don’t know the answers to these questions. Your guide will decide what you can see and what you can’t,” Tatjana Petrovna said. She began passing around a sign-up sheet for the field trip. When she finished, she cleared her throat and said, “Students, I am appointing a class monitor to make sure that you behave. Our top student and a girl who is very responsible: Angelika Galkina.”
I had stopped competing with Angelika long ago. She received every honor. She was clearly the most outstanding girl in our grade. Lately I had noticed that she and Sergei had started eating lunch together. They would probably marry and have perfect blond babies. While I would be forced to live with my parents for the rest of my life.
If they would have me.
“Now turn to page….,” Tatjana Petrovna began, and I tuned out.
During a break between classes, I was walking down the hallway when I spotted Sergei standing at Angelika’s locker. She had her back to me, and Sergei and I caught each other’s gaze. I don’t know why, but I sensed he was thinking about Yanov and our childhood together.
I often wondered if Sergei remembered the note that he had written me: Let’s go out together. I had never mentioned it to him. In fact, we had barely spoken since the accident. But at that moment, I walked up to him as if nothing had ever happened.
“Hey, Sergei,” I said.
“Hi, Katya,” Sergei said. “Algebra test is going to be tough, huh?”
Angelika, who was still kneeling at her locker gathering her books, twisted her neck to peer up at me. Her brown eyes held a clear message. They said: Keep away.
“Yeah,” I replied and quickly started walking. I was pleased to see Sergei look surprised, as if he expected—and wanted me—to keep talking.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A FEW TIMES AT CRYSTAL CREATIONS, I had challenged Margarita. “This crystal is just a rock,” I would say. But she would take the crystal over to a bright light and motion for me. Upon closer examination, I always had to admit that I did see something. Somehow, Margarita managed to sell between ten and forty necklaces a week. Her best customers were tribes of gypsies. Upon receipt of an order, Lyudmila and I strung the crystals on a velvet or silk ribbon.
When she needed to match a crystal to a request—say a man wanted a cure for bankruptcy—Margarita pressed her fingertips to her forehead in concentration.
One day after school, Lyudmila and I read a request from a man named Yves. On the form he had scratched the words, “major love problems.”
Margarita looked over our shoulders. “I think this one will be perfect.” She reached onto the table and selected a medium-sized crystal. It was strawberry-shaped. She spun it between her thick fingers, examining it.
“But, Auntie!” Lyudmila cried. “You already chose that one for the pig farmer’s son who has asthma. That’s a green crystal for health. Not a red one for love.”
Margarita took the crystal over to the light and examined it. “You’re right,” she said after a moment. “Lyudmila, you have a good eye.”
Lyudmila beamed. “Better than Katya’s.”
Margarita turned to me. Her gaze was bold. She had on a bright dress of emerald green that made her waist look vast and her long hair more eccentric. “Katya has other gifts.”
I think this was the moment that I began to trust her in a new way. “Margarita,” I said, “I can’t come to work for you tomorrow.”
“Why? Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I have an appointment.”
Margarita looked to Lyudmila as if for an explanation. Lyudmila said, “She wouldn’t tell me either. I hope it’s a new boyfriend.”
“You know I don’t like anybody.” For fear that Lyudmila would hound me unmercifully, I had never admitted my interest in Sergei. In fact, I hardly admitted it to myself.