Halfway up, I paused. My legs trembled as I balanced precariously on the rung and surveyed the scene before me. All I could see were the tops of trees, but the forest looked as clean as the day of creation.
“Don’t stop,” Sergei urged me.
I looked down. Sergei’s golden hair was below me. My hands had grown sweaty. Just a few more rungs, I told myself. Then you’ll see everything that you would have seen if you and Sergei had ridden the Ferris wheel on May Day.
“We’re so close,” Sergei said.
I turned my gaze upward and pretended that I was climbing to heaven. A few white clouds dozed above me. As I took those final steps, I was as calm as the blue sky.
At last, I stood on the top. If I hadn’t been so focused on Sergei, I might have been able to imagine my whole future mapped out in the patchwork of forest and meadow laid out before me.
“Hold on tight. I’m coming up next to you,” Sergei said.
His body jostled mine. Soon, we were standing side by side, pressed close together.
Why had I never noticed that his brown eyes held tiny flecks of the truest blue? The wind was blowing through his blond hair. I’m sure that my smile was an invitation. When his lips grazed mine, I felt an electric shock so severe that it reminded me of an explosion.
I even heard clanging in my ears.
Then, Sergei pulled away. He gazed down at the base where a man was banging on the structure with a stick.
“What in the heck are you kids doing?” a man’s voice called out.
I looked down. Despite the wind, my body felt warm.
The man was the color of concrete. His clothes, his face and his beret were all gray. His beet-red nose was the only thing that stood out. I guessed that he was a security guard.
I tried to think of any excuse that would explain our actions, but my mind was blank. My hands were sweaty and, suddenly, my legs had begun quivering.
“We’re Chernobyl kids. We came back to ride the Ferris wheel,” Sergei yelled.
“You must be the kids who left the field trip,” the guard said.
“That’s right,” Sergei admitted.
“Come on down. Be careful now,” the guard ordered us.
Next to me, Sergei stayed put.
I hesitated. We had worked so hard to reach the top. “Please, can we stay here for a few minutes longer?”
“Are you kids nuts?” the guard hollered.
“No!” I shouted. How could I make him understand? My request wasn’t any crazier than all that had happened to us. It wasn’t any crazier than the accident.
“Now!” the guard demanded.
“Come on, Katya,” Sergei said. He smiled sweetly at me. “I’ll go first.” He started climbing down.
I paused, considering. I heard static from the guard’s walkie-talkie, and then his boast, “I found the truants. Can you believe it? Ivan Dubko’s daughter is climbing the Ferris wheel.”
For the first time, I was afraid, but not about what would happen to me. I had been so caught up in my plan that it hadn’t occurred to me that my father might get into trouble. I dangled my foot until it touched a lower rung. “Sir!” I shouted breathlessly. “Do you know Ivan Dubko?”
“Yes, I do,” the guard said.
“Have I gotten him into trouble?” I asked.
“You can ask him yourself. He was in the office when your guide notified the guards that you two had run away.”
“My father’s here?” I asked, stunned.
“Yes, at the station,” the guard said.
One of Papa’s errands must have involved the station. Ever since the guard appeared, I had known that I was going to have to face my father sometime, but the realization that I would have to see him soon made me jittery.
The lone security guard waited patiently at the base. At least, he hadn’t called in a squad. Climbing down was less strenuous than climbing up, except that I was scared, and my legs were trembling.
When Sergei jumped off the ladder onto the metal base, the guard lunged for him. For an instant, I thought that the guard was going to handcuff him. Instead, he reached out and shook Sergei’s hand.
The guard’s plain face broke into a grin. “I always wanted to climb that Ferris wheel.”
By the time my feet touched the ground, the guard seemed to have spent his enthusiasm on Sergei. He gazed doubtfully at me.
“My father’s sick. Is he really coming?” I asked. I was surprised when I noticed myself batting my eyelashes at him. What was happening to me? Was I turning into a Lyudmila?
“He’s on his way,” the guard said. He lit a cigarette and took a big drag on it.
“Sit down.” He pointed at the grass.
“We did it,” Sergei whispered to me and plopped down on the grass.
“Quiet!” the guard ordered us.
I looked up at the yellow Ferris wheel frozen in the sky. Sergei was right. We were the only ones from our whole class who had seen the view from the top. We might be the only people in the whole world who had ever climbed the Ferris wheel. Our climb was something, I told myself. We had defeated time.
Sergei was plucking blades of grass. “That was fun,” he whispered.
“No talking,” the guard commanded. He lit another cigarette.
Even though Sergei was sitting a few feet away from me, all I could focus on was his presence. His muscled arms. His strong thighs. His hands busily yanking up the grass. I was wondering if Sergei was aware of me when I saw Mokhoyida rushing down the path. Her white shirt had come untucked and flapped underneath her gray jacket. When she reached us, she frowned, breathing heavily. “Thoughtless teenagers! You’ve gotten us all into trouble. And what you did was dangerous.”
We both stood up. Mokhoyida pointed at Sergei. “I’m taking the boy back,” she said to the guard. “The girl’s father is coming for her.”
“I know,” the guard said.
Sergei turned to me. He squeezed my hand. “See you at school, Katya.”
“Bye, Sergei,” I said. Although I was used to having adults angry at me, I doubted that Sergei was, and I was worried about him.
Mokhoyida grabbed Sergei’s arm. “Come on, you troublemaker. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
Sergei didn’t answer. I watched them hurry off together. The guide’s finger jabbed at him like a pecking hen as she scolded, but I was glad to see that his face stayed calm.
The guard nodded at me. “Sit.”
I sat back down. Beep, beep, beep. The dosimeter in my pocket was making a racket. I didn’t want to annoy the guard by asking if I could get it out to check if I was sitting in a hot spot. Besides, the thousands of ants that crawled over me didn’t seem to think that the ground was dangerous. I started brushing them off.
After the guard had stubbed out his cigarette, he nodded in my direction. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?”
“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” the guard said.
Never enough, I thought. We began walking until we came to a two-story wooden building. I followed him inside and found myself in some kind of lobby. The carpet curled around the edges. The air smelled sour like the inside of the abandoned apartment. A couple of rickety chairs leaned against a wall. He pulled one towards me. “Sit here,” he said.
I sat down. He lit another cigarette, leaned against the wall and stared at me.
“Don’t you know that smoking is bad for you?” I asked.
The guard gave out a short bitter laugh. “Like I have to worry about smoking. I work in the Dead Zone.” He blew his smoke at me. “We’ll all go when it’s our time.”
A door slammed, and I tensed. Papa’s here. Papa’s here, kept running through my mind. We hadn’t argued since his illness, and I was not looking forward to hearing his angry voice now.