Chapter 6

It took me a second to see my stepsister through Voropaev’s eyes and lose my temper. I saw how quickly he lunged toward the girl, and my mouth tightened into a thin line: he was clearly about to help her. I felt my jaw muscles bulge and my hands curl into fists. My back tense. Seryoga and I stood there looking at each other in a way we never had before. As if we were waiting for something—only what?

“Got it. Then at least give Lenka her bra back, Frol, if you’re not going to explain yourself here. You won.”

He wasn’t stupid, and he understood right away that I wouldn’t let him touch my stepsister. I think it was obvious in my eyes. I wasn’t going to help her myself, but I wasn’t about to let my best friend do it, either. Not now, with me right there! An inexplicable rage boiled inside me, churning through my blood in a quiet frenzy, and I couldn’t understand why. I couldn’t stand my classmates’ sidelong looks at the slender thigh beneath her hiked-up skirt, the girl’s close presence… or my own inaction.

She was nobody to me. Nobody. Nobody!

Someone she’d just met led the girl away, and I barely noticed. What I did feel was the strange tension easing. She was gone from the cafeteria, but one thought kept pounding in my head: What the fuck was happening to me?

“Frol, maybe you want to explain what’s going on? That was your stepsister, right?”

Seryoga said it quietly as he stepped closer, but I was already shoving him in the shoulder and walking out of the cafeteria:

“Fuck off, Seryoga! None of your business!…”

…It was none of Voropaev’s fucking business why I’d been hanging around the gym for two hours instead of going home after practice. Seventh period had ended a long time ago, but I kept pounding the heavy bag, taking my anger out on it and trying not to remember the promise I’d made Mom. Not to remember Pop, the sick old woman I didn’t know, or her hated granddaughter who’d slipped into my thoughts…

Don’t know, don’t see, don’t think? Don’t remember? Fuck that! I didn’t want to feel her—that was what mattered. I could live with everything else.

She was standing at the bus stop. In her white hat, light-colored jacket, and new boots. Stamping her feet and bouncing in place, searching for me among the passersby, rising onto her toes impatiently. When she spotted me, she grew shy. Or skillfully pretended to be shy, backing away toward the shelter where she should have been hiding from the wind all along.

I stopped and lit a cigarette, meeting her expectant look with indifference. I slung my bag over my shoulder and turned toward the roadside. The cold wind played with my hair and bit my cheeks with stinging drizzle, dusting the curbs and sidewalks with white, grainy pellets… After practice, my muscles were burning and the blood in my veins hadn’t cooled yet, warming my skin, but I still turned up my jacket collar and lowered my chin, unwilling to give that heat to the wind. Suddenly afraid it could freeze the irritation out of me—the sharp, unfamiliar irritation that hadn’t gone anywhere, only smoldered again inside me like an undoused fire, dangerously close to the girl.

“H-hi. I thought something had happened. Classes ended, but you still didn’t show up… And I didn’t know what to do.”

I made out what she was saying more from the movement of her lips than from her voice; she spoke that softly. It took the girl ten minutes to work up the courage to approach, and now she stood beside my shoulder, peering anxiously into my face and irritating me even more with her closeness.

Good thing it was so easy to push her away. Much easier than forcing myself not to look at her.

“I believe I asked you not to come near me, Skeleton.”

“Yes. But there’s no one else here, is there? And I was worried.”

“Doesn’t matter. Don’t ever talk to me again, hear me? Never. And don’t come near me.”

“I just wanted to…”

“I don’t give a damn what you wanted! You were nobody to me before, and you’ll always be nobody to me. And Mom doesn’t get to order me around here! I’m not your guide, leading you around by the hand.”

The bus pulled up, and I silently stepped onto it, flicking my cigarette aside. After paying the conductor, I went to the empty rear platform and dropped my bag onto a vacant seat. The girl climbed into the spacious bus behind me and then dug through the pockets of her new jacket for the money her stepmother had given her. Her cheeks flushed and her lips tightened, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t ashamed of what I’d said. Her hurt was her own business, and it was her fault she was my stepfather’s daughter. An unexpected guest in our new house. In my family and my life, where I had no intention of putting up with someone who wanted to take her share away from me.

Leaning my shoulder against the handrail, I turned away and stared out the window, remembering my encounter with Lenka. Trying to erase my stepsister’s existence from my memory, if not forever, then at least for the duration of the ride.

She didn’t dare approach. It was early evening, and the bus was half empty. After looking around, the girl sat in the middle, stealing shy glances at me over her shoulder as if she were afraid I might disappear at any moment and leave her alone.

Of course I noticed them. The young guys who’d been shoving each other around and laughing at the bus stop, throwing sidelong looks at Elf. I’d never seen them before, but so what? Cherekhino attracted plenty of people; maybe they had important business in the suburbs. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care about a single one of them until I suddenly heard:

“Hey, sweetheart. Where are you headed out of town?”

“A pretty girl like you without any protection? That’s not right.”

There were two of them, only a little older than me. Eighteen, maybe. Their good humor seemed to match their interest in the young stranger. The moment I looked at them, I recognized the familiar excitement in them—the same kind that had led me to Lenka today and would lead me to plenty of girls after her. That didn’t bode well for Skeleton.

The girl turned her head in fear and looked at me. The winter evening had darkened enough that I could easily see her worry reflected in the bus window. I forgot at once about my school adventure in the bathroom and the stupid bet. About everything that had filled my thoughts only a second before.

The guys asked my stepsister her name, friendly and joking enough not to alarm the few other passengers, but she still slid off her seat and backed toward me. She took a step closer, then suddenly stopped as if she’d hit an invisible wall, turned away, and sat back down by the window. Hugging her bag to her chest, she stared at the trees flashing past outside.

Naive. Does she really think they’ll give up that easily? Not after seeing those eyes of yours. You’re too easy a target for them, and the game has already begun. No, this won’t end that simply—not for you or for me.