The First of September. Part I. Chapter 1
Chapter 1
“I got it, and that’s OK”
The yearly calendar is full of dreadful days. Thursdays are especially devastating, but there is no day quite as bad as the 1st of September. Old grass-stained shorts and ripped t-shirts, filled with the warm smell of summer, get packed away to await long months until school is over and joy can return to the world. The uniforms, grey and wrinkly, march out of the closets and begin to rule over every hour of the day.
The dusty air of the small northern town of Vytegra was still warm, and the grasshoppers were singing their late-summer songs in the withering grass on the curbs. September 1st would always come too early. Fishing was still amazing, and even the apples were not yet ripe. Who was the genius who decided that a school year should begin on September 1st?
Dina hated her new shiny shoes. Her mom made her buy them two weeks ago, and they were slightly too big – she was supposed to grow into them. They had that awful glimmer of fake leather to them. She also hated her pleated skirt. If it were up to her, she would wear some good old pants and beat-up leather boots, and maybe chainmail. Otherwise, how would she defend herself against imaginary goblins if she was dressed in a skirt? She had to leave her trusty sword – a perfectly sword-shaped stick – under the porch today in the morning. It served her well all summer long as she, in her ripped green Converse sneakers, raced through the fields, captured frogs, climbed trees, and fought the “hordes of orcs and goblins” – the thick nettle bushes.
Summer was decidedly ending, and Dina found herself in the middle of the school courtyard. Somebody attempted to separate the students into groups by age, but they kept mixing, so Dina stood still in the sea of anxious people and waited to be allowed into the school building. It always smelled of old socks there. Her tights were too hot, her backpack, filled with books, hurt her shoulders, and Dina, in mounting frenzy, watched the school principal climb the steps of the porch. The fanfares cut through the air, and the principal received a giant bouquet of peonies.
“Let us begin this new school year, my dears!” she exclaimed, and the doors of the school opened. She carried the summer away in her odoriferous peonies.
Dina sighed and followed the crowd up the steps. The older girls in tiny skirts stank of new perfumes. The younger girls filled up all the empty spaces with their puffy bows and ruffles. The boys were showing off their pompous dress coats. Dina pushed her way through and ran up the wide concrete steps to the second floor, to her classroom. She rushed to take over one of the back desks so that no one could attempt to sit with her.
She tossed her backpack on the chair and glanced around. The students were just beginning to fill the room, so she calmed down a little. A giant tome of “The Lord of the Rings” was placed on the desk and strategically covered by the Russian language textbook and a pencil case. The random voices slowly grew into a familiar murmur, and Dina opened her book, pretending to ignore the presence of her classmates. Yet, the moment she started to zone out, diving into her reading, a quiet voice disturbed her solitude:
“Excuse me, would it be alright if I sat by you?”
“Actually, no, it’s not “alright,” there’s a whole bunch of desks, why would you…” Dina lifted her eyes and stuttered, staring straight into bright green eyes that pierced her soul. The stranger was short and well-built, with the overall sturdiness to his figure and an almost perfectly oval, freckled face. Dina could not take her eyes off him for a few long moments. His hair! The color of an orange peel, it spread over his shoulders in gentle waves, bright against the brown coat.
“Is everything OK?..” inquired the boy with a strange, unfamiliar accent.
“A-ah, yes!” Dina came back to her senses. “Yes, you can sit here.”
“Really? Thanks!” he pulled out a chair and took out a couple of notebooks, an inkwell, and a quill pen. Dina stared at him with an even deeper confusion, then took a long look at her book.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Nikita,” replied the boy and offered her a hand. “My apologies for my rudeness. You can call me Nick. And you?”
“I’m Dina,” Dina shook his hand, sturdy like the rest of him, covered in scratches. “Shishkova.”
“Pleasure to meet you!” Nick gave her a lively, cheerful smile that formed dimples on his cheeks. His face had a strange, unfamiliar shape to it – the cheekbones were high and prominent, the nose slightly flattened, and his heavy jaw gave his entire face a serious and daring expression.
“What are you reading?” asked Nick, embarrassed by her staring.
“’ The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers,’” said Dina, and he beamed.
“Oh! I just started the first book! It’s been great so far!” he exclaimed, and Dina witnessed the wall of awkwardness and misunderstanding crumble at their feet. They started talking and talked until the school bells rang.
The bells always had a sobering effect on the students. The doors flung open, and the last group of children rushed in. Dina winced at their sight, but Nick watched them with the curiosity of a toddler. The first through the doors was Kuraev Lesha, or Leshiy,[1] who earned his nickname due to his constantly disheveled curly hair. He jumped up on a chair and screamed at the top of his lungs, swinging his jacket over his head. He was followed by Kostya Ferov, whom Dina secretly called “the Jester”.
Ferov was a polite, proper sort of person, but only when adults were around. The rest of his life was spent in endless attempts to be as cool as Leshiy and his friends – the highest-ranking group in the hierarchy of the eighth grade of the class of 2016. They had the newest smartphones, and they owned a deck of cards to play Mafia, which was illegal at the school. Leshiy’s main partner was Dima Tuna, nicknamed the Seal for his build. Tuna kept half the school in fear and had consistent fights to maintain his title of the greatest bully.
On the other side of the room, away from Tuna’s and Leshiy’s gang, resided the members of the fashionable caste of the class – Taya Frolova and Dasha Smirnova. Taya liked to wear old soviet uniforms she inherited from her mom, and her braids were always so tight that they bent upward. Dasha, on the other hand, was famous across the entire school for her very short hair and a scarf that she wore year-round.
Dina kept her classmates organized by “layers”. One had Leshiy and his groupies, the other – Taya, Dasha, and their followers, but there was also a circle of failures who never had any homework done, and a separate group of perfectionists and straight-A students. Dina did not belong to any of these “layers”. Her “layer” consisted of only one person – herself.
“Is it always like this?” inquired Nick after watching the chaos for a while.
“What?”
“So much… noise?”
“Almost always,” Dina shrugged.
“I’ll miss my school,” said Nick sadly. “My “wall” had only ten students, and maybe we were a little loud sometimes, but we never did whatever this is…”
“Where’d you live?” asked Dina in her attempt to put together the puzzle of his character. “You have an accent too…”
“Far from here,” answered Nick cautiously. “Really far.”
“Are you from England?” continued Dina. “I know a little bit of English, but your ‘r’s are different… Are you French?”
Nick glanced at her with a flash of panic in his eyes and opened his mouth to respond, but the doors of the classroom slammed, and their teacher, Nina Nikolaevna, crossed the room, accompanied by the ominous clicking of her heels. She stopped, still pressing textbooks to her chest, and looked over her students through her tiny, narrow glasses. The class stood still, and even Leshiy tossed his vest under the desk.
“Ferov, where is your class journal?” asked Nina Nikolaevna and quickly fixed the glasses over her long, pointy triangle of a nose.
“One moment!” Ferov jumped up, tripped, and almost fell, but regained his balance and ran out the door. The class laughed, even Dina grinned with content.
“Sit down, everyone! What is this again? The school year has barely begun, and you’re already breaking the dress code! What is this black, what is this… what’s your name? Yes, you, in the back,” Nina Nikolaevna motioned Nick to get up.
“Who are you?” she asked sharply.
“Nikita Keteroe. Good day to you, Nina Nikolaevna,” Nick gave her a courteous bow.
“Nikita… well, sit down, but tomorrow wear the official uniform, please; this is no good at all,” said Nina Nikolaevna, and Nick sat down and clasped his hands together.
Keteroe – wondered Dina, yet again staring at her new friend – Keteroe, never heard of such a last name. Maybe he’s Finnish?
“Ginger!” noted Leshiy with a grin.
“Rapunzel, no less,” added his desk buddy Tuna. “Looks like a girl!”
“Silence!” shouted Nina Nikolaevna. The discipline always took up the first ten minutes of every class with her. After the disciplining, Nina Nikolaevna received the class journal and began the monotonous lesson, which was a recollection of the last year of study. Soon it became stuffy and boring, and Dina helplessly played with a sheet of paper from her notebook. Nick, next to her, seemed to be deep into the lesson, and his quill made scratching sounds on the paper.
He wrote quickly and skillfully as if for his entire life he had been using an inkwell and had never even seen a ballpen. The chalk was shrieking as it spelled out letters on the blackboard, a tired green fly was beating against the window, and Dina thought with annoyance that it had been a long time since they painted the walls of the classroom. The disgusting paint of greenish-blue color was starting to peel off. Finally, the bells broke the maddening boredom, and the class forgot about the presence of the disappointed teacher and her unfinished lesson.
“Listen, would you mind if I followed you around for a bit? I barely know the school; it would’ve really helped to be with you,” said Nick as he packed his leather bag.
“I don’t mind,” Dina nodded and got up. He was too nice. Thirteen-year-old people are not normally this nice.
‘Thank you,” Nick smiled again with that dimpled smile, and Dina, in her mind, rolled her eyes, taking that as an attempt to deepen her affection for him. They walked over to the door, and Dina caught herself thinking that since fourth grade, she had never had a friend.
The exit of the classroom was blocked by the monolith of Dima Tuna, squared off by Leshiy and Ferov on each side.
“Where are we going, ginger?” inquired Tuna and started to nonchalantly roll up the sleeves of his pink dress shirt.
It was a good idea not to have friends, thought Dina in dismay. Tuna was obligated by the laws of school hierarchy to test the newcomer; he had to make sure that the stranger understood who was in charge. He would never touch Dina for some reason; she could have just walked past him… but not anymore.
“What does ‘ginger’ mean?” asked Nick in an almost adult voice. His frowning face suddenly became very stern, but he was still much smaller and shorter than Tuna.
“Red-head,” laughed Leshiy. “That’s what it means. Head made of carrots!”
“What do you want?” Nick stared each one of them down. “And I got this hair from my grandpa; he was a noble… man.”
“You’re so stupid, little freckles,” Tuna stepped forward and bent down a little to look Nick in the eye. “You need to understand something here. I am in charge. You’re either with us or with The Trash!”
He nodded towards a tiny nerd – Fedya Alesov – who was waiting at his desk, hoping to leave the class alive and well after Tuna dealt with his new target.
“You’re not the king of this school, Seal!” yelled Dina, boiling with anger. “And you know that!”
“Keep it down, you loony!” replied Tuna.
“E-eh! Don’t you dare bully her!” said Nicklis and stepped in front of Dina, stopping her from attacking Tuna.
“Ah-ah, a girl is standing up for another girl!” sang Ferov from behind Tuna’s back.
Nik threw his bag away and then planted his fist into Tuna’s chest with so much power that the boy took a few steps back, stumbled, and fell down. Leshiy and Ferov stared at him in terror. Dina tightly grasped the straps of her backpack.
“Call me a girl!” said Nick with a daring smile. “Go ahead! Then the whole school will tell the tale of how you three got beaten up by a girl!”
It all happened in a few seconds. Dina barely had enough time to jump away. Tuna flew back into the classroom like a cannonball, and the desks and chairs exploded all over the room. Ferov started yelling as Tuna got off the floor; his raspy, unsure laughter broke the sudden silence. Nick stretched out in the middle of the mess, coughing, as he attempted to collect himself. Tuna kept laughing, but he sounded scared, as if he was taken aback by his own actions. Dina finally shook off her trance and ran over to her friend, jumping over a chair. Nick wiped his face with a sleeve, smearing blood all over his lips, and got up.
“Goodness… Nick!” Dina grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Let me go, Dina. I need to deal with this,” said Nick and lifted his fists.
“You’ll fight more?” snickered Tuna, inspired by his liveliness.
“Stupid scum, that’s what you are!” yelled Nick and leaped at him.
Nina Nikolaevna came back out of her room at the end of the class and started screaming as the fight progressed. Dina listened to their shouts, to the screeching of tearing clothes, to the thuds, and to Ferov’s howling. She saw the drops of blood on the light linoleum, and something within her turned. Numbed by fear, she pushed her way through the forming crowd and ran to the next classroom where they were supposed to have a geography lesson. She fell at her desk, tucked her face in her hands, and only then took the first wheezing breath since the fight began.
Tuna was strong; he could kill Nick. Why does she need friends? The moment she gains friends, she also gains problems. She cannot be friends with people; it always ends the same way – betrayal and pain, offences and insults. Maybe she was supposed to stay?.. She should have stayed to help; she was the only person Nick knew in this entire school, and she left him there… Which one of them was the traitor now? No, friendship was a waste of time.
Suddenly, the voices in the room died out. The teacher was gone for a while; he was helping stop the fight, so Dina lifted her head, thinking he might have returned. The class was peering at the door with thirty pairs of eyes. Tuna, Leshiy, and Ferov walked in, disheveled and beaten. Tuna’s left eye was starting to swell up in blue. Sergey Vasilievich, the geography teacher, followed them, pushing Nick in. The boy’s shirt was all ripped and stained with blood on the chest, his little bowtie twisted sideways. Dina hid her face in her arms again. Now she just wanted to cry for being so harsh to the delicate sprout of their barely formed friendship.
“Are you alright?” asked Nick quietly as he put his coat on the back of the chair next to her. “They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
Dina lifted her eyes at him. He smiled. He must have washed his face, and his hair was disheveled but brushed down.
“I’m sorry…” whispered Dina. “I’m OK, but I… I ran away… I left you there…”
“That’s OK,” Nick fixed his bowtie. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I couldn’t watch it… Really, I didn’t mean to…”
“I got it, and that’s OK,” said Nick calmly. “He insulted you – I fought him for you. That’s how it is with me. Always.”
“Thank you…” sighed Dina, surprised by the warmth that spread over her. “Thank you…”
* * *
Classes ended around two in the afternoon, and Dina walked out onto the sunlit school porch in Nick’s company. He hung his coat over his bag and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as he went down the steps.
“Which way?” asked Dina, noticing to her great annoyance that her tights had already gotten ripped at the knee. They never survived more than two days…
“There,” Nick pointed to the street.
“Same,” Dina smiled, and they started up the warm sunny sidewalk away from school and away from chaos.
“Mom will cry again,” noted Nick. “She always cries when I come home after a fight; she never even scolds me for anything. Father, though…”
“Does he punish you?” suggested Dina sympathetically.
“No, he just looks at me… with disappointment,” Nick shrugged.
“My dad says I was supposed to be a boy, because I fight when somebody hurts me,” said Dina.
“My sister also fights,” replied Nick. “Though she does not become less of a girl because of that.”
“I don’t know,” Dina shook her head. “I like to fight. I have such a cool stick, I’ll show you later. It makes an awesome sword. The moment I see goblins, I!..”
“Goblins? There are goblins? Here?..” Nick looked around in surprise.
“There!” Dina pointed at the thickets of burdocks by the side of the road. Nick grabbed her arm and dashed down the street.
“Where’re you going?!” screamed Dina, barely keeping up with him.
“You said there were goblins!”
“O-oh, yes, of course! We don’t have swords today!” Dina picked up the speed, and they ran to the next block. Nick stopped there, behind the turn of a fence, and took a deep breath. He glanced at the street cautiously.
“I was joking, by the way,” noted Dina, observing his agitation. “You got that it was a joke, right? Goblins don’t exist…”
“What?.. Oh, e-eh, yes, of course,” Nick straightened up and fixed his shirt. “A joke. Yes, quite funny.”
“I like to imagine that I’m not here at all,” explained Dina with a tone of deep regret. “That I fight goblins, even though it’s just those bushes. That I am a ranger and can follow animal tracks in the woods, that I am… in a different world. Have you ever imagined yourself in a parallel universe? Played “goblins” and all?”
“E-eh, yes, I have. We did play like that,” Nick pulled on his collar as if it was suffocating him. “And then… well, we stopped. It’s stupid.”
“Why stupid?”
“Because… there are more important things in the real world, and sometimes you must think about them instead.”
“Why are you so grown-up?” exclaimed Dina. “My parents say that! Are you like the rest of them all?!”
“Who are ‘they’?” asked Nick in confusion.
“They! All of those who call me a loony! All who say that drawing elves in a math notebook is stupid! And that flowers don’t feel anything!”
“Flowers have feelings,” said Nick seriously. “I was just talking about the goblins. It’s stupid to joke about them.”
“Did they tell you that? Which one of us is a loony now?” Dina crossed her arms.
“They!..” Nick wanted to argue, but then suddenly calmed down. “Let’s not do that; none of us is a loony. I just don’t like goblins, that’s all. And orcs, especially orcs, they’re the worst.”
Dina smiled as she sensed that their connection was not yet lost. She hated orcs too. The nettle bushes behind her house that she labeled “the orc horde” were always well beaten by her.
They kept on walking, and after a while Nick asked:
“Do you happen to have anything to eat by any chance?”
“I do,” Dina opened her backpack. “I always take a sandwich with me; you never know what they’re going to feed us at lunch.”
“Good idea,” said Nick approvingly. “Today was something… gross.”
“That was a cottage-cheese casserole, actually, the best food at our school. The rest is way worse, so beware,” stated Dina and gave him a homemade sandwich in tinfoil. Nick unwrapped it, broke it in half, and gave a piece to Dina.
“That casserole was the worst thing I’ve ever tasted,” said Nick, and Dina snorted in response. For a few moments, they walked in silence and chewed their sandwiches. Dina watched her new friend out of the corner of her eye. His shirt looked like it was holding on for dear life.
“How did it happen that when Seal hit you and you fell, your entire face was bloody?” asked Dina cautiously.
“Well, Dima hit me with his fist as I was falling,” explained Nick and brushed off the crumbs.
“You’re still on first names with him?!” Dina was utterly astonished. “After what he called you?.. I haven’t called him anything but “Seal” since first grade!”
“He insulted me, but I don’t want to go down to his level,” Nick puffed up his chest. “He wasn’t the first, and I’m sure won’t be the last. I’m a ginger after all.”
He shook his hair, and Dina contemplated the fact that gingerness can, in fact, affect one’s quality of life. They turned onto another street, and Dina inquired:
“Where do you live? My house is right there, at the end of this street, and you’re still walking with me.”
“I live right there,” Nick pointed at an old, slanted house with blue platbands on the windows. The house was abandoned a long time ago, and the grass around its mossy fence had not been cut in years.
“And… how long have you lived there?” asked Dina, staring at the elderly apple trees that cast a mysterious dark shadow over the house.
“We moved in a week ago,” said Nick.
“It’s just… I’ve never seen anyone live there since my childhood,” noted Dina.
“We barely had anything with us; you may not have noticed us,” Nick shrugged.
“And there’s never any light in the windows… There was none last week.”
“The house is very old,” sighed Nick. “The light doesn’t work, but my parents decided not to fix it yet. We won’t be staying long.”
“Really?..” Dina glanced at him in distress. “How long?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a month, maybe a bit longer. Father’s looking for a job,” said Nick reflectively.
“Where will you go then?..”
“To Moscow, maybe, or somewhere else, I don’t know,” Nick shrugged again. “It’s up to them.”
“O-oh,” sighed Dina sadly.
“Don’t worry, we aren’t leaving yet,” Nick smiled, and Dina nodded.
“Do you only have one sister?” she asked to change the subject.
“No, I have three,” said Nick. “One is older; I’m ten years her junior, the other one is a year younger than me, and then there’s Linsi. She’s little.”
“Linsi? That’s a funny name!”
“Mom likes it.”
“And you’re Nikita,” Dina continued her interrogation. “Why’s your name normal, and hers like that?”
“I don’t know, it just happened,” Nick winced as if he did not find this conversation amusing.
“And what are your other sisters’ names?..” Dina’s brain was itching with curiosity. Nick was quiet for a few moments as if he was recollecting the names of his relatives, then said:
“Ma… Marina is the eldest. And Finna, the younger.”
“Interesting, the two of you who are older have regular names, and the younger ones are different…”
“Listen, I have to go,” stated Nick, twisting his coat back and forth.
“OK. Let’s go to school together tomorrow!” suggested Dina.
“Sure,” agreed Nick. “Bye!”
“See you tomorrow!” Dina waved her hand as he ran down a narrow path from the street, opened a creaky gate, and disappeared into the thick twilight of the old garden. Nikita Keteroe. Very, very strange Nikita Keteroe.
Dina walked to her house in silence. Her mind was trying to calculate how old his parents must be to have children of twenty-three, thirteen, eleven, and two years of age. The fence around her house was white, and it was shining with its elegant carved shapes as if it were part of a dollhouse. Several well-kept apple and pear trees spread their branches over a wooden boardwalk by the house, and Dina tore off one of the ripe apples.
A short, wiry man stood on his knees by the porch. Dressed in old, greened jeans, a blue shirt that faded in the sun, and a pair of huge pink gloves that went up to his elbows, he was happily digging through a flowerbed. Dina went up the porch, leaned on the railing, and said:
“Hi, Dad.”
Her father, whose name was Igor, lifted his head and fixed his glasses that always threatened to slip off his thin, long nose.
“Hi,” he said. “I finally decided to collect the rose bush trimmings, since last year barely any of those developed roots. Careful when you come in; the begonias are sitting by the door. I need to bring them into the house for the winter.”
Dina nodded and, stepping over pots, watering cans, little shovels and rakes, went inside. Igor was a houseplant breeder and collector, so the house always smelled of dirt, plant food and flowers. Sometimes Dina caught herself thinking that her father’s complete and total obsession with houseplants must be something of an oddity, since he never sat down for even a second. He was endlessly engaged with his flowers.
She tossed her awful shiny shoes into the pile of other shoes and sighed over her old green sneakers. For a moment she gazed in a mirky mirror at her round blue-eyed face, framed by her chin-long curtain bangs, then huffed and walked into the living room. In the cloud of aroma exuded by soup and rye bread, Dina’s older sister Lena was helping set the table for lunch. The two younger sisters, Ira and Lera, were fighting about something by the window, and the two youngest, Dasha and Masha, were happily occupied by toy cars by the couch.
The living room was small, but it fit a dining table, Igor’s plantation of houseplants, two couches, and a couple of mismatched chairs. A tall white furnace rose along one of the walls. It had not been used in a very long time, since the house was now equipped with electricity and gas, but the family kept it as décor.
Dina dropped her backpack and shuffled to the kitchen where her mom Olga was skillfully filling bowls with soup, using a huge ladle. Her ancient TV, which resided by the microwave, was painstakingly performing a very scratchy serenade; and an enormous kettle, darkened by years of use, was screaming to inform everyone that it had boiled.
“Ah, Dina, you’re back,” Olga pulled her daughter over and hugged her, then shoved a plate with bread into her hands. “Take it to the table.”
Dina nodded and returned to the living room.
“Ira! Go call Dad, it’s lunchtime!” yelled Olga, and Ira stopped her fight with Lera and turned her attention to Dina.
“Dinka can call him!” said she and capriciously folded her lips into a bow.
“I ain’t ‘Dinka’ for you!” growled Dina. “I have forbidden you to call me that so many times!”
“Ah-ha!” snorted Ira.
“Go call dad,” ordered Dina and with a thud placed the bread on the table. Ira rolled her eyes and stumped to the door.
It took them another fifteen minutes and countless complaints about the soup getting called from Olga to get the entire Shishkovy family to gather around the table. Dina and Ira always sat together, since they were only a year apart and held the same position in the family hierarchy, even though they constantly argued about it. Lena, the oldest of the sisters, maintained her own quiet personal world and defended its borders against the rest of her sisters. Lera was a year younger than Ira, and had her own space, as did the youngest twins Masha and Dasha. They lived their own six-year-old lives.
“Dina, what happened to your sleeve?” asked Olga once everyone settled down. “Did you have painting today?”
“Oh! No,” Dina just now noticed the dark circles left by a few drops of blood on her sleeves. “That… So, long story, but we had a fight today…”
“Whose parents will we need to apologize to this time around?” sighed Olga reproachfully.
“How many times do we have to talk about this, Dina?” added Lina as she turned to face her sister.
“I didn’t fight!” stated Dina. “It was… my friend. He got into the fight.”
“You have friends?” laughed Ira.
“Imagine that!” snapped Dina. “He’s new; we met today.”
“I hope it was a worthy cause to fight, at least?” inquired Lena.
“It was! He… fought for me,” confessed Dina and looked down at her soup. “Dima Tuna insulted me, and he stood up for me.”
“O-oh, what a noble sir knight!” snickered Ira. “I saw the fight today; they say it was super bloody! Tuna told everyone he won!”
“Ira, be quiet,” requested Olga. “What’s your friend’s name?”
“Nikita,” said Dina, eyeing Ira. “And Tuna didn’t win! It got broken up! At least that’s what I got…”
“Did your Nikita get hurt? I am quite alarmed by this Dima, he gets away with too many things,” noted Olga.
“His nose was bleeding,” explained Dina. “That’s why I got blood on me too.”
“Alright then, bring your shirt to wash today,” said Olga.
“Wait, Nikita! Is that the ginger guy? The idiot with a girl’s haircut?” asked Ira suddenly.
“Ira, haven’t we talked that you should not be calling people that?” said Olga sternly.
“He’s not an idiot!” Dina was fuming. “At all! And he doesn’t look like a girl! He behaves more manly than most of the boys at our school!”
“OK, Ira, Dina, let’s calm down,” asked Olga wearily. “Let’s not fight.”
“You wouldn’t believe it! They put Ira Soboleva at my desk!” Ira immediately started her usual chatter. “And now when they call “Ira,” we cannot tell which one of us they want!”
Dina kept frowning as she finished her soup. They don’t understand anything about beauty or kindness; they don’t get that sometimes people need to fight to keep others humble. Dina sipped the rest of the broth, took the bowl to the kitchen, and ran up the creaky staircase to the second floor of the house. She shut the door to her room behind her, looked over at the open window, and took a deep breath of the warm September air. Now she had a friend. A very strange, but a very real friend.
[1] Leshiy is a mythological creature that appears in Russian folklore. He usually inhabits the woods and has the appearance of a huge old man covered in moss.