12

Like yesterday, there were a lot of people on the beach. Again there was loud misic booming from the sunbathers’ portable speakers and cars. Again there were cheerful screams of bathing kids, splashing and jumping in the water. But unlike yesterday I no longer felt as happy and excited. I didn’t feel like swimming; wrapped in a towel I stood on the bank and peered into the distance trying to figure out the brown rubber boat amidst the colored variety of others on the water surface sparkling in the sun - but it wasn’t there…

I didn’t care about the bright summer day on the beach. I didn’t care about the happy people having fun around me. I was blind and deaf to everything around; even the Sun in the sky seemed dark to me, the lake cold and uncomfortable, the bustling of the beach stupid and unnecessary.

Sue, excited and cheerful, ran up to me.

“Why don’t we take a swim?”

“I don’t want to” I muttered sullenly.

She squatted down beside me and, as she found a stick in the sand, handed it to me.

“Draw what you’re thinking about”

I drew a heart with an arrow through the center. She frowned.

“So that’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it” I answered through my teeth.

Sue stood up abruptly.

“Wow, it’s past three already” she said looking at her watch, “You gotta go home, your gran is worrying”

“She can wait,” I said dryly, “But why are you sending me away? Let’s go home together, then.”

“Okay, okay…”

Sue began gathering her s***s with apparent reluctance. I was all dressed and stood by the bicycles waiting for her, while she was lingering on purpose, pulling off and on her bikini and employing any pretext to stall me: now she lost her sunglasses, then she dropped her pants in the mud…

“Will you quit dawdling there or not?” I snapped out losing patience, “Don’t keep me waiting!”

“I’m not keeping you! You may go, if you want to.”

I gave up on her and went home alone.

At home I was ”greeted” by my cranky grandmother. As soon as I opened the gate she shouted to me from the other end of the yard where there was a shed we used as a kitchen:

“Have you got mashed potatoes for brains or what?”

I ignored that remark and, having washed my hands, approached the table.

“Bear in mind: if you are late for dinner next time, the shed will be shut!” Grandmother hurled a bowl of sorrel soup on the table, “I’m not gonna dance around the stove for you all day!”

Another time I would have burst out laughing on fancying the fat figure of Gran Zoya, wearing an apron and a kerchief and dancing the twist at the stove with a ladle in her hand - but now I couldn’t think about it. I was chewing sluggishly on the cold soup, reflecting over where the deuce that Sashka could be. It had already been an hour since I left the lake yet she wasn’t showing up.

Sue popped up only in the evening. I was sitting in the arbor and reading a book about a girl in white when I heard her abrupt voice calling my name from behind the gate.

I immediately put the book aside and headed for the gate. Sue was standing behind the fence with a twisted face and shaking the gate so furiously as though she was going to rip it off the hinges.

“Open the gate, quick! I got to talk to you right now!” she snapped out.

My hands shaking, I rushed to pull out the tight rusty latch. It wouldn’t give way. It was past nine o’clock and my paranoid grandfather had the habit of locking all the doors including the gate at eight.

“Call your grandfather, now! Tell him to open the gate! Quick!!!” cried Sue losing it.

Grandfather came and opened the gate. But Sue refused to come in so we sat down on the grass by the gate in the shade of a big fir tree.

“I’ve been at the lake…”

Those words hit me like an electric shock. So that’s where Sue had been until nine p.m.! That’s why she had dawdled there for so long, trying by hook or by crook to get rid of me!

She didn’t really have to continue; what she said next wasn’t breaking news to me. Although it was so unbearably painful to listen on.

“Roma came with his friends and we spent all day together. And then his mate pulled him aside and I heard him ask: “So is she your crush?” And Roma said: “Shh, yep…”

Sue was chatting on and on but I could no longer hear or understand her. All my hopes, all my dreams had collapsed. What an idiot I’d been baring my soul to her! And she had just snatched my crush from under my nose! What sense did it make talking to her now?

“Oh honey, please, don’t cry…” she said mockingly in a sing-song voice “I’m so sorry for you, so sorry! Don’t make me feel bad… Do you want me to cede Roma for you? I will talk to him, ok? I’ll tell him to go out with you, if you want me to.”

“No!!!” I snapped out, “I don’t want your pity or your favours! You’ve already done me a favor…”

“Up to you,” she replied coldly as she stood up, “If you don’t want to admit that you’ve lost the game, just say so, ok? And stop sniveling, go to the abandoned house and calm down. I’m not going to wipe your tears!”

And she left me sitting there in the dust, crushed and brokenhearted…