At the time my best friend, Dasha, and I were in the third grade and her brother with my sister were in the first grade, my mother preferred to accompany us all to school and back home. Perhaps this was caused by the excessive exuberance of our little group, which sparked quite a number of arguments between the four of us. Dasha’s and my benevolence together with Katya’s and Grisha’s common sense though, never did permit any real fights between us, so perhaps that wasn’t my mother’s reasoning after all.
In any case, as any working woman with a family, my mother was fairly busy, and sooner or later there was bound to be a time when she wouldn’t be able to pick us up. Too young to feel any real need for independence though, neither one of us kids was actually waiting for such an opportunity. So we weren’t quite as happy as we might have been in a couple more years when that chance for freedom finally did arrive due to my Mom’s science meeting at her job.
Therefore, feeling fairly joyous because of the undoubtedly long-awaited end of the school day, the four of us set off in the cold but sunny winter afternoon to the bus station located a half of a kilometer from our school. Perhaps I should also mention that our little scientific town of Putcshino, with all 20,000 some of its citizens, was only about two kilometers long and almost as wide. Therefore, just by walking up to the bus station we have already covered a quarter of the total distance from school to home. However, true to my mother’s instructions, upon arriving at the bus station, we all decided to wait for the bus to come rather than simply walk another one and a half kilometer or so.
The bus, as usual, was punctually late, and very soon quite a crowd was accumulating around the four of us. There wasn’t really anything fun to do while waiting, since the only thing behind the bus station was a hotel, an old (or as old as it could possibly get in a 30 year old town) menacing building, which most people chose to avoid due to the air of richness it emanated. Right over the road there was a soccer field. During all the years I’ve spent living in Putcshino, I’ve only once or twice seen anyone actually play on that field. That might be the reason (though I’m not quite sure) why my father sometimes called it “the field of fools”.
Therefore, when several boys from Dasha’s and my class, who weren’t particularly fond of us, came to the bus station, there was nothing except us around for them to entertain themselves with. They thought, and probably with a pretty good reason, that such goody-goody all-“A” students as we both were, only made everybody else look worse in comparison. Both Dasha and I, however, were very proud, if not moderately stuck-up, because of our early academic accomplishments so our self-esteems suffered immensely when those boys under the command of their leader, a very short curly-haired guy named Oleg Bitarov, picked up a nasty habit of throwing snowballs at us. We were just standing at the bus station, never paying any real attention to their little gang so we couldn’t possibly have provoked their actions. When the first snowball hit me, the boys laughed, apparently finding that very funny, and continued with throwing them at us. We were an easy target, too, since if we would’ve only answered and thrown snowballs right back at their little gang in return, they would’ve probably left us in peace; but perhaps we really were pretty stuck-up and perhaps we even considered ourselves a step above those trouble-makers and thus chose to ignore their actions. Undemocratic as this reasoning may seem now because of its obvious inequality, it was as close to fairness as our eight-year-old minds could possibly arrive.
Katya and Grisha, following our example, since our age made Dasha and me the leaders of our group by default, refused to participate in the snowball-throwing activity, too, turning away from Oleg’s group and trying not to notice the constant hits. However, just standing there with the snowballs thrown at us every five seconds or so wasn’t particularly pleasant not to mention quite hurtful; more to our feelings, though, I imagine, than to our bodies. Therefore, pulling together whatever practical reasoning two eight-year-olds were able to muster, Dasha and I decided to lead us all to the bus station near the music school, where the bus would be stopping on its way to the station we were at then. It didn’t take long for us to convince our younger siblings, for they didn’t particularly like being the standing targets for snowballs, either.
Conversing about life’s matters, which somehow always managed to revolve around our homework, we all set off to our destination, with Dasha and me leading in front of our procession, and Grisha with Katya following somewhere in the back, since by that time our sibling rivalry had already made us hesitant to play and chat all together. The wet snow under out feet and baggy winter cloths our parents made us wear slowed us down quite a bit, but we were quite confident that at the speed we were walking we would get to the music school just in time not to miss the bus. After making a left turn from our town’s main street at the House of Science just past the post office, though, the two of us remembered that we were supposed to take care of my sister and Dasha’s brother and turned around only to find Grisha walking behind us alone. When asked where did Katya go, Grisha mumbled something incoherent, but couldn’t really answer.
It seemed quite strange to us that someone, who was walking and talking with his best friend could just let her disappear and not notice anything. I mean, who was he talking to after she was gone? Himself? And why didn’t he tell us about her disappearance as soon as he noticed her missing? Needless to say, our first reaction was to suspect a practical joke our younger siblings were playing on us. Therefore, Dasha and I burst into laughter and tried to convince Grisha that his little scheme didn’t work. However, the little boy seemed genuinely confused by Katya’s disappearance (not to mention, quite scared because of our uncontrollable laughter), and knowing his usual honesty, it soon became evident to Dasha and I that this was no game. There were still some inconsistencies in his story, but from what we could understand, Grisha actually didn’t have any idea of how, why, or even when Katya had disappeared.
At that time in our lives, we were all quite the fans of the children mystery genre, and this together with our quite vibrant imaginations made us believe that some evil ghosts or maybe an unfriendly race of aliens had abducted my sister. Nothing else would really explain why Grisha didn’t notice anything when his best friend disappeared. Scared of every shadow and facing an obviously supernatural event, our little group went home by foot, shuddering from every sudden noise, which wasn’t all that rare on the street at noon. Perhaps we were afraid that our parents would misinterpret the ghost stealing Katya from right under our noses and would decide to ground us all, though I honestly believe we weren’t quite that selfish yet, and our childhood innocence truly did permit us to hold my sister’s well-being above our own. Besides, the parents’ punishment couldn’t really come into any comparison with the possibility of the ghosts coming back for us.
Our imaginations were really on the roll, and when a stray cat ran by behind us, that was clearly the sign of the ghosts pursuing us. To add to our nervousness, when we were just turning from the main street of our town to the narrow road, which led across the little field with a sand mountain in the middle of it and separated our quarter of Putcshino, the car of one of our suspects drove by, sending a shower of dirty melted snow straight at us. I should probably explain why that person was our suspect. As I already mentioned, back then we all really liked kid detective stories, and seeing how the children in those stories could solve the mysteries so well and always put the bad guys in jail, we were anxious to try our own detective skills. Unfortunately (or so we thought), there weren’t many crimes in such a little town as Putcshino. Therefore, we began writing down the driving slate numbers of all the cars which parked in front of our house in hopes that at least one of their owners will end up as a criminal. We didn’t really know what we were suspecting those people of doing, but whatever it was, it was pretty bad. Therefore, when a suspect drove by us in a day like that one was, ruining all our cloths, it could only mean that our suspicions were true, and that man really was in conspiracy with the ghosts, hunting for us. That incident made us practically run the rest of the way home since back then I apparently could still do that without any risk of falling dead from exhaustion somewhere on the way. It wasn’t that far away, either; only about half of a kilometer or so.
By the time the three of us had made our way to the rather unusual looking bright yellow apartment building my family was living in, we were suspicious of everyone and everything around us. Therefore, when the ancient wooden entrance door suddenly squeaked and opened all by itself as we approached it, Dasha screamed and immediately became convinced that the ghosts were already there, refusing to go inside. In our normal state of mind, we probably would’ve dismissed the movement of the door as a natural phenomenon caused simply by the wind, but we were all very scared of the possible supernatural forces at work. After several minutes, I somehow managed to convince Dasha that it would be much safer for us behind the locked door of my apartment, where the ghosts, hopefully wouldn’t be able to enter, than in front of the haunted ominous-looking green door. Therefore, willing to sacrifice Grisha to the ghosts if need be, Dasha and I left him downstairs to guard the entrance and, gathering whatever courage we had left, went on to the second floor, where my apartment was located.
The building itself was relatively new, but so many people had already made their way up its gray stone steps, that they didn’t look nice and new at all, but rather cold and menacing. There was quite an evident contrast between the shining purity of the snow on the outside and the walls covered with graffiti and many sayings young eight-year old girls really shouldn’t read. Fortunately, we were taught not to notice them and just went right by. However, the atmosphere of the dark building and its unpleasant smell caused by the stray cats and dogs mistaking the steps for their personal bathroom, made us even more nervous than we already were.
Upon getting to the second floor (thank God, my family’s apartment was relatively close to the building’s entrance, or Dasha and I could have lost our nerve before getting there), we found Katya sitting on the stone steps, singing some sort of song and seemingly unaware of all the worries she caused us. As it turned out, she was completely oblivious to our conversation and failed to hear our plan of going to the bus station near the music school, thus “forgetting” to turn with the rest of us at the House of Science. Her inattentiveness gave us all quite a scare, and after our going through all those worries she could offer no real explanation for her rude behavior whatsoever. Katya just sort of shrugged at our horrible story of running away from the angry ghosts and suspects. Obviously, she didn’t care at all about everything we went through while we were so scared for her. That really hurt our feelings (though, amazingly not Grisha’s). Even at that tender age both Dasha and I strongly believed in any action having its own reason, and Katya’s failure to provide one did absolutely nothing to make our opinion of her any higher.
I opened the door to my apartment and told Katya to go down and get Grisha, who was still guarding the entrance. Meanwhile, Dasha and I retreated to Katya’s and my room, where we tried our hardest to get our minds off of the entire incident by reading The Three Musketeers, which later became our next obsession after the mystery stories, though with less unfortunate consequences.
Somehow, after that particular incident, the relationship among the four of us never did get anywhere beyond sibling rivalry.
