Blue bleeding up to heaven. Forget the news reports, the stricter curfews, the posters of the missing girls—today was a perfect day to spend outside with someone. After the last school bell rang this afternoon, Olya had tried to get Diana to hang out in Petropavlovsk’s city center, but Diana said she couldn’t, that her parents were still worried, that they wanted her home. “It isn’t safe,” Diana said, with her voice high and cold in an imitation of adulthood. Diana’s mother’s voice oozing out of Diana’s mouth.
Besides, best friends, Diana reminded Olya, didn’t need to see each other constantly. This had been Diana’s refrain for the month since the sisters’ kidnapping. Olya couldn’t tell from Diana’s intonation, which these days gave every pronouncement a grown-up spin, whether this was Diana’s idea or her mother’s, but Diana certainly stood behind it. After those girls got lost, Olya and Diana saw each other just about never. Even now that the school year had started, Diana insisted: best friends had to put hangouts on hold, understand if there were sudden foolish rules in place, and bite their tongues instead of getting into another looping argument about danger.
Olya’s own mother was not worried. She trusted Olya to look after herself. An interpreter, she was up north with a tourist group from Tokyo, turning their official guide’s speech from Russian to Japanese so the peninsula’s rich visitors could learn how to spot brown bears, pick late-season berries, and bathe in thermal springs. Whenever Olya’s mother left, there was less music, less perfume, no lipstick-marked mugs in the apartment. Before the sisters vanished, Diana would come by Olya’s during solo weeks like this one to waste away their afternoons together, but now summer vacation was over and everyone had become paranoid. Olya had no one to make noise with until her mother came back on Sunday with foreign candies as secondhand gifts.
Strands of hair brushed Olya’s face. It was fine enough here by herself, anyway. Familiar, sun-warmed. Last spring, their year-seven history teacher had called Olya’s hair a rat’s nest in front of the class, and she had boiled with humiliation. But over this summer tourist season, as Olya turned thirteen years old, explored the city beside Diana, and felt her tangles tickle her neck, she thought again and liked that—a rat’s nest. She was a beast. This was her hollow.
She sniffed—even the smell had stopped bothering her.
A truck honked outside and another one answered. She rolled over to scroll through the news feed on her phone: selfies, skate parks, classmates in short skirts. Someone’s girlfriend had commented on his status with a heart. Olya clicked on that girl’s profile, looked through all its pictures, and moved on, finding mutual friends, scrolling, clicking, skipping. She went back to her feed and refreshed. She stopped.
A girl they knew had just posted a picture of Diana. Diana’s smile suspended between gleaming cheeks. Diana in her home clothes: that ridiculous red T-shirt, rhinestones lining the Union Jack on her chest, and those pink leggings cut off at the knee. Diana sitting cross-legged on her bed, and one of their classmates lying down beside her, and another leaning over in her school uniform while flashing victory signs with both hands.
Olya sat up. Texted Diana: What are you doing? Couldn’t wait. Sent another. Can I come over?
She shoved off the futon, found her jeans, grabbed her jacket, filled her pockets with her wallet and lip balm and headphones and keys. After class, Diana had told Olya she had to go home, but maybe she meant Olya should come with her. Maybe both of them had misunderstood. Olya looked again at the picture. There were four of them together? The girl who posted it didn’t even live in Diana’s neighborhood. Olya refreshed. Nothing new. She made sure she had her bus pass, slammed the apartment doors, then ran down the stairs.
Outside, the sun was bright enough to make her wince. She hadn’t been at the apartment for more than an hour, but already she had turned fully rodent, blinking at the light. As she hurried, she pulled fingers through her hair to smooth it out. Strands dropped behind. Olya had suggested they go to the center this afternoon—did Diana think she wanted to go only there? Nowhere else? Olya would’ve agreed to any other plan; Diana knew that. Diana knew Olya didn’t want to be alone. Best friends did not abandon each other.
Olya’s building’s long parking lot was pitted under her feet. She tried leaping over the biggest potholes so she wouldn’t lose her pace. Through her sneakers came the warmth of the asphalt, the pinpricks where gravel crumbled. In sunshine like this, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky’s bad roads softened as if to heal themselves. Even the billboard over the traffic circle looked like new; the model in its center grinned with her hands in a foaming sink. Residential buildings around the intersection showed off their many colors on squares of apartments outlined by dark concrete seams. There were flaking pink and peach façades on the units with owners who once had money, navy reclad balconies on the units with owners who had money now. In the gaps between buildings, Petropavlovsk’s hills lit up with yellow leaves.
Olya’s mother was somewhere far north of that foliage. She was on a tourism agency’s helicopter over the tundra. She was repeating arigato in the sun.
Hearing herself, the desperate noise of her shoes slapping, Olya slowed down, felt the light stroke her face, then hopped when she saw her bus rounding the traffic circle and had to dash to catch it.
The bus lurched as she went down the aisle. On either side were rows of people dressed in uniform after uniform: coveralls, scrubs, police dress blues, and blotted military greens. The workday was already coming to a close. Most of the men Olya passed looked like potential kidnappers. Useless, Olya’s mother said about the whispers flying through Petropavlovsk in August, which described someone heavyset, anonymous. Olya’s mother said the police’s witness probably hadn’t seen anyone at all. All that description did was make half the city’s population seem sinister. Olya found a seat and checked her phone.
Diana hadn’t responded. Quickly, Olya typed ???, sent it, locked the screen, and shut the phone between her hands like that would undo her message. To keep herself from anything else, she looked out the window.
“Golden autumn” her mother called this time of year, brief and beautiful as a picture. All the trees on fire. And the air still inviting. More summery, really, than it had been all summer. Way off on the horizon, the Koryaksky volcano was capped with its first snow. Cold weather was coming, but it wasn’t here yet.
By now Diana must’ve figured Olya had seen the picture. Olya crushed the phone between her palms. Were they all over there laughing at her?
This was how it went: the closer you were to someone, the more you lied. With people she hardly knew, Olya could say whatever she wanted: “That hurts” to the nurse giving her an injection, or “Put it back, I can’t pay” to the grocery-store cashier. On her own, Olya was honest. Even more distant classmates couldn’t constrain her—when the kid who sat behind her bragged about getting the highest score on their first exam of the year, Olya acted on the urge to turn away from him. Swiveling in her seat was enough to send a flare up her rib cage. Telling the truth was a thrill not found with her mother, who needed Olya to take merry care of their household, or with Diana, who made Olya measure herself out by request.