“Can I get a hot dog without the bun?”
The vendor rolled her eyes. “You said eighty-six? A soda and a tea are eighty-five.” Olya slid her money across the counter and took back a coin, a handful of sugar packets, a can of Coca-Cola. After a minute, she got her soft plastic cup of tea. Drinks in her fists, one hot, one cold, she picked her way across the stone-covered shore to a bench.
Cars passed behind her. Tiny waves lapped the rocks. Olya drank the soda first, while she listened to the current and the engines and the back-and-forth shouts of teenagers by the statue. Then she shook three sugar packets in her tea and drank that, too, tipping her head back until the sludge at its bottom slid to her tongue. Sweet grit in her throat.
People thinned out on the sidewalk. Birds swooped toward the hill. Ahead of Olya, the water twinkled with sunlight. The rows of cranes farther down the coast were motionless. Their operators were long home, with family, with friends.
The phone lay heavy in Olya’s jacket pocket. She did not want to check her news feed. She might discover more pictures of the four of them, temples pressed together, hands cupping each other’s faces, and the captions underneath: best friends! More of a threat than any stranger.
Though there might be no new posts at all. After today’s conversation, maybe Valentina Nikolaevna had taken Diana’s cell away. Maybe she kicked the other girls out. Maybe Diana, hearing what her mother had said, was going to cry all night.
And tomorrow before their first class, Olya would ask, “Why did you let her talk to me that way?”
Diana would say, “I couldn’t stop her. She grabbed my phone and pushed me away while she called.”
“You never stop her. She’s sick in the head.” Olya would have permission to speak plainly because she’d been treated so wrong, and Diana, after years of pretending she had the ideal family, would finally have to agree.
Together they would come up with a plan. Diana could say she joined a club so they would have two afternoons a week to go to Olya’s apartment. No one else would have to know. Olya’s mother would not tell. Olya ripped open another sugar packet, poured the crystals into her mouth, and chewed. The sugar dissolved on her teeth. The club could be called the Everybody Hates Valentina Nikolaevna Group or Escape from Mother Monster.
Swallowing, Olya brushed her trash onto the ground and lay across the bench.
The bay made such soft noises. Its ripples appeared a meter or two from shore. Far across the water was the dark opposite coast, the lights that marked where nuclear submarines docked, the layers of mountains that grew paler all the way to the sky.
The club could be called the Olya-All-Alone Brigade because Olya knew Diana wouldn’t do it. She knew that. No club was happening. When it came to love and lying, Diana put Olya last every time.
The yellow in the sky was leaching into the ground. Lights across the bay flickered. Behind Olya, traffic passed without a break.
Her temples grew wet and cold from tears. Olya wiped her eyes. Someone’s big hand closed around her right ankle and she sat up, terrified.
The detective from the news stood at the foot of her bench. He was tall, wearing sunglasses, imposing in his uniform. He let go of Olya’s ankle and said, “Alyona Golosovskaya?”
Olya drew her legs back. Her breath was quick. “Do I look like that girl to you?”
“Surname, name, and patronymic.”
“Petrova, Olga Igorevna.” Was this how the police conducted their search? Bench by bench where the girls were last seen? No wonder the Golosovskayas were still missing. “I’m older than they are. I’m in year eight. And I don’t look anything like her.” Olya wiped her face with both hands before staring up at the detective’s sunglasses to show him. The Golosovskaya girls had been tiny things, small-boned and fragile. Not teenage rats. Not Olya.
The detective evaluated her, then waved in dismissal toward the street. A police car, engine humming, sat at the curb. “How long have you been here?”
“Maybe an hour.”
“Have you seen anyone suspicious?”
“I haven’t seen anyone. I’ve seen you, that’s all.”
“No one else approached you? No man in a dark car?” Olya shook her head. “Don’t roll your eyes while I ask you questions,” the detective said.
“I didn’t.” It felt surprisingly good to lie to a stranger.
“I hope you understand the risk of being out here by yourself.”
“Oh, I’m not,” Olya said. She smiled up at him. “My mother just got out of work. She’s coming to get me—she should be here any minute.” On her lap, under her folded hands, her phone vibrated. Olya started. “That’s actually her calling right now.”
The detective shifted his feet. Though his glasses and clothes made him look authoritative, his face behind them was smooth, young. He pulled a business card from his back pocket and handed it to her: LT. NIKOLAI DANILOVICH RYAKHOVSKY. A number below and a shield embossed in the corner. “Call if there’s anything you want to tell me,” he said. “And let your mother know when she arrives that this is no place to leave a little girl.”
Nodding, Olya lifted the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mama. Yeah? Soon? Great.” She watched the detective leave, rocks shifting under his weight. The phone kept vibrating against her cheekbone.
After the detective climbed into his car, Olya lay back down. She looked at the glowing screen. One missed call from Diana. Unlocking her phone, Olya cleared the notification, opened their text message thread, and waited for Diana’s explanation to arrive. She pictured its letters, its sloppy dashes. Nothing appeared. She locked her screen again.
To tell the truth, Olya did not want to call back.
Olya all alone out here. She liked it more than she knew she would.
In the sunset, the pebbles on the shore shifted their color from black and gray to honey. Amber. They were brightening. Soon the stones would glow, and the water in the bay was going to turn pink and orange. Spectacular in the city center, where people feared to have their pretty daughters go.
When Olya turned her head on the bench slats, electric white and yellow lines appeared in her peripheral vision. Her hair had caught the light. Her jacket, too, was sun-soaked. Saturated.
Golden Olya. She concentrated on that light in the air. Even if Diana came to the apartment to explain things or arrived at school with a written apology from Valentina Nikolaevna, or if Olya’s mother, home next week, announced she found a new job, well salaried, teaching grammar in the university, so she would never have to leave for long again, or if the kidnapped girls returned, or if the police stopped patrolling, or if Petropavlovsk went back to normal…even if all of that happened, Olya wouldn’t tell them how the colors changed here. She would share nothing. They would never find out they missed the most beautiful day of autumn, while Olya, alone, had been in its very center.