On the Other Side of the Door

Часть 1

Polina says I spent my whole childhood in her room. That isn’t true. I had a room of my own. Nothing ever happened in it, that’s all.

Polina kept things on her desk and wouldn’t tell me what they were for. Silver tongs, for instance. I thought they were for cracking the very smallest nuts, but they were for curling eyelashes. She also had a box with money hidden under cotton pads. She thought I didn’t know. I thought she didn’t know I knew.

When I was very little, Polina let me sit under her desk. I made a house there and brought a pillow, a cup with no handle, and three clothespins. I don’t remember what the clothespins were for, but I wouldn’t do without them. Sometimes Polina lowered a foot and I pulled her sock off. If she pulled her foot straight back up, that meant she was angry. If she left it there, I could take off the other one.

I’m eight now, and Polina is thirteen. I still fit under the desk, but she doesn’t like it anymore.

“You’re breathing on my feet,” she says.

I have to leave.

We live on the fourth floor. From my window I can see a tree and the side of the next building. Dad says there used to be a view from that window, but then they put up the building. I don’t remember the view. The building has always been there for me, and I like watching the man on the second floor water his flowers in the evening. His cat follows him along the windowsill, from pot to pot.

Mom has pupils on the other side of my wall. She teaches them piano. The smallest one plays the same song and gets stuck in the same place every time. Even I know which key he needs to press. Sometimes I call out from my room, but Mom has asked me not to.

Dad works on the computer. If you ask him what he’s doing, he says, “Sums.” When I do sums, I get an answer quite quickly. Dad can do sums all day and say in the evening that it doesn’t add up.

On Saturdays we go out for bread. We can go through the courtyard on the way there, but on the way back we have to go past the building site. Dad likes watching things being built. I stand beside him and wait. At the last building site, he spent so long explaining where the stairs would go that a worker brought us a tangerine each.

Mom doesn’t like Dad bringing home bread with the crust missing. But I like the crust, and he’s the one holding the bag. He can break a piece off without stopping, without even looking down. All I have to do is hold out my hand.

When I started school, Dad decided I should ask for the bread myself. The woman behind the counter said:

“Which one would you like?”

I knew which one. We always bought the same. But suddenly I couldn’t say what it was called. I looked at Dad. He was standing behind me, nodding.

“Go on,” he said.

I pointed.

“This one?” the woman asked.

I nodded.

Later Dad told Mom I’d bought everything all by myself. I wanted to correct him, but Mom was already pleased.

Grandma lives nearby. When I was little, she used to pick me up from preschool and check whether my mittens were dry. Even in summer she asked where my mittens were, and we laughed. Then she started forgetting other things, and Mom said we shouldn’t laugh anymore. But Grandma laughed herself, and once she got really mad when I turned serious.

She has a photo album. On the first page is Mom, with her hair cut so short that for a long time I thought she was a boy. On the last page there’s me, wet and grumpy, standing in a basin. Grandma says the hot water was turned off that day. All I remember is the red dipper she used to pour water over me. Maybe I only remember the dipper from the photograph too. It’s in the photograph.

Polina says she remembers them bringing me home.

“You were awful,” she says. “All blotchy.”

“All babies are blotchy,” Mom says.

“This one was extra blotchy.”

Then Polina tells me I screamed all the time and she had to sleep in the kitchen. We’ve never had a bed in the kitchen, so she’s probably lying about that part.

But there’s one thing she tells the truth about. I remember it myself.

I was five, and one of Polina’s teeth had fallen out. She wrapped it in a tissue and put it on a shelf. I unwrapped it, looked at it, and decided to wash it. It wasn’t very nice-looking. When I turned on the tap, the tooth slipped out of my fingers.

I ran to Polina and said something had happened in the bathroom. She guessed right away. We both lay on the floor and looked at the bent pipe under the sink for a long time. Polina said the tooth was probably still in there.

“Just don’t tell Dad,” I said.

“Who’s going to get it out, then?”

We called Dad. He brought a basin and started unscrewing the pipe. A little ring, a hair clip, something black, and Polina’s tooth fell out. I still don’t know what the black thing was. Dad wouldn’t let me look.

That evening he told Mom how he’d rescued the tooth. Polina kept interrupting and showing her how we’d lain under the sink. I sat beside them. She never once said I’d dropped the tooth.

For a week after that I brought her cookies from the kitchen. She took them but didn’t say thank you. Then she asked:

“How long are you going to keep doing this?”

I said I didn’t know.

“You can stop now,” Polina said. “I’ve got the tooth.”

She put it back on the shelf.

Часть 2

Polina was the first one who wanted to go to the island.

She found a photograph on her phone: a white lighthouse, black rocks, and a sea the sort of color I could only get with a felt-tip pen. I said it wasn’t real. Polina zoomed in. There was a tiny person sitting in the sea. If someone had drawn the sea, they would probably have made the person bigger.

Dad suggested going somewhere we’d already been. It had a pool, and they sold fries in paper cones beside it. That sounded all right to me.

“Again?” Polina asked.

“It’s nice there.”

“You think everywhere’s nice if there’s breakfast.”

Dad said having breakfast made any place a lot better.

Polina stopped talking to us and started talking to Mom. They looked at tickets. Mom wrote down numbers, then crossed them out. Dad looked and started doing sums too. I sat between them, drawing the island. I put the sea around the edges and a hotel in the middle. That was all I knew about it so far.

“And what would you like?” Mom asked.

“To go on a boat.”

“There’ll be boats there.”

“A real one. One that goes away from the shore.”

She wrote that down too.

Then nobody said anything for another two weeks. I decided we weren’t going. That was what had happened with the dog: the grown-ups spent ages discussing where it would sleep, then stopped, and we don’t have a dog.

But one day Dad came into my room and said:

“Get your sea legs ready.”

I looked at mine. I had a Band-Aid on my heel.

Polina brought a notebook. She’d already written down what we were going to do each day. She’d saved Wednesday for my boat. I didn’t like having to wait until Wednesday, but Polina said they had Tuesdays off. I didn’t understand who did. I don’t think the sea gets days off.

I was allowed to take Dad’s old camera on the trip. It lived in a drawer with cables nobody used. When Dad switched it on, a round black tube slid out. I thought it had broken, but it was supposed to do that.

Polina said her phone took better pictures.

“But this is mine,” I said.

“Dad’s.”

Dad pretended not to hear.

He taught me to put the strap around my wrist and not press the button all the way down at once. First the camera has to think. If you hurry it, everything comes out blurry.

I took pictures of my room, the radiator, Dad yawning, and Polina when she wouldn’t let me take her picture. Hers was just a palm. The palm came out very clear.

That evening I went to Grandma’s.

“Bring me something back,” she said.

“What?”

“Whatever you like.”

I don’t like being asked to do that. Later it might turn out the person wanted something completely different.

Grandma thought for a moment and said:

“A stone.”

“A pretty one?”

“Of course a pretty one. What would I want an ugly one for?”

I promised.

The night before we left, I couldn’t sleep. First because I was excited, then because I was trying so hard to fall asleep. Dad said we had to get up at three, and I kept checking the clock. Polina was asleep on the other side of the wall. When I went in, she lifted her blanket without opening her eyes.

I lay down at the edge.

“Just don’t kick.”

“I’m not kicking.”

“You’re already kicking.”

Her pillow smelled of the sweet stuff she sprayed on her hair. I asked if she could spray some on mine before we got on the plane.

“Leave me alone,” Polina said.

But in the morning she did.

Часть 3

The house we stayed in on the island was yellow. The stairs outside were dark blue. In my photographs they came out light blue, no matter how many times I tried. I asked Dad why.

“The light,” he said.

I waited, but that was all he explained.

Our room was upstairs. Polina’s bed was by the window, and mine was by the bathroom door. She said that was just right for me, since I went everywhere with Mom anyway.

I’d been able to go by myself for ages. I just didn’t like doors that wouldn’t open right away. The handle at school was stiff, and once I’d hung on it with both hands. Nobody noticed, but after that I always checked how a door opened before I shut it.

In the yellow house there was a hook instead of a lock. That was all right.

We had breakfast on the terrace downstairs. The tables were under a striped awning, and when the wind blew, the shadows of the stripes moved across our plates. Dad said right away that the breakfast was excellent. Polina rolled her eyes.

The woman who brought the coffee was called Rosa. She had a card pinned to her chest. I read her name because I knew the letters. She saw me looking and said, “Rosa.” I said, “Sonya.” She repeated it wrong. I corrected her. The next day she said it wrong again, but in a different way.

Rosa had a boy. He came after breakfast and sat on the step by the kitchen. At first I thought he was her son. Then Mom explained he was her grandson. His name was Luca and he was nine. He talked to me and I didn’t understand. I talked to him and he didn’t understand either, though you couldn’t tell as much from his face.

One day Luca brought two plastic lids and a little ball. We started playing on the table. You had to use your lid to knock the ball over to the other person’s side. Polina came over and asked what we were doing.

“Playing.”

“How?”

I showed her.

“But what are the rules?”

I didn’t know. When Luca argued, I argued too. Sometimes he gave in. Sometimes I did. The game didn’t stop because of it.

We walked to the sea along a street where the cars were parked so close to the walls that Mom had to turn me sideways by the shoulders. Big sheets were drying on the balconies. Once a sheet landed on Dad’s head. He was walking along talking to Mom, and then he disappeared. I only managed to get a picture of his legs.

The sand on the beach was black. It got under my nails, and my hands looked dirty even after I’d been in the sea. I filled an empty bottle with it. Dad said we weren’t taking sand home.

“What about a stone?”

“One stone.”

“For Grandma.”

“All the more reason to take just one.”

I looked for two days. Stones that were beautiful underwater turned ordinary on the shore. I poured water over them from the bottle and showed Mom, but they dried out while she was looking. At last I found a flat gray stone with a white stripe across it that stopped just short of the other edge. It was pretty, and it was dry. I put it in my pocket.

On the third day, Polina stopped coming into the sea with us. She lay on a towel, writing to someone on her phone. I wanted to take her picture. She pulled her cap down over her face.

“Come on, Polina.”

“I said no.”

“You take pictures of me all the time.”

“You like it.”

“Not always.”

She lifted her cap.

“Then say so when you don’t.”

I felt annoyed. It turned out it was that easy, and for some reason I hadn’t known.

That evening Luca asked for the camera. I didn’t want to give it to him. He pointed at the strap and at his wrist. I let him have it, but I held his elbow.

He took a picture of me, then Rosa, then spent a long time aiming at an empty chair. I tried to explain that there was nobody on it. Luca waved me away.

In the photograph, there was a lizard under the chair. A tiny one, almost the same as a crack in the tile. I hadn’t seen it at all.

I called Polina over to show her the lizard. She said:

“Cool.”

That meant it really was good.

Then Luca started taking pictures of the two of us. At first Polina put up her hand, but he didn’t understand and kept going. She lowered her hand and sat down beside me. I sat up straight at once. Luca was saying something and waving his hand. We didn’t understand.

He put the camera on the table, pointed at his teeth, and stretched his mouth wide with his fingers.

We both laughed. Then he quickly grabbed the camera and pressed the button.

In the picture Polina’s eyes were shut and my mouth was open. I said we needed to take it again.

“Keep it,” Polina said.

I kept it.

Часть 4

On Wednesday the boat was canceled.

We were already at the dock. I had my new cap on, the one with the long brim, and in my backpack I had water, cookies, and a bag in case I felt sick. Mom had brought two bags, because sometimes Polina got carsick too. Polina said that was a hundred years ago and could she stop telling everyone.

A man in a yellow jacket stood beside the boat. He was talking to Dad and pointing somewhere beyond the breakwater. White spray was flying up out there. Right by the dock the water was calm. I thought the man simply didn’t want to work.

“The wind,” Dad said.

“But we bought the tickets yesterday.”

“They’ll give us our money back.”

I didn’t want the money. I hadn’t even seen us pay it. I wanted the boat, and it was right there.

I sat on the edge of a low wall. Dad told me to get down. I didn’t. Then he picked me up under my arms and set me on the ground, as if I were little.

“Stop picking me up!”

He took his hands away.

“Then listen when you’re told.”

I cried. Mom took me around the back of the ice cream stand. She didn’t try to make me stop crying, and she didn’t offer me ice cream. She took the water from my backpack, unscrewed the cap, and held the bottle until I could drink.

“We’ll try again,” she said.

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

I was upset that she didn’t know. Polina had known everything beforehand: which bus, when to go, where to buy tickets. Now she was standing beside Dad, looking at her phone.

Instead of going on the boat, we drove to the lighthouse. It turned out to be a long way. Dad steered, Mom looked for the road, and Polina said Mom was looking in the wrong place. I didn’t say anything. Then I felt sick, and everyone else stopped talking too.

We stopped beside a little shop. Dad bought me plain cookies. He held out the packet and said:

“Here you go, sailor.”

“I’m not a sailor.”

“All right.”

He sat beside me on the curb. An ant was crawling under his foot, dragging something white, much bigger than itself. We watched it while I ate. Then Dad moved his foot out of its way.

“I wanted to go on the boat too,” he said.

I thought he was just trying to make me feel better. But Dad didn’t say anything else.

The gate at the lighthouse was shut. There was a sign on it. Polina read it for a very long time, even though it only had two lines. Then she walked away and sat on a rock.

“Did you check the opening hours?” Dad asked.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, they were different.”

Mom said something to him quietly. I couldn’t make it out.

Polina was looking at the sea. I went over with the camera, but I didn’t take a picture.

“Everything’s stupid,” she said.

It was nice to hear that. Until then, only my things had been stupid.

We walked around the outside of the lighthouse. There was a path and a bench behind it. Mom took some squashed cheese rolls out of her bag. We sat in a row and ate them. The wind lifted a napkin, and Dad caught it between his knees. Polina laughed. Then the wind took the cheese wrapper, and nobody laughed: it got caught in a thorny bush down below, where we couldn’t climb down.

Dad found a long stick. Mom stood behind him and held on to his belt. Polina said he was only going to push it farther in. I stood to one side with my roll, waiting to see who I could give it to if my hands were needed.

They got the wrapper out.

After that we sat for a long time. Polina explained why lighthouses had stripes. I asked why this one didn’t, then. She said they didn’t all have them. Mom dozed with her head on Dad’s shoulder. He was sitting uncomfortably, but he didn’t move.

When we were about to leave, I put the camera on the bench and asked everyone to stand in front of it. Dad showed me how to set the timer. Polina counted out loud. I ran toward them, but I tripped over Mom’s bag.

The camera clicked as Mom bent down to catch me.

Only half of Polina’s head was in the picture. Dad had one arm up for some reason. I was bent over, and Mom was holding me by my T-shirt. Her back hid almost the whole lighthouse.

We took another picture. Everything was right in that one. Polina said I could delete the first. I pressed the wrong button and switched the camera off.

On the way back, someone from work called Dad. At first he said it wasn’t a good time. But then he stopped the car. We waited beside a field of low trees. Mom got out and walked a little way ahead. Polina put her earbuds in.

I heard Dad say, “No, that’s a different sum.” Then, “But I sent it.” Then he was quiet for a very long time.

When Mom came back, she asked:

“Finished?”

Dad said yes. But that evening he opened his computer again.

I wanted to show him the photographs. He asked me to wait ten minutes. I sat beside him on the bed and waited. Outside the window, Rosa was watering the flowers. Water from a pot dripped off the balcony straight onto the blue stairs.

Then Polina came in.

“Come on,” she said.

“Where?”

“Let’s look at your pictures.”

We lay on her bed. I held the camera and she pressed the buttons. It turned out I had lots of legs: Dad’s under the sheet, Polina’s in the sea, my own from when I was checking whether the flash worked.

Polina laughed. I started explaining that I hadn’t meant to.

“I’m not laughing at you,” she said.

I didn’t believe her right away.

When we reached the first photograph at the lighthouse, Polina looked at the little screen for a long time.

“Keep this one after all.”

“You said to delete it.”

“I changed my mind.”

She moved over to make room for me. The pillow smelled of home, even though the pillowcase wasn’t ours.

Часть 5

We got to go on the boat on Friday.

It was smaller than I’d wanted, and it smelled of diesel. While we were still at the dock, I thought we’d been cheated. Then the shore began to move away, and everything was all right.

I sat up front with Dad. When the boat climbed a wave, its nose disappeared for a second and there was only sky. Then the nose came back and spray splashed over us. Dad wiped his glasses on the bottom of his shirt. It didn’t help for long.

Mom and Polina sat at the back. Polina held a bag open, but she never needed it. I wanted to shout something to her about a hundred years ago, then I didn’t.

On the way back, Dad let me stand at the railing by myself. He was beside me, but he wasn’t holding me. I wrapped both hands around the wet pipe. My knees were shaking because the floor kept moving away.

“You okay?” Dad asked.

I nodded. He moved half a step away so I could see ahead.

That evening I drew the boat in Polina’s notebook. It came out looking like a saucepan. Polina drew a round window on the side.

“It didn’t have a window like that,” I said.

“Then it’s a different boat.”

I was annoyed and turned the page. But then I went back and drew me and Dad in it. He came out taller than the mast. I couldn’t erase it because I’d drawn it in pen.

The day before we left, Luca took me behind the kitchen. There were crates of bottles, two broken stools, and a flowerpot with no plant. A cat was lying in the pot with her kittens. One kitten was all black except for the white tip of its tail. It was asleep on top of another one, opening its mouth now and then.

I crouched down. Luca put a finger to his lips.

We sat very quietly. We could hear Rosa moving dishes in the kitchen. Then she looked out, saw us, and brought the cat a bowl.

I ran to find Mom and ask if we could take the kitten home.

Mom said no.

“What if Dad says yes?”

“Dad won’t say yes either.”

“How do you know?”

“This time I know.”

I went to Dad. He said no too.

So I took a picture of the kitten. I was so excited I forgot to let the camera think first. It came out as a little black heap. You couldn’t see the white tail.

I wanted to take it again, but the cat got up and all the kittens scrambled after her.

At our last breakfast, Rosa brought me an extra roll. Luca didn’t come. I kept looking at the step by the kitchen. Mom said he probably had school or something else to do. I knew he had things to do, but he could have come today of all days.

We were already standing beside the car when he came running around the house. He was wearing a shirt with a collar and a big backpack. He said something, pointed down the street, then at Rosa’s watch. I understood that he was late, but not what he was late for.

I took the camera off my wrist and showed him the photograph of the lizard. He smiled. Then the one where Polina and I were laughing. He pointed to himself: he’d taken that.

I nodded.

I wanted to say I’d keep both photographs, but I didn’t know how. I just nodded again, harder. Luca did the same.

In the car I remembered we didn’t have a single photograph of him.

“Can we go back?” I asked.

“No,” Dad said. “We’ll be late.”

I held the camera against my stomach. Mom suggested asking Rosa to send us a picture. We could do that. But I’d wanted to take it myself.

It took a long time to get to the first plane. Then we flew. Then we waited again in a huge airport where it was dark outside the windows but still morning inside. I fell asleep across two chairs. When I woke up, Mom was holding a cup of juice in front of my face.

I drank it and asked for more.

Polina said I’d be running to the bathroom every five minutes. I stuck my tongue out at her. Mom didn’t notice because she was looking for the passports. Dad said we were almost home.

He often said “almost.” There was still a whole plane between us and home.

Часть 6

On the next plane we sat in the fourth row. Polina by the window, me in the middle, Mom on the aisle. Dad was across the aisle. I liked his seat better: you could get up without making anyone else get up. Dad offered to swap. I looked at the two strangers beside him and said no.

There was a flight attendant with short hair by the entrance. She said something nice to everyone. To me she said something about the camera. I held it close, and she took her hand away, though maybe she hadn’t been going to touch it at all.

The cockpit door was open. Two men were sitting inside in white shirts with stripes on the shoulders. One turned and waved to me. I didn’t wave back: both my hands were busy with the camera.

There was another one in the first row, in the same sort of shirt with the same stripes. He was looking at a tablet. I asked Mom why he was sitting there if he was supposed to fly the plane.

“He’s a passenger this time.”

That was strange. When Mom came to a concert at our school, she was still a teacher and noticed if someone was holding their hands the wrong way.

A man on the aisle, one row away from us, was taking off his sneakers. He pushed them under the seat and sat in gray socks. One had a thin worn patch by the big toe. I wanted to take mine off too, but Mom said we were about to take off.

Polina put her earbuds in. Dad undid his collar and shut his eyes. Mom put the passports in her bag, put the bag at her feet, checked my seat belt, and shut her eyes too. Everyone knew how to sleep sitting up except me.

I watched the flight attendant fasten a belt around her stomach, even though there wasn’t a seat beside her. Then she took it off and showed us something else. I’d seen all this on other planes, but I watched anyway. I liked that she knew exactly what to do next.

Once we were up, there was nothing outside the window but brightness. Polina pulled the shade down. I said I’d wanted to look.

“It’s a cloud.”

“I want the cloud.”

She pulled the shade halfway up.

Then they brought food. I couldn’t open the little tub of butter. Dad took it across the aisle, lifted the foil with his fingernail, and gave it back. Mom was asleep. He leaned toward her and asked if she was going to eat. She shook her head without opening her eyes.

I ate the bread, a piece of omelet, and half of what looked like potato on the little plate. It turned out to be fruit. Polina said I should have asked first. I didn’t answer: my mouth was full.

I already needed to go to the bathroom. But there was a cart in front of us, and I decided to wait until they moved it.

They moved the cart. Mom was asleep with her cheek against a folded scarf. I thought I’d wait a little longer.

Then the belt started pressing on my stomach. I pulled it away with two fingers.

“Mom.”

She opened her eyes at once.

“What?”

I leaned close to her ear.

“I need the bathroom.”

“Now?”

I nodded.

She looked up, unfastened her belt, and stood. I climbed across her seat. Polina pulled her feet in, even though I was already out, and shut her eyes again.

At the front, the flight attendant was stacking cups. Mom asked her something, and she pointed to a door at the side, right beside the cockpit. There was so little room in front of it that my shoulder brushed the wall.

“By yourself?” Mom asked.

I nodded, but she looked inside with me anyway. She showed me which way to slide the little handle on the lock. When I slid it across, the little window changed from green to red.

“See? Occupied. And back again means free.”

She checked that I could reach the tap.

“I’ll be right outside the door.”

“Don’t go away.”

“I won’t.”

The door folded shut. I slid the handle back and forth once more, then left it on red.

Inside it smelled of soap and something else that was sharp. The sink was tiny. There was a picture of a baby in a diaper on the wall. I looked at it and thought it didn’t look anything like me, though Polina would probably have said it did.

I could hear Mom outside. She coughed. Then someone rolled something along the floor. Mom stepped back, and her heel made a quiet tap.

I finished and pulled up my jeans. The snap at the waist wouldn’t close. I tried again and decided to ask Mom.

I didn’t want to flush. On the plane it was so loud, as if they were opening a hole underneath. I knew there wasn’t a hole. But I still put the lid down first, stood farther away, and only then pressed the button.

When it went quiet, I heard a bang.

I thought someone had dropped a tray.

Then another. This one was duller.

“Mom?”

She didn’t answer.

I pressed the tap. A very thin stream of water came out. You had to keep holding the button or it stopped. I soaped one palm, then the other, and couldn’t work out how to press it now without getting soap all over the tap.

Outside the door, Mom said:

“Listen.”

She wasn’t talking to me.

I heard a man’s voice. I couldn’t make out the words.

“No, come here. Please.”

Mom asked like that when someone promised to bring her something and then didn’t. I quickly rinsed the soap off one hand and dried both with a paper towel. I slid the handle to green. The door didn’t open right away; I had to push with my shoulder.

I could see Mom through the gap. She had hold of the wrist of the man from the first row. He was standing sideways with his tablet in his other hand. Mom pulled so hard that he took a step.

I’d never seen her grab a stranger before.

“Mom, do this up.”

She didn’t turn around.

The man put his tablet under his arm. They moved toward the front, and I couldn’t see them through the gap anymore. A different door clicked, not mine. Someone said one word loudly. I didn’t understand what it was.

Then Mom screamed.

At first I didn’t even recognize her voice. I knew how she shouted when she was angry with Polina or when she dropped a cup. This was completely different.

I let go of the door. It swung almost shut, and I stayed inside.

The sink shoved me in the side.

My shoulder hit the wall. A piece of paper flew out from above and hung in front of my face. I tried to sit on the closed lid, but my feet weren’t where I thought they were. My knee hit something hard.

The door flew open.

Dad grabbed me across my stomach. I shouted that he was hurting me. He held me even tighter and pulled me out. My leg hit the edge of the door.

Outside, everyone was talking at once.

The cockpit door was open. The man from the first row stood in the doorway with his back to us, holding on to the handle. He wasn’t moving, and I couldn’t see anything past him.

Dad took a step and fell to one knee. I saw Mom very close. She was sitting on the floor, holding on to some sort of metal handle. Dad looked at her. Mom looked at Dad.

Neither of them said anything.

I wanted Mom to take me. Dad turned me toward her and she put her arms around me. Then Dad stood up. I grabbed his sleeve, but it slipped out of my hand.

He went where the shouting was.

Часть 7

Mom tried to stand up with me in her arms. She couldn’t. I was heavy now, and the floor kept tilting, and Mom kept ending up lower than she meant to.

I saw gray socks. The man without his sneakers was making his way past us, holding on to the seat backs. He bent down and pulled Mom up by the elbow. Then he let go and went on. The bottom of one sock was all black.

Mom dragged me toward our row. I tried to walk, but my knees kept folding. Polina was already kneeling on her seat. One earbud dangled on its cord; the other was still in her ear.

“Here!” she shouted.

Mom pushed me into the middle seat. Polina grabbed my T-shirt and made me sit. I started climbing out again.

“Stay there!”

“Dad!”

“I said stay there!”

She was looking for the ends of my belt. She shoved her hand under me and yanked one out. It hurt. Mom helped click the buckle shut.

Then the seat suddenly pressed up against me from underneath. My head wouldn’t turn. I opened my mouth, but the breath that came in was short and didn’t feel like mine. Mom’s cheek was down by my shoulder. I could see her ear, the loose bits of hair, and a little brown mark of dye on her skin. She’d dyed her hair before the trip and been mad at me for coming in without knocking.

Polina said right into my ear:

“Sonya. Sonya. Sonya.”

I couldn’t answer. She kept calling me.

Then it let go. Polina grabbed my hand. Mom lifted her head and tried to stand, but she swayed and sat back down.

People kept appearing and disappearing up front. Someone had their back to us; someone was bending down. I looked for Dad’s shirt. It was blue, with white buttons. Nobody else had a shirt like that.

There was a shoe on the floor. Black and shiny, with its toe pointing toward us. People stepped around it, and nobody picked it up.

I told Mom about the shoe. She looked that way, but I don’t think she saw it.

“Mom, where’s Dad?”

She didn’t answer.

“Mom.”

“I can see him.”

I stretched my neck. She pressed her palm against my chest.

“Stay put.”

“But I can’t see him.”

Mom held her hand so hard against me that I could hear my heart beating underneath it. Or hers. I couldn’t tell.

Someone up front shouted Dad’s name. Then something else. A bit of blue sleeve appeared, and I would have stood up at once if it hadn’t been for the belt.

“Dad!”

He didn’t turn around.

I shouted louder. Polina put her hand over my mouth. I bit her, not very hard. She took her hand away but didn’t complain.

Two legs in dark pants appeared from behind the people. The heels slid along the floor. They were dragging a man backward. I saw a white shirt with stripes on the shoulders, a bent neck. I couldn’t see his face. He jerked his arm, but Dad held it with both hands and wouldn’t let go. The man in gray socks was wrapping a white earbud cord around his wrist.

“Look here,” Mom said.

I kept looking ahead.

She turned my head with both hands. I saw her face. Her chin was trembling. I cried because she was looking straight at me and somehow still wasn’t my mom.

“Mommy.”

“I’m here.”

She wiped my nose with her palm.

A woman behind us kept shouting the same thing. I didn’t understand the words. A child shouted back. A bottle fell into the aisle. It rolled forward, stopped, then rolled back. I watched it. When it hit the leg of our seat, I wanted to catch it. If only it would stop rolling.

The flight attendant with short hair came down the aisle, holding on to both sides at once. There was a wet patch on her blouse. She was telling everyone to sit down. The man behind Dad’s seat tried to ask something. She told him to sit down again and went on.

Mom started undoing her belt. The flight attendant put her hand on the buckle.

“My husband’s up there,” Mom said.

The flight attendant answered very quickly. I didn’t understand. Mom took her hand away and sat back.

A woman in a gray sweater stepped out of the second row. I’d seen her earlier: she’d been eating a roll with a fork. Now she was showing something to a man standing up front. He shook his head and blocked the aisle with his elbow. The woman said a few words to him, then said them again, louder. The flight attendant went over, looked at the card in the woman’s hand, and moved the man aside.

The woman went forward. Her gray sweater caught on an armrest. She freed it in one movement without looking back.

The plane shuddered again, but not as hard. Mom grabbed my shoulder and Polina’s knee. Polina was still holding my hand. Her fingers were cold.

A voice came from the ceiling.

It said something, then stopped. You could hear the person breathing. Then he started again.

Polina took the other earbud out.

“What?” I asked.

“Shh.”

The voice asked everyone to stay in their seats. That was the only part I understood. Mom leaned forward, as if that would help her hear. The voice named a place. Mom looked at Polina.

“Where’s that?” Polina asked.

Mom didn’t answer.

I wanted to ask if it was far from Grandma’s. Instead I said:

“I didn’t wash my hands.”

Mom took my hands and rubbed them with hers. Then she stopped and pressed them both against her cheek.

Часть 8

A woman with a braid went past us, holding an open bag against her chest. A hairbrush stuck out of it. She tried to put it away, missed, and the brush fell. She didn’t pick it up.

Someone up front asked her something. She nodded, knelt down, and disappeared behind the first row of seats.

Mom stretched her neck. I tried to look under her elbow.

Another man in a white shirt was lying on the floor. One foot was bare. The shoe was probably his. I saw dark hair and part of a face. I thought he was the one who’d waved to me from the cockpit. Then the woman with the braid bent over and hid everything. The flight attendant handed her something white.

“Did he fall?” I asked.

Mom nodded. Then she shook her head.

“Please stay in your seat.”

The white stuff in the woman’s hands quickly turned dark. She asked for more. They gave her some. Then more.

I remembered getting a nosebleed at school. The teacher brought a whole packet of tissues. I was afraid the blood wouldn’t stop. But nobody had looked at my teacher the way the flight attendant was looking at this woman now.

A man across the aisle said to another man:

“There was a knife. I saw it.”

The other man answered sharply. The first one went quiet.

I pulled my feet onto the seat. Mom made me put them down. The belt was pressing on my stomach again. I wanted to loosen it, but I didn’t dare.

A girl a little older than me was standing in front of us. She leaned out into the aisle and called for her dad. The flight attendant went to her, crouched down, and said something. The girl started crying. The flight attendant put one arm around her and held on to a seat with the other. Then the man in gray socks appeared. He bent down to the girl. She grabbed him around the neck.

“Dad,” I said, very quietly.

Mom heard.

“He’ll be here in a minute.”

I was angry at “in a minute.” Dad could say “in a minute,” and then I’d have time to eat dinner and brush my teeth.

I watched the aisle and waited for the blue shirt.

Dad came back after Polina had stopped holding my hand. My fingers had gone numb, and I’d pulled them out one at a time. He stopped beside our row and crouched down.

There was a line on his cheek, as if someone had drawn it with a red pen. His cuff had come undone and hung over his hand. There was red on it too, but not a line.

Mom grabbed Dad’s hand and turned it over and over. He was saying something to her very quietly. All I heard was “not mine.”

Polina leaned across me and touched Dad’s head. She just put her hand on his hair. He looked up.

I started hitting his shoulder. First once, then again. He didn’t move away.

“You left!”

“Sonya.”

“You left!”

Mom caught my fist. I pulled it free and hit Dad again. He took my wrist, lifted my hand to his lips, and held it there.

“Don’t go away,” I said.

He nodded.

“Sit down.”

He sat in his seat across the aisle. I could still only see his side. I wanted him to sit on the floor in front of me and not look anywhere else.

Mom asked Dad something without making a sound, just moving her lips. He shrugged. I watched them, but I couldn’t make it out.

The ceiling spoke again. This time it was a different person, a woman. I looked toward the front at once. The gray sweater wasn’t in the cabin.

Mom listened with her eyes shut. Dad sat up straight.

“What did she say?”

“We’re going to land,” he answered.

“At home?”

“Somewhere else.”

“Why?”

Dad looked toward the front.

“It’s closer here.”

Polina raised the shade. Outside was yellow ground. I hadn’t known there could be ground with no houses or trees at all. Just stripes of different colors, like an old blackboard that hadn’t been wiped properly.

I asked if there was an airport there.

“Yes,” Dad said.

“Have you seen it?”

He leaned toward the window all the way across the aisle, but he couldn’t see that far.

The flight attendant told us to clear our tray tables. The little butter lid was still on mine. I handed it to Mom. She closed her fist around it and kept it there.

Dad showed me how to bend forward. I tried. The belt dug into my stomach and my knee hurt. Mom said I could put my hands on it. I did. Through the gap between the seats I could see a tiny piece of window. The ground was rising higher and higher toward it.

Polina bent forward too. I could hear her whispering. She kept saying the same words, ones I’d never heard her say before.

I wanted to ask what they were. I turned my head, but Mom said at once:

“Keep it like that. Don’t lift it.”

I looked at my shoelaces. The right one had a knot I’d tied myself before we left. Luca hadn’t come yet, and I’d taken a long time on purpose, sitting on the blue step.

Something hit us hard from underneath. Polina cried out. Then another bump, not as hard, and a long shushing sound. I was being pulled forward. Mom’s fingers were on the back of my head.

The shushing slowed down.

Someone clapped. Then someone else. I lifted my head. Mom didn’t stop me.

People were clapping. The man behind us was laughing so loudly that I turned around, but he was crying. Polina pressed her face against the window. Dad shut his eyes and put both hands on the seat back in front of him.

Someone up front started singing.

First one voice, then several. The tune went around again and again; you could join in anywhere. I didn’t know the words. Dad did, but all he could do was mumble them. Mom didn’t sing.

The woman with the braid was still on the floor. I could see her back between the seats. While everyone was clapping, she turned and shouted something to the flight attendant. The flight attendant stopped clapping and ran toward the front.

I lowered my hands into my lap. I’d started clapping too, just a little.

A red vehicle with flashing lights went past the window. Then a white one. Then another red one. They stopped beside us.

“Are we there now?” I asked.

Mom nodded.

“Can I undo it, then?”

“Not yet.”

I left my hand on the buckle.

Часть 9

We sat for a long time. I didn’t know how long, because Dad had the watch and I didn’t want to ask him to turn his wrist. He was holding Mom’s fingers across the aisle. Sometimes they let go to let someone through, then joined hands again.

People in matching clothes came onto the plane. They talked quickly and carried big bags. The woman with the braid got up from the floor, and I saw that her knees were wet. She moved against the wall. One of the people who’d come in held up his hands to her, and she took off her gloves and dropped them into an open bag.

Then they pushed a narrow stretcher on wheels toward the front. Mom blocked my view with her shoulder. I didn’t try to look around her anymore. I wanted there to be just an aisle and nothing else when she moved away.

The man in gray socks came back to his seat. His daughter clung to his shirt. He tried to bend down for his sneakers, but she wouldn’t let go. So he stayed sitting there without his shoes, with her head under his chin.

When we were allowed to get up, it took Mom a long time to stand. Dad took her elbow. She said she could do it herself. Then she let him help after all.

Polina noticed my jeans were undone.

“Wait.”

She pulled the two sides of the waistband together, lined up the snap, and pressed. It clicked. I didn’t even thank her. I just tugged my T-shirt down.

The camera had been in my little backpack under the seat all this time. I reached for it, but the flight attendant said to leave our things. Mom was already holding my hand.

“My camera’s in there.”

“They’ll get it later.”

“Who?”

Mom led me toward the front.

There were bits of paper, crumpled cloth, and an open wrapper on the floor by the exit. The flight attendant stood so that everyone had to walk around that spot. I looked at her shoes. The little buckle was missing from one of them.

It was very hot outside.

I went down the stairs, clinging to Dad. The handrail was hot and felt unpleasant to hold. A bus stood at the bottom with its doors open. People walked toward it, looking back at the plane.

Dad looked back too. I tugged his hand.

On the bus we were all pressed together. I stood between Mom and Polina. Through the glass I could see the plane’s big wheels. I hadn’t known they were that big. There was an orange block beside one of them.

The bus moved, and I crouched down in fright. Mom put her arms around my shoulders at once.

“It’s the bus.”

I knew. I still wanted to sit on the floor.

They took us to a hall with tall windows. The same yellow ground was outside. The air conditioner was on, and my wet T-shirt went cold right away. Mom rubbed my back with her palm.

Dad went over to a table. We sat down. There were boxes of water against the wall. A young woman was handing out bottles and asking everyone something. She wore a pale shirt.

When she came to us, I put my hands under my thighs.

Mom took the water for me.

I was thirsty. My mouth was dry and my lip had split. I licked it, and it hurt. Mom unscrewed the cap and held out the bottle.

I turned away.

“Sonya, one sip.”

“I don’t want any.”

Polina took the bottle and drank almost half. Then she passed it to me. I looked at the water. There was a tiny air bubble in it. It clung to the side and wouldn’t rise.

I put the bottle on the floor.

Dad came back with a man who had a card hanging around his neck. The man crouched in front of me and asked my name. Mom repeated the question. I told him.

He asked how old I was. I understood that by myself and showed him on my fingers.

Then he looked at my knee. There was no blood, only a red patch. He pressed carefully beside it. I said “Ow,” though it didn’t hurt very much.

The man asked something else. Mom answered. He put a folded blanket on the next chair and went away. Mom unfolded it and put it over Polina and me together.

It was nice under the blanket. Polina didn’t move away. I could feel her shoulder.

Dad walked around the hall with his phone. Every time he went behind a pillar, I sat up straight. Mom said he was here. I waited for him to come out.

The man in gray socks sat opposite us. Someone had brought his sneakers after all. He held one and looked inside, as if he’d lost something in it. His daughter sat beside him eating a cookie. She had two braids. One had come undone all the way to her ear.

The woman with the braid, the one who’d been on the floor beside that man, went over to a box of water. Someone handed her a bottle. She took it, tried to open it, and couldn’t. The person beside her unscrewed the cap for her. She drank, holding the bottle in both hands.

On the plane her hands had done everything very quickly.

Mom started calling someone too. At first she talked calmly. Then she kept saying, “Mom. Mom, listen.” Then she cried. I knew she was talking to Grandma.

I needed to go to the bathroom.

Only a little at first. I thought it might go away. I crossed my legs under the blanket. Mom put her phone away and held me. I sat very straight.

Polina asked why I kept fidgeting.

I said I was cold.

Some more time went by. They brought boxes of food. Dad put one on my lap. Inside there was rice and something red. I shut the lid.

“But you’re hungry,” he said.

I shook my head.

He looked at Mom. They were looking at each other all the time now.

I couldn’t sit still anymore. I moved to the very edge of the chair. Polina pulled the blanket, and it slipped off my shoulders.

“Mom,” I said.

She bent down at once.

I pulled her close by the neck and whispered in her ear.

“Of course. Let’s go.”

She stood and held out her hand.

I looked at Dad.

“You too.”

He stood up.

Polina started getting up after him. I grabbed her too. She looked at me and didn’t say anything.

We all went together. Dad and Polina stayed in the corridor, and Mom went inside with me. There were lots of doors, all white, with the same handles. Mom chose the farthest one, checked it, and stepped back.

“I’m here.”

I was holding her sleeve.

She looked at my hand, then came into the stall and shut the door behind both of us.

Часть 10

Then they took us to a hotel. I didn’t notice what it looked like from outside. The room had two beds, a little table, and a chair. Dad draped his shirt over it right away.

Mom looked at the shirt. Dad took it off the chair and put it in a bag.

I sat on the bed with my sneakers on. Nobody said I wasn’t allowed.

They brought us things in clear bags. Toothbrushes, combs, and big white T-shirts. Dad put one on. It was too short for him, and one just like it came down to my knees.

I asked where our suitcase was. Dad said he was finding out.

“And my backpack?”

“Your backpack too.”

Polina washed her hands for a long time. I could hear the water in the bathroom. Mom knocked and asked if she was all right. Polina said yes. The water kept running.

Mom opened the door. They talked about something, but quietly, and I couldn’t hear. Then they came out together. Polina’s hands were red.

We ate soup from deep cups. Mom blew on my spoon, even though the soup had cooled down already. People kept calling Dad. He picked up his phone, went out into the corridor, came back. I didn’t like it.

“Can you talk in here?” I asked.

He looked at his phone and put it in his pocket.

At night they pushed the beds together. There was still a gap between the mattresses. First I lay beside Mom, then climbed over to Dad, then back again. Polina said if I stepped on her hair one more time, she’d kill me.

Mom said her name sharply.

“I was just saying,” Polina answered.

She didn’t say anything else.

I lay facing Mom. In the light from the corridor I could see her eyes were open. I kept mine open too. Once I fell asleep anyway and woke because the bed was falling. I grabbed Mom’s T-shirt. The bed hadn’t moved. Mom was already holding me.

In the morning Dad said someone would pick us up after lunch.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away.

“To the airport.”

I sat on the floor between the bed and the wall.

Mom crouched beside me. She said we were going to fly home. I shook my head while she talked. She stopped talking. I kept shaking it.

Polina came over and put my sneakers in front of me. I pushed them away with my foot.

Dad said:

“Sonya, we can’t stay here—”

Mom looked up at him. He didn’t finish.

They went over to the window. I heard the word “today,” then “tomorrow.” Dad called someone. Mom sat by the window with her hands between her knees. I waited for them to say at last: all right, we won’t fly.

They didn’t.

After lunch we were on a bus again. Polina sat beside me. She was holding a bag with our toothbrushes and T-shirts. Mom and Dad were one row ahead. I put my hand between the seat backs and held the edge of Mom’s sleeve.

We waited a long time at the airport. I saw some of the people from the other plane. The man in gray socks had his sneakers on now. His daughter was asleep on his lap. The woman with the braid wasn’t there.

The flight attendant with short hair walked through the hall with a little suitcase. She had a different blouse on. She saw Mom, came over, and they hugged. Not the way Mom’s friends hugged when they met. Very tightly, without a word.

I held on to Mom’s T-shirt. The flight attendant bent down to me. She wore a chain around her neck, with a tiny airplane on it.

“What about that man?” I asked.

She looked at Mom. Mom asked my question in different words.

The flight attendant said a few words. Mom breathed out.

“He’s in the hospital,” she told me.

“Did they give him his shoe back?”

Mom stroked my hair.

The flight attendant went away. I watched her go. A blue ribbon dangled from her suitcase. She bumped someone’s bag, stopped, apologized, and straightened it. Then she went on.

When they started letting people onto the plane, I didn’t get up.

Mom sat beside me. Dad stood in front of us with the passports. People went past, put their pieces of paper against a little glass board, and it beeped. I looked at their feet. At the suitcase wheels. At the cord around the line of people.

Polina crouched down and tied my sneaker. It was already tied. She pulled the bow tighter and made a second knot.

“I’ll sit with you,” she said.

“You did last time.”

She didn’t answer.

Dad went over to the woman at the desk. They talked. He came back. Almost everyone had gone through.

“It’s time,” Mom said.

She held out her hand. I looked at it. There was a pale mark on her ring finger: the ring was still in the bag from the hotel because her finger had swollen.

I took her hand and stood up.

After that I remember pieces. A long corridor. A person in a bright vest behind glass. A different smell at the entrance. Dad putting the bag under a seat. Polina asking the flight attendant for more water.

When the rumbling started, I shut my eyes. When it got louder, I covered my ears. Polina put her hand over mine. It bothered me, but I didn’t move it.

I didn’t look out the window. Polina kept the shade up. Sometimes I could feel the light even through my eyelids.

Dad said something funny about breakfast. Nobody laughed. Then I asked how much longer. He checked his watch and told me. I waited and asked again. There was almost as much time left.

Before we landed, Mom took my hand away from my face. My nails had left marks on my cheek.

“Sonya. Look.”

There were houses beyond Polina’s shoulder. Lots of little houses, then big roads. I didn’t know if they were ours. They could have been anywhere.

When the plane stopped, nobody started singing. I turned to Mom. She undid her belt and mine.

“Now you can,” she said.

Часть 11

Grandma got to our apartment before we did. She’d made soup and was waiting in the hall. I hadn’t even taken my shoes off before she was hugging me. She smelled of onions and her usual hand cream.

Then she hugged Polina, Mom, and Dad. She held on to Dad for an especially long time. I stood in one sneaker and waited for him to be free so he could untie the other one. Polina had pulled it so tight that I couldn’t.

Everything in the apartment was the same. Mom’s notebook was on the piano. The cup of pencils stood on my desk. One pencil had fallen while we were away. I picked it up and, for some reason, put it back on the floor.

Grandma followed me from room to room.

“Would you like something to eat?”

“Later.”

“Some water?”

I shook my head.

“What would you like, then?”

I didn’t know.

Dad sat on the hall floor and untied my shoelace. While he was working at it, Grandma asked how it had all started.

Mom began to tell her. How we were on our way home, how she’d fallen asleep, how I’d woken her. I sat on the little bench and waited for her to mention the bathroom.

She did.

Grandma gasped and put her hand to her chest.

I went to my room.

Then one of Mom’s friends came over. Then someone called on video. Then Dad’s brother. Every time it started from the beginning. I already knew where Mom would go quiet, when Dad would interrupt, when they would start talking at the same time.

In their story, the man from the first row was always “buried in his tablet.” The cockpit door “wasn’t even locked, can you imagine?” Mom would get to the part where the copilot was hitting the captain and stop. Then Dad would say, “With a knife.” They both told the bit about the woman in the gray sweater, interrupting each other: she was a pilot too, traveling as a passenger, and she was the one who’d landed us.

“And if Sonya hadn’t—”

“Don’t,” I said from the hall one day.

Mom turned around.

“Don’t what?”

“Talk about me.”

She looked at the phone in her hand.

“All right.”

I stayed where I was. Mom said goodbye and ended the call.

One evening Dad was sitting in the kitchen, watching something on his phone. I came up behind him. That man was on the screen. He was lying in a bed with bandages on his head and arm. He spoke slowly in a language that wasn’t ours, and once he smiled.

“Who’s that?” I asked, though I knew.

“The captain,” Dad said.

I looked for his feet. They were under the blanket.

Dad watched to the end and played it again.

A few days later I was allowed to go to school. That was what Mom said. I asked if I hadn’t been allowed before. She said we’d all been very tired.

In class Lika ran up to me and asked:

“Were you really falling?”

I looked at her. She waited.

“I’ll tell you later,” I said.

She nodded and showed me her pencil case. It had a little lock on top with numbers. I turned the wheels. Lika said the code was secret, but she’d tell me later.

In class we had to draw something from our vacation. I drew the flowerpot, the cat, and four kittens. I couldn’t remember how many there had really been. I gave the black one a white tail. The teacher stopped beside me and looked for a long time.

“Is that at your house?”

“Behind the kitchen.”

She waited. I colored in the pot.

“Where we stayed,” I added.

The teacher nodded and moved on.

That day Mom came to pick me up before the bell. I saw her from the window. She was standing by the gate, looking at her phone. All the other parents came later.

Once Dad dropped a baking tray. I was sitting in the kitchen eating an apple. The apple was on the floor and I was by the door. I didn’t remember getting up.

Dad held the tray and looked at me. Then he put it on the table, picked up the apple, and went to wash it. The water ran for a very long time. By the time he came back, I was sitting in the chair again. He cut up the apple and put the pieces in front of me.

Mom started giving lessons again. The little boy played his song again and got it wrong in the same place again. I listened from my room. Once I really wanted to shout out the right note. I didn’t, because Mom had asked me not to. But I wanted to, and for some reason that made me happy.

Polina shut her bedroom door. I stood outside and asked what she was doing. Sometimes she let me in. Sometimes she said she wasn’t doing anything.

“If you’re doing nothing, why can’t I come in?”

“Because I want to be by myself.”

I sat on the floor in the hall. After a while she opened the door and almost hit me with it.

“Why are you sitting here?”

“Just because.”

She sighed and went to the kitchen. I followed her.

One time Dad was talking to his brother. I was playing with my building set on the rug and could hear everything.

“I ran back,” Dad said.

“You weren’t running,” I said.

He looked at me.

“You were on your knees.”

Dad’s brother went quiet.

“At first, yes,” Dad said.

“You fell.”

“I fell.”

I wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what. Dad kept looking at me. Then he asked his brother if he could call back and put the phone down.

He sat beside me on the rug. I was building a garage, but the car wouldn’t fit. I had to take a wall apart. I started removing the pieces one by one.

“You and Mom looked at each other, back then,” I said.

Dad nodded.

“What was that for?”

He rubbed his cheek with his palm. The red line was almost gone.

“I was handing you to Mom.”

“But I’m big.”

“I know.”

I took off another piece. Now the car could get in, but the roof fell through. Dad held out a long flat piece. I didn’t take it.

“Why did you leave?”

“They needed help up there.”

“What about us?”

He lowered the piece to the rug. I waited. I wanted him to explain it in a way that would stop me from being angry with him. Dad said nothing.

I picked up the piece and put it over the garage.

“I called you.”

“I didn’t hear you, Sonya.”

I put the car inside, then took it out. Dad sat beside me. After a while I moved closer and pressed my knee against his leg.

He didn’t put his arms around me. We sat like that a little longer, until Mom called us to eat.

Часть 12

They brought my backpack on Friday.

It was in a box with Dad’s jacket and Polina’s earbud case. Mom signed for it at the door. I dragged the box straight to my room.

Inside the backpack were the camera, a sweater, and the cookies I hadn’t finished. The cookies had crumbled. My greasy fingerprints were still on the camera. I wiped the screen with my sleeve and pressed the button.

It didn’t switch on.

I pressed again. Then harder.

Dad said it needed charging. I stood beside him while he looked for the cable. He found ones that looked right, tried them, set them aside. I shifted from foot to foot. At last the little light on the camera came on.

An hour later I came to check. Dad said I could switch it on.

The lizard under the chair was on the screen.

I scrolled back. Dad’s legs. The sea. Wet black stones. Polina with her cap over her face. Rosa holding a coffeepot, with hardly any of her head in the picture. Me in front of the dark blue stairs. The stairs were light blue again.

I called Polina.

She sat on the edge of the bed and took the camera. She looked at a few pictures, then went back to the one where we were laughing.

“Send me this one.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Dad will.”

I sat beside her. Polina pressed the buttons. When the lighthouse appeared, she stopped.

In the proper photograph we were all standing straight. Dad had a hand on Mom’s shoulder, Mom was holding me, and Polina was looking to one side. In the first one I’d tripped, and Mom was catching me by my T-shirt.

“You look like a beetle in this one,” Polina said.

“You’re the beetle.”

She moved the screen toward me. My legs really did stick out in a funny way. We looked a little longer, and I laughed. Polina did too. Then she kept scrolling.

The kitten had come out really badly. We zoomed in, but it didn’t get any better. Polina said if I didn’t explain it to everyone, nobody would know it was a kitten.

“Well, I will explain.”

“Go on, then.”

I went to Mom to ask about Luca. At first she didn’t know which Luca I meant. That hurt.

“From the house. Rosa’s.”

“Of course. Sorry, I was thinking about something else.”

She found the messages on her phone and started typing. I stood beside her, watching the unfamiliar words appear. Mom asked what I wanted to tell him.

I wanted to say lots of things. About the cat, about the boat, about still having the photograph of the lizard. Then I got scared that Mom would write about the rest too.

“Only about the photographs.”

She nodded.

The reply came that evening. Rosa sent a picture of Luca by a white fence. He was wearing the same collared shirt as on the day we left and had a ball tucked under his arm. One of his front teeth was missing now.

I zoomed in on his face. He was almost exactly as I remembered him. Only I hadn’t noticed before that his eyebrows were different: one was higher than the other.

“Is he going to school?” I asked.

Mom read the message.

“Coming back from practice.”

I looked some more. For some reason I’d thought Luca had been sitting on the step by the kitchen all this time. But he’d been going to practice, and a tooth had fallen out.

Grandma came the next day. She brought cheese pancakes. I remembered the stone and ran to the suitcase. We’d unpacked everything, but there were some bits of paper in the side pocket. Under them I found my stone, wrapped in a sock.

I put it in Grandma’s palm.

She turned the stone over, running her fingernail along the white stripe.

“It’s pretty.”

“Even when it’s dry,” I said.

“Very.”

I wanted to tell her how long I’d looked for it, but Grandma asked if we had a saucer. She was afraid she’d forget the stone on the table. Mom brought a little box. Grandma put the stone inside and put the box in her bag.

We ate the cheese pancakes. Dad asked if he could have a third. Grandma said that was what she’d brought them for. Polina showed her the photographs on her phone. When she got to the one of us at the lighthouse, Grandma asked her to make it bigger.

“You all look a bit untidy here.”

“The wind,” Dad said.

That evening Mom went to wash her hair. I took the camera and sat in the hall. I needed to choose a photograph for Luca. He’d sent his, and I hadn’t sent mine yet.

I could hear water in the bathroom. Then Mom turned it off. Opened the cupboard. Put something on the edge of the sink.

I looked through the photographs. In one, Polina held a bag over her head, as if she was going to catch a bird in it. In another, Dad stood at the boat railing. His glasses were covered in drops. I remembered how they got wet again almost before he’d finished wiping them.

I went back to the photograph Luca had taken. Polina’s eyes were shut and my mouth was open. At the edge of the table you could see the blue lid from our game. I could send him that one. And I’d need to take another one tomorrow, a new one.

Mom took hold of the door handle.

“Sonya, are you there?”

“I’m here.”

I moved over so she could open the door.