“What do you think? Will the scary story work?” Volodya asked, breaking a long but comfortable silence.
“I don’t think so,” Yurka admitted frankly. “I’m afraid it’ll make them want to experiment and test whether toothpaste really does dry hard as concrete on hair.”
“Who cares about hair?” said Volodya, waving his hand dismissively. “As long as they don’t do the nose or eyes.”
It looked like the sky was resting on the roofs of the little one-story troop cabins. The Milky Way’s blanket of colorful stars glittered. Satellites and airplanes blinked their white, red, and green signal lights on and off, looking like flashes of sunlight on water. If Yurka’d had a telescope, he could’vemade out the galaxies that looked from this distance like tiny, indistinct clouds. He might’ve even fulfilled his childhood dream of seeing Asteroid B-612 and shaking the Little Prince’s hand. Why not? This kind of quiet summer night was the best time for believing in fairy tales ...
But Yurka didn’t have long to enjoy the sky’s nearness. After a few minutes, Volodya sighed and stood up. “Well, time to go. I have to get up early tomorrow for the staff meeting, and I can’t be late.”
Yura stood up, too. While Volodya’s right hand grasped his in the customary parting handshake, Volodya reached his left hand up to Yurka’s shoulder. Yurka expected Volodya to clap him on the shoulder with it, but instead the troop leader did something that was neither squeezing it or petting it but sort of a combination of both.
“Thanks for everything,” Volodya whispered, a bit awkwardly.
“I’ll sneak out after lights-out tomorrow,” Yurka blurted out. “Will you be at the merry-go-round?”
Volodya chuckled and shook his head, but didn’t bother rebuking him. “Yes.”
It felt like their parting handshake lasted for an eternity. But as soon as Volodya ended it, Yurka’s mood plummeted. It hadn’t been enough. Yurka had never really thought about the fact that when you’re shaking someone’s hand, you’re holding it. But he thought about it now. And suddenly he realized he wanted to hold Volodya’s hand a little longer.
But, drowsy and lulled by the nighttime quiet as Yurka was, he didn’t get all worked up thinking about that or trying to get to the bottom of it. He was too sleepy and too ready for it to be tomorrow already.
As he wrapped himself in his thin blanket, Yurka literally plunged into a deep dream, landing not on his hard camp bed, but on soft, fluffy dandelions.
CHAPTER SIX
CONFESSIONS OF THE PERSONAL AND THE PERVERSE
The merry-go-round by the junior cabins became their unofficial meeting place. Yurka would go there after lunch, or when he sneaked out of quiet hour, or at night before the dance started, and after a little while Volodya would turn up, too. Yurka liked sitting on the merry-go-round, slowly spinning this way and that, silently gazing into the emptiness before him and thinking about all kinds of things. He liked it when Volodya sat down wordlessly next to him and gazed off into the distance as well. There was something about sitting like that, side by side, watching the little kids and listening to their shouting, that was somehow special, and unusual, and simple, and close to his heart all at once. It made Yurka feel as cozy as when he played in the courtyard of his grandmother’s apartment building back when he was little.
But what he liked best was what they’d been doing the last few evenings when, after rehearsal, Volodya handed Troop Five over to Lena to take care of until lights-out, and Volodya and Yurka thought up scary stories for the kids. Once they’d even missed the signal for lights-out, the time when they were supposed to go and actually tell the stories they’d been inventing.
The first week of the camp session was over, which Mitka’s voice was proclaiming over the loudspeaker as he delivered the morning announcements—as if the Pioneers didn’t already know! Yurka remembered that day well. He and Volodya had been sitting on the merry-go-round, and Volodya had gestured at Yurka’s face and asked, “How’d you get that scar?”
Stillness reigned over the playground. It was quiet hour, when all campers were supposed to be resting in their cabins. Yurka had slipped away as usual; the ever-responsible Volodya had merely reminded Yurka that as soon as they saw anyone coming down the path to the junior cabins, Yurka hadto duck into the bushes. This was because of the occasional check-ins on the troop leaders, making sure they weren’t leaving the campers by themselves. But Volodya had nothing to fear, since he and Lena had made an agreement that she’d be on duty during quiet hour, while he’d be on during dances. So she was on duty right now.
Yurka’s hand went instinctively to his chin, where the tips of his fingers brushed the old scar under his lower lip. “Oh, well, it’s from this one time when some hooligans were giving me a hard time. There were three of them, by the way, and just one of me! And so I ...” But then he stopped. Yurka told everyone this version of the scar’s origin. In it, he was a brave scrapper who got his lip busted fighting some street toughs who’d cornered him. But for some reason he wanted to tell Volodya the truth. “Actually, what really happened is that I went flying off a swing when I was eleven. I’d swung up really high because I was trying to impress the little neighbor girls—they were playing nearby—so I held my hands up, and ... well, to make a long story short, I did a nice front flip off the swing, plowed a long furrow face-first when I hit the ground, and only stopped moving when I smashed into the sandbox. I busted my lip so bad that I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding for, like, fifteen minutes. My dad even had to give me stitches! So that’s how.”
Yurka was sure that now Volodya thought he was an idiot and a braggart and would laugh at him, but all Volodya did was smile amiably and note, “But at least you experienced a brief moment of free flight!”
Yurka couldn’t smother a smile:Volodya’s so weird, though, he thought.He’s just too nice and understanding.Yurka would’ve even made fun of himself for something like that, but not Volodya.
“I didn’t actually fly that far,” Yurka said. Then he gave the troop leader an appraising glance. “Your turn! Since I shared my secret with you, now you share something with me!”
Volodya raised an eyebrow in surprise, but nodded. “Sure, ask away.”
“Why did you really come to be a troop leader at Pioneer camp? Because it’s obvious you don’t much like dealing with kids.”
“Umm ...” As he considered his answer, Volodya absentmindedly adjusted his glasses, poking his finger at the bridge of his nose. He sighed and rattled off a phrase he’d seemingly memorized: “It’s a good way to acquire someuseful experience and—don’t argue, Yura—to get a good character reference for the Party.”
Yurka scoffed. A week ago, at the opening assembly, he’d have believed that Perfectly Perfect Volodya, the ideal Komsomol comrade himself, didn’t care about anything but his upstanding reputation, but now ...
“Here we go again: you and that character reference! But if we’re being honest here, is that really the only reason? Just to help your reputation?”
Volodya hesitated. He adjusted his glasses again, even though they were already in place. “Well ... not exactly. To tell the truth, I’ve always been really shy. It’s hard for me to get along with people, to talk and make friends. But kids ... My mom works in a day care and she’s the one who advised me to come be a troop leader. She said that if I want to learn how to get along with people, it’d be best to start with children, because they draw you out.” He went quiet again, and Yurka thought that if Volodya adjusted his glasses one more time, he’d have to reach over and smack Volodya’s hand. “You’re actually more effective there. I mean, you get along with them better.”
Yurka proudly sat up straighter, but then slouched again. “We both deserve credit for it,” he said. “I don’t really like messing around with the little kids, either. I mean, I don’t know how to. But if it helps you, then ... Oh! I meant to tell you: yesterday after supper I was going to the cabin and I saw Olezhka. He was out on the playground all by himself, crying, so I went up and ask him what happened, and it turns out that this whole time the kids have been teasing him because of hisr’s, and now that he has one of the main parts, they’ve really started picking on him. The poor little guy’s already insecure, but now he’s hearing all this stuff from the kids, like ‘How are you going to perform onstage when you can’t even say yourr’s!’”
“They really said that? Who?”
