Diana was Olya’s friend. Her best friend. They had known each other since the first year of school. No matter how odd Diana could be, distant in one second and overeager the next, Olya loved her, and for all Olya’s rattiness, her fidgeting during lessons, the sharp things she said sometimes to their classmates, Diana loved her back. Diana used to sleep over when Olya’s mother was out of town. She combed out Olya’s hair and braided it into one brown tail that became skinny as a chewed-up pencil at the end. Every so often she borrowed Olya’s T-shirts to wear to school, the less laundered the better, because she enjoyed having their intimacy pressed against her back—and Olya did not influence her to do those things. Diana tried hard with Olya for the same reasons Olya did with her: out of history, out of desire, out of care.
The sleeve of Olya’s jacket was warm from tears. When she straightened out her arm, she found a starburst pattern in the crook of her elbow, the folded place where the fabric had stayed dry.
She stood and texted Diana again. Can you talk? Watched the screen. No response.
Even if Diana were allowed to text right now, she wouldn’t have anything new to say. Another excuse. The missing girls, Olya told her at least once a week, had nothing to do with them: they were little kids, bobbleheaded, the older barely into middle school.
After their last class today, when Olya mentioned going to the city center, Diana had brought them up again. As if that place were responsible for their absence. Olya said, “Can’t you just call home and ask if you can go?” So while the other kids were shoving toward the street, while the teachers were shouting at everyone’s backs, Diana said into her cell, “Okay, Mama. I know she is. I will.”
Diana hung up and Olya said, “You didn’t even try.” Diana shook her head. “I tried,” she said, and Olya said, “You didn’t.” Diana dipped her head so her pupils were covered by blond fringe. She looked albino in those moments. “She told me she doesn’t want us going there. I listen when people tell me what to do,” Diana said. The I was made to sound like an accusation.
I listen, Olya had not said. Olya was an excellent listener.
For example, Olya heard the truth behind what Valentina Nikolaevna was saying. That the missing girls were strangers—they didn’t matter. That Valentina Nikolaevna just hated Olya, hated her mother, for no reason, because they were brave enough to survive on their own.
Another bus chugged to a stop in front of Olya. The wooden board propped in its front window announced its route: this one went not back to Olya’s apartment but toward the other end of the city, the repair yard district and Zavoyko. She touched the pass in her pocket. She could get on it. She could do anything she wanted. She was alone.
So she did. The bus took her down past the police station, the hospital, the lines of flower stands and bootleg DVD vendors, the brand-new grocery store with its apples imported from New Zealand, the lower campus of the pedagogical university. Pressed on all sides by grown-ups, Olya held on to a hanging strap. It was too crowded to take out her phone so she imagined the picture instead. Diana didn’t look good in it. Rounded shoulders and high-contrast whiteheads. A classmate tipping into the frame with her skirt riding up one leg. All of them shiny from the flash.
An old lady down the aisle was staring at Olya. Probably thinking about Olya’s so-called frightening behavior. Olya shook her head so tangles fell forward and hid her face.
When the bus pulled over next, Olya got out, elbowing against late commuters. She emerged from their bodies to find the city center still busy. There was the statue of Lenin, his jacket billowing out and high school boys on their bikes around his feet. The wide municipal building, the brilliant burning hills. The volcano—only its peak was visible from here. To Olya’s right, a pebbled beach sloped into the bay. St. Nicholas Hill stood to the side. Car exhaust mixed with the smells of grease and salt water. The missing sisters had been imbeciles to get themselves lost from this place.
Olya checked her wallet and turned toward the food stands.
“I have eighty-six rubles,” she told a vendor, who nodded toward the posted price list. “Can I get a hot dog, though?”
“That’s a hundred and ten.”
“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.