Andrea White: Radiant Girl

Waiting for Angelika outside the classroom, I caught bits of other students’ conversations:

“They’ve never shut down school before.”

“My dad says there was a fire and an explosion.”

“What does the station have to do with our school?”

“The radiation, stupid.”

Angelika appeared at my side.

Since her parents were both scientists, I thought she might understand the term better than I did. “What’s radiation?” I asked her.

Angelika smiled a superior smile. “Energy that comes in waves.”

I didn’t admit this, but her explanation sounded fantastical to me. And this from a girl who mocked my tales about my forest creatures. “Can you see radiation?” I asked.

“Of course, not. It’s invisible,” Angelika said, as if she were answering a child.

When Angelika and I passed through the door into the brilliant sunlight, Nina Ivanovna’s error was obvious. If the outdoors were dangerous, hailstones would be pummeling us. A tornado cone like the one I had seen in my science book would be swirling around the Ministry of Culture. Or at the very least, lightning bolts would be crisscrossing a dark sky.

Instead, the day was still beautiful. The sky’s blue color was almost as unreal as the eyes of the boy in the woods. But thinking about the boy made me uneasy, and I pushed the memory aside.

I collected my bicycle, and we began walking to Angelika’s apartment.

In front of us, a baby in a stroller started crying. The mother stooped to comfort the child. A sweaty jogger hurried past us. His feet pounded the pavement.

In the distance, I heard the wail of a fire truck, and I thought of Boris. He was probably on his way to the station, and this thought calmed me. Boris would know how to put out the fire.

“Hey, girls!” Andriy and Sergei called, floating by us on their bikes. With his blond hair flowing in the breeze, Sergei looked careless and happy, as if he were off to go fishing or to play soccer. “We’re going to the station.”

“Hey, Sergei,” Angelika shouted after them.

Thinking I had called him, Sergei turned back to glance at me. I shook my head, tried to warn him with my eyes, No. Don’t say it .

“See you soon, Katya,” Sergei called.

When Angelika turned towards me, her expression was perplexed. “What did Sergei mean, Katya?” she asked.

A few yards from us, Sergei and Andriy had stopped to cross the street.

Even though the whole town seemed to be out enjoying the sunny day, suddenly biking to the station and breathing in that black smoke seemed like a bad idea. “Sergei, Andriy, you should go home,” I yelled after them.

“Are you kidding? It’s a holiday,” Sergei answered. The light changed, and Sergei and Andriy pedaled off in the direction of the station to watch the fire like many others.

We had reached Angelika’s apartment complex. It was a gray concrete building with a green leatherette door and a lone poplar tree in front.

“What did Sergei mean, Katya?” Angelika repeated.

The truth was bad, horrible. Especially when I had gotten caught like this and hadn’t told Angelika in advance as I had planned. What could I do now but tell her? “Sergei asked me to ride the Ferris wheel with him,” I confessed.

Angelika’s face darkened. “Thanks for stealing my boyfriend, Katya.” She turned her back on me and started towards her door.

“I was going to tell you. I promise,” I called after her.

“You don’t even like Sergei.” Angelika glared over her shoulder at me. “You’re just doing this to hurt me.”

Was this true? I felt both guilty and confused.

Without saying goodbye, Angelika slammed the door and disappeared inside.

Standing on Lenin Street, holding my blue bicycle, I understood that everything was my fault. I was responsible for Angelika’s pain, for the accident, for all that was going wrong. Although I knew Angelika liked Sergei, I had sought his attentions anyway. And didn’t lots of young girls live in the area? Yet Vasyl had chosen me to hear his secret. Why would he do that unless he knew I was a bad person? Angelika was right to get away from me. I didn’t deserve friends. Certainly not nice girls like her. Those boys wanted me because they knew I was bad, a daydreamer who made up lies about fairies and would go into the woods at night.

A fire truck barreled past and startled me. It raced toward the station. Was that Boris clinging onto a ladder on its side? “Boris!” I screamed.

The fireman tipped his hat. Only it wasn’t Boris. The dark-haired man was a stranger.

I needed to go to the boulder and find Vasyl again. Although I was a mess inside, my cottage wasn’t destroyed. Noisy was alive and well. My cows and chickens were healthy. If I could convince him that he was wrong, then perhaps I could convince myself that everything was fine.

Nina Ivanovna had told us to go straight home, but the boulder was just a short detour. As I was hesitating, deciding what to do, I realized I had another reason for stopping by the boulder. I remembered that I had forgotten my baby matryoshka . I needed to rescue her. Then afterwards, I could ride home and check on my father.

Climbing onto my bike, I hurried alongside the cars, other bicycles and people. When I reached the end of the block, I again faced the new Ferris wheel. Although I felt dark inside, the gleaming yellow circle shining against the blue sky still managed to lift my spirits.

I was certain of one thing: the day we celebrated the solidarity of all workers, May Day, was right around the corner. This was the most important holiday in all of the Soviet Republics; it wouldn’t be canceled unless the world had ended. It was as plain and simple as that. Whatever had happened at the station, Pripyat would be back to normal by May Day. But would I be? When I tried to feel excited about riding with Sergei, I couldn’t. Angelika’s angry words had ruined my anticipation.

I raced as fast as I could towards the boulder. At the top of a small hill, I began panting. I struggled to identify the acid taste that had coated my tongue. Car Battery. [3] The Truth About Chernobyl By Grigori Medvedev, page 150, 1991 Perseus Books Group, New York I had never tasted one before, but somehow this seemed right. What a strange flavor, I thought as I kept pedaling towards the woods.

When I reached the rushing stream, Vasyl was nowhere to be seen. I stepped closer to the boulder and saw ants feasting on the sausage and cheese that I had left last night. I dropped to my knees and examined the dirt. Although I noticed scuff marks, my baby matryoshka was gone.

I thrust my hand underneath the boulder, but all I felt was my muddy cup, an old fishing reel, a ball of twine…. My green blanket had disappeared, too. The green blanket was so worn that my frugal mother had no problem giving it to me for my outdoors picnics. It was dirty and worthless. But now its absence was proof that Vasyl was dishonest, and the proof made me happy.

“So you are just a common thief,” I muttered. All of my imaginings that he was special now seemed fanciful. What I had learned from Granny Vera were childish tales. Papa was right. Science was the only truth.

I leaned my bicycle against the boulder and set off into the woods. After traveling a few hundred yards, I spotted a square of fabric. It lay underneath an oak tree whose low outstretched branches reached out towards me like gnarled hands. Although I must have walked by this tree many times, I had never noticed the tree’s unusual branches before.

“Vasyl,” I called out cautiously.

When no one answered, I bent down and crawled on my knees towards the trunk. A thin sheet, a blue towel and a piece of foam rubber lay on the ground. I ruffled through the damp material but found nothing interesting. I was about to leave when I noticed a candle stub at the base of the tree. It was almost burned to a nub. Used matches littered the ground.