Andrea White: Radiant Girl

Sergei shrugged his broad shoulders. His dark eyes twinkled. “You found me.”

“I thought I made it clear,” Angelika bent down and whispered loudly into his ear. “I don’t want you talking to her .”

“When was the last time that you climbed a Ferris wheel in the Dead Zone, Angelika?” Sergei asked.

“I’m not stupid enough to return to a buried village,” Angelika said.

I thought of those mounds of dirt. My trip home had been stupid, and yet…

Lyudmila leaned across the table towards me. “Yeah, Katya. Why did you go back to Yanov?”

“I missed my home,” I answered.

Angelika sniffed. “But Yanov is buried.”

I shrugged. “I know.” I would never admit to her that I hadn’t truly believed it until I had seen it with my own eyes.

Angelika pulled on Sergei’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said. Tugging on Sergei’s T-shirt, she insisted, “Come sit with me. I have a lot to talk to you about.”

“Not now, Angelika,” Sergei shook her off impatiently.

Angelika shot me an unhappy look before turning away.

“Hey, Sergei,” Lyudmila said. She was twirling her long hair around her finger. “Katya and I are going to a movie this weekend.” This was news to me.

“Do you want to go?” Lyudmila played the part of the old village matchmaker effortlessly.

I held my breath as Sergei glanced toward the nearby table where Angelika had sat down. Her sack lunch was untouched in front of her, and she openly studied us.

Sergei turned back and gazed at me. Long after I had given up hope, his face broke into a smile. “Why not?”

I felt a tingle of excitement. The movie theatre would be dark. Sergei and I would sit side by side. When Lyudmila went to get popcorn, hopefully Sergei would kiss me again.

“So what movie should we go to?” Lyudmila asked.

Sergei smiled at me. “Katya, you decide.”

“Yeah,” Lyudmila said. “What does our hero want to see?”

“The new James Bond movie,” I said.

“Did you see the James Bond where…?” Lyudmila started, but I didn’t notice what she said. For the first time in a long time, surrounded by friends, and basking in the aftermath of our climb, I felt happy, radiantly happy, once again.

Happiness begets happiness, Granny Vera used to say. I’d learned that she was seldom wrong.

WHEN I KNOCKED, Margarita Pikalova cracked the door. Her dark hair was in large rollers, and cold cream covered her creased face. “Katya, I haven’t seen you for a while. Come in. Come in.”

I followed her inside and was glad to find that the apartment was empty. Hoping that Lyudmila would have gone home, I had chosen to wait until after dinner to stop by.

Margarita stood next to the kitchen counter, wearing only a black slip. A large crystal pendant hung on a chain around her thick neck. “I’m a nervous mess. I have a date tonight.”

“Who with?”

“A man I met at the café. He is picking me up in an hour. But I need a cup of coffee. Have a seat.” While she boiled some water, I sat on a stool.

“Lyudmila told me about your escapade at the Dead Zone,” she said.

“I went back, Margarita. I went back to the boulder where I had seen the domovyk ,” I said.

“Did he appear again?” she asked.

“No.” I shook my head. She sat down beside me and looked over at me as if expecting details. But I hadn’t come to talk to her about my strange experience. As I watched her sip her coffee, I took a deep breath and told her what I needed to say. “I’ve got a new job.”

“Oh? Where are you working?” she asked.

“For a scientist.”

Margarita raised one eyebrow. “What kind of a scientist?”

“He’s an engineer, but he’s working for an international health organization.” I paused, trying to gather the courage to disclose the rest. The fact that I, too, wanted to become a scientist. “He tells me that for something to be true, you have to be able to prove it.”

“Can I offer you some soup?” she asked. “I made potato soup last night.”

“No,” I said. “Papa is going to leave for Kiev tomorrow. I better go home.”

“Look at me, child,” Margarita said. I stared into her dark eyes. Her usually stringy hair wound tightly around the curlers framing her face. “I thought so.” She came around the counter and angled my chin underneath the light. “Your aura has changed.”

“You explained that crystals have auras, but you didn’t tell me that people have them also,” I said.

Her head bobbed knowingly. “Oh, but they do, and yours has changed.”

She spoke with such authority that, although I didn’t believe her, her words made me nervous. “I hope my parents don’t notice.”

“I doubt that they will,” she said. “Enjoy your new boyfriend, whoever he is.”

Remembering the jolt I had felt when Sergei kissed me, I smiled.

“By the way, when does this scientist friend of yours say that people will be able to move back to the Dead Zone?” Margarita asked. She sat back down and started taking the curlers out of her hair.

“He says 400 years.” I smiled, hearing Uncle Victor’s voice inside my head. But of course, I am an optimist. Most of my colleagues think it will be 700 years .

Margarita tapped her long fingernails against the counter. “So hundreds of years from now, some little girl will find your boulder.”

“I hope so,” I said.

She started humming. “It’ll happen.”

“Why are you so sure?” I asked, teasingly.

Margarita smiled at me. She walked over to the table and picked up an ordinary ceramic bowl. She set it on the counter in front of us. “Look.”

I saw the bowl glazed blue on the outside. It was full of yellow water. The water she used to dye the crystals, to trick people. Disappointed, I was about to tell her that I really needed to go, when she twirled her finger in the bowl and said, “Now concentrate.”

The water, wildly spinning around the sides of the bowl, was forming an image.

I thought I recognized it.

She twirled her finger in the water again, and the image became clear. It was the Ferris wheel in Pripyat—the one that had never moved—turning fast and even faster.

A FEW WEEKS LATER, TATJANA PETROVNA brought us copies of Nuclear Energy News . The students on the field trip, about one hundred of them, were lined up in front of the abandoned apartment complex in Pripyat. Most of my classmates were smiling, but not Angelika. Her face was turned in profile as if she were searching for us. Of course, Sergei and I were missing from the group. The headline in big bold letters read: “Dead Zone Safe for School Children.”

Another lie!

Although at the time I didn’t realize this, the Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev had begun promoting ‘ glasnost ’ or political openness throughout the Soviet Union, and everywhere Ukrainians were debating the justice of Soviet domination over our country. Finally, the citizens of Ukraine were beginning to realize that Moscow was destroying their environment and endangering their lives.