,I got a mother who came home from work in the evening
and showered her with criticism and complaints. I forgot this, didn’t do that, didn’t think about it.
And so on, day after day,
really sick of it. With my friend Mara, of course, it was at-
Coldly, she couldn’t go out with her as often as
she used to. Strict parents, foreign language tutors
,music school and other «joys» of teenage
life left her too little free
time, and so Lina just went out alone in the evening
to wander around the neighborhood, to distract herself from her
thoughts, from noisy home and from endless school
lessons. Today, she decided that she would leave the house
earlier because Michael was due to arrive.
Michael was not her mother’s new husband, but he often
spent time with their family. This plump, red – faced man
with piggy eyes and a guilty smile made
Lina feel sorry for him. She couldn’t understand why her mother
had chosen such a ridiculous friend. He did not help
them materially, as he earned quite little,
and never bought them gifts or food. He was just lonely,
6
just like their mother, and maybe that’s why they enjoyed
spending time together.
Lina didn’t want to have dinner in this
company tonight. They made her feel like a ten
– year-old girl again, being poked around and lectured.
So she called out that she wouldn’t be home for dinner and would spend the night
at Mara’s, she slammed the door and stormed out of the house.
My mother wasn’t up to it – my younger brother spent half the day crying
over a B in physics, and then to top it off
,he was bitten by a wasp. When his mother came home from work, she wiped away his snot
and tears, calmed him down as best she could, prepared dinner for meeting
Michael, and was generally tired after the day’s work, so she was
even glad that there would be no youthful
maximalism and arguments about nothing at the table.
They lived almost at the very edge of the village, two houses away from the fields and the road, then a thin forest.
Lina had explored the area up and down the rivers.
She liked the small hunting lodges
that kept coming across her way as she walked along the forest.
Cool but dry inside, they seemed very cozy —
you can lie down, listen to music, dream about your own things, and no
one will bother you.
Reaching one of them, the girl easily climbed