the evening’s poison from my lungs, my soul.
“It’s too cold,” Olena says. “Close the window.”
“I am suffocating.”
“Well, it’s freezing in here.” She crosses to the window and pulls it shut. “I can’t sleep.”
“Neither can I,” I whisper.
By the glow of moonlight that shines through the grimy window, she studies me. Behind us, one of the girls whimpers in her sleep. We listen to the sound of their breathing in the darkness, and suddenly there is not enough air left in the room for me. I am fighting to breathe. I push at the window, trying to raise it again, but Olena holds it shut.
“Stop it, Mila.”
“I’m dying!”
“You’re hysterical.”
“Please open it. Open it!” I’m sobbing now, clawing at the window.
“You want to wake up the Mother? You want to get us in trouble?”
My hands have cramped into painful claws, and I cannot even clutch the sash. Olena grabs my wrists.
“Listen,” she says. “You want air? I’ll get you some air. But you have to be quiet. The others can’t know about it.” I am too panicked to care what she’s saying. She grabs my face in her hands, forces me to look at her. “You did not see this,” she whispers. Then she pulls something from her pocket, something that gleams faintly in the darkness.
A key.
“How did you-”
“Shhh.” She snatches the blanket from her cot and pulls me past the other girls, to the door. There she pauses to glance back at them, to confirm they are all asleep, then slips the key into the lock. The door swings open and she pulls me through, into the hallway.
I am stunned. Suddenly I’ve forgotten that I am suffocating, because we are out of our prison; we are free. I turn toward the stairs to flee, but she yanks me back sharply.
“Not that way,” she says. “We can’t get out. There’s no key to the front door. Only the Mother can open it.”
“Then where?”
“I’ll show you.”
She pulls me down the hallway. I can see almost nothing. I put my trust entirely in her hands, letting her lead me through a doorway. Moonlight glows through the window, and she glides like a pale ghost across the bedroom, picks up a chair, and quietly sets it down in the center of the room.
“What are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer, but climbs onto the chair and reaches toward the ceiling. A trap door creaks open above her head, and a ladder unfolds downward.
“Where does it go?” I ask.
“You wanted fresh air, didn’t you? Let’s go find some,” she says, and climbs the ladder.
I follow her up the rungs and scramble through the trap door, into an attic. Through a single window, moonlight shines in, and I see the shadows of boxes and old furniture. The air is stale up here; it is not fresh at all. She opens the window and climbs through. Suddenly it strikes me: this window has no bars. When I poke my head out, I understand why. The ground is too far below us. There is no escape here; to jump would be suicide.
“Well?” says Olena. “Aren’t you going to come out, too?”
I turn my head and see that she is sitting on the roof, lighting a cigarette. I look down again at the ground, so far away, and my hands go clammy at the thought of climbing out onto the ledge.
“Don’t be such a scared rabbit,” says Olena. “It’s nothing. The worst that can happen is you fall and break your neck.”
Her cigarette glows, and I smell the smoke as she casually exhales a breath. She is not nervous at all. At that moment, I want to be exactly like her. I want to be fearless.
I climb out the window, inch my way along the ledge, and with a heavy sigh of relief, settle down beside her on the roof. She shakes out the blanket and throws it over our shoulders so that we sit snug together, under a warm mantle of wool.
“It’s my secret,” she said. “You’re the only one I trust to keep it.”
“Why me?”
“Katya would sell me out for a box of chocolates. And that Nadia is too stupid to keep her mouth shut. But you’re different.” She looks at me, a gaze that is thoughtful. Almost tender. “You may be a scared rabbit. But you’re not stupid, and you’re not a traitor.”
Her praise makes the heat rise in my face, and the pleasure is a rush better than any drug. Better than love. Suddenly, recklessly, I think: I would do anything for you, Olena. I move closer to her, seeking her warmth. I have known only punishment from men’s bodies. But Olena’s offers comfort, and soft curves, and hair that brushes like satin against my face. I watch the glow of her cigarette, and how elegantly she flicks off ash.
“Want a puff?” she asks, offering it to me.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Heh. It’s not good for you anyway,” she says and takes another drag. “Not good for me either, but I’m not going to waste them.”
“Where did you get it?”
“The boat. Took a whole pack of them, and no one noticed.”
“You stole them?”
She laughs. “I steal a lot of things. How do you think I got the key? The Mother thinks she lost it, the dumb cow.” Olena takes another puff, and her face briefly glows orange. “It’s what I used to do in Moscow. I was good at it. If you speak English, they’ll let you into any hotel where you can turn a few tricks. Pick a few pockets.” She blew out a lung full of smoke. “That’s why I can’t go home. They know me there.”
“Don’t you want to?”
She shrugs and taps off an ash. “There’s nothing there for me. That’s why I left.”
I stare up at the sky. The stars are like angry pinpricks of light. “There’s nothing here, either. I didn’t know it would be like this.”
“You’re thinking of running, aren’t you, Mila?”
“Aren’t you?”
“And what would you go home to? You think your family wants you back? After they find out what you’ve been doing here?”
“There’s only my grandmother.”
“And what would you do in Kryvicy, if all your dreams were to come true? Would you be rich, marry a nice man?”
“I have no dreams,” I whisper.
“It’s better that way.” Olena gives a bitter laugh. “Then you can’t be disappointed.”
“But anything, anywhere, is better than here.”
“You think so?” She looks at me. “I knew a girl who ran. We were at a party, like the one tonight. At Mr. Desmond’s house. She climbed out a window and got away. Which was just the first of her problems.”
“Why?”
“What do you eat out there? Where do you live? If you have no papers, there is
