Page 113 of Pioneer Summer

“Who, Irina? No,” he replied with certainty. “Otherwise she would’ve dragged us off with her. Or did you mean Masha?” Volodya added warily. “Do you think Masha will tell her?”

“Nah, she’ll be too scared. It’s fine telling Ira about something like that, but telling Leonidovna and the director’s way scarier.”

“Itisscarier, but that doesn’t mean she won’t do it!” insisted Volodya. “If she tells anyone, it’ll be them. They’re older, they’re more experienced, they know this kind of thing does exist. Not like Irina.”

“Okay, so fine. Let’s say she does tell them. What then? In that case, I’m the victim here, and they’ll ask me whether that’s really what happened. And I’ll say Masha’s lying! And you will, too, and Ira—I mean, everybody will say Masha’s lying! We know Polya and Ksyusha won’t be able to keep quiet, they’re definitely going to blab. So the way it’ll end up is that there’ll be nothing to charge us with because there are no victims.”

“That’s true, too. There’s no crime here.”

“Okay then, so are we going to the willow?”

Volodya nodded, turned off his flashlight, and went off the path directly into the woods. “To make sure nobody else can tag along,” he explained. “Even though that’s unlikely now ...”

After a couple of minutes, when they were going around the steep riverbank, he paused and set the alarm on his watch. “Did you leave anything at the bonfire?” he asked.

“Why, are we not going back there?”

“Well, we sensed it’s our time to leave, remember?” Volodya smiled and started walking again.

Yurka managed to collect his thoughts somewhat as he trundled obediently along behind Volodya. He felt guilty, because he was the one who’d gotten them in trouble, after all: he hadn’t gotten permission from Irina, nor had he kept track of Masha ...

“That Masha’s a real pest,” he said. “She was the one who sent Ira after us. It couldn’t have been anyone else. And then the Pukes went gallivanting along behind her. I thought she was busy playing babbling brook and didn’t see me leave.”

“No need to justify yourself, Yur. We’ve already seen how good a spy Masha can be. By the way, I was amazed that you stood up for her. That was a good thing you did.”

Yurka winced. “I don’t even know what came over me. It was like I suddenly felt sorry for her. What do you think: Will Ira go tattling on Masha to Leonidovna? I mean, accusing a Komsomol member of something like that is no joke ...”

Volodya scoffed. “I wouldn’t bet on it. Just imagine the mess Irina will have to deal with if she does. And also, she’s just a troop leader: she doesn’t have any kind of pedagogical role like a teacher or anything. And on top of that, today’s the last day: tomorrow Irina won’t have any kind of official position with regard to Masha anymore. And Leonidovna doesn’t need this kind of bureaucratic hassle, either.” Volodya snorted. “She had more than enough of you last year. So why do you ask?”

“Well ... What Polya said was actually true ... ,” Yurka mumbled lamely. “People would condemn Masha ...”

“Are you worried about her?” Judging by the tone, Volodya was even more surprised.

“Well ... ,” he said slowly. “I mean ... even if she is evil on two legs ...”

“Come on, Yur. She’s just a girl in love. Her love isn’t evil in and of itself.”

Yurka groaned wearily. “Look who’s talking about evil, Volodya! That love is precisely the kind that is evil. It’s ours that isn’t. Masha blackmailed you, after all! She tried to force us apart, and now here she is pulling this nasty, vile maneuver on us.”

“No, Yura,” insisted Volodya stubbornly. “She just doesn’t know how she should love. She’s in despair. She should be pitied, treated with—”

“I’m in despair, too! And I don’t know how I should love, either!” exclaimed Yurka. “But somehowI’mnot the one sneaking around spying on you! I’m not trying to do these nasty, awful things!”

“That’s because your love is reciprocated. Why don’t you tell me who was still throwing apples at me not all that long ago, huh, Yur?”

Yurka tried to think of something to say in reply but didn’t come up with anything before they reached the shallows.

They had to take their trousers off to cross the river. During the day, Yurka had been wandering around here in shorts, so he’d just pulled them up, but now the prospect of sitting half the night in jeans that were wet all the way past the knees didn’t seem very appealing. The water in the river wasn’t that cold, but his legs were covered in goose bumps the moment he came out on the other side of the river. Volodya dove quickly into his tracksuit bottoms, but Yurka had to struggle a bit with his jeans. He was rewarded with several mosquito bites as a result. He cringed as he put on his shoes: his wet feet squelched disgustingly in his sneakers.

As they walked along the far riverbank toward the willow, Yurka asked, “What did you say to Ira that made her let us stay out all the way until one a.m.?”

“I reminded her that I covered for her and Zhenya when she asked.”

“Oh, so you do know ... ,” said Yurka, surprised.

Volodya sent him a sideways glance. “Zhenya and I shared a room. How could I not know?”

“So what do you think about it?”

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