That November day was gray and raw, as if fate itself were choosing the set for the first act of this drama. The air in the school hall was thick with the breath of a crowd that smelled of wet coats, woolen mittens, and anxious excitement. Alisa, clutching to her chest a brand-new grade book that still smelled of printer’s ink, froze on the threshold, stunned by the booming hum of voices. It was her first day at a new school, and instead of a quiet look at the schedule she had walked straight into the eye of a storm.
In the center of a human ring, as if on a pillory, stood two boys. And above them, like a storm cloud, towered the assistant principal—Klavdiya Viktorovna. Her voice, metallic and merciless, slashed the air like a saber.
“I haven’t seen such blatant lawlessness in my thirty years of teaching!” she thundered, her heavy, condemning gaze sliding over the onlookers’ faces like the slow beam of a searchlight. “Sneaking into the kitchen through the back door! Stealing property from the school cafeteria! What is this—training for prison, future repeat offenders? Your road leads straight to a correctional colony and then—to the very bottom of society, into filth and poverty!”
Shrinking from the ugliness of the spectacle, Alisa wanted to see the targets of all that fury. Like a little pike, she wriggled through the wall of backs and stopped short.
Two boys. One—scrawny, with a pale, frightened face, in a worn, clearly too-small jacket. He was crying silently, with an adult’s bitter grief, big tears rolling down his cheeks and leaving shiny tracks on skin reddened by shame. The other… the other was his complete opposite.
He stood staring stubbornly at the floor, clutching in one hand the evidence of the crime—a pirozhok (a small hand pie). There wasn’t much left of it: the dough was crushed into a tight lump, and the potato filling, like clay, had oozed out between his fingers and crusted on his hand in knobbly patches. On the dirty linoleum beneath his tautly extended arm lay a few sorry crumbs of dough. But that wasn’t what caught Alisa’s attention. His face did. Red-haired, freckled, with lips pressed in defiance and a hard, unbroken gaze fixed on nowhere. A little Viking, ready to die but not to beg for mercy. That image—a fusion of audacity and doom—struck Alisa straight in the heart like an electric charge. The world narrowed to him alone. And so, at first sight, with the first thud of her heart against her ribs, she was hit by her first, all-consuming, agonizing love.
“Have their parents here—tomorrow!” Klavdiya Viktorovna went on pouring out her wrath.
The crowd, sated with the show, began to disperse. Dazed, Alisa hurried off to find the homeroom teacher’s office before the bell.
Zoya Mikhailovna, a kind woman with smile-wrinkled eyes, was already waiting for her. She walked Alisa to biology and, with a gentle nudge forward, introduced her to the class.
“Grade 5, Section V, a moment of attention! Children, we have a new student—Alisa Sokolova.”
A sharp, piercing bell made Alisa flinch. Dozens of curious eyes stared at her from all sides.
“You know the classrooms already; it’s November, so girls, please—look after the new one, help her settle in. All right?”
“Yes, Zoya Mikhailovna!” the class chorused.
“Good. Alisa, go on, sit at the third desk by the window, next to Lyova Ognev. There aren’t any free seats closer, and your mother asked that you not be put in the back row. Ognev!” The teacher’s voice turned stern. “Watch yourself! No tricks. Don’t embarrass the new girl, clear? I already know your antics.”
“Yeah,” came a careless reply from that very spot.
Alisa looked up. Blood pounded in her temples, drummed in her ears; the world swam. It was HIM. The same redheaded Viking, the pirozhok thief. Lyova Ognev. Now he was half a meter away, and she could see every freckle on his nose, every fierce coil of his copper hair. Noticing her, he ostentatiously edged to the far side of the desk and stared out the window.
All that endless day they didn’t exchange a word. Lyova spun like a top: pulling faces at neighbors, poking the back of the boy in front with his pen, tossing paper balls. He was a hurricane sweeping everything in its path. But there was no malice in his mischief, only some desperate, boiling energy. And when, during recess, he tore down the corridor, his red thatch lofting above his head like a fiery crown, Alisa felt that his wide, reckless grin brightened the gloom of the school walls. It seemed there was no better place on earth than wherever he happened to be.
“That redheaded idiot,” a classmate sniffed when Lyova whirled past, nearly knocking them over. “I wonder if all redheads are that unhinged?”
Alisa stood in a circle of new friends, huddled against the hot radiator, and kept silent. It was already January, the New Year’s holidays had faded, and a piercing wind howled outside.
“Remember the story with the pirozhki?” said Ira, the chattiest of her new friends. “I heard from my mom yesterday… Turns out Lyova didn’t steal those pies for himself. It was for the quiet kid, Slava’s little sisters. Their father drinks, the family’s dirt poor, the kids go hungry. It was Lyova who talked him into the ‘feat.’ My mom’s friends with Lyova’s mom, so I found out all this in secret… He really got it that time, of course.”
“And rightly so! Boys like that need a belt. What else do you know about him?”
“Well… he’s almost indecently kind. His mother’s always scolding him because he keeps dragging home injured animals—one day a kitten, then a fledgling crow with a hurt wing. Then he hands this zoological joy out to relatives and neighbors. And at New Year he saved up from his school lunches and bought a huge cake for the old woman next door who lives alone. She nearly cried with happiness. He even digs her flowerbeds in spring.”
“Not normal,” another classmate pronounced, a stern girl with perfectly sleek braids. “He’s got a screw loose.”
Soon Alisa and Lyova were seated apart. A strange, sweet, tormenting game began. In lessons she watched him on the sly, catching every gesture, every smile, every new freckle that appeared on his nose with the coming of spring. He pretended not to notice that intent gaze. Then, sometimes, he too would freeze, staring at her with that clear, open look in which you could read a kind, guileless soul. Alisa would diligently bend over her notebook, feeling the warmth of his gaze on her cheek like a ray of sun. She basked in it, like a lizard on a hot stone. Half the lesson she looked at him; half the lesson, he looked at her. And at night she cried softly into her pillow, overflowing with an incomprehensible longing and tenderness, and in the morning she put on her mask of indifference again.
So the days, weeks, and months passed, until they finally got a home phone in their apartment. Alisa and Ira discovered a new pastime—prank calls. Taking advantage of duty time, they sneaked into the teachers’ lounge and borrowed the class register, carefully copying down all their classmates’ numbers.
“Hello, good afternoon!” Ira would begin in a droning bureaucratic voice, while Alisa choked with laughter, digging her fingers into Ira’s shoulder. “This is the police department calling. I need to speak to the father of Konstantin Vasiliev.”
“Dad’s not here… He’s on shift… What happened?” came a frightened, youthful voice.
“Inform him that a criminal case has been opened against your son.”
“Whaaat?!”
“This morning at eight, when exiting his building, he deliberately crushed an earthworm. The victim’s mother filed a complaint. She demands one million dollars in compensation. You must…”
“Bazyakina, is that you! I know it’s you!” an offended voice suddenly yelled into the receiver.
“No, I’m the district police officer! I expect you at the station!” Ira would squeal, and, slamming down the receiver, collapse to the floor, convulsing in silent laughter.
Later they found a safer theme—love.
“Hello, may I speak to Serezhenka?” they would purr, syrupy-sweet.
“That’s me…” the boy would say, already beginning to blush in advance.
“Why don’t you call me, darling? I’m waiting…”
“Who is this?”
“Forgotten already? Tsk, tsk… Last week, by the dam… You confessed your love so beautifully…”
“Maybe you’ve confused me with my dad? His name is Sergei too…”
“No, you—the boy in the blue jacket with the mole above his lip…”
“Uh…”
“How could you forget our kiss! You heartless monster! It’s over! Never call me again!”
At that point they’d hang up, breathless with laughter. Watching the next day as the victims shuffled around, embarrassed and bewildered, was unbelievably funny.
And then it was Lyova Ognev’s turn. Ira handed Alisa the receiver, heavy as cast iron.
“You call.”
“No, you do it!”
“It’s your turn—I’ve already called ten people!”
Alisa hedged, hid in the bathroom, pretended she urgently needed to study, but in the end she gave in. Her fingers trembled; the numbers on the dial blurred before her eyes. She managed to dial with difficulty. Her heart was hammering somewhere in her throat.
“Hello?”—his voice came on the line. So familiar, so dear, and so terrifying.
“Hi,” she whispered, and in panic dropped the receiver as if it were red-hot.
“What are you doing?” Ira asked, surprised.
“I can’t… I can’t talk to him, even as a stupid joke,” Alisa admitted, feeling her cheeks burn.
Her friend patted her shoulder sympathetically.
“What, you hate him that much, huh?”
“Yeah…” Alisa bowed her head even lower.
That same evening, sprawled on the couch in front of the TV, Alisa had no idea what was about to happen. The phone rang. Her mother picked up.
“A girl? From this number? Strange… Alisa, I think it’s for you.”
Not suspecting a trick, Alisa thought it was Ira.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Were you the one who called me today?”
Her knees went weak. Her heart thudded so wildly the fabric of her house T-shirt quivered. She slowly sank onto the little stool in the hallway. Her mother raised an eyebrow—“Who?”—and Alisa begged her with her eyes to leave them alone. Mom smiled her wise, all-understanding smile and stepped out.
“How did you…” Alisa began.
“We have caller ID on the phone,” Lyova explained simply.
Alisa praised herself inwardly. How naïve she had been!
“Uh-huh… So, how are you?”
“Doing homework. Just got back from practice. Lis’ka, was it really you?”
The unexpected, warm nickname stole her breath.
“Um… yes.”
“I thought so. I recognized your voice. What are you doing?”
“Watching TV…”
“And? What’s it about?”
“Oh, you know… About love, about friendship…”
Without noticing, they talked for almost an hour. He turned out to be so funny! He told the silliest stories about his coach, about his dog, about the old lady next door. It turned out they both adored strawberry ice cream in winter and those greenish, tart apricots; both dreamed of going to the sea and traveling the world.
From that evening on, Alisa’s life flipped over. After school she raced home alone, brushing off her friends with all kinds of pretexts, and sat by the phone as if by a campfire, warming herself in the expectation of his call. And he called. Every day. They talked about everything under the sun: books, music, silly teachers and boring lessons, the stars and the future. The conversations went on for two, sometimes three hours, until Alisa’s mother came home or Lyova had to dash off to soccer.
At school it was harder. They had to keep up appearances. Their communication shrank to eloquent looks and quick, furtive smiles. Alisa melted under his gaze like ice cream in the sun. But soon even that game bored them. They began to talk openly.
Six months later they were seated together again. Lyova started walking her home, though he lived on the opposite side of town. Six months after that, on evening walks, their fingers intertwined for the first time—shyly, uncertainly, but already forever. And a year later, when they were both fifteen, they kissed. In the park. Under a spreading willow. Awkward, clumsy, sweet, and thrilling beyond measure. His lips were soft and a little rough from the wind. And so it went. He saw her home every evening. She rose on tiptoe to peck his cheek, and then that quick, headlong, sweet kiss on the lips. His eyes, shining like two emeralds. The old willow by her building. The lights in the windows glittering like gems. She floated up to the fifth floor without feeling the stairs beneath her feet. It was the purest, brightest, most sincere love in all the world.
And then they quarreled. Over nothing, over nonsense, over a silly misunderstanding not worth a cracked egg. There was a school dance, and Lyova had guests—his father’s birthday. The phone at his place was busy all evening; someone forgot to hang up. Alisa couldn’t get through, took offense, and went alone, giving in to her friends’ coaxing. Then came long, agonizing showdowns, full of hurtful words, bitter reproaches, and unfair accusations. Neither would yield, neither would take the first step. Their nightly phone calls stopped. At school they became strangers again.
“Our inseparable Siamese twins have fallen out! What a drama!” classmates sneered.
Six months flew by. Ninth grade was ending. The school was preparing for the graduation ball. After ninth, almost everyone left; from all the sections they could barely make up a single tenth grade. Lyova was leaving too—he was enrolling in a college in another city.
At last, graduation night. The hall was dim, colored lights flashing, music playing. Everyone danced, laughed, horsed around. Only the two of them—Alisa and Lyova—stood on opposite sides of the room, not taking their eyes off each other. Boys came up to invite Alisa to dance, but she only shook her head in silence. Her friends tried to drag Lyova onto the floor, but he brushed them off like gnats. And so they stood all evening, not moving, piercing each other with their gazes through the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen, last two tracks!” the emcee announced. “We’re wrapping up our ball!”
The music began. Slow, sad, aching. About love that never came true. Alisa recognized it instantly. It was THEIR song. It had played from the frayed speaker of a street kiosk in that very park, that very evening… She saw Lyova start, too, recognizing the melody. He suddenly broke from his spot and strode across the hall with quick, decisive steps, cleaving through the crowd like an icebreaker.
“Shall we dance?” His voice was quiet and hoarse.
She only nodded, unable to say a word.
They danced, holding each other, through two songs in a row. He held her tight—so tight it almost hurt—and his lips brushed her temple, her hair, her neck. And there was no one and nothing else in the world—no spectators, no time, no past grievances, no future parting. There was only her and her redheaded boy, her Lyova. She didn’t notice when one song ended and another began. She didn’t notice when the last chords faded. It was over.
People began to drift out. He, as of old, walked her to her building. They stood in silence, holding hands—Alisa studying the glitter on her shoes, and he staring far, far away, through buildings, through years, through his entire future life without her.
“Well, I should go,” he finally exhaled. “Bye. Take care of yourself.”
He bent and pecked her on the lips. Just as simply, childishly, as before. He turned and left. His silhouette dissolved into the dusk.
At home Alisa cried all night. In the morning, after a brief sleep, she glued herself to the phone, waited, believed he would call… But no call came. A few days later Lyova left. Two years after that, she left too.
Fate never brought their paths together again. More than twenty-five years have passed. Alisa has her own life, her own family, her own worries. But somewhere very deep in her heart, in its most hidden corner, lives the memory of a redheaded boy with freckles and stolen pirozhki. The memory of her first love—the purest, the most painful, the most beautiful. And sometimes, when she hears a stray melody from long ago, she goes still, goosebumps race over her skin, and treacherous tears well up. And she understands that she has never stopped loving him.