Yeats Middle School had been better than Grayson in every way. Freya had liked the teachers better, it was closer to her house, and she had more friends. Even the building was newer. She loved spending every day with Betty and Jane.
Betty and Freya always rode to school, sitting together on the front seat of Randall’s truck. He would tell them all the dumb things people had gotten arrested for the night before and, sometimes, he could make Betty laugh so hard she would snort. Seventh grade was the best year. Betty and Freya had four periods together. The three of them were inseparable.
Every morning, Freya woke up excited. She couldn’t wait to get to Yeats and see all her friends. Half the reason she got involved with Drama was so she would have an excuse to stay after school. Most nights, both Randall and Lassa had to work late. She hated being alone in the empty house.
Freya’s first meeting with Radomir was thrust upon her by Lassa. Her mother had introduced them at a Hiidenkirnu company picnic, and then abandoned Freya, leaving her trapped in an incredibly awkward conversation.
Radomir had been in America for less than three months, she could only understand about half of what he said. Freya tried to soldier through out of politeness, but she got nothing back from Radomir. He obviously had nothing to say and didn’t want to be there.
Things weren’t any better for Radomir at Yeats. He’d arrived halfway through the school year, and everyone had already decided who their friends were. No one was enthused about making room for someone they could barely understand. Freya felt sorry for Radomir, and she tried to be nice to him.
She would say hi when they passed in the hall, offer to partner with him in science class when no one else would and, once, she’d even brought up inviting him to sit with them at lunch, but the suggestion was swiftly vetoed by Jane. She thought he was creepy.
Every interaction was like their first conversation. She never got anything back from Radomir. It felt like he resented her efforts. He walked around with a perpetual scowl, dark eyebrows slanted as if every day was worse than the one before. Freya gave up on him.
Two months later during lunch, she sat with Betty and Jane. Earlier that day in art class, Mr. Hendrix had brought in his miniature schnauzer Winky to be their model for figure drawing. Dogs were hard to draw, and the three of them chattered about it, bemoaning none of their parents would let them get a dog of their own.
Their table was very close to the stoner\skateboarder table, a raucous group of eighth graders whose bi-weekly visits to the principal’s office were as regular as a paycheck. Any time that table got quiet, something awful was about to happen.
Freya glanced over and saw Malcolm Lewis hunched over something. Back then, he’d had one of those skater cuts where the side was buzzed, and the hair fell in his eyes in a big swoop. She saw him loading up a half-eaten cup of red Jell-O with chocolate milk. He caught her eye and winked at her.
“Grosssss!” Freya nudged Jane and Betty.
“If he eats that, I’m gonna barf,” Jane groaned.
Malcolm had other plans. He stuck the label back on and ducked under the table with the Jell-O cup. They saw his arm pop up and lob the Jell-O-grenade across the cafeteria.
Malcolm scored a direct hit on the back of Radomir’s head. The whole cafeteria exploded in howls of delight and disgust. With bits of red and brown gunk running down his neck, Radomir stood up and slowly turned around to face them. His fists were clenched at his sides. His eyes moved from person to person, lingering on each. It felt like he was memorizing their faces. The laughter died.
Freya remembered the way he’d stared at them. Radomir wasn’t angry or embarrassed. His eyes were wells of sadness, like this was just the latest in a long line of disappointments. It was a teacher who broke the silence. Miss Matteo rushed over and asked Radomir who threw Jell-O at him.
“I saw nothing,” Radomir said. He gathered up his spattered bookbag. “I will go home now to clean up.”
“Not yet, honey. We’re going to the principal’s office. No one is leaving here until we find out who threw that Jell-O.”
Radomir looked at her like she was insane.
“I will go home now,” he told the teacher, speaking slowly as if to an idiot. He turned away from her and walked out the side entrance to the cafeteria. Miss Matteo shouted after Radomir, ordering him to return, but he ignored her completely.
Everyone watched him cross the parking lot through the windows and disappear up the street. Radomir was given three days of in-school suspension for leaving without permission. No one would rat on Malcolm. He was the biggest boy in the eighth grade.
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In a way, Malcolm did Radomir a huge favor. After that, he was no longer the weird effeminate foreign kid. He was the one who’d stared down everyone, then told a teacher to fuck off. That was how everyone told the story even though he hadn’t really said that. Freya couldn’t get the way he’d stared at her out of her mind.
The day Radomir got out of ISS, she overruled Jane and invited Radomir to sit at their table. She was surprised when he accepted and returned every day. He said little, mostly just listening to them talk, and they got used to him.
It changed one day when Freya and Betty were talking about The Fifth Element. Betty’s favorite scene was Diva Plavalaguna, a tentacle-headed opera singer who performed a sensuous dance while hitting impossible notes. They were wondering aloud what that style of dancing was called, and just about to Google it when Radomir suddenly piped in.
He was a big fan of the choreographer, Mia Frye, and told them about all the other things she had worked on, La Femme Nikita and The Dancer. It was the first time they’d ever gotten him to talk. As soon as the topic was dance, he was a broken faucet, everything flowing out.
They learned Radomir’s family had moved from the Czech Republic to Moscow when he was very young, and he’d wanted to be a dancer for as long as he could remember. He’d started ballet when he was eight and pursued it seriously all the way until earlier this year, when his father Dymek got the job with Hiidenkirnu.
When Radomir arrived in Maine, he was despondent to find himself stuck in Sillas, hundreds of miles from anything resembling a real ballet studio. He took a four-hour bus ride to Portland every Friday night and stayed in a hotel room on his own, returning late on Sunday evening so he could have two full days of classes at the Lafayette Ballet Academy.
After they got to know him, Radomir fit in well with the three of them. He was even more serious about his grades than they were. He wanted to go to Columbia. His English got perceptibly better every day. He made friends outside of their group but stayed close to them, grateful they’d given him a chance.
Freya always felt a little worried about Radomir. There was a note of sadness surrounding him that never quite faded. Once day, they’d been on their own at lunch. Radomir told her the story of Nijinsky. For ten years, he’d been the most famous male dancer in Europe. Then he went mad and spent the rest of his life in an asylum.
“Ten years of growing up, ten years of training, ten years of dancing, and thirty years of darkness,” Radomir had said, looking haunted. That was another look she’d never forgotten.
Radomir worked very hard and managed to skip the eighth grade. By the time Freya got to Grayson, he had a whole new set of friends. They were still friendly but not close anymore. Their paths didn’t cross that often.
* * *
The rain continued to drum on the roof of the walkway to the arts building, it showed no sign of relenting. She saw Radomir’s class starting to break up.
Thirty years of darkness.
Freya shivered as she walked back into the school, the back of her gym shorts and underwear soaked through. She got her still-damp clothes out of her locker, remembering her hypothesis about sealing the Starball inside. It had been a stupid idea.
She changed clothes in the girl’s room and walked in the pouring rain to her bicycle. Before she undid her lock, she glanced over at the cars idling in the pickup lane, even though she knew it was useless. Lassa wasn’t there. It was a long, wet ride home. Freya could have left her bike at school and taken a cab, but she didn’t want to. She deserved this.
She hadn’t brought a hat, so the whole way home she squinted against the rain until her face hurt. Towards the end of the ride, her hands were getting numb. When she rode down the big hill, she was afraid she’d lose her grip, but she just kept pushing forward until everything was one long, aching blur.
She hoped Lassa would be home so she could try apologizing again, but her car wasn’t in the garage. The house was dark and empty.
Randall used to have the early shift on Tuesdays and Thursdays. When Freya was in middle school, she would ride her bike home, and the garage door would be open. Randall would be inside tinkering with his truck or fooling around on his laptop.
She would ring the little bell on her handlebars, and his head would perk up. It never mattered what he was doing. Even if Randall was under the truck, he would crawl out covered in oil and grime with a big goofy smile. He was always so happy to see her.
He’d grab their baseball gloves, and they’d ride to Nading Hill Park to play catch, or they’d drive to Dorsey to play mini golf, then see a movie. She hadn’t realized how good she had it. Nobody lit up when they saw Freya now. Nobody was happy to see her. Certainly not Lassa. For the hundredth time, she felt shitty about this morning.
Freya stood in the rain in the driveway, staring at an empty garage. She thumbed the bell of her bicycle, but it was wet and wouldn’t ring. It only made a dull Tink! It just ached and ached. It never stopped.
She entered 1984, the key code to the garage door, and dragged her bike inside. The tires left wet lines on the cement. She wondered what Randall did on Tuesdays and Thursdays once she started after-school drama and had rehearsal those nights. Was he still here in the garage?
With perfect clarity, she imagined him turning from his computer chair to look out at the driveway, then giving a sad little shrug and turning back to the screen.
Freya cried, little sobs rising above the sound of the rain outside as she dripped onto the garage floor.
Why not? I can’t get any wetter.
She kept doing this to herself. Digging at the wound, dragging herself deeper. There was no way out, things were just getting worse. She went to her room to get dry clothes, and there was half of a pill sitting on her dresser. The message was clear. Lassa wasn’t coming home tonight. Freya spent a long time staring at the half pill and, finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. She went to Lassa’s closet and looked for Randall’s gun.
But the case was gone.