Timur

I'm Timur. I'm 15 years old. I'm in the 9th grade. I'm smart, well-read, but not very good. I'm one of the cool kids at school.

It's like finding a lost part of yourself. The one without which everything was out of place.

When she's mad at her makeup or her hair, I look at her and don't understand what she's talking about. I only see her. Disheveled, makeup-free, with sparkling eyes. And to me, that's the most beautiful thing in the world. I tell her, "You're beautiful. Period." And it's not a compliment. It's a statement.

We've created our own world. With our own language. "Po nogam" instead of "dogovali." "Zalublyu," "schozya." We can use the formal "vy" with such pathos that we both collapse laughing. This is our code. Our territory. And I won't let anyone in here.

I look forward to the weekend more than my birthday. Because my birthday is about me. And the weekend is about us. About her falling asleep next to me with some movie we never watch anyway. About her sigh in her sleep. About the mornings when I can just look at her.

Sometimes I'm scared. Scared that I'll do something wrong. That I won't last. That I'll ruin this fragile, perfect thing that's grown between us. But when she looks at me and smiles that smile of hers that only I get, the fear recedes. All that remains is a quiet, all-consuming confidence. And the desire to move forward. To where "after the New Year." To where "we need to live." To where she is my woman, and I am her boyfriend. Period.

And at my place... It was already the point of no return. When she asked, "Shall we kiss?" and it sounded like another joke, something clicked in my head. No, I thought. Enough jokes. Enough games. I nodded and walked towards her. And at first she recoiled, scared—apparently she didn't expect me to be serious. And then... then her lips touched mine. It was soft, hesitant, and so divine that the world narrowed to this single point of contact. "Can we do it again?" I breathed out when we parted. I couldn't even properly form the words.

Now... Now everything is different. She lies on my chest, and her hair smells of something sweet. I can kiss the top of her head, her forehead, her cheek. I can bite her cheekbone, just lightly, and she laughs. She laughs right on my lips when we kiss, and it’s the most stupid and wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. She let me touch her, and my hands memorized every curve, every tremor. And then we boiled dumplings. I served her exactly 15, because I knew she wouldn’t eat more. And I kissed her hand while the water boiled.

I tell her that she is my woman. Not because she is my property. But because… because it is a fact. Like a law of physics. She entered my life and took up all the space there, became its meaning and center of gravity. She says that this is not love yet. That love requires living. And she is right. I will not argue. The word “love” is a big one, a responsible one. But what I feel… it is more than sympathy. It is deeper.

It became unbearable at school. I'd see her and it would be like an electric shock. All those stupid "hello kitty" calls we had were the only way I could connect without going crazy. I was afraid to get closer. Afraid that if I touched her, I wouldn't be able to stop. So I'd brush her off in public, pretending I didn't care. Meanwhile, I'd catch her every glance out of the corner of my eye.

That day in the locker room after the Olympics... When Styopa and Kostyan started pestering me: "Kiss her!" I froze. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like everyone could hear it. I was afraid to move. Afraid that if I turned my head, everyone would see everything—all my tension, all that stupid, wild hope. And she... she looked at me, saw my stupor, and... saved me. She pretended I was the one being squeamish. She lightly touched my chin. Her fingers were cool. Then she blew me that kiss. I exhaled and died for a second, simultaneously.

Then I asked her out. It fell through. I hated myself for it. And then I asked her again. And we went. She mentioned her bag being heavy, and without thinking, I blurted out, "I'll carry it." And I did. And it felt so... right. As if it had fallen into place.

Dasha was clinging to me then. A nice girl, but... not the same. Not the same at all. I tried, but it felt weird. Like I was playing the wrong role. And Alisa... Alisa walked around school like I was nothing to her. And it was incredibly infuriating. I wish she hated me.

Stepan ruined everything. My friend, damn it. He started teasing me. "Say hello, Timka, to your betrothed!" And so I stand there, looking at her, and she looks at me, and in her eyes there's not anger, but some kind of mischievous anticipation. And I squeeze out: "Hello... kitty." My voice, damn it, breaks. And she responds, with some kind of mockery and tenderness at the same time: "Hello, sunshine." And something clicks inside. As if we both remembered the same old secret.

And then she was in that black dress... Damn. I still remember. She was walking down the hallway, and it just blew my mind. I spent the whole day shutting Styopa up: "Did you see? Did you see?" I was speechless. And then in the evening I couldn't resist and texted her. I asked how she was. I told her about the dress. And off we went. Night chats. At first about nonsense, memes. Then more and more serious. About childhood. About how we were sitting in the same tent in the rain at the tourist center. She remembered every little detail. I thought I was the only one who kept all of this in my head.

Honestly, I still don't understand how it all happened. How we got from the point of "I can't stand her" to... to this. To the silence in the room, where the only sounds were her breathing and the beating of my heart somewhere in my throat.

With Alisa... We've been together since we were babies. Since first grade. I remember her sitting at the next desk in a dress with bows, trying to write her last name in her copybook, her tongue on one side. Funny. Then we somehow immediately hit it off. I don't know why. It was easy for me with her. There was no need to clown around or seem cooler than you were. We built shacks out of chairs at her house, her mother fed us pancakes, and her cat was always trying to climb into my lap and unleash his claws. It was... a different time. The world was simple and colorful.

And then all this teenage bullshit started. Everyone around us started being divided into "us" and "them," and talking to girls became somehow... not comme il faut. Ashamed, perhaps. I saw her change—from a chatterbox with bows into... someone else. She became beautiful. And that only made it scarier. It was easier to write it all off as "well, pretentious" and pretend I didn't care. We became masters at avoiding each other. It was a whole ritual: see her in the hallway, pretend you didn't notice, walk past, feeling your back burn. And inside—some stupid emptiness. And anger. At myself, mostly.