In fifth grade, Artyom was not at all the object of her secret love (he had been in third grade, but did not know this). At the time, Zinochka had saved him from retribution out of a passion for strong sensations: she had a pull towards the terrifying, towards, say, blurting something out and seeing what came of it. In that case, nothing good came of it, but Zina cried her heart out as much as she liked, and spent a long time in the status of a heroine. Even her braids got yanked more often and harder than those of the other girls. And this was enough, and she paid no attention to Artyom for three entire years, in the meantime replacing the braids with a short haircut. But at his birthday party, she suddenly discovered that she herself had become an object of affection, that Artyom liked her, that he looked at her in a special way and talked to her in a special way.

This was a great discovery. Zinochka was incredibly proud of herself and spent even more time preening in front of chance-met mirrors, and felt a deep need for conversation about that evening, about love, longing, and suffering. Which was when Valentina Andronovna stumbled on her and easily uncovered everything, though the everything was all so confusing that Valentina Andronovna herself got confused and abandoned this unpromising approach.

Everything was going just wonderfully, if it was not for two tenth graders who were showing an energetic interest. One was simply the handsomest guy in the school, who for his beauty the female majority regularly elected as the class president, and who, with enviable consistency, did nothing at all at this high post. The other was also all right, and Zinochka suddenly realized with terror that this was far too much luck for her. She would have to make a decision, and Zinochka did not like making decisions. Usually, she suffered and struggled and never decided anything.

Iskra was the one that always made all the decisions. Zina would report her problems, and Iskra would knit her eyebrows for a moment and deliver the program to be followed. A precise, complete program, one that was beyond doubt. And then everything was easy and clear, but going to her friend with the question of who to fall in love with seemed unthinkable. Iskra would have strongly condemned even the very question itself as obviously over-hasty, and partially petty-bourgeois (Iskra considered everything that was not aimed at serving society to be petty-bourgeois). Then there would follow a logical analysis of Zinochka’s own essential being, which would reveal such an abyss of shortcomings that Zina would need to eliminate before falling in love, that the mere possibility of love would be delayed by forty-odd years. Zinochka would then only be able to cry, because she would have no line of argument other than tears and a complete absence of logic.

Neither could she count on advice at home. Zina had come into the world when she had no longer been at all expected: eight years after the birth of Aleksandra, and the eldest, Maria, was fully adult, with two kids, and lived in the Far East with her husband. Aleksandra had a family too, she only rarely came by, and Zinochka was always somewhat uncomfortable in her presence: she was considered the eternal baby. This left her mom, always busy with her hospital, where she was a senior operating room nurse. But her mom, as it happened, was so much older that she could no longer give any advice, having forgotten the age at which you fall in love three times simultaneously. Talking about such things to her father, buried up to his neck in work, meetings, and talks, would be useless, and Zinochka was left to her own devices in a difficult and unfamiliar situation.

She was struck by inspiration during an algebra test. She wrote three letters, differing only in their address: “Yura, my friend!”, “My friend Seryozha!”, and “Dear friend and comrade Artyom!”. There followed a vague discussion of feelings, of the loneliness and suffering of a girl’s heart, of a fearful secret that stood in the way of their friendship at present, but, possibly, everything would yet turn out for the best, and she, Zina, would overcome her passions, and then she, lonely and sad, would ask again for the friendship that she now – temporarily! – was forced to reject. Having composed these missives, which skillfully combined sweeping promises with obscuring references to the fateful accidents of fortune that stood before her, Zinochka was overwhelmed with delight, and thought even that she was being awfully shrewd and foresighted. True, the question of whom to send the letters to remained unanswered, but Zinochka decided not to rush this part: it was enough that she had independently found a solution that no one else in the world, not even Iskra, would have ever thought of. So she put the letters inside her textbook and cheered up a little. She did not, obviously, have time to also do her test, but she cried up such a storm for the math teacher, Semyon Isakovich, that the old and very kind teacher gave her a “mediocre”.

She spent three days on the question of which (two!) letters to send, and which (one!) letter not to. But then it turned out that she had misplaced two of the letters, and only one was left: “Dear friend and comrade Artyom!” And, since there was now no choice, she slipped it to Artyom when everyone was taking their seats after lunch and the long recess.

Artyom spent all class reading and rereading the letter, refused to come to the board when summoned by the teacher, got a “poor”, and sent a note asking to meet. Zinochka had not counted on a conversation, but was very happy about this nonetheless.

“I, er, don’t get it,” Artyom admitted honestly, when they had sequestered themselves in the schoolyard after school. “Are you, er, in trouble?”

“Yes,” meekly sighed Zina.

Artyom also sighed, shifted from foot to foot, and huffed. Then he asked, “Maybe you need help?”

“Help?” She smiled bitterly. “The only help for a woman is blind chance or death.”

Artyom did not know much about this kind of category, and did not particularly trust it. But she was suffering for some reason; he could not make any sense of why she was suffering, but was sincerely suffering himself.

“Maybe, er… someone’s gotta get punched in the face? You, er… you just say, don’t be shy about it. I would, for you…”

Here he fell silent, unable to bring himself to admit that for her, he would indeed do anything that she might desire. And Zinochka, out of flightiness and a lack of feminine experience, missed those four words. Four words spoken by Artyom out of the oath that he carried inside himself. Four words that for any woman mean far more than a declaration of love, for they speak of what someone wants to give, and not of what he hopes to receive. But Zinochka was only scared.

“No, no, definitely not! I don’t need anything, I will curb my vice myself.”

“What vice?”

“I am not free,” she said mysteriously, feverously trying to recall what the heroines of novels would say in cases like this. “I do not like that person, I even hate him, but I gave him my word.”

Artyom looked very suspicious, and Zinochka fell silent, realizing she was overselling it.

“Is this person Yurka from 10’A?” he asked.

“What, no, no,” Zina denied in alarm. “If it was Yurka it would be easy. No, Artyom, it’s not him.”

“Then who?”

Seeing that Artyom would not just leave her alone, Zinochka set to wriggling out of this corner.

“You won’t tell anyone? Anyone at all!”

Artyom was silent, looking at her very seriously.

“It’s such a secret that if you give me away, I will drown myself.”

“Zina, er,” he said sternly. “If you don’t trust me, then don’t say anything. I’m not a blabbermouth generally, and for you…”

Again those words came out, and again he fell silent, and again Zinochka heard nothing.

“He’s an adult,” she admitted. “He’s married and he already left his wife over me. And two children. I mean one, the second hasn’t been born yet.”

“But you’re still a kid.”

“What can I do?” Zina asked in a desperate whisper. “Well, what, what can I do? Of course I won’t marry him, I won’t marry him for anything, but for now – for now, you understand? – you and I will pretend like we’re only comrades.”