TWELVE

–

The sky is all kinds of pastels, the overcast day has turned into a watercolor evening as the sun sinks low toward the horizon. From on top of the building, which reaches above the canopies of the trees surrounding us, I can see as far as my sight can reach, from one edge of my peripherals to the other.

We aren’t far at all now from Reactor Five and the Sarcophagus. They make up the skyline of Pripyat in a haunting way, but nothing is really that unsettling when bathed in blues and pinks and oranges. It instead looks like an egg nestled in a bed of greenery. Though I will admit, it’s one egg I hope did not crack any time soon.

Our guided tour had focused so much on the destruction the disaster had caused. The desolation it left behind. The families it segmented. But from up here, Chernobyl didn’t look desolate at all. It looks like the hunting grounds in Iowa, and every hunter knows, the forest is never empty. 

Humans are fragile. We need stone buildings and glass windows to keep out the wild because we’re scared of it. They gave us iodine pills before our tour, for the low levels of radiation we’d be experiencing. Meanwhile, the Red Forest was covered in nuclear ash and now grows wild and untamed again, like our human intervention, our unavoidable mistakes, never even happened. The wolves have full bellies, and the dogs stayed. 

Mother Nature continues to heal herself, no matter the sores we leave on her flesh, she always grows back more beautiful. 

Lex lets me stand there for a long time before reminding me he was there, with fingers brushed gently against my forearm. I flinch, but mostly just from being shaken back to reality. When I look, he beckons with a hand and I follow. He circles us around the hatch entrance, to the small roof access room that likely housed the building's original electrical system, or maybe even an elevator mechanism. It doesn’t matter, because we aren’t going inside.

He pulls himself up with just his fingers on the roof’s edge, barely struggling, his toes climbing up the 90 degree wall until he could swing a leg over the ledge of the roof. Once on top, he reaches for me, and I grab onto his forearm with both hands, as he wraps that solid grip around one of mine and quite literally hauls me all the way up with him; I kick off the wall to try and help anyway, but it feels like my efforts do nothing at all. 

It’s not high enough to make a difference in our vantage point really, but it feels significant, being on top of everything. Being as high up as we could reach. The air is clearer up here, in the exhales of the trees, under the painted sky. 

We sit with our legs hanging off the edge; it’s not scary because the main roof is still below my feet, but when I close my eyes my body can sense the elevation and it’s exhilarating regardless. We soak it up for a while in silence, the sights and sounds and feelings of the evening approaching, until the sun is just a red, barely-there globe tucking itself away for the night, like the dying embers of a raging flame.

When I feel recovered enough to be sure that my tone wouldn’t be colored with irritation anymore, I begin my questioning. Because if he was going to drag me away from dinner, I was at least going to get something out of it from him. “Why do you like this so much?”

“Chernobyl?”

I shake my head. “Being up here. Most people are scared of heights, you know.”

Lex stares out into the horizon, the colors of the sky saturating his dark eyes with glimmers of gold. “Most people are scared of falling,” he corrects finally, his jaw shifting with a smirk, the moment of softness left fleeting with a skilled avoidance of my question.

So I roll my eyes. “You’re not scared of falling?”

“I don’t fall.” He’s so cocky, but the mischief in his eyes is obvious.

“Not even in love?” I say it before I even think, my intention being solely to wipe that look off his face for a moment, but I find myself immediately embarrassed when I realize exactly what I’ve said and how it could be interpreted. 

And then, even further mortified when he answers curtly and without humor anymore. “No.”

I force a snort, to laugh off the awkwardness, trying to get back onto the playful track with further sarcasm, all while fidgeting with my fingers. “Oh so you’re one of those ‘can’t be tied down’ non-committal types, huh? That makes sense.” 

“No, that’s not–” He hurriedly tries to counter, but stops himself and closes his eyes to recollect. When he opens them again, he stares at me for a moment, and the look is so intentional I can’t avoid it, even though I badly want to avert my gaze. Finally, he elaborates. “I’m waiting for someone.”

That’s what Mikey had said back in the car. Lex was waiting for someone, then he would be going back to Romania. Maybe saving himself for someone was a better way of putting it? A girlfriend? A wife? Then, I remember the cemetery. The name he’d lingered by. 

“Marta?” Was that her name, the girl he was waiting for?

He nods, and something in my gut twists. Then, he adds to the horizon. “My baby sister.”

I say nothing, not because I don’t have questions but because I suddenly have too many. So I just stare, urging him to answer one of them, any of them. 

He obliges to my silence. “Our parents disappeared when I was eight, and Marta was only two. When we were transferred to foster care, she was adopted.” 

I’m able to end the sentence for him. “And you weren’t…”

“Nobody wanted an angry, soon-to-be pre-teen.” He can’t hide the bitterness; it curdles his usual silky tenor. I remember the bend in his nose, that he doesn’t know I’ve seen. A scrapper, then.

“I’m sorry, Lex.” It’s all I can manage, because there’s nothing else to say really.

He shrugs, but there’s a stiffness about it. A deep wound, sensitive to prodding. He brushes the somberness away though. “Once I turned eighteen I was no longer a ward, and officially homeless, so I just left. First Bucharest, then Romania all together. Kept moving around. Found some friends. And here we are.”

“But you’re going back?”

He nods again. “She turns eighteen this year. In December. She was a Christmas baby.” I can hear the fondness as it leaks into his words. But it turns a little sour as he continues. “I know she probably won’t even remember me… but I wouldn’t be able to live with it. Her, maybe thinking I abandoned her too.”

I offer a knowing hum, because at this point, he’s been too open, and I owe something in return now. “It’s a tricky wound. Abandonment.” When he flicks his eyes in my direction, there’s a lick of skepticism, like he was debating whether I’d said that just for something deep to say, or… “I told you, you don’t know me either.”

He blinks as the understanding sinks in. “You’re right. I assumed a girl like you had the perfect nuclear family.” For some reason, his choice of words is ironic, given our location, and I can’t help but chuckle. His eyes smile again. It helps to deflate the tension, and loosen my lips further.

“My father passed a little over a year ago. A stupid hunting accident. And with all the COVID stuff, I wasn’t able tomake it the funeral. He raised me, though. All on his own. My mom… she could be dead also for all I know. Or, she could have a husband somewhere. A job. Another daughter. Or a son. Or both? I don’t even remember her name.” It still hurts to talk about my father. But my mother, that’s like speaking about a stranger. Or, maybe about a character in a book. Someone I know, but not for real. An idea of someone, nothing more. 

“It makes sense now. Why you’re here.” He lets me sit on that with curiosity for a few heartbeats before explaining. “Chernobyl has a pull. It calls. To people like us.” 

Us. I like that he’s put us together like that. It makes me feel like I belong somewhere. Here, maybe. At least for the moment.

“A place abandoned, calling for the abandoned.”

I’ve made him smile again under the mask. He adds to my narrative. “Chernobyl’s my Neverland. If it wasn’t for Marta, I might just stay here forever. I’ve considered it.”

“Neverland needs a Wendy though,” I say, referring to Marta, of course, because I thought it was admirable that he wanted her to at least know he hadn’t run away. That he wanted to show her what he’s been doing, while waiting for her.

Lex exhales, an almost-laugh. “We have a Wendy, now.”

He’s referring to me. I know because he gives me his eyes again when he says it. I scoff, and shake my head. “Wendy goes back.”

A hum, and his eyes squint, but this time it’s like the smile in them is just hiding something else. “Wendy goes back.” When I’m left speechless, and the sun is barely a sliver on the treeline, Lex stretches his back, then slides off the ledge down to the main roof. Conversation over.

He helps me down also, catching me by the waist to help absorb some of the impact on my legs. I hold his forearms on the way down, then keep my grip when he tries to step back from me. I can’t help vocalizing the question bouncing around in my brain, and I need him to hold me steady just to be able to ask it. “Is that why you still won’t take off your mask? You don’t trust me, because you know I’m going back?”

“I trust you.” The fact that this is the first thing he says deflates me. Even with my loosened grip, he doesn’t move. His hands linger on my hips, grip my tee shirt a little, as he adds, “Sometimes that’s not enough, though. I can’t risk anything happening that might keep me from going back. Getting arrested would do that. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

I don’t really have a word for what I feel. It’s a weird mixture of disappointment, vulnerability, and embarrassment. Because I have no right to be upset, but I am. And I have no right to demand this from him, but I have. The emotions are like an aura around me. I can feel it sizzling on my skin despite the evening air cooling. 

Maybe he can feel it too, because he finally takes his hands away, but offers another attempt to placate me before stepping away. “It’s nothing personal, Vulpiță. I promise.” He makes a point to insist. I hear it in his voice, sincerity. And I believe him, but somehow it just makes it worse. 

I can’t look at him, the shame making me feel ill. So I offer a curt nod while avoiding his gaze, and follow him silently back inside.