THIRTEEN

–

As we are nearing the apartment that Nico and Mikey chose for us, Lex pauses in the hallway abruptly, and I bump into him before I can stop. I open my mouth to question him, but he has a finger to his mask immediately, and I instead hold my breath and listen. There’s chatting coming from the room, but not Ukrainian as Nico and Mikey always talk to each other. English, and voices we don’t recognize.

Lex pushed me into a different apartment, immediately lifting my hood over my head as we go. “Where’s your mask?” He whispers, urgency in the tone.

I dig for it and put it on obediently, then let him usher me into the corner of the room adjacent to the entrance. “Who’s there?”

“I don’t know.” He quiets to listen again, the muffled voices barely audible through the wall between us and the apartment we’d settled in. There are two unknown voices, thick with accents even I was familiar with. Lex confirms. “Russian.”

“Stalkers?” I whisper back, and he nods. 

“Come on. You have four bags, where’s your friends? We want to meet them!”

Mikey responds, “Taking a shit in the forest. They take long shits.”

“The camping food does that, huh?” The Russians laugh, but Nico and Mikey’s chuckles are missing.

“Stay here. Don’t move.” Lex directs finally, removing his hands from my arms and exiting the room. I instantly press my ear to the wall to listen.

Lex knocks on the threshold to announce his return, and the Russians loudly greet him, like a friend. Lex does not return the welcome. 

“It is a special treat to run into friends. It is our last night. Have you just arrived?”

“We’re leaving tomorrow also.” Lex answers, clearly taking the lead now.

“You have four bags, where is your friend?”

“Taking a shit in the woods.” Lex reiterates Mikey’s excuse to validate it. The Russians chuckle. 

“You’re not lying to us now, friends?”

There’s a pause, and I imagine Lex shrugging. “Maybe he’s going through your gear. Like you intended to do with ours, da?”

Another round of laughter. “Come now, friend. We are all here for same reason. No need for hostility.”

“You should check that your bags are still where you left them. Not everyone in Chernobyl is as friendly as you or I.” His tone is so intentional, like he’s had to make this statement before. A warning, from a scrapper.

The Russians don’t laugh this time. Instead, I hear their boots and they shift out of the room. “OK. We will be ghosts by morning, friends. As long as our gear is still where we left it. Do svidaniya.” 

Their steps pass my doorway and I flatten myself to the wall, noticing that I’m trembling. I focus on my breath and heart, taking even, shallow inhales to try and calm myself, and listen to their boots as they pass, down the stairs and out the building. 

I hug the wall while moving over to the window, and peer around the edge of it to see them head into the forest, towards a different building. I tuck away the information for later reference, so we can avoid running into them again.

“I told you not to move.” I jump at Lex’s scold.

“Sorry. I had to see them leave.”

He ignores my excuse and beckons me to follow, so I do. Nico and Mikey are already finishing up dinner when we enter the apartment again. 

“Good sunset?” Mikey inquires, and I nod.

“Beautiful.”

“They usually are.”

Lex tsks his tongue against his teeth, annoyed with the small talk. “We’re not staying here.”

“You scared them well enough. They won’t come back.” Mikey brushes off Lex’s concern. Still sensing the apprehension in the room, he adds, “We’ll barricade the door.”

“I’m not staying here,” Lex repeats, then crosses the room and grabs his bag. “I’ll be on the roof.”

He doesn’t wait for anyone else. I linger, undecided.

Mikey encourages me to sit with another reassurance. “They won’t be back. Eat. You need it.”

I did, I know because when he says the word my stomach pangs with agreement. But I’m still trembling a little and can’t help but consider following after Lex. 

Nico decides to chime in, after staying quiet since the Russians. “We keep you safe. Eat.”

I nod, and sit, then start to unload my bag for dinner. 

Mikey tries to calm my nerves, when he notices my shaky hands as I set up my burner. “Lex always has an excuse not to sleep in the room. He’s claustrophobic, I think.”

Nico giggles, and I manage a smile.

“I might be a bit, also.” I admit. Stirring the last of my water into a dinner packet, I decide to keep my thoughts busy with further small talk. “Where does he sleep, then?”

“Under the stars,” Mikey answers whimsically, as he lays back onto this rucksack. “Like a fucking animal.”

Or a lost boy. I can’t help but smirk. 

Nico adds some teasing. “Maybe one day he will roll over in sleep and fall.”

I hum, then quote him facetiously. “Lex doesn’t fall.” 

“Is that what he said?” Mikey snorts. “Fucking liar.”

I appreciate him humanizing Lex for me. Maybe he could tell, even after our unexpected visitors, that the conversation on the roof had ended sourly. I’d never been great at hiding my emotions, and even though I didn’t really have a word for how I felt, I could tell I was wearing it on my face.

They let me finish my meal, before Mikey suggests trying to get some sleep. If we wanted to make the most of our time, we would have to avoid security patrols, and the earlier we headed out, the better. The boys start moving some deteriorating furniture – a dresser and wire bedframe – to block the entrance of the room as I pack away my dinner supplies and instead set up my sleeping mat and bag. They leave a small gap, large enough for either myself or Mikey to fit through if necessary, but otherwise fully blocking the entrance. Then, we tuck in to try and get some sleep.

The exhaustion isn’t enough to help me drift off this time though. My mind races with the close calls we’d had that day, and the anxiety is too much to allow myself to even close my eyes. I feel like a caged animal in this room, despite the open windows tunneling a gentle draft. If the Russians decided to come back, or worse, if security stumbled upon us, maybe a barricade would keep them out, but it also left the three of us without an escape. And then what would Lex do, alone? I imagined he would be able to take care of himself but, I didn’t like even considering being the reason someone was left alone here. I also preferred the idea of flight over fight, especially since it worked for us previously. 

I wait until I can hear both Mikey and Nico are fully asleep, before I roll up my sleeping bag quietly and carefully slip out of the room. It’s pitch black in the hallway of the building now, but I don’t dare use a flashlight, so I follow closely along the wall, careful to watch my steps, until I get to the end of the hall where I know the ladder to the roof is. 

I’m sure the sound of the hatch opening would announce my presence, but Lex doesn’t acknowledge me until I’m struggling to pull myself up onto the higher roof we’d watched the sunset from. He doesn’t help, instead just watches me until I manage to get my leg up and haul myself up finally, left panting from the effort. I’m not sure I’ve ever done a pull-up before, and my arms ache in confirmation. I hope I didn’t pull anything.

Earning his approval, he finally speaks through the darkness. “We’ll have to get you some gloves.”

“And maybe a few weeks in the gym,” I add through my exhaustion. I hear him chuckle, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, with the moon’s face almost full, I can see his silhouette, laying back down to face the sky. 

“We’ll take you to the pool house tomorrow and you can get some laps in.” I can assume the pool he’s referring to is likely no place for a swim, based on the humor in his tone. I take this as a success though; despite the night we’ve had, he was joking, and it put me at ease. 

Once I’ve caught my breath, I roll out my sleeping bag next to him, leaving some space between us but making sure I had enough room on the other side as well, just in case I rolled in my sleep; Nico had put a worm of anxiety in my head with his prior joke. When I’m settled, the sensation of being so high up isn’t as bad anymore though. In fact, my previous sensation of being caged has dissipated now that I can smell the trees and see the sky. 

My father didn’t like tents much either. They protected from the elements, but also kept you blind. And they were a pain to set up and put away, they took a lot of time, and he hated wasted time. We had hammock sleeping bags we would use, instead. The hard concrete roof wasn’t quite as comfortable as a hammock, but cocooned inside my sleeping bag, being able to see the stars, it felt a lot like being out in the forest with him. 

When I release a settled sigh, Lex pries, “couldn’t sleep?”

“I felt trapped in there.”

“Yeah. I can’t sleep with their snoring either.”

I laugh despite myself, and I notice him turn his head to watch me. I shift to my side to face him also, and after another second of silence, I have to ask. “Why are you out here, really?”

He lets my question sit for a long time. Until I’m sure he’s not going to answer. But he does. “My foster ward was little more than a delinquent jail. Just a bunch of kids like me, with issues like me, and no help, like me. It wasn’t a nice place to be, most of the time. But, there was this huge oak tree on the property, probably a century old or something; I got into a fight with some older boys and I escaped through a third story window, jumped across to one of the branches. And they didn’t follow. I guess I learned that the places other people aren’t willing to go, can often be the safest.”

I don’t say anything for a while, stewing instead in the glimpse of his life he’s given me, a piece of who he is, and how he’s gotten here. I don’t know what to say, really. The considerations bounce around in my head for a long time before anything solid finds its way to my lips, and by the time I speak, it’s clear my words aren’t in response to his story, but rather, just something that needs saying.

“I trust you too, Lex.” 

I watch him look at me for a long moment, before turning back to the sky and giving me a soft hum. I desperately wonder what expression he’s making, but I can’t see through the darkness.

“Good. Climb with me tomorrow, then,” he says finally, his tone shifting ever so slightly to a dare. He softens the demand though, after letting me sit with it for a moment. “I won’t let you fall.”

I swallow down the knot in my throat and let out an unsteady exhale as I turn to the sky as well. The moon’s beautiful, pale face looks so big from up here, and I wonder, could I know her better from even higher up?

“OK.” I agree, finally. 

He hums again, and this time it’s satisfied. “Good.”