much considered my future since we made it to America—I was too busy trying to catch up to the present, the language, the culture. But part of me is desperate to pursue my lifelong dream of mastering genetics, just like my mother.
The other part is terrified of becoming just like my mother.
“I’d love to,” I say, wrestling the scared part of me back.
Cindy hops up. “Perfect. I’ll let Professor Stokowski know. But I think you’ve worked hard enough for today. Go dig through my record collection, if you want. Don’t worry too much about Anna—I promise, we’ll find her soon.”
She promises. I watch Cindy sway away on her heels, all confidence and sunlight. I wonder how she can promise a thing like that—how any of us can. Sergei’s warning weighs on me, threatening to crack and shatter me. If he’s telling the truth, regardless of his motive, then the mole could be any one of my teammates, and trusting the wrong person could mean losing it all.
CHAPTER 9
I AWAKEN WITH A SCREAM, my throat already dry and my nerves leaning eagerly, ready for action, so much so that it’s several seconds before I realize the scream is not my own. I’m already standing, bare feet on springy wood floors. Where am I? I blink away the fuzz of sleep from my vision. A hulking piano to my left; a blanket pooling at my feet. I must’ve fallen asleep in the conservatory. That’s right. Valentin was practicing different jazz riffs for open mic night, and I curled up to listen to him while I puzzled through Sergei’s warning, safely ensconced in our disruptor-shielded Russian enclave in the heart of Georgetown. I must have fallen asleep, and Valya covered me with the blanket.
Another scream. It’s not coming from me. I bolt up the stairs, passing Papa’s room on the second floor (door flung open, empty), swinging around to the next flight, cresting it to the third floor, where Valentin’s and my bedrooms are. Valentin is wedged into the far corner of his bed, a crust of salt along one cheek and his raw, jagged scream collapsing into a whimper under its own weight. I coil around him like a compression blanket. “ Tikho, tikho ,” I urge him in Russian, though I have no idea if he can actually hear me right now. It can take minutes for his nightmares to break and recede.
He curls into my embrace for a moment, then pries back one of my hands, studies it, then drops it. “She’s burning up,” he tells me. “It’s never enough.”
I wince. We’ve lingered at the start of this trail before. None of my usual questions ever succeed in coaxing him down the path, so I stay silent.
“She never meant—” He slurps down air. “She wouldn’t want Boris or anyone else to know—”
Boris, yes; Boris Sorokhin. Valentin’s father. A Communist Party member who once lived along the gilded Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow’s heart, in a sprawling apartment, where he drank high-grade vodka with generals and ministers while little Valya entertained them with his piano wizardry. Past tense, Valya was always very clear on that point, though I don’t know what brought an end to it. The usual reasons, I suppose—maybe he fell out of favor with the party. Maybe he was found to be a traitor or a dissident or a miscreant or just plain irritating, and was sent to the Siberian prison camps, or else a tiled basement with a drain in the floor.
Valya shudders, once, sharp, then goes limp in my arms. Now that the adrenaline is working its way out of my bloodstream, I can hear and sense his shield more clearly, and I feel the moment when it changes from noise to signal: from a shotgun torrent of scrubber-flavored pain to a constant hum, his musical shield threaded along its central note. I let those same melodies course along my skin, but I’m careful to hold my fear and concern and, if I’m being completely honest, irritation inside of me like a held breath. I’m a two-way valve of emotion, and I can’t risk burdening Valya any
The other part is terrified of becoming just like my mother.
“I’d love to,” I say, wrestling the scared part of me back.
Cindy hops up. “Perfect. I’ll let Professor Stokowski know. But I think you’ve worked hard enough for today. Go dig through my record collection, if you want. Don’t worry too much about Anna—I promise, we’ll find her soon.”
She promises. I watch Cindy sway away on her heels, all confidence and sunlight. I wonder how she can promise a thing like that—how any of us can. Sergei’s warning weighs on me, threatening to crack and shatter me. If he’s telling the truth, regardless of his motive, then the mole could be any one of my teammates, and trusting the wrong person could mean losing it all.
CHAPTER 9
I AWAKEN WITH A SCREAM, my throat already dry and my nerves leaning eagerly, ready for action, so much so that it’s several seconds before I realize the scream is not my own. I’m already standing, bare feet on springy wood floors. Where am I? I blink away the fuzz of sleep from my vision. A hulking piano to my left; a blanket pooling at my feet. I must’ve fallen asleep in the conservatory. That’s right. Valentin was practicing different jazz riffs for open mic night, and I curled up to listen to him while I puzzled through Sergei’s warning, safely ensconced in our disruptor-shielded Russian enclave in the heart of Georgetown. I must have fallen asleep, and Valya covered me with the blanket.
Another scream. It’s not coming from me. I bolt up the stairs, passing Papa’s room on the second floor (door flung open, empty), swinging around to the next flight, cresting it to the third floor, where Valentin’s and my bedrooms are. Valentin is wedged into the far corner of his bed, a crust of salt along one cheek and his raw, jagged scream collapsing into a whimper under its own weight. I coil around him like a compression blanket. “ Tikho, tikho ,” I urge him in Russian, though I have no idea if he can actually hear me right now. It can take minutes for his nightmares to break and recede.
He curls into my embrace for a moment, then pries back one of my hands, studies it, then drops it. “She’s burning up,” he tells me. “It’s never enough.”
I wince. We’ve lingered at the start of this trail before. None of my usual questions ever succeed in coaxing him down the path, so I stay silent.
“She never meant—” He slurps down air. “She wouldn’t want Boris or anyone else to know—”
Boris, yes; Boris Sorokhin. Valentin’s father. A Communist Party member who once lived along the gilded Kutuzovsky Prospekt in Moscow’s heart, in a sprawling apartment, where he drank high-grade vodka with generals and ministers while little Valya entertained them with his piano wizardry. Past tense, Valya was always very clear on that point, though I don’t know what brought an end to it. The usual reasons, I suppose—maybe he fell out of favor with the party. Maybe he was found to be a traitor or a dissident or a miscreant or just plain irritating, and was sent to the Siberian prison camps, or else a tiled basement with a drain in the floor.
Valya shudders, once, sharp, then goes limp in my arms. Now that the adrenaline is working its way out of my bloodstream, I can hear and sense his shield more clearly, and I feel the moment when it changes from noise to signal: from a shotgun torrent of scrubber-flavored pain to a constant hum, his musical shield threaded along its central note. I let those same melodies course along my skin, but I’m careful to hold my fear and concern and, if I’m being completely honest, irritation inside of me like a held breath. I’m a two-way valve of emotion, and I can’t risk burdening Valya any
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