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self-conscious mirror, its own stilted paraphrase on a dry page? It may be only an inevitable symptom of maturity, this politely disappointing sense of distance, this perception of the world at second hand, through words alone—but if so, I do not wish to grow up.
    Forcefully I stand up, brush the crumbs off my dress.
    “Time to bring out the telescope,” I say. “It’s grown dark enough.”
    The telescope is a small handheld model my father gave me on my fourteenth birthday; it remains my most treasured possession. I unscrew its plastic cap, gently rub the lens with a square of cloth, and lift it to my eye. The black fringe of leaves and the indistinct celestial shimmer beyond slide across my vision in a swift blur. As I lean over the balcony railing, training the telescope on this or that quadrant of the sky, Olga rattles off the names of stars and constellations.
    “Vega, Deneb, Altair,” she pronounces as she sketches the Summer Triangle with deft movements of her wrist, one, two, three. “But to be honest, I don’t like looking at the sky, it makes me feel small. I imagine myself as a tiny dot in a sprawling landscape of a monstrous country on a spinning globe floating like a minuscule speck in a freezing ocean of stars . . . Brrr!”
    She guides the telescope down, lower, lower, until it is level with the road; then she laughs. “Hey, look, they’re having a party over on that terrace. You know, this thing is more powerful than I thought. See your boy pouring wine into three, no, four glasses?”
    I attempt to shift the telescope away. “He is not my boy.”
    “Fine, your neighbor, then, if you prefer, Alesha, Serezha, whatever his name is, I thought you liked him.”
    “It’s Tolya, as you well know. And I don’t like him, I hardly know him. We just went for a walk one time last summer, that’s all.”
    I do my best to appear nonchalant, but, as so often, I am plunged into remembering that August darkness striped with denser shadows of lampposts, and the heaps of wild roses hanging over thefences on both sides of the village dirt road, their sun-warmed smells drifting across our path like shy sweet ghosts, and our steps, in perfect, effortless harmony, and our awkward absence of words, for what one talked about with older boys—or any boys—I had no idea. As we turned into our street, his hand found mine, and its feel was big, dry, and nice, not in the least like those sweaty adolescent hands I imagined when overhearing the popular girls whisper to one another in the school hallways. But already we were approaching my gate, and there, in the cone of scanty light, under the soundless whirlwind of frantic moths, the stocky shadow of my father paced the road, three steps to the left, three steps to the right, waiting for me, though it was not yet ten o’clock, though I had never been late before. Anatoly’s hand let go of mine, and the next day the summer ended without warning, for my mother had fallen ill and we had to leave for the city; and I did not know Anatoly’s phone number or, indeed, his last name.
    “I know!” Olga announces brightly. “Let’s go over there.”
    I am shocked by the idea. “No, no, we shouldn’t. We aren’t invited.”
    “That doesn’t matter, they’ll be glad to have us, you’ll see.”
    “No, no, I’d rather stay here. But—you can go if you want to.”
    And as I say it, I already feel a chill of dawning excitement at the thought that she is about to talk me into doing something so wild, so unexpected.
    “Really? You wouldn’t mind?” She sets the telescope down at once and begins to hunt for the powder compact borrowed from my mother, then, coming upon it, inspects her lips for stray crumbs. “I’ll be back soon, I promise. You’re sure you don’t mind?”
    Snapping the compact shut, she glances back at me.
    “I don’t mind,” I say after the briefest of moments. “I’m . . . tired anyway.”
    As her steps fade away into nothing on the