Boy on the Bridge by Natalie Standiford

Author:Natalie Standiford [Standiford, Natalie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2013-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

A beam of sunlight lasered through a crack in the curtains. Alyosha kissed the spot where the light landed on Laura’s cheek. “Happy Day-After-Women’s-Day,” he said.

He got up to open the curtain, and the room flooded with sun. She smiled and stretched. “I’m going to be so late for class.” She wished she could stay there forever, nestled in that small apartment with Alyosha.

He got back under the covers with her. “Don’t go.”

“I have to. They take attendance. Anyway, don’t you have to work?”

“Yes, but I move from one theater to the next, and no one is ever sure where I’m supposed to be at what time,” he said. “And no one really cares, either. So I can pretty much do as I please. And what would please me right now is to make you breakfast.”

He made tea and toast with gooseberry jam. He put the jam on his toast and in his tea, instead of sugar. “Try it, it’s good.”

She dipped a spoonful of jam into her tea and drank it. It immediately became a sweet berry tea, the most delicious tea she’d ever tasted.

“Oh! I forgot to give you your Women’s Day gift yesterday.” He went into the other room and returned with a small package wrapped in coarse gray paper. He’d decorated the paper with flowers drawn in blue pencil.

“You didn’t have to do that.” She touched the flowers.

“You might not like it. Open it.”

Laura opened the package. Inside was a matryoshka, one of those nesting dolls that could be found in any Berioska Shop or souvenir stand. But this doll was not the usual smiling babushka in a head scarf. It was a close likeness of Laura. Laura as a matryoshka doll. Alyosha had painted her onto the doll, from her straight brown hair to her sheepskin coat and heavy rubber boots. Every detail was exactly right.

Laura opened her mouth. But she couldn’t speak.

“There’s more,” Alyosha said. “Look inside.”

She pulled off the top of the Laura doll. Nestled inside was a smaller doll, a little guy with brown eyes, brown hair, and a familiar blue parka that didn’t look warm enough for winter. She gasped. It was Alyosha.

Alyosha bounced on his toes and rubbed his hands together. “Keep going…”

She pulled off the top of the Alyosha doll and there, resting at the bottom, were two keys on a Fiat keychain.

“What is this?”

“Keys to my apartment. So you can come over anytime. And if I’m at work or out shopping, you can just wait for me to come home.”

She was stunned into silence. She didn’t know what to say.

She tried to imagine Josh knowing her face and clothes so well he could paint a perfect likeness of her onto a doll from memory. She tried to imagine him giving her the keys to his apartment, telling her to come over anytime.

All she could see were his eyes like slits, smoking a joint, not meeting her gaze.

“You trust me with the keys to your apartment?”

He laughed. “Are you

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