Karinka was the daughter of a neighbor downstairs and a real punishment for 15-year-old Slavik. This skinny black-eyed girl was often brought to them in the evenings.
Aunt Galya raised her daughter alone: barely made ends meet, worked as a nurse on shifts, ran to give shots to pensioners, grabbed any opportunity to get money.
I also tried to arrange my personal life ─ all by myself. There was one decent one, it turned out to be married.
A neighbor always appeared on the doorstep suddenly, turning her eyes away, whispering hotly:
"Faithfulness, for a couple of hours, I'll have to tell you, it's too late for me, as she is alone?"
Karinka stood next to her, puffed up, sadly lowering her head.
Mom sighed but still agreed to take the girl so she wouldn't sit in the dark, in an empty apartment. Dad fought later, of course.
Slavik had to pay for his mother's kindness because it was to him that an uninvited guest was sent to see "some cartoons". Karinka sat in the corner of the sofa, obediently looking not the most harmless militants, silent, kept his hands on his knees, the more pissed off.
Once a week Galya's aunt gave him a crumpled hundred rubles and asked him to take the newly baked first-grader at least until the turn, but still, they go to one school.
That day Karinka shone like a shiny samovar, even uttered a few words on the way: she said they had a holiday today, and she would read a poem by Snowflake. Slavik smiled: in an unguarded helmet, this fool looked more like a cosmonaut's microbe.
After the first lesson, a flock of schoolchildren reached out to the dining room for breakfast. The slave was going to take a cheese sandwich by habit. And the hell he did.
The little girl in her corner was particularly excited. The guys surrounded Karinka in an elegant dress. Someone was laughing, pointing fingers, and trying to hold out a napkin. The bench came a little closer. It was worse than that - the whole festive outfit was covered in fruit kefir.
The girl couldn't move with horror. She cried silently.
Unexpectedly, the excited Igor jumped up to him:
"Slava, run! Lerka there decides whether to have a party" ─ the voice sounded from somewhere far away ─ "come on, she asked you to come! Then it will be too late!"
Lera... Just talk to her ─ every guy's dream. And here he wants to invite her to his house, I think. He took a step to the exit. After all, it's not his problem. Let Aunt Gala make calls, clean the dress and whatever.
In his heart Slavik understood that no one would be engaged in Karinka, they would be pushed to the far corner, and that was all. And she would get back together again, she couldn't see it, couldn't hear it, she got used to it.
He sighed, just like his mother, and went to the table.
"Irina Mikhailovna, what time is your matinee?"
"Oh, Glory in an hour and a half. Well, look, I gave my words to a man, I was hoping... How can I make it out like this?"
She was shaking a little. She was standing there all dirty and pale like she was throwing up. She could barely pull an empty glass out of her hands.
"Let me take her home, maybe change her clothes."
"I'll be grateful for a century of gratitude, run, I'll agree with Elena Petrovna."
It turned out that there is no other festive dress. Slavik remembered all the words he knew: he washed the fat divorces, dried them with a hairdryer, smoothed out the pink folds with an iron. The skinny Karinka in her t-shirt and pantyhose was hustling nearby. Running backward, he was squeezing a small handle in his palm in a blown mitten.
He never talked to Lera that day, and he scored a goal in his class.
Karinka dashingly thwarted her poem. And when their class passed by, suddenly she came out of action, rushed to it, pinned down and fell out:
Glory, if it wasn't for you, I would have died today...
What a fool...)))