The Scent of Pine Read Online Free Page B

glass down when Yanina walked in, but she didn’t know what to do with the big piece of crust left from her sandwich. She couldn’t finish it—everybody else had stopped eating, and she didn’t want to leave it on a table—she didn’t want anybody, especially Yanina, to think that she was so spoiled that she didn’t eat crust. So she just sat there with the piece of crust clutched in her hand.
    Then Yanina started to talk. Her face was meaty and red—her cheeks, her chin, her nose, her forehead, even her ears. Her thin yellow eyebrows looked indecent and scary against all that red, which became deeper and deeper as she talked. Lena decided that it would be safer to stare at the floor. Yanina’s voice was low and sharp, and she seemed to hammer her sentences right into their heads.
    “If the property of a unit gets stolen or lost—you’re responsible. If a kid gets sick with food poisoning—you’re responsible. If a kid gets lost in the woods—you’re responsible. If a kid from our unit falls and breaks his neck—you’re responsible. If something bad did happen, in the best-case scenario, your college would be notified and you would have a bad record forever, and in the worst-case scenario you would go to prison.
    “By the way, are you aware of the dangers of masturbation?”
    In 1989, perestroika, and the sexual revolution, had yet to reach summer camps and pedagogical colleges.
    Yanina proceeded to give the girls a lecture on how hormones were our worst enemies, and how all sexual evil started with hands under the blankets and gradually led to rape and pregnancies, and how almost every camp had some incidents every year. And how it was the counselors’ responsibility if anything like that happened here.
    The schedule and the long list of our specific tasks followed—everybody was too stunned and intimidated to listen properly—and then Yanina announced that each unit would be assigned to two counselors, and they could choose the age of the children.
    “We’ll take the littlest! The littlest!” Inka yelled before Yanina even finished her sentence. The girl who sat next to Lena whispered to her that “the littlest” were the most work, but it was too late.
    After Yanina assigned the rest of the units and dismissed the girls, one of the women, either Zhenya or Natasha, asked if Major Vedeneev was going to greet the girls, but Yanina waved her hand. “He will greet the girls some other time,” she said.
    Lena’s head was spinning as the girls walked out of the room one by one, clutching the typed papers with the daily schedule and the kids’ names. She felt as if she was about to faint. She was sure that every single horrible thing that Yanina mentioned was bound to happen, and that she and Inka would be severely punished. She turned to Inka, hoping that she’d reassure her and maybe even mock her for her fears, but Inka looked just as scared. After the meeting they went into their unit, found the tiny room designated for counselors, and started to unpack. Lena felt uneasy taking her clothes out in front of Inka, because she was afraid that they would somehow give away the fact that she was a virgin. She decided to leave them in the suitcase, and pushed the suitcase under her bed. Inka looked at her and shrugged. She must have thought that Lena was a slob. But being considered a slob was so much better than being considered a virgin. Inka proceeded to hang some of her clothes on hangers and put others in drawers. Her clothes looked very serious and adult-like. Blouses. Skirts. Sundress. More blouses. White panties. Flowery panties. Whoa! Huge bra! Bigger than Lena’s mother’s. She then filled her nightstand with all kinds of bottles, and jars, and containers of hair spray and deodorant, and huge curlers and hairbrushes. All the jars were closed, but a sweet chemical smell filled the room. Inka plopped onto her bed, stretched, and scratched one foot with the other.

T HREE
    T he conference