Page 156 of You + Me – Against the World

“I’m busy at the moment.”

“It’s important.”

“Alma, can’t it wait? I—”

“No. It really can’t.”

My voice catches slightly, and my father finally looks up from the thick file in front of him. Seeing the anguished look on my face, he takes off his glasses and places them upside down on the eight-inch stack of papers.

“What’s going on?” he asks, massaging the bridge of his nose.

The rare serious conversations I have with my father are invariably about my studies or my future, and he is always the one who initiates them. Usually he talks, I listen, and the only acceptable answers are “yes” and “okay.” Tonight, he seems just as uncomfortable as I am to see me show up in his office. I hover in the doorway, fidgeting with the wooden frame as I wait for him to invite me in. But I don’t know where to go, where to sit, or where to begin.

“You know, if you have a problem, I’m always here to help you, Alma.”

He sinks back into his leather chair and waits for me to open up.

“It’s not me. It’s… Vadim.”

“That’s funny… Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

Any other time, that know-it-all tone would have been enough to make me give up. I would have gone back to whatever I was doing, muttering a quick “forget it” or “whatever.” My father would have asked me to watch my language, and I would have smiled just to cut the conversation short. But I need him more at this exact moment than I have needed him during all the previous ones that make up the last nineteen years. This is where everything is decided: in this austere office, facing this unyielding father who sees sadness as a weakness and other people’s problems as trivial.

“You know, he doesn’t have a father. He’s got no one to help him.”

“His caseworker seemed to me like a very decent man, capable of handling all kinds of situations involving young men like him.”

“Not this time. It’s more serious than that.”

“Alma,” he sighs, joining me at the doorway. “Do you understand now why I tried to keep you away from him? He’s always in some kind of trouble. And it’s always a little more serious each time. I hope you haven’t gotten yourself into hot water again.”

“No, not me. But… he’s in jail.” I blurt this out and immediately look away.

When I tell my father the whole story, he isn’t sure whether to explode or comfort me. At first, he is furious and refuses to believe me. He paces back and forth in his office, crossing and uncrossing his arms. Yet as I continue to fill him in, he softens a little: not out of compassion for Vadim, but simply because he can’t stand to see his daughter suffer.

I’m still just as incapable of hiding my emotions.

“You… love him… You really love him… that much?”

My father is a born speaker, an expert when it comes to grand speeches. Except perhaps when it comes to one specific topic: love.

“He isn’t perfect, but he’s everything to me. You have to get him out of there, Dad.”

“‘Everything’? Aren’t you a little young for that?” His eyebrows shoot up.

“Vadim is everything to me, and I’m willing to do anything for him.” I hold my father’s gaze, trying to transmit to him all my pain, my sincerity, everything I’ve never dared to share with him until now.

“I didn’t know you felt this strongly about each other… But why should I trust him? He has never stopped challenging my authority, flouting the rules we had set.”

“Maybe, but he has never lied. He is the most loyal, most honest, most genuine guy I know. Please, help me!”

“If I do help—and I haven’t yet said that I will—it has to be on the basis that I am one hundred percent certain he is innocent, Alma. It would be to right an injustice, not to protect some petty criminal who doesn’t know how to take responsibility for his actions.”

“I promise you he didn’t do anything. It was Keith who orchestrated it all. Chances are, there are plenty of other teenagers he pretends to save so that he can enjoy manipulating them. He’s the worst kind of asshole there is!”

“Language, Alma!”

“Sorry. But we can’t leave Vadim to rot in jail! I would never forgive myself. And if you do nothing, I’ll never forgive you either.”