By SmashZED
His Strange Name
MAY 2017
The city of Slavyansk, near Rostov-on-Don, Southern Russia
At first, Volya didn't realize he had a date with destiny. He was better at math than everyone else in his orphanage, so he was looking forward to spacing out next to his best mate Toshka all period long. But nope, no dice.
"V-AH-lya Volkov," the loudspeaker's announcement blared. "To the principal's office."
The call had to be extra-loud like this, because Volya's math teacher, a twitchy alcoholic, took to keeping everyone outside his classroom before the bell. This was to save his frayed nerves.
Similar consideration wasn't made for the boys' nerves. Even in the dingy hall, twiddling their thumbs. Even with Volya's off-the-charts hearing, he could barely hear what Toshka was saying over the chatter of their classmates. It was a decent approximation of being confined with ten monkeys, a rooster and a weasel in a sealed barrel.
Before the echo of Volya's screwed-up name died down, heat rushed into his face. Thank God for the mop of curly hair that hung into his eyes and the burned-out halogen lamps in the hall. When he turned red, he burned seriously red. Volya cursed under his breath.
"Sod off," Volya muttered preemptively.
Sniggering broke out on all sides of him, anyway. All conversation ceased, so he could hear Toshka's breathing now. Which wasn't much of a comfort, because it sped up in anticipation of trouble, intensifying to a bit of a whistle at the end of every inhale.
"Valya Volkov," the loudspeaker sputtered through the hiss of static for the second time. "To the principa—"
Volya pounded the wall behind his back with his fist. His name was V-O-lya, with an O, as in a word volya, yes, volya, the word that meant freedom, not Valya with an A.
Volya was an idiotic name, all right, but was a little respect too much to ask for? He had lived in this effing orphanage forever. They should have learned his name by now.
It was all he owned.
"Oh, look, our freak got 'Valentine-d' again," Dimon the Bruiser jeered, then hummed an insipid pop-song. "Hey, Valya-Valya-Valentaaine!"
"Hello to you too, Dickhead," Volya shot back.
"Don't be like that, VAH-lya." The Bruiser's grin was more of a snarl than a smile. Somehow, without moving, he seemed to stretch upward until he loomed.
Thanks to the dim light, Volya didn't get to enjoy the view of the Bruiser's stained teeth, wider than an average snow shovel. The stench of cigarettes and something even fouler, though, assaulted his nose. He wrinkled it, then bared his teeth too.
"Sod off."
"Still here? Gee, when will you clue in that nobody wants you around?" the Bruiser said. His cronies picked up their cue, a good little Greek chorus.
"Nobody wants you here!"
"Get lost!"
"Is he deaf or something?"
The Bruiser stepped down the wall a bit, sticking one of his overgrown legs out to block the way. Seriously, genius? Like the taunts would rattle Volya in the core, and he'd just run away, maybe even in tears, fringing over it? He glared from under his fringe. "Ha!"
"Please, guys, don't fight. It was just a stupid mistake with the name," Toshka piped up.
Thanks for the assist, mate, Volya thought while warmth spread through his chest. Alas, with Toshka stepping in, leaning before the bell rang was out of the question. Toshka had to get inside the classroom first, under whatever protection the old cot could offer.
The Bruiser decided to forgive Toshka's stutter this time and smiled at him. "A totally mistake. Can't ask much of freaks, right?"
Toshka gaped at how his words got twisted, and Volya's fists clenched tighter.
His deadbeat mother penciled in Freedom on his birth certificate and disappeared into the blue, leaving him to deal with the fallout of her lousy life choices. Worse, now Toshka had to deal with it. Hell no!
Volya forced his fingers to relax, folded his arms across his chest and rolled his shoulders back, straightening to his full height. "Pick on someone of your own size, jerk."
The Bruiser matched him sneer for sneer, then ground the sole of his sneaker into the wall, leaving a muddy footprint. "Flattering ourselves, are we?"
Volya's chest heaved. So, okay, maybe he didn't grow as freakishly large as the Bruiser, but he boasted the right combo of wiry and squat. Had the right gleam in his eye. Maybe today was the day to settle the score once and for all.
The loudspeaker, however, wouldn't shut up.
"Valya Volkov. To the principal's office, please."
The bell announcing the next period rang right after that, and the classroom door opened a crack. The teacher stepped out gingerly, as if expecting a pack of wolves waiting for him. His beady eyes squinted at Volya.
"Volkov, do you need the Queen of England's invitation to entice you to attend the office? Because I can arrange that."
In his boozy dreams, but there was this unwritten code among the boys... like, for example, they had to feed the teachers' delusion that humor worked when dealing with difficult adolescents.
"Well, since they've said 'please' this time, I'll go," Volya said, while pushing Toshka closer to the classroom's entrance.
The cowlick on the back of Toshka's head flashed red, then disappeared when he turned to meet Volya's gaze. For a second, Volya forgot everything else. Looking into his mate's eyes was like peering into a cloudless summer sky, dissolving in the pure blue and the boundless joy of it.
"What do they want with you?" Toshka tugged down his sweatshirt, so worn that Volya could barely make out which pop band was on it. Buzzkill, probably, since it was Toshka's absolute favorite for two months running.
"Maybe the principal will give me a sticker for staying out of trouble," Volya winked. "I'd love myself a gold star!"
Toshka gulped and was carried by the press of the other boys into the classroom. It closed with a bang, leaving Volya in the empty hallway. There was nothing for it, but to trek to the principal's office.
Volya walked, dragging his hand along the teal wall. The deserted space echoed—not with Volya's footsteps, because he had an uncanny ability to walk without making a sound—his presence itself echoed off the walls. Or at least, Volya thought it did, though he couldn't say if he sensed it as a shadow, a whisper, a snarl. He'd called it energy, but what the heck sensed energy apart from charlatans and all the other characters by his lousy parents' doors. Volya paused and perked his ears.
He wasn't afraid of what waited inside. If asked, he could have pointed out the fresh cracks spider-webbing the linoleum. It wasn't his first visit to the hall, just visiting the office was familiar to him, like visiting his own outhouse.
"Very, very talented... Of course, we understand that it's impossible to miss out on," the principal said. Her tone was set to eleven, on the groveling scale. It could only mean a major donor visit.
So why call in Volya then? He wasn't an exemplary product of this establishment by any stretch of imagination. What in the actual hell?
His heart stopped beating for a minute.
Could it be that from all the boys here, he was the one to pull the one-in-a-billion ticket of being a lost child of someone filthy rich? Wouldn't that be funny?
No, no, no, that can't be it.
Not after seventeen years.
You're not that stupid, stop it.
Stop it.
An unfamiliar woman took over from the principal, saying something in English. A velvety, baritone responded. Also in English. Volya tried to pick out a sense to it, but English? Not so much. Made sense to him. But English? Not so much.
The unfamiliar woman murmured in Russian, "I'm glad to hear that."
Was she... interpreting? Okay, in this case, whoever the moneybag was, he wasn't family.
Volya rubbed his sweating palms on his jeans, hating the visitor for reducing him to the preschool flutter of hope. He had nearly passed out here!
"Try to do what we can to foster, in Russian. We mean what with the steep need in such difficult circumstances with such gifted boys love of arts, including the band, of course."
While the interpreter did her job, Volya expelled a sigh of relief. If it was about the band, then he was off the hook. The band was Toshka's idea, naturally. He'd joined, and did whatever Toshka asked of him. All he needed to do in the office was to tell them to talk to Toshka and that would be the end of it.
He knocked, then popped his head inside.
"Ah, here he is, our nightingale," the principal exclaimed. She beamed at him. "Come in, Volkov. Come in!"
Volya's jaw hung.
The biggest compliment she had paid his vocal cords to date was saying that he had the lung capacity of the youngest boy in their beds after a sick fit. And wasn't Toshka asking... in a kindergarten's music institute wouldn't he be stuck with singing in a million years.
With a blush still blooming on his cheeks, Volya edged inside.
The office dwarfed the other rooms in the orphanage, but the ambiance was the same. He spotted the time-stained layer of Soviet horror fortified with toilet paper since the war was over. The matching mold took over the ceiling.
The place smelled of dust, cheap detergent, recently cleaned with unusual thoroughness. The glass in the window was so dirty that it practically blinded Volya and expelled a hallucination.
He saw a guy sprawled in the armchair in the middle of the office. And not just any guy.
Liam Anders, the lead singer of Buzzkill.
Volya blinked again, the dancing spots in his vision didn't start to fade. He blinked himself into a stupor so hard that Toshka's buzzkill sweatshirt was absurd. Daydreaming about Toshka's obsession? But he didn't want to add himself to the list.
The phantom refused to melt away.
He blinked.
Come on! If Liam Anders had traveled to Russia for a concert, he would be chilling in Moscow. He wouldn't be hanging out in Volya's hellhole in the middle of nowhere.
"Volya," the principal lifted her desk with a smile of a piranha breathing the dark surface of the Amazon river.
"Yes, Anna Leonidovna?" He took a step backward.
"Volya," said she, pointing at the guy who looked exactly like Liam Anders. "Volya, this is Liam Anders."
And so the delusional dream continued, with Anna Leonidovna's grin.
"I'm sure you've recognized him. He's your generation's idol, after all."
The interpreter murmured in English into Liam's ear.
"Uh-huh," Volya replied. "Sure."
Anna Leonidovna shot him a warning look, like, don't mess it up. But the caring for the education, the fun, the spokesperson for the orphanage's fund created the reputation.
Volya's feet slipped from under him. He was going to hit the floor, to stop.
And ask if he hoped all these names back? To ask if he'd repeat the interpreter could come up with something, because the fund's summon wasn't coming up.
This was Liam effing Anders before him. He wasn't dreaming.
Liam Anders, the idol of millions, in the flesh.
Wait till he told Toshka about it.