Read Online Kursed by Lindsay Smith - Free Book Online

more—his cheeks fleshy and full, face softened by age, standing before a sun-dappled classroom. “You’ll find him again.”
    *   *   *
    Olga claims the narrow bed against one wall of the cabin, while Stokowski bundles up on the couch. Andrei and I make pallets on the floor with the rest of the blankets we find, and roll our jackets up to put under our heads. I burrow deep into the blankets, but there’s a chill in my bones that refuses to thaw. When I try to fall asleep, the futures loom out at me. Berlin, bombed into nothingness, chimneys poking from shattered wreckage like accusing fingers, and bodies scattered like matches. Olga screaming as flames lick at a doorframe. And everywhere—a scratchy, prickly sound, scrubbing at the world like bleach to eat it away.
    I open my eyes and roll over, once again, to my other side. Andrei is staring at me—I can see the dull moonlight glinting off his eyes. I start to turn away, but there’s something so familiar in the way he’s watching me. Not cold, not calculating, not the look of a man who has a use for me—whether as a scientist or a warm body or anything else. Like a friend, waiting for me to tell him to go or stay.
    â€œCan’t sleep,” I whisper, low enough that only he should be able to hear. Not that Olga’s snores leave much doubt as to how she’s faring.
    Andrei nods, but is quiet for a while. He looks more vulnerable without his glasses, or maybe it’s the way he has of softening, of letting the camouflage drop. I still can’t put my finger on what the real difference is—between the moments when he’s dazzling, commanding, confident Andrei and when he fades into the background. “Step outside?” he asks.
    I start to nod, then hesitate. “Is it safe?”
    He closes his eyes, then nods and rises slowly, silently, to his feet.
    We exit the cabin and circle around to a windowless wall, then settle onto the stoop. The cold, wet air pricks at my flesh. The blouse I’ve been wearing since we reached Mittelbau-Dora feels clammy against me, like a bathing suit that refuses to dry out, but unless we get lucky, even luckier than we did in our escape, I’ll be wearing it for far longer. Better it than the uniform Andrei’s wearing. Even without the hat, with the jacket peeled away, he has no choice but to present himself as much of anything besides an officer of the SS. I curl my arms around my chest and hunch into a tight ball on the stoop.
    â€œAll right,” Andrei says, “let’s hear it.”
    I raise one eyebrow. “Hear what?”
    â€œWhatever caused that … that look on your face, back there. Bozhe moi , how it hurt to see you look so sad.” He smiles, lopsided. “What can I do to ensure you never look that way again?”
    I shake my head. “It was nothing. Just … thinking about the past. Regrets.” The dimple in his cheek calls to me; maybe it’s just exhaustion, but I find myself reaching for it, brushing my fingertips against it. “What about you? What’s keeping you awake tonight?”
    His smile fades, and the shift happens. “Speaking about loss,” he says.
    I look down at my hands. “I’m sorry. If you’d rather not say—”
    â€œIt was my mother. My father. My sister.” Andrei’s voice is right beside me, but his expression looks thousands of miles away. “I’d been away at university for not even a year when they were deported.”
    â€œFrom Georgia?” I ask.
    He nods. “Stalin’s work. The Georgian people are unclean, don’t you know. Bourgeois. Soft from our sunny life by the sea.”
    â€œBut Stalin himself comes from Georgia.”
    â€œThe exception to the rule.” Andrei laughs, dry and brittle. “No one sent me a letter, any sort of proclamation or explanation as to where they’d gone or why, but