If We Exist

23.

My aunt had found me there, watching as his head lulled back in euphoria. Her approaching steps set off the sensors. My aunt, like my father, had a no-nonsense voice which made her inquiries sound like militant commands.

- What's the matter?

Either her voice or the double door pulling back, or equal parts of the two, alerted the men. Their attention shifted over to us. I froze. Swirling snowflakes landed and thawed on my flaming cheeks.

- Did you get your gum? The echoes of her kitten heels against the floor were a welcomed distraction from the embarrassment of being found out.

I turned to her and asked, - What's that thing? I hadn't pointed at them, hadn't even indicted towards them, but my aunt—in that adult way—seemed to instantly know who and what I was referring to. Her face tightened. The lines around her mouth multiplied as she pursed her lips.

- That yellow stuff in the bottle, I clarified. I realised it was the wrong thing to have asked when she swerved towards me. Her face was stricken; etched in wide-eyed terror. She seized me by the upper arm and dragged me out the door. I stumbled forward, trying my best to keep up with her long strides. Our feet plowed through the snow. After some pushing and maneuvering, she had me properly covered with her frame, out of the men's sight.

- Don't look back at those s'kier, she chided when I had, out of morbid curiosity, tried to sneak one last glance at them. With a quick pull of my arm, she had me facing straight ahead, at the white hills awaiting our ascent.

- They're the children of folks God has forsaken. S'ka is s'ka born.

Like the snowflakes whose fates were to settle on top of the piling mounds of snow, so too my aunt's words settled in my subconscious. They sedimented like dirt in clear liquid, only to be shaken and shoved to the front of my mind at the sight of Haroon.

We met him downstairs, standing beside Krié next to the under stair cupboard. I was in knots over being confined in the same space as his younger brother that the first seconds of seeing him, I saw Millin in his stead. Even though knowing, in the back of my mind, that Millin had never been that rail-thin. From the bird's-eye view of descending the stairs, their similarities were uncanny. Haroon was the same height as his brother and had the same short haircut.

In the end, what told them apart was their cadence. Unlike his brother, who had an assertive voice, Haroon spoke in a choppy, joking manner, as if everything he said could be interpreted as a double entendre. That day his voice had been filled with mucus, making his already slurred speech barely intelligible. I should have taken that as my first warning, but I was swept by a shower of relief at having been spared a confrontation with his brother.

- Konstantin! Krié called, his arms heavenward in surprise when we approached them. I felt my body tense. I was more conscious of the other set of eyes which turned to me than I was of Krié's.

Haroon Ibranov was smiling but his eyes were vacant. He said something that got drowned out in the boom of Krié's voice. I was too caught off guard to catch what had been said. Instead, I latched on to Yuri's father's mood and coaxed a smile that was at odds with the feelings that coursed through me.

I wasn't affiliated with the elder Ibranov in any way, but I had seen and heard enough of him to piece together an image of who he used to be. Being five years older than Millin, he predated him as a known troublemaker in Dronesk. Everyone who knew him held him with great reverence—especially those of us from the same middle school. He had paved the way for so many things that were popular when we were growing up. Everything from being the first to play ball with football shoes, to popularising imported walkmans and burning foreign music to CDs. He used to go around town telling everyone he had copies of songs which he swore hadn't been released yet. He claimed to know a person in Rujga who could get his hands on virtually anything you wanted.