Bitches, seven to one. That’s not fair.
How you tore that ring off her brow. You the man.
No worries, they won’t touch you again.
YANA. And so we’re all on adrenalin in that flat. My whole body hurts, even laughing hurts, but I can’t stop. And we shout…
YANA and LADS. I said, put your mouth on the curb!
YANA. Like American History X. And for the first time in a long while I feel so good and so content.
MAYA. There’s a song that goes “I wanna live so much I could die!” That’s how it was.
YANA. And then the lads go…
LADS. You drop by sometime, if you like.
YANA. And Ilya winks at me. And so I start to drop by.
7.
MAYA. The lads would meet in different flats. Someone would message Yana on VK2. Time, address, entrance code. They had a common chat in VK that Yana was not part of. But they’d meet once a week and Yana was hoping they were asking her to join all their meetups. She got pretty familiar with soccer. Was proud that she was maybe the only one among her girlfriends who really knew what offside meant and that The Hand of God was about Maradona and now what do you think? Yana liked how the lads would talk over each other explaining to the others, and to her too, why the fresh transfer to Real or Barcelona was a win. She would even ask them to repeat things she’d already known, on purpose…
YANA. Wait what? How many mils you say they paid for him?
MAYA. The lads laughed patronizingly, but repeated the stuff for Yana with pleasure.
YANA. I called them my boyfriends. Jokingly. Turns out, I had many boyfriends, about fifteen in the gang. They called all the girls “whores”, but I at all times was Yana, or “mate”.
MAYA. Yana felt grateful and tried not to think about what could be happening in her absence. Must be some lads’ beef and discussions. At first, the lads were cautious, throwing glances at each other, and almost never cursing. Then Ilya once said casually.
ILYA. Lads get nervous, whenever there’s a girl nearby they start acting like jerks.
YANA. I won’t freak out. I promise.
ILYA. That’s what I thought.
YANA. I’ve talked with Max. We’re just friends. I’m single.
ILYA. You’re with us. All good.
2VK is a popular in post-Soviet countries social media network.