veil | W. Axl Rose

Ⅰ

20.05.1985

How weird was that spring of '85, a weird, sultry spring that hit like a fever just before the crash. Gorbachev took power, and suddenly everyone had something to say, even if none of them really knew what the hell they were talking about. Anastasiya included. She didn't know why she was still in Russia, or what for.

Leningrad was bad enough. By nine in the morning, whatever fake, dewy essence that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. The streets turned into pale rivers of heat, shimmering with mirage-gray light. Car hoods sizzled and glittered, and the dry, tindery dust blew into her eyes and down her throat. Leningrad didn't bloom in spring; it smoldered.

And through all that haze, all that monotony, one name buzzed through the air like a fly you couldn't swat—Gorbachev—till she couldn't get him out of her mind. And that's all there was to read about in the papers—goggle-eyed headlines staring up at her on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every metro station. It was like someone had found a new face to worship and jammed it down everyone's throat.

Lyceum 239 didn't help. That poser private high school over on Kirochnaya Street, where Anastasiya wasted two years of her life, was packed with kids who walked around like they'd been issued diplomatic immunity at birth. If your family had any pretensions of being reputable, they tried to ship you there. And if they didn't, they've probably seen the ads anyway. They advertised in about thousands of magazines, always showing some nerds with 1960s glasses, polyester blazers, all smiley and savvy and hunched over chemistry textbooks. Like as if all you ever did in 239 was meditate over chemistry all the time. Other ads had those cheesy titles—"We believe that by challenging our students every day, we can help them develop the skills and values they need to ensure their future is as bright as they are." What a crock. Truth is, they didn't develop any more skills there than they do at any other school. And she didn't know anybody there who was bright. Maybe two guys. If that many. And they probably came to Lyceum 239 that way.

She knew something was wrong with her that spring, because all she could think about was the upcoming high school graduation and how stupid she'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, extravagant dresses that now hang limp as fish in her closet, and how the prospect of acceptance into UCLA fizzled to nothing outside the opulent façades of marble and plate-glass lining Nevsky Avenue.

She was supposed to be having the time of her life.

She was supposed to be the envy of thousands of high school girls, just like her, scattered across Russia who wanted nothing more than not to be some girl from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain anymore, but to strut through Rodeo Drive, lost in the allure of Western consumerism. And when her picture came out in the magazine—alongside the lucky few, strictly "bright future" types, who'd made it into American universities—dresssed in a white shirt, a skimpy navy skirt, and knee-high socks, standing beside their high school principal as they all held up those pitiful diplomas, little more than props for Soviet propaganda—everybody would think she must have been having a real whirl.

Look what can happen in this country, they would say. A young lady stuck in the USSR for half her life receives an opportunity to study in the US, only to find herself steering Los Angeles as if it were her private chariot.

Only Anastasiya wasn't steering anything, not even herself. The only person remotely interested in her arrival was her half-brother from Los Angeles. He had yet another rock band that hadn't played a show in months and a plan that mostly involved getting high and calling it networking. He once told her that she was a mistress of self-reinvention.  Even though she wasn't really sure what it meant at the time, she came to understand it as the years passed.