The Twelfth Grade

The start of the school year is getting closer. Summer holidays are in their agony. My frantic attempts to both rest a little more and stock up for school, along with the ever-present dacha with its timely harvest, turn my last days at home into a real nightmare. Mom and Dad are displeased. And if in previous years I was mostly driven out of the house by the desire to meet friends, now I’m ready to run away from under my parents’ roof simply because home has already gotten on my nerves.

And those are my last school holidays! What I managed to do over the summer: alone and in noble solitude, I swam in the lake; reread a pile of books, and some of them were quite interesting; made several trips to the wonderful towns of the Moscow region—though not for sightseeing and educational purposes, just for the sake of banal gatherings of school friends… In this way I spend every summer. This season’s novelty, however, was—taraa-taraam, tam-tam!; my first job ever!; turу-turум, tum-tum!; my very first paycheck!; tiri-tirim, tim-tim!; and the gold-plated earrings I bought for that occasion!