Chapter 1
June, 2025
The foot angrily touched the brakes. The pages of the Let Me Cry novel rattled as the book flew across the air and made its way from a dashboard straight onto a parcel shelf.
“MUST YOU DRIVE SO… RIGIDLY, ROSIE?!!!”
“WHAT ARE YOU YAPPING, NATASHA? CAN’T HEAR YA!!!”
“THEN MAYBE TURN DOWN THE FREAKING MUSIC!!!”
The 2000 Honda Civic Ferio, with its sedan body style, has definitely seen better days. But on that scorching summer afternoon, it was ploughing through sunny countryside like a wild horse let loose from the stable. Its roaring engine efficiently scared away farm animals. Tumbling tyres amassed gusts of dirt at every turn. The speakers were blasting at full volume, scattering the lyrics of Linda Jo Rizzo’s “Perfect Love” along the way. But it wasn’t the complete image of the mechanical mayhem. None other than Roseanne Juzynski was behind the wheel, mastering the basics of driving a car.
“There’s no need to be in a hurry. It’s not a race, you know!” Natasha Wierzbicki screamed from the passenger’s seat as the car narrowly missed somebody’s fence.
“It is now! I should’ve been back in the city five minutes ago,” Roseanne exclaimed. Instead of a thick, long braid from last year, she sported a ponytail that swung violently at every turn.
“Hey, hey, hey! I brought you out in the field for some practice. Don’t you dare drive my Honda across the Szwederowo district! You don’t have the licence yet.”
“It’s not your Honda, but your dad’s. Besides, I can do whatever I want cause I’m the driver, babe.”
“Oh shit, watch out for that farmer!”
Some poor old man jumped into the bushes at the sight of the Honda. Roseanne just honked. Natasha, on the other hand, made the sign of the cross and sank her fingernails into the dashboard.
“Relax, we’re miles away from the heaven’s door.” Roseanne smiled while upshifting.
“Easy for you to say.” Natasha held onto the dashboard tightly to maintain balance. “I’m not the one who’s burning the clutch. Why must you hurry anyway?”
“Because I need to see my sister!”
Roseanne’s right hand travelled from the transmission to the cassette deck and turned the volume all the way up. Now it seemed as if Linda Jo Rizzo’s spirit was about to burst out of the engine.
I’m lookin’ for love
I want a perfect love
I’m lookin’ for love
oh, I can’t get enough of perfect love
“MY EARDRUMS ARE BLEEDING!!!” the high-school friend cried at the top of her lungs.
Against the still, evening landscape of birches and plain fields, the Honda looked like a silver bullet jettisoned from a Wunderwaffe cannon. Who could have thought that a military student in her senior high school grade would squeeze so much power out of a daily driver? Unfortunately, the enthralling spectacle of the piston’s linear motion, empowered by the fast beat of Italo Disco, came to a sudden halt.
Out of nowhere, a black cat emerged on the road. Roseanne spotted it in a flash and hit the brakes with all the might in her feet. It was a matter of seconds, but it felt like an eternity. The Honda skidded on the dirt track, narrowly missing the furry bystander. However, the vehicle made a 90-degree turn, and the back of the car collapsed into a ditch.
Roseanne and Natasha remained motionless, looking straight through the windshield until the song finally finished. The engine was dead silent.
“Oh god, my dad is gonna kill me!” Natasha unfastened her seatbelt and jumped out of the car.
Roseanne regained her composure and pulled the handle, getting out gently on her side.
The Honda Civic was thankfully in one piece, and there was no sign of damage to the body, but the entire back was consumed by rye in a drainage channel.
Roseanne stepped down and, within the grassy jungle, she pressed hard against the trunk. “Help me, will you? We can push it out ourselves,” she said.
Natasha stood over the ditch, eyeballing her friend in complete shock. “Are you completely out of your freaking mind?!” she screamed so loud that birds in nearby trees took flight. “This isn’t Maluch, which you can just pick up with your bare hands and carry on driving! We are 100 per cent legitimately and unapologetically in the shit!”
Of course, by referring to Maluch, Natasha meant Fiat 126p; the tiny, rear-engine, four-passenger car, which was arguably one of the most popular vehicles in the Land of Po during the 1980s.
Roseanne kept trying to push the Honda in silence for a few good minutes, but it was a fool’s errand. “Darn it!” she exclaimed and climbed out of the rye bush.
While Natasha was pulling her hair out by the side of the road, Roseanne, on the other hand, tried using her cell phone. “There’s no signal, are you kidding me?!”
The black cat, which made Roseanne stop, walked past her, swishing his tail like a happy camper.
It took Roseanne and Natasha a good half an hour of running through the field back and forth until they found farmers kind enough to pull the Honda out of the ditch with a tractor. Thankfully, the engine was still working, so the girls resumed their journey to Bydgoszcz, but this time Natasha was behind the wheel.
After getting through the flood of red lights, it was already evening. Roseanne observed the stillness of the Brda River that was basking in the after-sunset pinkish glow of the dark sky. The car crossed the Uniwersytecki Bridge and arrived at the entrance to the Kazimierz Wielki Library.
Cho Juzynski was sitting alone on a bench by a bus stop. Despite long, loose hair, she was the spitting image of her sister. They had the same smooth face and dark, brown eyes. Both of them dropped the braids. Roseanne, however, still liked forming tiny fringes over the forehead. It was not until recently that Cho was diagnosed with nearsightedness. As a result, she had to wear spectacles.
Roseanne ran out of the car, extending her arms. “Oh, Cho, my dear sis. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I know I’m an hour late, but I have a good explanation for it. Please don’t be mad at me.”
The sister taxed her from the bench, then gently lowered her head. “It’s been an hour with no word from you. I was ready to catch a bus,” Cho said.
“Yes, I’m sorry. I had an accident in the middle of nowhere, and there was no service. I got here as soon as I could.”
“She’s right, you know,” Natasha called out from the driver’s seat. “She nearly totalled my car.”
“Shut up! It’s not your car, but your dad’s!”
Cho got up in a sluggish manner, massaging her thighs. Her legs went numb from the constant sitting. In between them, there was a large bag filled with books. “I guess there’s no point being sulky,” Cho said. “You need to be careful when you’re in a rush, Rosie.”
Roseanne smiled. Without hesitation, she grabbed the bag of books and put it in the back seat. “I love your… how do you say it? Consideratendness?”
“Well, you could say that, but either ‘thoughtfulness’ or ‘solicitude’ is a better synonym.”
“Your mastery of language never ceases to amaze me.”
Cho tapped her forehead while getting into the car. “Just for the record, I would have gone mental if it were winter and I would be forced to sit like that.”
The screechy, dirt-stained tyres of the Honda finally arrived in the streets of Szwederowo. However, Roseanne and her family were no longer living in a tenement building. Thanks to savings which her parents have been relentlessly putting aside over the years, the family was finally able to leave the grim, post-socialist surroundings of blocks of flats and move into a small bungalow at the edge of the district. There was no backyard, only the front yard, but it was big enough to accommodate a modest vegetable garden, a plot of grass for pastimes or potential barbecues, and a parking space for a truck cabin belonging to Roman Juzynski—Roseanne’s father.
“Thanks for nothing, Juzynski. Because of you, I have to drive to a car wash. Pray to god nothing is damaged inside, or you’re gonna pay,” Natasha spat out from behind the wheel, backing out into the main road. Her black hair was in disarray, so she had to tie it up in a bun.
“Hey, I love you, too, Nat. See you tomorrow!” Roseanne waved at her friend.
As soon as the girls crossed the entrance, Enzo, the loyal German Shepherd, jumped out into the corridor, his paws tapping joyously against the stylish grey tiles.
“Oh, who is Cho’s favourite doggy? Who is Cho’s favourite doggy? I have the cheese balls you like. Can you smell them? You want to eat them in the kitchen? Yes, you do!”
Enzo escorted Cho down the hall to the kitchen in the hopes of getting the snack. Roseanne, on the other hand, turned right from the entrance into the living room. She immediately stopped by the doorway at the sight of what was inside.
Her mother, Liz Juzynski, was fast asleep on the couch. On her chest, there was rising and falling rhythmically a book with the front cover title Success and failure in learning a foreign language.
Tiptoeing around her mom, Roseanne grabbed the book and put it on a bedside table. Then she pulled a blanket up to Liz’s neck. “How was your day, Mom?” Roseanne said affectionately. “Dad won’t be here until tomorrow, but you know that already.”
As Cho was busy in the kitchen making dinner and feeding Enzo, Roseanne went to her room. What a commodity it was—to have a room entirely for herself once again. Throughout last year, Cho and Roseanne had to be boxed together in a small room because there was not enough space in the flat for the two of them. Now Cho had a room in the right back corner of the house, next to the kitchen and bathroom, whereas Roseanne had one in the left.
The majority of her stuff survived the gruelling moving process, including her collection of CDs and a CRT TV, the sides of which were covered in fluorescent My Little Pony stickers. A new addition to her belongings was a small laptop, resting together with coursebooks on the wooden desk.
Wasting no time in the fleeting evening, Roseanne sat down in front of the laptop and lifted its cover. She logged in to her Google account and opened up a document draft she was working on. She located the fragment where she finished correcting the last time and began typing:
As the sun kept getting lower and lower on the horizon, the shadows of our six-year-old bodies grew larger on the pavement. We continued to talk and exchange information about each other. He was the penultimate youngling of the four siblings, which included the poshy brother and three sisters. During vacation, when not being at school, he helped his uncle at a grocery store, which was adjacent to their detached house.
All of a sudden, he said to me with a tone of genuine concern mixed with a hint of subversion, “You’re such a life of the party, but I can bet you wouldn’t send me a postcard.”
I immediately responded that I would. “It’s a promise, and if you want a postcard, then you will get one.”
“Okay—” he said and grabbed me by hand, pulling me into his family’s dwelling. The one-storey homestead looked unimpressive from the outside, but I must say it was as busy as Heathrow Airport.
As we were making our way through numerous corridors and tiny staircases, he explained to me that apart from the parents and siblings, his uncle and aunt, together with their children, were living under the same roof. On top of that, they occasionally used to take in a bunch of tourists for a small charge.
When we finally cut through the jungle of tight corners blocked by human obstacles of his family members, we finally arrived at his room.
The room in question left a lot to be desired. My tiny personal space back home was always clean and neatly organised, but his looked as if it got hit by a hurricane. Piles of magazines and books just lay in the middle of the floor. He barely touched a cat porcelain figure on a desk, and a stack of VHS tapes immediately fell apart like a house of cards. After grappling with a notebook that got stuck in the ruckus, he ultimately gave up and tore a page out of a calendar.
“There you go,” he said and handed me the scribbled page with his address. “I hope you’ll keep your word.”
“I always keep it. I’m an old-fashioned lady.”
He chuckled. “Your whole face screams you’re old-fashioned! You seem more old-fashioned than my grandma!”
Needless to say, I bid my farewell and returned to my hometown the next day. It is difficult for me to explain this, but I felt genuinely happy that for the first time I made an acquaintance outside of school, on the spur of spontaneous coincidence.
A week later, I sent him the promised postcard. My memory fails me, so I can’t recall what I wrote exactly, but it was some kind of stupid joke written with my bad handwriting.
I put the card into the rusty post box next to my primary school and went off for classes.
He did not respond.
“Dinner’s ready!” Cho shouted from the kitchen.
“Oh, shit!” Roseanne typed in the last sentence and pressed “print” in the browser.
