The Last Bell.

I just woke up from a dream. I usually don’t see dreams like that. Most of the time, if I do dream, it’s something random. Something weird. Something that never happened. But this one was different. This one wasn’t really a dream. It was more like a memory that came back so clearly it felt alive again.

And that almost never happens to me. It took me back to Posledniy Zvonok or the last bell.

If you didn’t grow up in Russia, you probably won’t fully get what that means.

I heard in America it’s different. You have elementary school, then middle school, then high school. You switch buildings. Switch people. Switch lives every few years.

But in Russia, at least where I grew up, it was different.

We had eleven years together. Eleven.

You don’t just study with people for eleven years. You grow into yourself next to them. Or at least, that’s what you think when you’re young. You think these are your people forever. Your classmates are there for life. You think if someone saw you at eight years old, and then at ten, and then at thirteen, and then at seventeen, that means they’ll always know you.

Back then, I believed that.

I grew up in Tomsk, in one of those parts of the city where old wooden houses stood not too far from gray apartment blocks, and everything somehow looked both dead and alive at the same time. In winter, the snow made everything quieter. In spring, the streets turned into wet slush and dirt and everybody’s shoes were ruined. In summer, the city felt almost soft. Green trees, open windows, cigarette smoke near podyezds, and kids yelling somewhere until late at night.

That was enough for us.

Our whole life fit into a few places.

Home. School. The yard. The kiosk. Somebody’s apartment. The same route over and over again until it felt like it had always existed and always would.

And then one day it didn’t.

That’s what the dream brought back.

The last day.

The day of Posledniy Zvonok. The last day of school. The end of something we have built over eleven years. 25th of May.

I still remember waking up that morning and feeling like something important was happening, but not fully understanding what exactly it was. It snowed that day. It was rare, but I didn’t think much of it. I told myself it was just one of those strange things nature does sometimes. I brushed it off. Later, I would understand it meant something. At that age, you still think life is made of events. You don’t yet understand that sometimes the real thing happening is much quieter than that. Sometimes something ends and nobody even knows how to act normal around it.

We all had to dress properly that day.

The girls wore the same kind of clothes almost every Russian school graduation seemed to have. White tops, black skirts, ribbons in their hair, white socks, nice shoes. Some of them looked like little versions of their mothers. Some looked too grown already. Some still looked like children pretending to be older than they were.

The boys had it easier.

White shirts. Black pants. Black shoes. A tie if your parents cared enough to make you wear one properly. Most of us looked uncomfortable and slightly stupid, which was normal. We were boys. Looking stupid was part of the uniform too.

And one of our jobs that day was to bring flowers. It had to be either roses or gvozdikas.

That was tradition.

Flowers for the girls.

I remember carrying mine like an idiot, trying not to crush them while pretending I didn’t care. Most of us acted like it was embarrassing, but secretly I think we all liked that the day had rules. It made it feel official. Like if everybody followed the same script, maybe nothing would really end.

That morning, when I got to school, everybody was already there.

That alone felt strange.

Usually, people arrived in pieces. One by one. Half-awake. Complaining. Late. Somebody always forgetting something. Somebody always running. Somebody always eating something on the way in.

But not that day.

That day everybody looked like they had actually thought about how they looked before leaving the house.

And that was unsettling.

I saw Pavel first.

Of course I did.

He was standing near the entrance already laughing at somebody, shirt half tucked in, tie crooked, hair a mess like he had fought with a pillow and lost. Pavel was the type of person every class has. The funny one. The one teachers were always tired of. The one who somehow survived school without ever fully participating in it. He almost never did his homework, always had some stupid comment ready, and somehow could make even the quietest person in the room laugh when they were trying not to.

If there was trouble somewhere, Pavel was usually standing near it.

Next to him was Boris, pretending to be more serious than he really was. Boris always acted like he had his life under control even when he absolutely didn’t. He was the kind of guy who would say “it’s fine” while everything was clearly not fine. He had that fake calm some boys develop early because they think being unreadable makes them strong.

Then there was Alyosha, who was somehow friends with everybody. Nobody ever had a real problem with Alyosha. Even teachers liked him, which usually should’ve been suspicious, but somehow wasn’t. He had that easy face. The kind that made people trust him for no reason.

And then there was me.

Standing there with flowers in one hand, pretending this was just another school morning.

It wasn’t.

The girls were all in little groups already. Hugging. Fixing each other’s hair. Taking photos. Laughing too loudly in that way people do when they’re trying not to think too much.

I remember seeing Dasha, Liza, Sveta, Amalya, all of them moving around each other like they were trying to keep the moment alive by not standing still too long.

And then I saw Katya.

Not Yekaterina. Nobody called her that.

Just Katya. Cute and short. We the Russians do that with names. Each name has at least 10 different variations of it.

She had her blonde hair done up with white ribbons and somehow looked both older and younger than she usually did. Like she was trying to be part of the day, but some part of her was still somewhere else.

We were never a couple.

That should be said early so nobody gets confused.

Nothing official ever happened between us. No dramatic love story. No secret relationship. Nothing like that.

She was just one of those people who quietly become important to your life without either of you ever naming it properly.

That kind of person.

The kind where your friends notice before you do.

Back in middle school, me and the boys used to make paper planes out of notebook pages instead of paying attention in class. Especially in lessons nobody cared about. History on the wrong day. Math after lunch. Chemistry when the teacher was in one of those moods where she just talked to the board instead of to us.

We’d fold the pages under the desk, trying not to get caught, and then launch them across the classroom like idiots.

Sometimes they had nothing on them.

Sometimes just a stupid drawing.

Sometimes a curse word.

And sometimes, if you were brave enough or stupid enough, there’d be a message for a girl.

That was the dangerous version.

Because if your plane didn’t make it to her first, your friends would intercept it mid-flight like it was military intelligence.

And then your life was over.

That’s exactly what happened to me once.

I wrote something embarrassingly simple. Something like,

“Katya, turn around.”

That was it.

Not even romantic. Just dumb.

But Boris caught it before it got to her, read it out loud in the lowest dramatic voice possible, and Pavel nearly died laughing.

“Katya, turn around,” he kept repeating the whole lesson, making kissing sounds like a complete animal.

Alyosha was no better.

“Look at this Romeo,” he said. “Bro can’t even survive algebra without writing love letters.”

I wanted to kill all of them.

Katya turned around once during that whole thing and looked at me with that half-smile like she already knew exactly what was happening and was nice enough not to make it worse.

That was school back then. That was life.

Notebook pages, stupid jokes, paper planes, wet jackets hanging by the classroom door in winter, teachers acting like they controlled the room when half of us were mentally somewhere else entirely.

And somehow, without any of us noticing, that life became the past.

The ceremony itself is blurry in my head now, but certain parts stayed.

The song. Everybody always sang the song. That Posledniy Zvonok song they make you sing together like your voice can somehow hold the moment in place.

I remember all of us standing there, lined up, trying to look proper, trying not to laugh, trying not to sweat through our shirts, trying not to think too hard.

Some girls were already crying. Some were smiling too hard. Some looked like they were performing being okay.

The boys, of course, handled it the way boys usually do. By being stupid. By insulting each other affectionately. By pretending everything was funny. By turning emotion into jokes before it had the chance to expose us.

Pavel shoved Boris at one point and said, “Don’t cry, idiot, we’re literally seeing each other tomorrow.”

Boris told him to shut up.

Alyosha laughed and said, “You’re the first one getting married and disappearing, watch.”

Somebody called somebody else ugly. Somebody got hit in the shoulder. Somebody almost dropped flowers. The usual.

That’s the thing I didn’t understand back then.

When boys are hurting, especially at that age, it doesn’t always look like sadness. Sometimes it just looks like more noise.

After the ceremony, we all took a thousand photos we thought we’d keep forever.

Class photos. Group photos. Boys only. Girls only. Stupid faces. Serious faces. Arms around shoulders. Flowers in hand. Teachers in the middle smiling like they had not spent eleven years trying to survive us.

And then later that evening, we all went to celebrate together. A restaurant.

Nothing fancy. Just one of those places people rented for events because that’s what you were supposed to do. Parents came and went. Music played too loud. Somebody’s uncle was probably already drunk. Somebody’s mother kept fixing somebody’s shirt. People were laughing. Taking more photos. Making speeches nobody fully listened to.

Everybody looked happy. And honestly, maybe most of us were. Or maybe we just didn’t know what else to look like.

I remember the girls hugging each other constantly that night. Crying, then laughing, then crying again. I remember boys pretending not to care and then getting strangely quiet whenever they were alone for too long.

I remember thinking,

This is sad, but not that sad.

We’re obviously going to see each other again.

That was the logic.

We had phones. Social media. VK. Numbers. Group chats. Birthdays. Plans. Promises.

We said all the normal things people say when they are too young to understand what is actually happening.

We’ll always stay in touch.

We have to meet every year.

Nobody better disappear.

Same day, every year, Posledniy Zvonok reunion. Promise.

And we meant it too. That’s the worst part. We actually meant it. At some point that night, I went to the back to wash my hands.

I don’t remember why. Maybe I had sunflower seed shells or cake or something sticky on my fingers. Maybe I just needed air. Maybe I was tired of pretending I knew how to act.

But when I came back out, I saw Katya sitting alone on a bench near the side of the building.

And she was crying. Not cute crying. Not movie crying. Not the kind where somebody just wipes one tear away and still looks beautiful. I mean really crying.

Shoulders shaking. Face red. Trying to breathe through it and failing.

The second I saw her, my whole mood disappeared.

It was like the noise from inside the restaurant got cut in half. I walked over slowly and sat next to her. She looked at me, tried to say something, then looked away. I remember saying something stupid first.

Probably something like,

“Hey. What happened?”

As if that was a real question. As if I didn’t already know. I told her it was okay. I told her not to cry. I told her we were literally all still here. She kept crying.

So I did the only thing I could think of and just moved closer to her and offered her my shoulder. Then I hugged her. I remember kissing her on the forehead too. Just once. Not because we were together. Not because it meant anything dramatic. It just felt like the right thing to do in that moment.

And I remember saying, quietly,

“It’s going to be okay.”

And that’s when she said it. She looked at me and said,

“We will never see each other again.”

I remember actually smiling a little when she said that, because to me it sounded ridiculous.

I told her she was being stupid. I told her we were all being dramatic.

I reminded her that we had literally just promised to meet every year on Posledniy Zvonok. I reminded her we all had each other everywhere already. VK, numbers, everything.

I even said,

“What are you talking about? We’re seeing each other next month for Alyosha’s birthday.”

She just kept shaking her head. And she said it again.

“No. You don’t get it. We will never see each other again.”

At the time, I thought she was just emotional. Too emotional. That’s what I thought.

Now I understand what she really meant.