“I don’t know who attacked me,” I shake my head. – I was going to go for a walk. Left home. The weather was good, and I decided to walk through the forest...

- Forest? – Mom looks at me scared. - Why did you go into this terrible forest? There are some maniacs there! Last year a girl was killed there!

Tears are flowing down my mother's cheeks.

– I just wanted to walk along the forest a little. I reached the river. And there was an unfamiliar company by the river. There were about five of them... Just guys. And they had a fire. They came up to me and asked something. I don't remember what I answered them.

Mom bursts into sobs again.

- How long can I keep telling you? You can't talk to strangers!

“Olya,” Uncle Kostya interrupts her sharply, “let her finish.”

I keep making up the story as I go. I understand that it doesn’t stand up to any criticism, I’ve always had a hard time with improvisation... But I couldn’t tell them the truth.

“They seemed pretty cute to me at first.” They asked something, I answered something. And I wanted to leave, but...

But what?

I'm frantically trying to think of something. But I can't do it.

I start to sob.

My family thinks it's because of my nerves. That it pains me to talk about it.

“They attacked,” I say with difficulty, “And then they forced me to drink some kind of rubbish so that I would pass out.”

I fall silent. This moment looks quite implausible. If anyone had told me about this, I would have thought that the girl met some guys and got drunk. And then they dragged her into the forest and...

But this moment really happened. The picture is still before my eyes. Stas throws two pills into the bottle.

“Will you drink it yourself or force it?”

I refused.

"No. I won't force this crap into you. I'll give you the opportunity to choose. After all, you can’t deprive a person of the right to choose?”

He looked so kind. Care and attention were visible in his blue eyes.

And he put out the cigarette on my hand. The smell of burning leather drowned out the pain.

"Well. Choose. Either you drink yourself, or you’ll get a second burn.”

And he put out the second cigarette butt on me.

"Think well. Do you think I enjoy hurting you? Make the right choice. It's in your best interest. I don't think you want to remember what we're going to do to you. So just drink this. And you'll end up on a rainbow. Well, what do you choose?

In his left hand was a bottle of dissolved pills, in his right was another lit cigarette.

I nodded towards the bottle.

"Well done. Right choice. You can’t deprive a person of the right to choose, right? And remember. You did this, not me. I suggested you take a different path."

I show with a gesture that I can’t talk about this anymore today.

“Everything is fine, daughter,” my mother strokes my hair with her hand. “They didn’t have time to do anything to you.” A couple of scratches... Marks on my arm... A burn on my eye, but that's okay. What happened at the end? Did they let you go? Did you run away?

“I don’t remember,” I lie. Let them think that my memory loss is due to shock. When they leave, I will think about my story and come up with a logical ending.

- We'll contact the police. These bastards will be caught,” my mother hugs me, rocks me from side to side, like a little girl.

Police? No! Never. But I don't tell my mom anything. After. I will tell her later that I will not write a statement.

- How long have I been lying here?

- They brought you in the morning. “It’s evening now,” the grandmother answers.

- Okay, relatives. The patient needs rest,” the nurse says dissatisfied. “You’ve already tormented her with your questions.” Let's go home. Say goodbye. And I’ll go get an IV...

- IV? - I say in horror. - For what?

- Do not be afraid. There are vitamins there. Glucose. Let's wash your blood of rubbish. You will feel better,” she smiles encouragingly and leaves the room.

Grandmother and mother kiss me. They say kind words. They say goodbye to me. Uncle Kostya pats me on the shoulder.

“We’ll come tomorrow, don’t be boring,” says mom.

They leave the room. I breathe out a sigh of relief. It’s not that I’m really depressed by their company, but now... Now I need to think about everything carefully. And for this you need privacy.

A nurse enters. She is carrying an IV with her. This device looks a lot like a clothes hanger. Attached to the top is a glass bottle containing a clear liquid.

She wipes it with a wet cotton swab on the crook of her elbow.

-Won't it hurt me?

“Like a mosquito bite,” she says.

I watch as the needle enters the skin. There is now a thin tube running from the plastic bag to my hand. Somewhere in the middle of the tube there is a small transparent cylinder, from which clear liquid flows down drop by drop. For some reason the cylinder reminds me of an hourglass.

“When there’s just a little bit left here,” she points to the cylinder, “turn the wheel.”

I nod. She leaves. I lean back on the pillow. I close my eyes. I have a lot to think about.

“Before we dug a hole, we first sawed those damn gratings.”

Chapter 2

“The pit,” I say, but only a faint whisper escapes my lips.

We discovered this hole back in the spring, when we were running away from Them. She was in the forest, nearby there were piles of garbage and abandoned buildings. What was here before? Someone's house? It looked more like a warehouse or industrial zone. An asphalt road led to this place, all broken and overgrown with grass. No one has come here for many years.

The hole was filled with earth and concrete fragments. An iron grate covered it from above. The thick bars of the grate crashed into the ground.

I thought about taking the stories of the people around me. There are several people in mind whose life stories are very tragic, interesting, etc. But it’s hard for me to write biographies, and people, as a rule, don’t know how to talk about themselves in an interesting way; what comes out is not a story, but pure whining, and I can turn the whining into a book very difficult(((You need to be able to work with real stories, I don’t know how to do this. Maybe in the future I will study.

When Toma and Roma doused Stas with dirty water and he caught him in the gym, he began to unbutton his shirt to let her wash it. Having unbuttoned it a little, he turned his back to Tom and began to unbutton something at chest level. It could have been an icon given to Toma, if not, what could it be?

Similar points are introduced in the book to develop the ability to read between the lines, but in this particular case, in my opinion, it is simply obvious =D

What do you do in your free time? What can easily inspire you? How is the pole, are you still doing it or have you given up?

Are you going to make a film/series based on any of the books? If so, which one?

It was a newsletter. And your books inspire me. Thank you for your creativity.

How did the idea of ​​becoming a writer come about? How did your family react to this? What inspired you to write the book MDZR, and from it to create MLV?

I wrote from early childhood, when I couldn’t write, I either drew stories in pictures or played with Barbie dolls, but so that there was a story. Barbies were the heroes for my invented story, different events happened to them, each time I gave them new characters, new events, everything was like in the books)) So the desire to create stories is in my blood) How the MZR was invented... I've been waiting for a long time I was coming up with something, trying to find a topic that would be interesting to me. Perhaps the final decision (or inspiration) came after watching the film The Secret of Moonacre. Now I don’t really remember what this film is about, but I remember that there were two warring kingdoms/clans, and the girl Maria from the good side became friends with the boy from the bad side. And it just dawned on me that I wanted to write about such friendship and love, so that the heroes were from two warring communities. This is how Keith was invented, and around him a whole world of mine children, and at the same time my best enemy, was already built. Relatives reacted differently. my mother and friends thought that writing books was a stupid waste of time, that there was no way to get into publishing, etc., one husband actively supported and inspired, without his support there would be no books

If you were writing your own book, what would it be about?

Why doesn't the TV series match the book, My Best Enemy?

I didn’t even want to answer such a question at first, it’s a pity for the time. Because before asking it, you need to think a little - at least half a minute - and study and find the answer yourself. Because there is no film adaptation, someone else’s series based on someone else’s script has nothing to do with MLV, it’s just the same name.

Almost at the end of the book it was said about a girl and a boy, how they played war games, the girl was cold, they also saw a fire, and Stas and Toma wanted to warm up, but the boy stopped the girl. What was this connected with? And why is it written that you are doing this? wanted to show? Sorry for so many questions. Thank you

“Beauty is when there is nothing superfluous, no fluff. But in war there is only life and death and nothing superfluous. War is beautiful.” What do you think, is war beautiful, or is war ugly?

what are you doing at the moment, do you have any ideas for new books, if so what?

What do I do after finishing the book - second job, losing weight, sports. There are several dozen ideas, realism, fantasy, you can’t list everything.

“Tell me, American, what is strength? Is it in money? So my brother says that it is in money. You have a lot of money, and what?.. I think that strength is in truth...” And what, in your opinion, strength?

Oh😅 Then another one If I just read the GZI, is there any point in reading the MDZR?😅 Thanks in advance for your answer💕

I'm a little confused, so I'd like to clarify: Is We the Children of the Gold Mines a sequel to The City Beyond the Hedge?

Are you writing anything now? If so, what? What genre and for what age of readers? Describe a little. Thanks in advance❤

Alena, good evening. After sending a book to the publishing house, is it necessary to meet with the editors face to face? Is it possible to discuss issues remotely?

It can be done remotely. After all, the publishing house is located in one city, and it can have many authors from all over the country and not only

Weren’t you afraid that your book could be “stolen” and passed off as their own?

No. People with some kind of genius syndrome suffer from this. Like I wrote something brilliant, what if it gets stolen? By the way, this is a big disadvantage on the way to the book world. Re-evaluate your creativity. Who should steal it? Now every second person writes something, the entire Internet is full of self-published works, I don’t want to steal, and no one needs it =)

Tell me, when you printed the book on a computer, how was the text formatted? Did you install manual word hyphenation (using dashes), or did the publisher do this?

Splitting a word into 2 lines? This is what the layout designer does after the book is laid out. The text must be in Word without any word divisions.

And the last question... How did you develop the group on VK, did the readers have to read the entire original book first? Or did you post it in excerpts?

Good evening! Alena, please tell us what you were doing before you sent your first book to the publishing house? How did you attract attention to her? I heard that you posted it on Internet resources. Can you find out more about this? What sites, is it free, how long does it take...

“The pit,” I say, but only a faint whisper escapes my lips. We discovered this hole back in the spring, when we were running away from Them. She was in the forest, nearby there were piles of garbage and abandoned buildings. What was here before? Someone's house? It looked more like an abandoned warehouse or industrial area. An asphalt road led to this place, all broken and overgrown with grass. No one has come here for many years.

The hole was partially covered with earth and concrete debris. An iron grate covered it from above. The thick bars of the grate crashed into the ground.

I discovered the hole by accident when I was running through an industrial area: my shoe caught on the grate, and I flew forward, painfully hitting my nose on the ground. I went back and looked at what I tripped over. She squatted down. I touched the iron bars. Strange thoughts were spinning in my head.

Romka emerged from the bushes - another of Their victims. Seryoga and Anton must be hiding somewhere in the depths of the forest. Together we make a wonderful team. All the victims of Stas and his monstrous company united into a club. Club of the flawed and wretched.

And all together we fled from Them. During the time we spent together, we formed a fairly well-coordinated team. We learned many things: how to run away, how to become invisible, how to merge with a wall, how to turn off your brain while you are being hurt. The last point is the most difficult. Everyone dealt with it differently. Seryoga taught me to switch off from pain. When Stas knocked out his front tooth and burned the skin on his side, he said that it didn’t hurt him because he turned off his head.

- How? – I asked him. When Stas hurt me, I couldn’t think about anything but pain.

Words cut sharper than a knife. This saying was invented by vanilla people who have never really experienced pain. They know what a broken heart is, but they don't even know what a broken nose is. But a broken nose is much worse. There is nothing worse than physical pain. No moral suffering can compare with physical suffering. Such pain pierces your body right through, blinding and deafening. Changes are happening to your body. The temperature can jump to forty degrees and immediately drop to thirty-five. Sweat appears all over the body. You scream, but you can’t hear yourself because you’re deaf. And because from the pain you suddenly forgot how to speak. When they burn your skin, you squirm like a worm. The iron hand of pain squeezes your lungs like a vice. You can't breathe. All your senses are suddenly cut off, you feel only burning pain. And you hear laughter. Their laughter. They feed on your pain, delight in absorbing it from you.

“We need to count,” Seryoga answered. - About myself. One-two-three... It usually ends when I reach eighty. But once I reached two hundred and fifty... If the count doesn’t suit you, then you can just think about pleasant things.

- About pleasant things? – I asked him again.

- Yes. About pleasant things. I usually think about squirrels. Squirrels are kind of nice.

I giggled. Seryoga always managed to squeeze a smile or laughter out of me, even in cases where this was impossible. For example, that time when he told me about squirrels, I was not at all laughing. The day before, Stas tried to drown me under a stream of scalding hot water, and the burns on my face throbbed unpleasantly. I needed to adjust my brain so as not to think about pain, and I turned to Seryoga for help.

They “love” Seryoga more than anyone. Maybe because he is the youngest of us. He's only thirteen. Or maybe they don't like his ear-to-ear smile. Now his smile is especially beautiful - his front tooth is missing. After Stas shoved his face into a concrete slab, Seryoga spat out a bloody clot along with his tooth. And then he smiled at us with a holey, bloody smile. He was not at all upset, but, on the contrary, was very happy about the hole. He learned to spit coolly and whistle masterfully.

I squatted and studied the bars. Roma also squatted down. Our eyes met.

“Are you thinking the same thing I’m thinking?” – I asked quietly.

His eyes widened in horror. I realized that we were thinking about the same thing.

But Roma suddenly jumped to his feet.

- No. “I don’t think about anything,” Roma shouted, jumping up sharply. - Let's run out of here, they can appear at any second...

And we ran. I turned right, Roma turned left. We always ran in different directions. This made it harder to catch us.

Many times after that I returned to thoughts about Yama. Exactly. With a capital letter. The pit has become something of a household word for us.

Somehow we came to Yama again. She attracted us like a magnet. Roma and I sat at its edge. We looked at the iron bars. For construction waste in Yama.

“She could be the perfect trap,” I said quietly. Roma did not answer.

“We could gain freedom.” We could learn to breathe deeply. We would stop having nightmares. Lips and eyelids would stop twitching. Hands are shaking. We would become ordinary people.

Roma just shook his head, grinning.

- You speak beautifully... Write a poem.

But I saw that Yama attracted him in the same way as me.

But... These words remained simple words, and Yama remained an ordinary pit. And we began to live our normal lives. Life in short bursts. Life at war.

I watch as the last milliliters of liquid fall from the cylinder into the tube. I turn the wheel.

The nurse with a sharp movement pulls the needle out of me, sad memories take possession of me, I don’t even notice its appearance.

“You need to sleep,” she says.

– When will my bandage be removed? - I ask. I can't wait to see what my face looks like now.

“In a couple of days,” she answers.

When she leaves, I close my eyes. But sleep doesn't come. Memories appear and disappear in my head - about my family, about my childhood. About Stas.

All memories are incredibly vivid. They flash one after another, light up like lights on a Christmas tree garland.

#Chapter 3
My head begins to throb with pain, I no longer have the strength to endure it. A loud voice grated my ears, causing me to close my eyes, trying to relieve the pain. It became difficult to breathe, my lungs burned. They started replaying the same scene in my head over and over again, as if they knew that I couldn’t stand it anymore.
***
-Go away! Go away! - a voice that sent a shiver through my entire body. He fell on the bed, next to the table. His head was bowed down and his hands were covering his face. The body was shaking, either from rage or from pain. I stood motionless, looking at the shark tattoo behind my ear. My hands became cold, as if I had put them in ice water, and tears welled up in my eyes. I knew I was weak. Too weak to be with him.
- Your mother, get out of here! - repeated the voice louder. I just twitched, continuing to stand motionless. Stas stood up. Approaching me, he looked into my face, and I couldn’t help but lower my eyes. I was scared to look at him, into his eyes, so bright that it seemed as if the ocean was reflected in them. As free as he himself:
-Look at me...Are you afraid again? - He said it so quietly that I didn’t understand right away. Am I afraid? Yes. I'm afraid that his beast will want revenge again:
- Fear motivates me to do crazy things. - I answered quietly. Stas grinned and sat down at the table opposite me. Now his face studies me intently:
-How could you? - he asked a question. I bit my lip nervously. I don't know myself. Stas sighed:
- Go away, start a new life in which everything will be fine. - Turning his head away from me, he shouted: - Get out! - I sat down on the bed next to him, looking at him. I suddenly wanted to hug him, hug him so tightly that it became difficult to breathe. He turned in my direction. I saw anger in the eyes, but not the one that was there before. Different. New anger:
- I ran for too long. I'm tired of hiding, tired of being afraid. Yes, you are the damn devil who ground me into dust! Which destroyed every cell of my body so that I would die! For me to be in pain... I'm tired... Pain is a feeling that has already consumed me. I've been gone for a long time. - I said, knowing that he blames himself. My hands clutched the bedspread on the bed, and my eyes were already hurting from the tears that were streaming down my cheeks. I sucked in air, trying to stop shaking. There was a pause. I don't know how long we sat like that. All this time blue eyes looked through me:
- What did I do to you? I destroyed, ruined everything! I’m not a person... - he spoke with such pain that I burst into tears even more. My psyche can't handle it now. I feel myself sinking out of bed onto the cold floor, choking on tears. I closed my eyes, continuing to breathe heavily. I heard Stas fall next to me, his head fell into my lap, his body began to beat in hysterics. He squeezed my dress, I felt his pain, which, like mine, was not of human strength.
***
The screams in the house grew louder. Mom was furious when she found out that her daughter was dating Shutov. She walked around the house screaming “How could you?!” Who allowed you?!
The rest of us read morals to me about how this shouldn’t be done. They said that I was damaging my already fragile nervous system. Uncle Kostya almost called the police to report attempted murder. I was so tired of this that I ran out of the house. Now I wanted to be alone and turn off my brain for at least a couple of hours. I was almost out of the gate when my grandfather’s voice suddenly rang out:
-Tomochka, let’s talk. - He was quiet, almost did not get involved in the quarrel in the house. He, like me, couldn’t stand the noise. My grandfather didn’t blame me. He knew that I would decide for myself what I needed.
I reluctantly turned around and sat down on the bench next to the gate. I didn’t have the strength to speak, so I silently looked at my grandfather. He put his arm around my shoulders:
-Tell me, what’s going on between you? What happened to Stas? You were such friends... And here, he almost kills you! -Moments came to mind when Stas hurt me. I shuddered. Tears came to my eyes and a lump formed in my throat. Grandfather calmly waited for me to start pouring out my soul to him. I spoke quietly:
- Once upon a time, I committed a vile act. I was 11. That morning we gathered together as usual, deciding to play war. We split into teams, each with a bag of colored paint. Whoever sheds his “Blood” could go home.
I was with Stas. We ran into the guys. One called himself Kruch. - I shuddered again, wiping away a tear. I didn’t want to remember further, but I decided to tell everything, continuing to speak quietly:
- They mocked us... Stas asked that they let me go, so that they would not touch me. And they let go! And he stayed there. When I ran home, I became very scared. I went to bed. I chickened out! The next morning I found out that Stas’s ear was burned out and beaten... And he became different... Completely... - Grandfather pressed me to him, making it clear that this was already over:
-Well, and then... When I came here again. He recognized me... And began to take revenge... I BECAME HIS “Toy” with which he could do whatever he wanted. It was too painful, but I endured it. I believed that I could bring my boy back from childhood. Not yet. This... - and then I realized that I was crying. So much so that even my grandmother came out. Then mom. Grandfather drove them away, giving vent to my feelings...
- Eh... It’s all sad, granddaughter! This wasn't a joke showdown, was it? I thought grandma would demolish the house out of anger! And you, a real brave man! I understand why you didn't tell anyone. I wouldn’t say that either. You clever! - wow, even here he finds something positive! I hugged him tighter:
-Do you know what I understood? - I asked with a grin. He smiled slyly:
-What?
-I love him! - I whispered. Grandfather was not surprised. He just stroked my head and replied:
- Love is hatred, which over the years can turn into something bright! Well, of course this is not always the case. It happens differently. But you still have time to find out! In the meantime, sort your heart out.
P.S - I will correct mistakes, but over time)