A Light-Brown Birthmark

... another maggot entered my skull through an eye socket. I could feel its slimy body penetrate the damp, rich soil within me. My skull would become its home for a long time...

"Literature can go to places where love doesn't exist and create love out of nothing." Teacher Tamm's high-pitched voice dominated the classroom. My clumsy, too-skinny body was there - my mind was not. I could give everything away for touching one light-brown birthmark. 

...Anastasia. She sat in the last row alone, with nobody ever trying to talk to her. I drew her vehemently in fear she would get sick or transfer to another school, and I would never see her again. She appeared without previous notice, with no teacher or student mentioning her arrival, with no cheers from boys or girls' gossip. I learned her name by peeking at her copybook's cover when she gave work to a literature teacher. She wore the same simple black dress daily, complemented by necklaces, temporary tattoos, and ankle bracelets. Accessories were of gothic style: little metallic skulls on a homemade colorful straw as if it had been taken out of some fancy blanket; graphic worms and slugs, going from corners of her eyes toward ears; bracelets representing leaves or roots. 

An angular birthmark above her left brow encapsulated all I desired. The fragility of her white skin, arteries visibly pulsating on the temples, fascinated me. She slid through the school corridors unnoticed, yet everybody pressed themselves against the walls as the waves had once obeyed Moses's order. Undistinguishable from the school's grey halls, I silently watched her granting smiles and nods to the people who decided to ignore her...

I felt how Andrey, my desk neighbor, hit my knee with his own. I stopped drawing Anastasia's new tattoo, a magically accurate maggot that crept from the cheek toward her right eye, and told Andrey, irritated, "What?" He pointed to the teacher with his eyes. 

"Stanislav, have you read an excerpt from 'Anna Karenina'? Pages 150 to 164." Teacher Tamm gawked at me from behind his thick glasses with cheap frames. I knew the price: my mother worked in an optics store. The teacher was past his prime time if he had ever had one. He was aware of his unattractiveness that stemmed primarily not from his physical appearance but his constant desire to be appreciated and inability to give love. Or so I thought of him.  

His tone didn't promise anything good for me. 

"I didn't know we had to read these pages," I answered.  

"How would you know about love if you don't read about love?" Tamm asked suddenly. 

"I'll know it. Everybody has to have the first love, even you. Just wait for it."

My blunt reply caused a thunder of laughter from my classmates. Tamm's miserable face blew up with red; his fingers began to move quickly in hopes of finding something and tearing it apart. He covered the distance separating us in three swoop steps and grabbed my copybook before I could hide it. 

"You are quite an artist, Stanislav. And who has the pleasure to be your first love?" He flipped through the pages with a triumphant, sadistic smile as if he had photographed me masturbating and was about to expose me to the world. 

"It's not your business!" I erupted and jumped out of my seat. I was already taller than teacher Tamm. We stared at each other briefly, his long nose almost touching my chin, the smell of bitter sweat emanating from under his dark-brown suit. 

Andrey patted me on the back to calm down.  

The teacher must have sensed that I was ready to do anything to get my drawings back. I felt he disgraced my pure fantasies of touching - kissing if she would permit - Anastasia's birthmark, yet his words named the feeling I couldn't quite catch. The longing to see her day in and day out, the irresistible desire to dig my hands into her curly hair, and dreams of her birthmark; I was, indeed, in love.

"For the next lesson, read the pages and write down one memorable quote," the teacher finally articulated. I watched his Adam's apple tremble and thought the man was afraid of me. He slowly put the copybook back onto my desk while the whole class stared at me: I won this battle. 

The copybook was a little wrinkled at the corners, one page depicting a root-shaped ankle bracelet slightly torn. 

I didn't want to face Anastasia. 

My disfigured hands and accidental memory losses reminded me how stupid I had been, going full-speed on an electric scooter only half a year ago and colliding with a bus. I merely escaped an amputation of a left hand, which was now scarred and stiff. When I was bored, I contoured the scars with a pen. As I noticed later, the picture resembled Anastasia's head: a hole here and there, a compilation of protuberances out there, and a row of red dots as her necklace with metallic skulls. 

I didn't remember leaving the class and going to the eatery. I leaned on a pillar and watched Anastasia navigate toward the array of food. 

"Hey, wake up!" Andrey slapped me hard on the shoulder. "Who are you staring at?" He first looked toward Anastasia, who was putting a greyish-brown sauce on her buckwheat porridge - as always, cooks ignored her request for help. Then he glanced at me, pretending to be worried. 

"Lora?" he whispered in my ear in a deliberately intimate tone. Lora, slender, with a piercing in her nose and small breasts visible through an almost transparent white blouse, stood a meter away from Anastasia. 

"No, the other one, with a birthmark above her left brow. In a black dress," I whispered back, pointing at Anastasia. 

He laughed nervously as if unsure what to say to me. His unease made me uncomfortable too. "Dude, there is nobody there." 

Anastasia must have felt my predicament because she turned and looked directly at me. Her eyes were the color of the black damp dirt.