That spring we finished ninth grade. Each of us had plans for the future. I (Volodya Belov), for example, was going to become a geologist. Sasha Krieger had to go to medical school because his father was a doctor. Vitka Anikin wanted to become a teacher.

Sasha and Vitka were friends with Katya and Zhenya. I am with Inka Ilyina; she was two years younger than us. We lived in a city on the Black Sea.

After the final exam in mathematics, the three of us and Pavel Baulin, a sailor from the port (he was the boxing champion of the Crimea), were called up to the Komsomol committee and offered to enter a military school.

We agreed. But what will our parents say? Although I was calm for my mother. I was proud of my mother, her fame in the city, proud of the fact that she was in a royal prison and was serving a link.

My sisters Lena and Nina worked in the Arctic. The eldest, Nina, was married. Her husband Serezha at the age of eighteen already commanded a squadron, then he studied at the labor faculty and graduated from the Promacademy. He was a geologist.

In the morning, Vitka woke me up. There was no need to ask him about a conversation with his father: there was a bruise beneath his right eye. The fact is that his father, Uncle Petya, just lived a dream to see his son as a teacher.

When we went behind Sasha, they shouted in his apartment.

“Your state needs your son,” his father shouted. “This is his and our happiness.” “Let this bandit and his party mother take such happiness for herself ...” answered the mother.

By "gangster" I meant, of course, me.

Sasha came up with a way: to speak with the Komsomol secretary Alyosha Pereverzev so that there would be an article about us in the Kurortnik city newspaper. And then the parents can’t stand it and agree to let us go.

We wandered around the city together with the Inca. I suddenly saw something that I had not noticed before: oncoming men stared at her intently. “I want everything to be in the past, for you to graduate from college ... Now we would go to our home. Do you understand? ” - said the Inca.

We entered the porch. Her eyes glowed in the dark. Then Inkina's lips touched my lips. I thought I was falling.

After the last exam, we decided to finally become adults. We confirmed the strength of this decision by leaving the school in our arms. On the way to the city, we suddenly decided that it was time for us to smoke, and bought a box of Northern Palmyra. We believed that marine guys like us would only be sent to a maritime school.

The intelligent world, the only worthy person, was embodied in our country. The rest of the planet was waiting for liberation from suffering. We believed that the mission of the liberators would fall on our shoulders.

Sasha asked me: “Are you already kissing Inca?” And I suddenly realized: Sasha and Katya have been kissing for a long time, and Vitka and Zhenya too. And I had no idea!

In the evening we went to the kurzal to listen to Ukulele King John Denker. I still in the afternoon, when Inka said that she met him on the beach, I did not like it. And at the concert, I clearly understood: among the many voices, he heard Inkin's voice and sang what she asked.

The street we were returning rested on a vacant lot. And our girls (they always went ahead) heard a woman screaming in a vacant lot. Everyone in the city knew that Stepik’s gang was operating in the wasteland, it was raping single women. Then we saw Stepik come around the corner. People still came out with him. We planted Katya and Zhenya through the fence, and they fled to the sanatorium. Sasha was beaten with brass knuckles, they apparently hit me with his head: the tooth was broken and my chin was intact. It would have been worse, but Inca, it turns out, was running after boxer Baulin, and he and our friends helped us out. We celebrated graduation at the restaurant "Float". In the afternoon we were waited on the beach, but Inca and I climbed into the most remote part of the wasteland. “I can’t leave you like that,” I told Inke. And everything happened for us.

An article about us appeared in Kurortnik, and our parents could not stand it.

An order came to us: Vitka and I got an infantry school. And Sashke is the Naval Medical Academy.

Then I will be destined to find out that Vitka was killed near Novo-Rzhev in the 41st, and Sasha was arrested in the 52nd. He died in prison: the heart could not stand it.

When our train started moving, mom appeared on the platform: she lingered on my farewell because of the bureau. I never saw her again - even dead ... Behind the station on an empty road I spotted a small figure, went down, hung on the handrails. Close, underfoot, the earth flew back.

"Inca, my Inca!" The wind pushed the words, and the rumble of the train drowned out the voice.