Anyone who read the news online knew that Roman Tarasov had lost his son in that accident. He shouted, and his voice echoed among the wet tombstones. “You’re another fraud! Another street kid trying to cheat me!”
The words came out harsh, cruel, but it was the only defense Roman had. His heart couldn’t take being broken again. The boy started to cry. Large tears mixed with the rain on his disfigured face.
“Dad, please. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s really me. Remember? Remember the scar on my knee from when I fell off my bike in the yard, and you rushed me to the emergency room? Remember how you argued with the doctor because he was going to give me stitches without anesthesia?”
Roman froze. Nobody knew that. It had never been in the press. “And do you remember our secret?” the boy continued in a cracking voice.
“Those nights when you came home late and came up to my room, and we would secretly play video games behind Mom’s back. You always said, ‘This stays between us, champ. If Mom finds out, we’re done for.'” Roman’s legs gave out.
He fell to his knees in the mud, feeling neither the cold, nor the dampness, nothing. Those words, those moments, belonged only to the two of them—a father and his son. “Misha?” His voice came out broken, almost a whisper. “Yes, Dad, it’s me.”
The boy crawled towards him, his crutch getting stuck in the wet earth with every agonizing step. “It’s me.” Roman couldn’t move. Six months of mourning, six months of hell.
And now? Now his son was here, alive, crippled, but alive. “But how? How did you survive? Why did no one find you? Why didn’t you come home?” The questions tumbled out all at once, jumbled.
Misha sat in the mud next to his father. He was shivering so hard he could barely hold his crutch. “The accident was horrible, Dad. So horrible that I don’t remember everything, just fragments. People screaming, fire, lots of fire.”
“And the pain. Such pain that I thought I was really going to die.” Roman closed his eyes; he didn’t want to imagine it. Didn’t want to see in his mind what his son had gone through.
“When I woke up, I was in a public hospital in the regional center, far from here. My face was all bandaged up because of the burns, my leg was broken in three places. The doctors said I was lucky to be alive.” Misha wiped his nose with the back of his dirty hand.
“But nobody knew who I was. My backpack burned, there were no documents, nothing. I… I was so confused, Dad. My head wasn’t working right. I couldn’t remember my full name, couldn’t remember our home phone number, everything was a mess.”
“Oh, my God.” Roman felt a wave of nausea. “And nobody recognized you, none of the teachers?” “The teacher, Elena, died in the accident, and the teacher, Anatoly… he was so badly injured he couldn’t even speak properly.”
“By the time he recovered and came back, I had already been transferred to another hospital. And my face, Dad, it was so different because of the burns. No one would have recognized me.” The rain poured even harder.
Now they were both soaked to the bone, shivering, but neither moved. “Then why did they say you died? I buried…” Roman couldn’t finish the sentence. He looked at the headstone behind them.
His son’s name, carved into the cold stone. “There was another boy on the bus, Dad. A boy we didn’t know.” Misha swallowed hard. “Teacher Anatoly brought him secretly. A homeless boy, with no family, no one.”
“The teacher had given him food a few weeks before and felt sorry for him. On the day of the trip, he saw the boy starving near the school and decided to take him along without telling anyone.” Roman was beginning to understand, and the understanding was the worst part.
“That boy… He died in the accident. And since nobody knew he was on the bus, since he had no documents, they thought…”
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