What are we willing to pay for our passion? What is the price of nastiness done for her? And where is that thin thread, which can not be torn off, making its way in the darkness of incomprehensible life? Boys find these answers even if they don’t rush to get them. They find them with pain ... and with pleasure.

... The summer sun burned water droplets on my body when I came out of the river and fell on the coastal sand. The feeling after bathing, so frequent during the school holidays (there are two weeks left before the beginning of the new school year), is super. I close my eyes, exposing my face to the scorching rays. Suddenly I hear a desperate cry, turn in his direction and see how someone's head, periodically covered by a river wave, flounders under a precipice in a river. Above, on a precipice, a crowd of girls squeals. Actions are always stronger than thoughts when someone is in trouble. I fly to the spot with a bullet, fly into the water and dissect the waves, in a few seconds I find myself near the drowning one. Girl! Choking, waving her arms with the last strength, she fights for her life. Has managed her to fall off a cliff. I clasp the fragile body, I pull to myself, and soon we find ourselves on the shore. Gently stack sinking on the sand. Her friends had already fled down to us and surrounded us when I bent over her. The girl was unconscious, and in this situation I need to do everything that I was taught. I do not hesitate, I dig my mouth into her lips ...

I spat out the last of the water when she came to her senses. Only now I was able to look at the saved. Low, thin, but in appearance my peers. Her hair was the brightest in her - fiery-red, glistening with sputum, they merged with her face strewn with red caulking gills. I repress disappointment. Ugly. Her eyes - light brown, seemed the same red, like everything else, and with interest I was treated.

“Thank you for pulling me out,” said, finally, this is a fiery miracle. I immediately felt better. If she spoke, it means everything went well.

“Yeah, only you don't stumble on the precipice again,” I reply with a smirk and clarify. - Everything is good?

In response, I get a nod.

“She jumped herself,” someone explained to the girls. - To argue. And hit the water.

From a small height of this cliff in our area only a few boys dived, I am among them. The desperation of the “redhead” struck me. I almost praised her, but immediately appreciated how inappropriate it is. In the meantime, my girlfriends showered me with compliments, how I quickly responded and how I am swimming. In response, I voiced (modestly) with him the fact of my swimming school championship. Another series of admiring reviews and interested views.

- What is your name? The redhead asked. She had already fully recovered, as if she had not drowned a minute ago. “Redhead” was standing on her feet and straightening her orange swimsuit (to match herself). I note that her thin undeveloped figure does not cause me a touch of interest. Hmmm, it’s probably not fate to save Angelina Jouly.

“Vlad,” I reply. You can remember my name, I think condescendingly, although we will never communicate.

“Marina,” she meets me. - Do I know you. You live in a neighboring yard, I recently moved here.

“A handsome boy saved you,” remarks one of the girlfriends. - This can be the very pull.

The girls laughed approvingly. It's time to throw. There is no desire to crack with this Babskiy tribunal. Quickly I say goodbye to wishing no one ever to drown and go back, scanning the whisperings of the girls with my back and (absolutely one hundred percent) the “redhead” look.

... The first lesson is the first of September in my "tenth B". When everyone sat down at their desks, a “cool” one appeared. Yes, with whom! On the threshold of the class, with my bag in my hand, was my red-headed drowned woman.

- Guys, meet me. This is Marina. She will study in our class. Help the girl join our friendly team.

And the “cool” invited Marina to sit at the first desk, to Olka.Then something terrible happened. The Redhead, in her turn, examined the class, noticed me, caught her empty eyes near the empty place and walked clearly towards me.

“I have long-sightedness, Natalya Petrovna, I cannot sit close to the blackboard,” she confidently explained to the “cool” one, and her bag, and then she sat down on the side.

“Well, hello,” I heard this red-headed miracle. The class rolled whispering, and I was silent, almost falling from shame. Has everybody decided that this scarecrow is my girlfriend?

“Vova is sitting here,” I notice Marina coldly, suppressing my irritation.

“And we will ask him to change seats,” she calmly retorts. Balbes Vovan, a friend of mine, who appeared as usual in a slob for the second lesson, tried to swing his rights for a place in the sun (the last desk where you are not visible). Immediately ran into the arguments of the "red" in the form of a nonsense about sick vision, accompanied by a hard red gaze. Yes, that was her character. She would not have relocated, even if Vova, a man without a tower, would start beating her. Half a class was watching this scene at recess. Unexpectedly for all, Vovan had his arrogance, wilted, and sat down at the first desk to Olya. In response, Marina thanked him and looked at me.

So look at your property. My classmates giggled, and I just mumbled something. Later I learned that Marina chose the class for studying strictly the one in which I study. This is how it all began ...

Is it easy to explain to a girl that you don't need her? That everything she does, and everything she dreams of is just nonsense, an empty fairy tale invented by herself. And that everything will be different, not as drawn in her head. I passed this exam in explanations for the next two years while we were finishing school - with a girl, for whom the nickname “redhead” was firmly entrenched. It is worth noting that in the classroom she immediately turned out to be special. Some kind of black animal, but in her case - not white.

- Red Crow, - our cool beauty Tanka (with whom I kissed a couple of times) mockingly mocked after Marinka once decided to put her in her place. The girls didn’t like Marina for a daring but strong character, while the guys were condescending towards her, while laughing at me. Before the mockery did not reach. Yet at school I was respected.

She was waiting for me after class to go home with me. I got rid of her as best I could. On the “23rd” and on the day of birth - Marinkins are indispensable gifts, and hand-made. My mom praised the knitted sweater, and my dad approved the cherry pie (don't throw it away). I did not give anything back. She cared for me completely like a man, invited me anywhere. If only to be together.

- Yes, she runs after you like a bitch, - once identified in the company of a friend Serega. All the boys present released the comments of different content.

I was not silent. Marinke explained several times that nothing could happen between us.

“Maybe,” I heard in reply, like an echo. Then I just sent her. Rough. She was offended. Gone. But not disappeared from my life.

I started the first relationship with girls, courtship, dating, but Marina every time found an opportunity to remind myself. In the "eleventh" class, everyone wrote essays on what we do after school. “Marry Vlad” - was written in her plans. The surname “Vlada” was not indicated, but the whole class laughed when Natalia decided to suddenly mention the work of Marina for her high artistry and meaningful presentation. And for me - the next portion of paint in the face. I sighed when the school ended, and I went to college. In a prestigious, legal, as befits the son of his dad, who had become by that time the prosecutor of the city. In this university Marina - a girl from a simple family, the path was ordered, and she safely did not go to it in the competition, although she submitted the documents after me. We began to see less often, she only occasionally met me in the courtyard, since she lived next door, well, continued to congratulate with different holidays. We must pay tribute, Marina began to change externally.Angular skinny figure was transformed, appeared ...