The dust on the old stage smelled as if someone had scattered memories over it: a hint of chalk, a hint of sweat, a hint of rubbed velvet. I sat on the edge of the platform with my knees pulled up to my chin and watched the blue paint dry on a background that was supposed to pretend to be the night sky. Overhead, high above my head, the stage lights blinked lazily, as if they were falling asleep along with the rest of the school. - 'Any more stars and it'll be perfect,' Santa stated, sitting down next to me and handing me a paintbrush. - Just don't make them too even. The night has no rulers. I laughed, although the laugh came out a little nervous. Everything about me had been a bit nervous lately: my hand movements, my breathing, even my thoughts. The paint calmed that down, just enough to mix in cobalt, black and a little silver. I wanted this background to be more than a decoration for 'Balladine'. I wanted it to be my breath that no one would trample on during the interval of the performance. - Maybe a smudge of milky way more? - I asked. - One that's, you know, fuzzy. - Mrs Horos will kiss your hands - Nikolai pointed to the phone. - 'But she wrote to tell you to remember to close the magazine. "Tomorrow the renovation team is taking the cutin off". - he read aloud and stammered at the word. - Curtain, that is. I corrected the cap on his neck, as I always did when he started to stammer. What I liked about him was that he didn't pretend when things weren't going well. And there was a lot of pretending in me. It was September, and I was still acting like the summer holidays were going to last, like I was about to get a text from my dad: "I'm coming back early". He hadn't sent one since June. I moved my brush along the black edge and that's when I saw it for the first time: on the board, at the very threshold of the backstage area, someone had hooked letters into the wood with a knife. They weren't new, the encapsulated sounds in them had the dust of many years, but they formed something I'd been looking for for months. My fingers ran over the smooth indentations before I had time to think. "NOTHING TO FEAR, EASY." - Miki - I said very quietly. - See. He leaned over. - Who is the Patch? My heart did two tumbles, as if I had suddenly fallen off the back of a chair. "Patch" was the name my dad came up with when he was putting my broken Lego together and saying that a person could put themselves together too. No one but him called me that. Never. Even Mum didn't like it. - 'Nickname,' I replied quickly, my stomach squeezed into a hard ball. - From art camp. Good, huh? - It wasn't. I was lying. And I could even hear the lie hanging in the air, like the overly thick smell of resin. Nikolai didn't drone on. Patience beat from him, the kind that doesn't judge. He went back to reading the text and pretended to be a nobleman in a turban, and I rubbed my fingers over the sharp ends of the letters, as if I wanted to hurt myself with them to see if it was all for real. The lights in the auditorium dimmed until only the rims of neon above the exits remained. I turned off the lamps by the stilettos, made sure the paints were tightly capped, and Santa and I locked the warehouse. I slipped the key to the auditorium into my sweatshirt pocket. Before leaving, I glanced at the platform once more. The letters seemed deeper in the semi-darkness. As if the wood was breathing. The house was empty and too quiet. Mum called out from work, as usual, asking if I'd eaten, if I'd done my homework, if I'd remembered to take out the rubbish. Dad texted briefly: "Today long, good", and because of that typo I got soft and angry at the same time. When the tears started to tickle, I usually went to the shower and let the water run so hot that the steam filled everything, even the things that hurt. Today the water didn't help. Then a voice message came through. An icon was flickering, as if to tempt me. I opened it and felt my heart do a third tumble. Wood creaked in the receiver, something metallic sounded like an echo, and then a voice said: "Don't be afraid of anything, Lata." For a split second I thought it was Dad. That timbre, that hesitation at 'nothing'. But immediately afterwards I heard breathing different, shorter, younger? Or maybe it was me adding it all up. I wanted to write back: "Who's there?" but my fingers went numb. I looked at the time. 7:42 p.m. The auditorium should be closed by now. Mrs Horos had left me a key so that I would get in early in the morning. In my ears it sounded: "Nothing to fear". The irony bubbled out of me enough that I parried, but it sounded a bit like a sob. I texted Nikolai: "Listen, I need to check something. Will you come with me?" He wrote back immediately, "With whom if not you." School at night is a different animal. The corridors make their own sounds, some draughts, some thuds, and every safety poster stares as if from a crooked corner. When we entered the assembly hall, the overhead lights were not on. The green points of the exits, one lamp over the side balcony and the soft light of the telephones were enough. - Is this it? - Nikolai spoke in a half-hearted voice, like in church. - 'Here,' I replied flatly, or my voice would have shaken too much. - I got a message. I don't know from whom. It sounded... - I broke off. I couldn't say it out loud because the sound of the 't' in 'dad' stood in my throat like a prune stone. We walked quietly, as if we were afraid of waking the backstage area. The boards groaned under our weight. When we reached the inscription, I knelt down and ran my finger over the letters again. They were cold, as if someone had just carved them, although, after all, I had had them under my fingers a few hours ago and they were not like that. - Do you hear? - I whispered. We looked at each other. At first glance: nothing. And then - as if from under the stage someone had dragged their hand across the iron. One tentative rasp. My imagination shot up, began to suggest images of hands searching for something in the darkness. I swallowed my saliva. - 'There's a hatch,' Nikolai said, as if he'd just remembered. - They used to keep the lighting equipment in the cellar. We never looked in. He slipped his fingers under the boards by the backstage and indeed, in the light of the phone we saw the delicate outline of a rectangle. There was an iron ring stuck in the middle, pressed against the wood so hard that it left a semi-circular mark in the wood. I thought that if I picked it up, something would change. I didn't know what yet, but I felt it like a tremor under my skin. - Maybe we shouldn't,' I muttered, not knowing myself if I wanted him to stop me. Fear and curiosity began to tug at the rope inside me. - 'Mrs Horos said to check the paints,' Nikolai reminded me, and I heard a warm joke in his voice. - 'We'll also check... the climate. I grabbed the ring. The coldness of the metal went up my arm to my elbow. When I pulled, the wood first protested with a short "booty" and then let go. Air gushed from within - not the musty smell I had expected, but something fresh and damp, like from the forest after a rain. I felt the needles. And a silence that was not empty, rather tense, as if someone was holding their breath along with us. - Hello? - I looked into the darkness. - Is anyone there? Instead of an answer, we heard a crack, as if something small had broken under someone's shoe. The light of my phone danced down the steps going down. They were narrow and wooden and led up to the stage. My first instinct was to take half a step back, but then I heard a whisper. It wasn't loud. Nor was it unfamiliar. - Lena? The voice stopped my heart on a level with my breath. I knew that timbre, those two uncertain centimetres at the beginning of a name, as if someone almost didn't have the courage to say it. Nikolai grabbed my sleeve. His fingers were warm, and I felt like I was turning into snow. - Did you hear that? - I whispered. - 'I heard,' he said, and his half-light eyes looked bigger than usual. - 'If you're coming down, it's together. We fell silent. From the depths the air moved again. A threadbare web trembled at the edge of the hatch, as if a current had swept across the silk. I squeezed the iron ring so hard that my nails hurt, and started to lower my foot onto the first step, when...