- How many languages ​​do you know? The more complex the translation, the better

Reading for growth with Mikhail Yasnov The bulldog ate my new sneakers! Hurry here! The bulldog ate my new sneakers! Now these will be the only sneakers that I will remember for the rest of my life!

Asya Petrova is a very young St. Petersburg writer. She was published in periodicals, participated in two festivals “Around Detgiz”, and went to a seminar for young translators in the French city of Arles (she already has several serious publications of translations of French prose under her belt). She is also the author of the fairy tale “The Girl with the Flute.”

This story is about the ambiguity and multiplicity of fate options, and that human consciousness must be light, flexible, and most importantly, free, in order to perceive all the options and choose the right one. In childhood, such a thought is not easy to understand, and even a teenager wants the world to be divided into white and black, good and evil, fairy tales and reality. But the world is actually much more complex. And reading Asya Petrova’s stories, you understand that you are not the only one who is strange, superfluous, stupid, you are not the only one who is tormented by unusual doubts, and you are not the only one who wants to cry.

In her story, Asya went against many current children's books, which propose solving problems with the help of magic, otherworldly forces and magical phenomena. real life. Of course, while you are reading, it is sweet to console yourself with the hope that all difficulties and sorrows could be overcome if only you had at hand Magic wand, and behind him is a reliable comrade from parallel world. But for some reason, witchcraft experience does not help at all in everyday life...

Asya Petrova is not afraid of the most difficult problems and contradictions of teenage life; together with her heroes, she thinks about the main questions - what is death, love, betrayal, lies... There are many reasons for such reflections in life, and it is important to find the right decision, the right point of view that will help you gain the necessary experience and knowledge.

However, the conclusions are not presented by the author as the ultimate truth. All endings have a surprise when the main idea suddenly questioned. The hero seems to be asking“Is everything so clear?” . All Asya’s stories are built around this question mark.

It's the other way around

In the morning everyone was running around like crazy. Back and forth. Mom even knocked over the pot of porridge. And dad said absolutely nothing to her. Mom can knock over the pots because she cleans everything up. In the same way, doctors are allowed to kill people because doctors treat, teachers are allowed to scream at the top of their lungs because they teach, and police officers are allowed to shoot because they care about the peace of people. In general, if you do something, you can also do something opposite.

I thought about what interesting things I could do, came up with nothing and decided that until I found my own fun activity, I would help my mother maintain the mess. After all, in order to enjoy cleaning, you must first scatter everything thoroughly. Mom can't cope very well with this alone.

Go put your things away, they're everywhere! - I started every morning with these grandmother’s words.

It's easy to say "take it away." If her room was as messy as mine, I would look at her. It's easy to tidy up when your place is clean. I have never seen everything scattered in my grandmother’s room. And since nothing is scattered, there is nothing to clean up. She simply pretends to remove, but in reality she only preserves what is already there. This is unfair. If only she had sorted everything out properly first...
“Tell your child to make the room look divine,” the grandmother continued.
- Clean up the room! - Mom obediently told me, but for some reason her words did not convince me.

So this time I wandered despondently to my place, not even thinking about getting to work. And who came up with the idea that disorder is bad? I reached for my sock and a tiny red dog- last year I collected a collection of toy dogs, but stopped when there was nowhere to put them. I hadn't cleaned since last year, so now my dogs were literally everywhere. In every corner you can stumble upon a new breed. The collie fell out of the sock. Not my favorite breed, but I'm pretty sure there's something better behind the sofa.

I sat down on the floor next to the sofa and thought deeply. The more I thought, the clearer it became to me that the world is built topsy-turvy. My classmate Sasha Pavlov is an excellent student, and all the teachers love him. But one day we decided to skip history class and hid as a whole class in the corridor in front of the computer science classroom. After about half an hour, the teacher guessed where everyone had gone. Hearing footsteps, we closed the door, and when the teacher tried to enter, it was Sasha who leaned on the door with his whole body so as not to let the enemy in. Then, of course, we were scolded greatly, but the teacher never found out who was holding the door. And, believe me, it never occurred to anyone that this could have been done by the most exemplary student, the pride of the school.

Perhaps the case of Sasha Pavlov is not very convincing, but take someone more serious, and you will immediately see how the world turns upside down. Just take God! He does so many nasty things, but he gets away with it just because he created man.

And here’s another, for example, Santa Claus. Almost as much of a klutz as God. Once upon a time, a long time ago, I gave someone a gift, and since then everyone has believed in it. But he hasn’t given anything to anyone for a hundred years and hasn’t even appeared!

I entered the kitchen, looked my mother very sternly in the eyes and said:
- Mom, I won’t clean up.
Mom raised her eyebrow in surprise:
- Why?
- This, Mom, will be a complete lie. I will become the same liar as everyone else. But I do not want. People do something good only so that they are not scolded for bad things later. I decided to do it honestly. I just won't do anything. I love chaos.
- If you're worried that I won't scold you for the mess, then don't worry. “I will always scold you,” my mother laughed.

But I was not as naive as she thought. And to prove the seriousness of my intentions, I returned to the room and began to shift everything from place to place, hoping to mix it up even more. But it was not there. Dad, passing by my room, noticed the fuss and immediately reported to my mother: “It seems that someone has got down to business!” Lord, he thought I was cleaning things up! Do you understand, do you understand how ridiculous this is? On the contrary, I made a mess! Everything around is not what it seems. Everything is on your ears. But you can't fool me. I'll scatter everything. Pants here, a sweater there, books can be placed like this, let a large inflatable ball be in the middle, and socks on the radiator... I was rushing around the room, flushed and happy, when suddenly I felt something was wrong. I stopped, wiped the sweat from my forehead and gasped - without noticing it, I tidied the room... The mess turned into order against my desire. In bewilderment, I plopped down on the sofa. And how did I manage to forget that in this world everything always happens the other way around!

Sneakers forever

I sat down on the grass in the garden. The sun stroked my nose, eyelids, cheeks, lips. Women, men, dogs, children passed by. My sneaker-clad feet sat comfortably on the ground. And I could say that I was absolutely happy, if not for one circumstance, namely, my stomach was churning terribly. My stomach swelled, groaned, and changed before my eyes, either because of an extra piece of pizza, or because of dirty hands at lunch, or because of a microbe sitting on a tomato and God knows how it entered my stomach. Nothing, nothing, I thought, I’ll be patient a little, the sun is so good today. But my stomach did not subside. It rapidly expanded, grew, and took up more and more space in my jacket and in my head.

Some time ago I realized that this happens to me with all happy moments. As soon as I find myself in a happy situation, company, place or time, something that gets in the way always appears. It prevents me from enjoying the moment. I'm not downplaying! Honestly! As soon as possible.

For example, I go to bed after my birthday, happy and tired, I want, of course, to sleep. Between my fingers I feel a pleasant, silky, cool pillowcase, between my knees - an even, soft, plump blanket. Everything is fine, I start going over events in my head, my thoughts are slowly spinning and suddenly I feel uncomfortable. Well, it’s just uncomfortable - the head is lying somehow wrong, the arm is bent wrong, and in general it’s uncomfortable to lie on the side. Well, I roll over onto my back, and on my back it’s even worse, my stomach somehow sticks out, it’s hard to breathe. I’m on my side again, then on the other, on the third... I mean on the first, I’m spinning, and I’m uncomfortable everywhere and in all positions. So I can toss and turn for several hours until I resign myself and fall asleep in an awkward position.

In addition to just good moments, sometimes very good moments. I can't deal with them either. While riding a horse, which I had dreamed of since I was six years old, I was in terrible pain there. Well, there, there, under the stomach. Sitting in the saddle, I was happy like crazy, the wind was just blowing inside me. When I am very happy, I always have the feeling that inside, somewhere between my chest and stomach, a happy wind is blowing with all its might. And the happier I am, the more gusty and irrepressible this wind is. I even hold my breath. But when I galloped, the saddle, hard as a stone, began to hit me so hard that it ruined all my joy. I thought it would give me a headache, honestly.

In general, something happens every time. If I sit down to eat my favorite chocolate cake, a piece ends up on my pants. If I happily go to school on the first of September, then on the way a truck splashes me from a puddle. If I'm flying on an airplane (I love flying on airplanes!), the seat I'm sitting in isn't near the window. If the chair is by the window, then the person in front tilts the back of the seat, and it presses down on me. If there is no person, then I accidentally pour boiling water on myself. Or I start dying to pee when I can no longer get up. But even if you imagine that everything is good, it’s still bad, because I know that when I land, my ears will hurt.

Over time, I noticed that absolutely all good moments are accompanied by inconvenience, and all happy ones are accompanied by suffering. I couldn’t get used to it and one day I decided to try to fix everything.

My mother is an actress. She often travels around the world and once got ready to go on tour to whole year. It was in August. They left me with my dad and grandma. But before leaving, she promised to fly with me to the sea for a week. I felt uneasy, but I was determined to enjoy it to the fullest.

Everything really turned out just fine. Simply fabulous! We swam in the warm sea, I was never bitten by a jellyfish, we walked until the evening, I went to bed when I wanted, there was beauty all around, a lot of flowers, carousels, lanterns and my favorite food. Yes, yes, every day I devoured millions, billions, myriads of eclairs. And rode on a water banana. And I chatted with my mother for hours, and was happy, but I constantly experienced a strange feeling. It was as if I was being pricked by a tiny needle. At the most unexpected moment - once, it will sting in the throat, once, and in the arm. “Something is wrong,” knocked in my head, “something is wrong.” I wanted to tell my mother, but I couldn’t figure out how to explain why I suddenly felt so sad and scared. And then one evening a terrible thing happened. My mother and I just rode the golden horse - it’s a carousel, very slow and beautiful - and then sat down in a cafe on the embankment. Mom bought me a huge ice cream with sparklers on it, which I love, and then her phone rang. She spoke very quickly with her director, but when she turned to me, I suddenly hit the ice cream tin on the table with all my might and started crying all over the place.
- I hate your stupid job, because of which I see you once a year! I hate the director, I hate the theater! There is nothing scarier than the theater!

Mom dropped the phone from her hands in surprise and wanted to say something, but I suddenly thought better of it and beat her to it:
- No no no! I would like to stay here forever, but every time I think that it will end, and then...

I cried for a long time, but it turned out that the director called to warn about the postponement of the tour for three months. I was delighted. Three more months together. While my mother was choosing a dress for herself in the store, I sat on a bench by the sea and thought. Nothing bothered me anymore. At least for the time being.

But a strange thing - I realized that precisely because my happiness is incomplete, I will remember these days so well... Like grapefruit juice with bitterness. Like leaves lightly touched by the colors of autumn. Happy moments, slightly spoiled by sadness, create much longer paths in our heads, which means... then I felt that someone was gnawing on my leg, and I jumped up from my seat.
- The bulldog ate my new sneakers! Hurry here! The bulldog ate my new sneakers! Now these will be the only sneakers that I will remember for the rest of my life!

Not quite a mustache

Don't leave! Please! Just don't leave me here alone! No! No! No! - I grabbed my mother’s legs, pulled her jacket, buried my forehead in her stomach and shed tears until my dad started the car and turned his sternest gaze on me.

Every time my parents went to the city after the weekend and left me at the dacha with my grandmother, I thought it was forever. Each time I felt that they would not return, each time I was sure that I had been abandoned.
- Senya, they will arrive on Saturday! You'll see your mom in a week! - Grandma said, patting me on the shoulder, but I had no time for Saturday.

It seemed to me that I was alone in the whole world, and this made me incredibly scared. I sat in a hammock, rested my toes on the rough trunk of a pine tree and waited for my heart to come out of my heels. If someone asked what I was so afraid of, I would never be able to answer. I had nothing to fear - my grandmother was cooking pancakes with cottage cheese on the veranda, somewhere in the neighborhood my friends were playing Cossacks and Robbers, the weather was warm, but I only wanted one thing - to see my mother.

This is the first time,” my grandmother explained to her friend, who came to us on Sundays for pancakes, “we always lived normally, he was a cheerful boy, he ran all day long, swam, but this year it was just some kind of misfortune.” As parents go home, we are in tears, and nothing can calm us down.
- Maybe he quarreled with his friends?
- He didn’t quarrel with anyone! I was very little - I didn’t cry like that. Oh, okay, tell me about your hydrangeas,” and the conversation smoothly turned to flowers, weeds, flower beds, beds and other nonsense.

I was bored listening to boring conversations, and was annoyed with my granny for telling everyone about me. But one day, while chatting like this, grandma’s phone rang. It was dad, he said that mom had finally been given a vacation, so they would arrive not on Saturday, as usual, but on Wednesday. I almost squealed with joy - there were several happy weeks ahead.
- Well, Senya, how did you behave? - Mom asked jokingly while Dad took the last bag of fruit out of the trunk.
- I behaved badly, but now I will improve. Finally you have arrived.

They came. They have arrived and will stay for a long time. I repeated these words to myself a million times, swinging in the hammock and spitting out cherry pits. How many of these bones! Why are all the most delicious berries It’s so hard to get - strawberries are always scarce, blueberries are difficult to pick, gooseberries are eaten by weevils, and I’m allergic to red currants. I spat out the last bone. There were no more cherries. And suddenly I felt that I was alone again. All alone and no one needs him. How come? After all, the parents have arrived. They came! The car was at the gate! I jumped off the hammock and ran to my mother.
- Why are you crying? We're not going anywhere now. What are you doing?

I looked up at my mother with a tear-stained face and didn’t know what to say.
“Come on, come on, look at me,” Mom leaned over me and broke into a smile.
- What? - I asked incredulously.
-Your mustache is growing! Just look at this fluff under your nose! It's a bit early. It’s still not quite a mustache, of course, but now I understand why you became such a crybaby.
- Well, why? - I didn’t see the connection between my anxiety and some stupid mustache.
-You're just going through puberty.
- What?
- Maturation! Sexual! You are becoming a man. Still a very small man, but your body is being rebuilt, you know? Kind of like a piano. When the piano is rebuilt, it makes unpleasant sounds, out of tune, and then everything is fine - it sings with a clear voice again.

That evening, after dinner, I took my dad's dusty Polaroid out of his drawer, held it up to my face, and took a photo of myself. close-up. In the photo, my “not quite” mustache was not visible at all, I was happy, put the photo in a thick book about Winnie the Pooh and went to bed. And the next morning a curious thought came into my head. I took a pen, took out a photograph and on the back, turning to the adult Sena, I wrote the following words: “If you ever get lonely, buddy.”

They didn't want me to get bad grades, write on the walls, or listen to loud music. No matter how I make excuses, it’s all in vain. They said I was at a difficult age. Difficult for what? I don't understand what age means. And I don't understand why they call themselves old, because they're not even gray! I swear, my mom doesn't have a single gray hair!

I'm not at a difficult age, I just want something to happen. At least something. It is possible for a flying saucer with aliens to fall on the house. Or for robbers to break into our place in the middle of the night. I'm not evil, I don't wish anything bad on anyone. If there was a volcanic eruption or an earthquake, I would be happy too. It doesn’t matter to me whether the events are good or bad, as long as they are incredible.

Recently I noticed two things. First, bad events keep people occupied longer than good ones. Secondly: in life, much more often nothing happens than something happens. Everyone around is constantly afraid. My mother is afraid that she will be fired, my dad is afraid that he will go bankrupt, my friend Vitya is afraid that he will be kicked out of school, my friend Dasha is afraid that one morning she will wake up completely bald, my grandfather is afraid that it will soon begin nuclear war, and I’m the only one who’s afraid that none of this will happen.

Mom says: “Dress warmly, otherwise you will turn into ice!” Dad says: “Train well, otherwise the guys will one day beat you to pieces!” Grandfather says: “Don’t sit at the computer until nightfall, otherwise you’ll become hunchbacked like a mouse!” But nothing like that happens. Every morning I get out of bed exactly the same as when I went into it, and every morning I find the world in exactly the same order in which I left it before going to bed.

That’s why, when dad once said that our house was bought by some company that would turn the apartments into offices, I didn’t believe him at all. Moving! Moving to another house, to another area, to another street is too big an event to be true. If we move, I will no longer wake up to the sound of the piano from the kindergarten (it's right below us!). If we move, I will no longer meet sullen Aunt Clara from the next apartment in the morning. No - these changes are too global to happen.

But every day my doubts were pushed further and further away. A lady with a bun of burgundy hair began to come to us - she was discussing a new apartment with her parents. Dad soon began to dismantle the bookcases, and I helped him put the books into boxes. Mom - she was pregnant with my brother - constantly complained that there was dust all around, and it was harmful for her to breathe dust. Every evening, grandfather mourned his old rocking chair, which dad refused to take to his new apartment. “Dad, I would still take him to the dacha sooner or later!” - he said to his grandfather. By the way, I never understood why my parents always offer to take all the trash to the dacha. It’s as if the dacha is a garbage dump, not a summer house.

So. Every day I realized more and more clearly that I was wrong. Of course, there are exceptions, but they only confirm the rule. And the rule is that life likes to relive the same events, and not allow surprises and changes into itself. It doesn't rain strawberries in spring! And suddenly the neighbor doesn’t turn out to be a maniac! And meteorites don’t fall to the ground! Okay, people say they fall, but have you ever seen a meteorite fall right in front of your nose? Have you ever found a green monster in your room, like Harry Potter? My God, I've been trying to come to terms with the absence of a monster for years.

Sometimes funny things happened to me, but they were always either pranks or some other nonsense. For example, when they gave me a computer, it was wonderful, but after a couple of hours I got used to it and it became an ordinary piece of furniture. What now? Is it really something incredible?

I couldn’t believe it, but after dismantling my own bookcase, I came to the conclusion that, perhaps, the move was starting to look more and more like reality.
- Wow, the child will be born in new apartment, - my mother sighed joyfully.

Unlike her, I didn't care much about the baby, but I was happy to carry on the conversation. So now I nodded and went home to cherish the dream of moving.

Several months passed, we literally lived out of suitcases, and I actually slept hugging my old backpack in the shape of a tiger cub. Every day for me began with the question “Well, when, dad,

when will we move? At first dad said “in a month”, then “in a week”, then again “in a week”, and again “in a week”... It seemed like countless weeks had already passed, but we still didn’t move. I managed to chat about the move at school, to all my friends and teachers, I even wrote a poem about the move! And then one evening dad returned home very cheerful, hugged mom, sat down in grandpa’s old chair and said:
- You won’t believe it, I didn’t believe it myself when I found out, but the office project was finished! Guys, we can stay home!

He said this with such relief that I was dumbfounded. Like this? My incredible event got away again!? But? Yes, yes, that's how it always happens. And how could I believe that the old rocking chair could disappear from its place somewhere! Upset almost to tears, I went to bed. And at night my mother started having contractions and continued until lunchtime the next day. Towards evening, dad took me with him to the hospital to look at the baby. We walked along a long white corridor, then the doors of the room swung open, and suddenly... suddenly I saw him. It was so strange. It was as if an alien had suddenly appeared in front of me. The child was tiny, like a toy, but real, with red hair, like his mother’s, and dimples on his cheeks. I was afraid to touch him, I was afraid to blow on him, and when he suddenly woke up, turned his head and opened his big blue eye, I hardly took air into my lungs to exhale: “Oh God, this is incredible!”

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  A tale of life and death and a parody vampire novel. Hardly leaders kindergarten will be interested. But I will be glad to attract the attention of readers of teenage literature to these texts. Great values ​​disguised as provocation, language experiments disguised as confession. As the author would say, whoever does not die - read disco and dance the book!.ru

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  Teenagers want to be independent. Make decisions independently. Be free from parental rules. Experiment and cross boundaries. And also - to be heard, respected, understood.

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  A new book Asya Petrova“Who is not dead, dance disco!”, published by Bertelsmann Publishing House, is an immersion into teenage psychology, a study of feelings, emotions and life itself.

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  Adolescence is a complex and contradictory period. The desire for independence gives rise to many conflicts, both external and internal. And here's Christina Paley, a teenage girl main character story “Who is not dead, dance disco!”, holds on to the balcony bars, intending to commit suicide. Karin Gilbert, the heroine of the story “The Man on Four Stairs,” tormented by hatred for loved ones, is ready to commit a terrible crime.

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  Behind many disappointments and conflicts, unrequited love, the misunderstanding of others hides one thing - the desire to understand who you are and what happiness is.

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  Black and white illustrations for the book created by Tatiana Stadnichenko, enhance the tense atmosphere of the story and expose the feelings of the main characters.

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