Author

In the sopping-wet spring of 1995, Sylvia rode the bus to and from Old Mountain more times than she cared to count. Her twin brother, Drago, was in Kyustendil, doing his military service, and she felt obliged to visit her mother twice as often as usual. When she had been a student, she’d caught any bus she could, usually from Poduene Station, which was a filthy place, thick with fumes and overrun by dogs, full of stalls hawking cheap underwear and overripe vegetables.

For hours now Dobrin has been begging Stassi to stop it, shut up, are you trying to make her mad? “Put those down,” he hisses, whispering, though his mother lags too far behind to hear.