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He wasn't using it to cheat. At least, that’s what he told the ghost of Baranov that seemed to watch him from the black-and-white author portrait.

The blue-and-white cover was frayed at the corners, the laminate peeling like sunburnt skin. On the shelf of the school library, nestled between a dusty atlas and a collection of Chekhov, sat the 6th-grade Russian language textbook by M.T. Baranov. To any other student, it was a tomb of grammar rules and relentless dictations. To Alyosha, it was a gateway to a silent war.

Alyosha looked out his window. The snow wasn't just "white flakes." It was a shroud over the grey Soviet blocks; it was the muffled sound of his mother’s boots as she came home late from the pharmacy; it was the way the streetlights turned the world into an orange-tinted dream.

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