Part 1

Lesia was a doozie dreamer. At the age of twelve, she deliberately didn`t want to grow up. She was not at all attracted to the fashion brands that her classmates craved. It was not interesting for her to spend hours on social media discussing statuses of “liking” under photos of friends and stubbornly marking “Cutie!”, molding where many and many emoticons from colons, dashes, and brackets were needed. Lesia liked reading and dreaming. It must be said that her fantasy was relevant to any classes, even the exact ones. So, she thought of chemistry, imagining that valence is a family of atoms and the greater their valence, the stronger the relationship in their family.

There was a history lesson where teacher Mr. Petrenko spoke about the Crusades and the Middle Ages. Lesia sat at her desk, daydreaming and flying in her far away  fantasies. At one moment, she imagined herself as a Princess in the era of courageous knights in lats and their lovely ladies. At another moment, she was racing on a white horse, and the wind was fluttering her golden hair and pink lace dress…

“Oh My God, by the way, where I’m rushing. Oh, this is no longer a dream. It comes true. It is an advertisement of some detergent where a knight turns into a queen,” Lesia laughed out loud, forgetting where she was.

“Sidorchuk, do we not disturb you?” the teacher reacted instantly.

“She flies back in her dreams!” Jeanne gently giggled.

“Probably, she composes a letter to Saint Nicholas,”  said dumpy Slavko Buts. And then, clapping in a squeaky voice, he added, “Dear Nicholas, give me a toy elephant and a magazine “Primary student.”

The class exploded with laughter.

“I ask for silence,” Mr. Petrenko tried to calm down the class, but it was not easy to do, because the seventh graders didn`t joke. Lesia was startled. She felt as if she had been poured with a bucket of cold water… Ice bucket challenge…The bullying of classmates about her dreams started recently ― at the break, she had the negligence to announce that she was going to the Carpathians for Christmas holidays because she had already booked a ticket, having written to the heavenly office of Saint Nicholas. After hearing the news, her school mates were making fun of her. Only Sonia Karpenko, with whom Lesya from the first-class sat at the same desk and considered her closest girlfriend, shook her head sadly and remarked, “You, Lesko, as simple as three pennies. Who in our age believes in Saint Nicholas and all kinds of things like that?”

And since then it has started…. Every day her classmates asked her several times, “Lesia, and will you travel by train or Saint Nicholas will deliver you to the Carpathian on your own plane? Lesia, have you already written a list of your good deeds?”

Oh, if Lesia only knew what her sincerity would be! After all, she was a smart girl and knew that the classmates’ ridicule would continue until they will choose a new “victim”. Lesia suffered and stood her ground. “They just don`t know that Christmas is magic that works,” she thought to herself… She suffered…and waited for her hour…