Ok.ru had changed. It was sleek, loud, full of advertisements. But I found my old profile. User123 . The page was still there, untouched.
I typed, slowly, the letters clicking like tiny bones: I am 7. I have a red ball. Today is sunny. 7 Ans 2006 Ok.ru
I closed the laptop. Outside, the sun was setting over a courtyard that looked nothing like Tashkent. But for a moment, I could almost hear the whir of the fan. The click of Lena’s bracelets on the keyboard. And the little bing of a message that never came. User123
I stared at the date. November 12, 2006. I was twenty-three years old now, living in a different country. Lena was a doctor in Germany. Dima from summer camp was a truck driver with three kids. And somewhere, lost in the server farms of a forgotten internet, a seven-year-old boy was still waiting for someone to reply. I have a red ball
Lena eventually went home. The computer fell silent. The cursor stopped blinking. Years later, I found the old hard drive in a box of cables. I plugged it in, just to see.
A tiny, pixelated photo. A boy in an oversized tracksuit, leaning against a peeling wall. His profile said he liked Ruki Vverh! and hated broccoli. To me, he looked like any other boy. To Lena, he was a star fallen to earth.