Before the Sky Changed

In the spring of 1986, the trees lining the streets of Prypiat bloomed early. Pale blossoms clung to the boughs like quiet promises, stirring gently in the river breeze. Fourteen-year-old Katya Ivanenko rode her bicycle down Lenina Avenue, her hair braided in twin ropes, her face flushed with the freedom of an early dismissal from school.

Snowmelt had long faded, leaving the sidewalks clean and the chestnut trees feathered with new leaves. The river carried a softer current, reflecting skies so pale they seemed painted. To Katya Ivanenko, fourteen and restless, the world felt briefly weightless—an open door leading to her first real summer of freedom.

She pedaled, her bicycle's rusted bell jingling when she hit a bump. The city around her hummed: the chatter of neighbors leaning from balconies, a scratchy pop song from a radio kiosk, a trolleybus sighing as it stopped near the department store. Posters bearing slogans like, Слава праці! “Glory to labor!” peeled slightly at the corners. She barely noticed. All she saw was possibility.

In her canvas satchel was an application to work as a junior counselor at Emerald Pioneer camp. She had smoothed its creases three times already, imagining the long summer days: teaching small children to swim, roasting potatoes over campfires, sneaking away with her best friend Olya to talk under the stars. Maybe Sasha, who lived two floors down, would find a reason to visit the camp too. He had begun looking at her differently, not just with the quick, mocking glances of childhood, but something quieter, almost shy.

“Це буде наше літо,” Olya had whispered that morning in school. This will be our summer. Katya had smiled so hard it made her cheeks ache.

Her father’s apartment waited at the end of the avenue. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage from a neighbor’s pot and the faint metallic tang of her father’s clothes. He was a technician at Reactor No. 4, a fact Katya had always carried like a badge of pride. “Не бійтеся, донечко,” he’d said: “Do not be afraid, my daughter.” He worked at the plant, shifting fuel rods under the bright lamps that glowed with deadly intensity. When he returned from his shifts from the plant, he was fatigued, but his voice softened the moment he called her name.

There had been sadness before, her mother had died six winters ago from something no one named out loud, but that was long ago. Her father seemed to be nearly back to his old self. He was able to laugh on the rare occasion. As for Katya, the past was behind her. Now was for breakfasts filled with smiles, rivers, and whispered plans in the dark.

She dropped her bicycle outside the entrance and bounded up the stairwell, her feet echoing against concrete. Inside, the apartment was warm and cluttered: a radio with its back cover off (her father loved repairing things even when they weren’t broken), tea glasses on the table, a basket of potatoes by the window. Her Pioneer scarf hung drying on the balcony line, fluttering in the breeze.

She carefully set the table, placing two yellow mugs aside baby blue cloth napkins, and practiced how she would tell him about the camp when he got home. She wanted him to smile, not just the small, tired smile, but the real one, the one that made his eyes light briefly as if remembering something better.

For breakfast, they would eat simple food: dark rye bread, jaječnja, maybe a small jar of cherries he had bartered from a coworker. He wasn’t a man of stories or long conversations, but his presence filled the place like a steady lamp. Even silence felt safe with him there.

That night, while she lay in bed, Katya listened to the city’s familiar sounds: a distant train, dogs barking near the river, the rhythmic pulse of machinery from the direction of the plant. It lulled her, that constant low thrum. Life was ordered, predictable. The future stretched like the river, calm, wide, endless.

She closed her eyes and imagined floating downstream, her fingers trailing over the water’s cool surface. At the bend in the river stood Café Prypiat, known by locals as ‘The Dish’, the circular riverside café where she and Olya sometimes shared soda in tall glasses. Its windows caught the sunset like orange fire. She pictured herself there in June, laughing, the taste of sugar on her tongue, the sound of boats creaking against the docks.

For now, there was only April, and the blossoms outside her window, and a girl who still believed the summer ahead was hers.

Katya woke to a stillness that felt wrong. Prypiat was never silent. Even at dawn, there were always the distant hums: the plant’s turbines, early buses, a neighbor’s radio playing news. That morning, there was only air that smelled faintly of metal.

Her father hadn’t come home from his night shift. She approached the window of the balcony, and her stomach dropped, there was a large crimson glow, with a glowing, bluish light above it coming from the power plant.

At first, she waited, the news said it was just a small fire, nothing to worry about. Perhaps her father was delayed due to trying to contain it. The clock’s hands moved past the hours… and then further. Neighbors whispered on the landing. A woman clutching her child asked her where her father was. Katya didn’t know. The woman’s face tightened, as though the answer itself was dangerous.

At 1:23AM, the reactor had exploded. But they didn’t tell the children. Not at first. They said everything was under control. To just wait. But fathers don’t come home late. Not when they work near the core. Not when the sky turns strange and the birds stop singing.

The next day, loudspeakers crackled in the streets: citizens were instructed to remain indoors, windows closed. No explanations. No sirens. No official panic, only a tightening quiet, as though the city itself was holding its breath.

Two days passed in a blur. On the third morning, soldiers in masks arrived. Orders were shouted: “Gather your documents, some clothes, food. Only what you can carry. Buses will take you. Temporary evacuation. You will return in a few days.”

Katya stuffed her satchel with what she could: her school notebook, her Pioneer scarf, her father’s radio screwdriver—small, sharp, something of him. She paused in the kitchen, staring at the table set for two. Then she left it behind.

Outside, people moved like shadows carrying bags and children. Soldiers watched them but didn’t meet their eyes. The buses lined the streets, their engines rumbling. As she climbed aboard, Katya turned once to see her building, its windows reflecting the pale sun, her bicycle still leaning by the entrance. A soldier urged her forward. The door closed.

Through the dirty glass, she watched Prypiat slide away. The Ferris wheel still stood unfinished in the amusement park. Laundry swayed on balconies. Blossoms fluttered from the trees. It looked almost normal, like a painting of itself. Her chest hurt with something sharp and enormous she couldn’t name.

The bus ride out of Prypiat was quiet. Mothers clutched plastic bags stuffed with papers, pill bottles, and their children’s schoolbooks. Soldiers in masks stood motionless on the side of the road, eyes hidden behind thick goggles. Someone on the bus said it was a just precaution, a drill, something routine. Another woman wept into her scarf.

At the checkpoint, they were told to discard certain belongings—metal, shoes, anything that could “retain contamination.” Katya held onto her satchel tightly, not wanting to let it go of her father’s screwdriver, yet had no choice. She dared a glance back, tears and the dust on the dust on the window muddling her vision. She saw Prypiat’s rooftops vanishing behind them, as if swallowed by the forest. Her room—where she’d drawn pop art posters of summer nights; her secret bench by the riverbank, where dragonflies danced; the rusted merry go round at the playground, where she and Olya had laughed boundlessly. It all faded away, as if from existence. She pressed her hand against the glass, it felt cold.

They never went back.

In the refugee center, an old schoolhouse in a rural village of Polesia, Katya lived in a narrow bunk bed with strips of mildew on the walls. The smell of stale bread and damp wool blankets lingered day and night. Every morning, she woke to the clatter of metal plates and the hollow echo of other girls whispering news. Wondering where someone was, when they’d be able to go back. No one laughed.

One muggy afternoon, she wandered outside into the courtyard. She found a broken swing, its chain twisted, and sat down. The wood groaned, a weary creak that sounded like an old man’s sigh. She closed her eyes and imagined herself back in Prypiat: the sun flickering through birch leaves, the excitement of her and Olya rushing towards the Palace of Culture Energetik to catch a foreign film at the cinema.

But the memory was too bright, too sharp. Tears pricked her eyes. She smelled smoke on the wind, nuclear smoke, she thought, and her heart pounded.

On the evening of May 9th, Victory Day, fireworks bloomed in the sky above Zhytomyr. Each explosion echoed like thunder, but instead of the usual awe, they brought nausea. Light flashing in dark sky, just like that night.

In the dormitory, she began to write letters she never sent, the notebook that still felt like a sliver of home. She addressed them to her father, to Olya, to no one.

Dear Papa,

I miss the way you would fix the radio, even when it didn’t need fixing. I miss your tea. I miss having breakfast at dawn and talking about nothing at all. I miss you.

Between the lines, she sketched the Ferris wheel: half built, skeletal, leaning into an empty sky. She imagined climbing into one of those empty cars, letting it rise above the town and carry her away.

That night, the electricity flickered, once, twice, and the girls shrieked. In the dark, Katya could hear her own pulse, loud as a drum. She clutched her notebook until her knuckles whitened.

The relocation office eventually assigned Katya to an aunt she barely remembered—Halyna, a distant cousin of her mother’s.

Zhytomyr was a different world: older buildings, fewer trees, air that smelled of coal and fried onions. Halyna’s apartment was small, with faded wallpaper and a couch that smelled of vodka and smoke. Her husband, Petro, barely acknowledged Katya. When he did, it was sharp, barking syllables and scowls. They had no children of their own, and they didn’t seem to want her.

“She eats too much, “Halyna muttered in the kitchen. “She should be grateful. We have our own mouths to feed.”

Katya learned to eat little. To move quietly. To fold herself into corners.

School papers were delayed or lost. No one told her when, or if she would be placed. When she mentioned her plans to go to the University of Kyiv to study engineering, her aunt cackled, a far cry from her father's reaction. Days stretched empty. She stared from the window at children playing in the courtyard with sticks and tin cans, their laughter sounding far away, like echoes from a life that wasn’t hers.

The food was different here, bland, lifeless. She missed her father’s small rituals, the way he peeled apples in a single curling strip, the Sunday varenyky, the tea brewed so strong it stained the glass. At Halyna’s, meals were boiled potatoes and cabbage, or plain millet porridge, with sharp reprimands if she reached seconds.

At night, she continued to write letters.

Dear Papa,

I still have hope. I waited at the bus stop for you. I kept looking for your jacket. I don’t know if they told you where I went. I hope you are able to find me soon.

Dear Olya,

I miss you, my friend. I hope you are well. I heard some saying that your family probably went east. I wish I had an address to at least write to you. It seems Sasha and his family have vanished entirely. The camp by the Uzh has been closed until further notice. I am still in disbelief that all of this happened. This was supposed to be the summer of our lives. Now I am just wishing for our most mundane day together. Hopefully we can return to the city soon.

Sometimes, she dreamt of Prypiat, not the poisoned city it had become, but as it was: sunlit streets, the river breeze, the sound of trolleybuses. She woke with tears and a hollow ache in her chest. Once, Petro caught her crying. He sneered.

“No use crying for a dead place. Only fools think the past can be held.”

But she couldn’t. Forgetting felt like betrayal.

By late August, Zhytomyr bloomed. Trees along the streets unfurled full leaves, and children ran barefoot in courtyards, their voices high and bright. But for Katya, the world had dimmed.

She spent most days by the apartment window. Watching a boy below draw patterns in the dirt with a stick, watching neighbors hang laundry, listening to distant laughter. None of it felt connected to her. It was as though she had been cut out of her own life and pasted into someone else’s.

One morning, she woke to find a dark smear on her pillow. A nosebleed. Just a small one, but enough to make her hands shake. Halyna noticed. That night, she whispered to a neighbor in the kitchen:

“They say the children from there… they’re different now. Their blood isn’t right. Some lose their hair. Some…” Her voice trailed off as she noticed Katya behind her.

Katya fought back tears. She imagined herself dissolving from the inside, piece by piece, until there would be nothing left to bury. Her dreams changed.

At first, they were simple memories: the riverbank, Olya’s laughter, her father leaning over the radio, screwdriver in hand. Then they began to twist.

She dreamt she was inside ‘The Dish,’ the quaint riverside café. But it wasn’t warm and golden now, it was gray, dreary, dull. Her father sat at one of the tables. He didn’t move, didn’t blink. Only his eyes glowed faintly in the dim light.

She tried to speak, but no sound came. Radiation seemed to discharge from his eyes, and then he fell to the floor. She gasped awake, clutching her blanket. Her skin smelled faintly metallic, as though the dream had followed her out.

Later that day, when Halyna left for the market, Katya wandered the apartment. She paused by the hallway wall. A faint crack ran from the ceiling to the baseboard. She crouched, touching it. Her fingers came away damp, with a thin, sharp scent, like wet iron.

She jerked her hand back. Maybe it was just a leaking pipe. Maybe. She tasted metal at the back of her throat. She thought of Reactor 4, of light splitting the night, and the silence that followed.

She couldn’t stay inside. She wanted to be by the river, but there was no river nearby. Only gray building and air that smelled of frying cabbage and exhaust.

She grabbed her shawl and left, walking without direction. The city thinned around her: buildings giving way to fields, paved streets to dirt. Finally, she found a quiet meadow and stopped.

Wildflowers grew there, blue, white, pink, their petals trembling in the wind. She knelt, the earth cool under her knees. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe.

She reached out and plucked one flower, holding it carefully. She thought of Olya’s words: Це буде наше літо. This will be our summer.

Her throat tightened. The world blurred.

She saw it all in fragments. The bus ride away from her home, the apartment table with two mugs waiting, her father smiling at her, weathered hands hovering over scattered tools. In that moment, she understood that she would never see him again, never look over her old school projects, or ever visit her cherished places. Olya's bright laugh echoing on the merry-go-round. The secret bench where dreams used to bloom. It was all gone.

It felt as if she was screaming, being ripped apart inside, but she stood in silence. The meadow unperturbed. Only the wind moved.

She stared at the flower in her hand. It wasn’t much, not a home, not a future, but it was the tiniest glimmer of beauty in a world turned to despair.

That night, back in Halyna’s apartment, she wrote in her notebook.

The summer never came. The river is gone. But I am still here. I remember the liveliness of the pool, rectangular light, water trembling with every dive. The center's heartbeat, children's laughter ricocheting, parents calling, water slapping against tile. A world contained, warm and alive.

I remember birds once threaded melodies through park branches. The air had seemed charged with hope. I remember Olya’s joyfulness and her love of strawberry ice cream. I remember Papa and the happiness he found in fixing things. I remember the love in his voice when he said my name.

I remember the sky before it changed.

She closed the notebook gently, slid it beneath her thin pillow, and lay down. In the dark, she whispered to herself:

“я завжди пам'ятатиму”

I’ll always remember.

And for now, that was enough.