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“It’s just a scratch.”

“That is not a scratch, you giant fibber.”

Before I can stop him, Ilya hops off the wall. He trots around behind my back, his little sneakers crunching over the gravel.

“Don’t,” I rasp, my spine locking into rigid iron. “Don’t touch it.”

“I’m not gonna touch it! I’m not a barbarian!”

I hear him shuffle his feet, then comes the warm puff of air against the torn fabric of my shirt.

Fffff.

He is blowing on my shoulder, his little chest heaving with the effort.

“There,” Ilya announces from behind me. “Mom says if you blow on the scrape, the pain flies away into the sky and turns into a gray cloud. Did it work?”

My throat feels like someone is squeezing it with two hands. “Yeah,” I choke out. “It worked.”

“See? I’m basically a doctor.”

A fat drop of water lands on the tip of my nose. Within three seconds, the sidewalk is slick, and water is streaming into my eyes.

Ilya gasps.

“My hair!” he shrieks.

He yanks his tiny blue windbreaker off his shoulders, nearly tripping over his own sneakers as his arms tangle in the sleeves. He breaks free, marches up to where I am sitting, and slaps the jacket directly over my left shoulder.

It is hilarious.

The jacket is tiny, so it barely covers anything.

“There!” Ilya shouts over the roar of the downpour, patting the polyester fabric down with both hands. “Now you’re waterproof!”

I look down at the tiny sleeve dangling over my body.

“Ilya.”

“What?”

“It’s too small”

“It’s the thought that counts!” he yells back, completely undeterred by logic. “It’s called manners! You’re bleeding and you have cold eyes, so you get the coat!”

He plants himself directly between my knees. “You have to go back to your house now,” he says.

“No.”

“Yes!” Ilya insists, grabbing the lapels of my soaked shirt in his fists. “My mom said if you get dirty water inside a cut, it turns into an angry monster and then they have to cut your arm off with a giant saw! You don’t want a saw on your arm, do you?”

“If I go back, they’ll just hurt me again.”

Ilya stares at me. Then he reaches up, cups my jaw in both palms, and tilts my face down.

“Then don’t let them have the prize,” he whispers.

I blink through the rain. “The prize?”