| OCR Text |
Show 110 "You know, for someone who's so anxious to hear everything about Yulyona, you seem to know plenty already," Andy remarked. "Yeah, Aleksei was her only brother. There were just the two kids in the Petrov family. Hey, do you want me to get you a bottle of pop to wash down the cookies?" "No, stay here," Karl said, grabbing Andy's arm. "I want to hear more about Miss Petrov. How did her brother die?" "In the mill. He was working on a platform near the top of C Furnace when there was a slip. The whole top blew apart, and the explosion knocked Aleksei off the platform. He fell almost seventy feet to the ground. His skull was smashed." "Ugh!" Karl swallowed to dislodge food which seemed stuck in his throat. "How old was Aleksei?" "I don't know," Andy said. "Wait...yes, I do know. He'd just turned sixteen. He quit school on his sixteenth birthday to go to work in the mill, and he'd only been working three days when the slip blew him off the platform." Karl couldn't eat the last chrusciki. He'd lost his appetite. He understood now why Miss Petrov was so intent on keeping her students in school. "How did she take it when her brother died?" he asked. "Awful. She was crazy about Aleksei, kind of took over being his mother after their own mother died. So it really hit her hard. She went out of her head at the cemetery... ran all the way from the cemetery to the general superintendent's mansion. The way I heard it, Yulyona shoved past the maid and busted into the room where Charles Bonner was. She screamed at him that he was a murderer and a child |
