#LOVE, OR A TRUE STORY

1. Where Love Begins

Late November. Moscow. Sixteen-year-old schoolboy Andrey Neverov, nicknamed Foma—Thomas—by his classmates because of his surname and an old classroom discussion of the doubting apostle, has long been in love with Nastya Shirokova. Nastya is independent, unconventional, and largely indifferent to school fashions. She has no social-media pages, rarely gives anyone her telephone number, and loves poetry and the theatre. Other girls call her a white crow, an outsider, but it is precisely her difference from everyone else that draws Andrey to her.

When Nastya catches the flu and misses several days of school, Andrey can no longer bear the waiting. After classes, he goes to her home, something he has never dared to do before. Nastya welcomes him with surprise and genuine warmth. They talk about school, their futures, and their dreams. She hopes to enter Oleg Tabakov’s theatre school and become an actress; Andrey is considering a maritime college and a career as a navigator on long-distance voyages. For now, their plans belong to separate futures, but the visit brings them closer.

Before leaving, Andrey overcomes his fear of looking ridiculous, tells Nastya he loves her, and asks her to be his girlfriend. Taken aback, she asks for a little time to answer. She has not rejected him; a joyful hope is stirring in her heart, too. But Andrey leaves in painful uncertainty. He has no idea that his courageous confession has already set a cruel plot in motion.

2. Svetlana, Who Cannot Let Go of Hope

Nastya’s friend and classmate Svetlana Lunko, known as Svetka Luna, has been in love with Andrey for a long time—so deeply that she scarcely dares admit it even to herself. When she learns that Neverov has declared his love for Nastya, the news feels like a personal catastrophe. She cares for her friend, yet is jealous of her and increasingly sees her as a rival. Genuine affection, envy, shame at her own thoughts, and a growing willingness to get what she wants at any cost become tangled together.

Sveta seeks advice from an older friend, Irina Bakhtura, a tenth-grader reputed to be an expert in romantic relationships. Irina is accustomed to manipulating admirers. She despises other people’s trustfulness and treats emotions as a game won by the cleverest player. Instead of helping Sveta speak honestly to Andrey, she proposes destroying the fledgling relationship between Neverov and Shirokova.

Once she learns how passionately Nastya dreams of acting, Irina devises a particularly vicious trap: a filmed performance will be passed off as a preliminary theatre audition. Nastya will deliver specially written lines as a character in a play, and an edited video will make her performance look like a personal message to Andrey. Svetlana knows she is betraying her friend’s trust. Her conscience protests, but the fear of losing Neverov proves stronger.

3. The Forged Confession

Irina writes a script supposedly intended for a director and gives Sveta detailed instructions. Sveta calls Nastya, hints at an exciting theatrical opportunity, and insists that the deadline for submissions is almost upon them. Eager for a chance on stage, Nastya agrees to receive a cameraman at home and record an audition, despite still being ill.

The conspirators recruit Vasily Lyakhov, a young man who knows how to handle a camera and editing software. Anxious to please Irina, for whom he clearly has feelings, he has no idea what his work will do to other people’s lives. Nastya delivers the scene convincingly. She speaks of a lack of love, differences in social standing, and the impossibility of a relationship—but those are a fictional character’s words, not Nastya’s own.

Later, Irina tells Vasily exactly what to cut. The beginning, the ending, and every trace of the theatrical context disappear. What remains is a short ‘video letter’ that seems to be addressed directly to Andrey. Svetlana delivers it to Neverov, pretending it came from Nastya. She also withholds Nastya’s telephone number, supplies plausible explanations for her absence from social media, and does everything she can to prevent Andrey from checking what he has heard.

Watching the video is an agonizing humiliation for Andrey. He believes the girl to whom he opened his heart considers him beneath her and has denied him not merely love but respect. The tragedy is that neither Andrey nor Nastya has stopped loving the other. A carefully manufactured lie has separated them.

4. After the Video: Hurt, Pride, and Silence

For the first time in his life, Andrey truly suffers because of love. He cannot understand how Nastya could have spoken so coldly, and he feels betrayed. Yet his pride will not let him ask her directly. Svetlana continues to pose as their intermediary, sympathizing with him while controlling the flow of information. Andrey mistakes her attentiveness for sincere friendship.

His mother, Anna Andreyevna, notices that something deeply upsetting has happened. She does not demand to see the recording or impose her own judgment. Instead, she invites him to talk, reminds him that people should be understood before they are condemned, and urges him never to take revenge on the girl or humiliate her. Their late-night conversation opens the story of the Neverov family.

Andrey’s biological father died before he was born. His mother later married Veniamin Mokrousov, whom Andrey called Dad for a time. Ksyusha and Kirill were born of that marriage. The couple has since divorced: Veniamin has all but vanished from the children’s lives, drinks heavily, and neglects his responsibilities as a father. Anna Andreyevna raises all three children alone. For all his adolescent sarcasm, Andrey loves her deeply and feels responsible for his younger brother and sister.

Family life is no mere backdrop to the romance. In the Neverov home there is constant arguing, joking, and discussion of parenting, education, honesty, and human dignity. It is here that Andrey gradually learns one of the novel’s central moral truths: declarations of love mean little when a person’s actions tell a different story.

5. Pavel Pyatnitsky: A Friend Who Questions the Obvious

Overwhelmed by despair, Andrey skips school for the first time. Outside, he meets Pavel Pyatnitsky, an older friend with whom he talks about life and goes fishing. Pavel immediately senses that something is wrong and invites him home. Andrey tells him about his confession to Nastya and shows him the strange video.

At first, Pavel also takes the recording for a rejection. On a second viewing, however, he notices that the girl speaks unnaturally, as though she were playing a part on stage. Andrey explains it away as a result of her interest in theatre. To him, the video is irrefutable proof. Pavel is less certain that the whole truth can be contained in a few minutes of footage. He urges Andrey to fight for his love rather than bury it at the first sign of pain.

Pavel is lively, noisy, witty, and full of stories about ordinary life. He can argue enthusiastically about loans, cars, the army, and marriage, or suddenly demonstrate his foolproof trick for never losing the television remote. Beneath the jokes, however, are a keen attentiveness to others and a genuine willingness to help. These qualities are especially clear on a fishing trip, when the older friend supports Andrey and tries to convince him that one miserable day must not become the measure of an entire life.

6. Nastya: Love Mistaken for Indifference

While Andrey tries to forget Nastya, she is suffering no less than he is. She knows nothing about the falsified recording and cannot understand why he has changed so suddenly. She believed his declaration was sincere and had been preparing to return his love. Now he seems like a stranger, distant and cold, as though he himself has abandoned his feelings. Svetlana, who knows exactly why he has changed, remains at Nastya’s side and continues acting the devoted friend.

Nastya is far more than a helpless heroine in a conventional love triangle. She writes poems and short stories, reflects on human dignity, and helps the people around her. In one scene, she reads Sveta her own story, ‘Chanel No. 5,’ about the way fashionable symbols of success can obscure a person’s true worth. Its subject echoes the pupils’ lives: while those around her judge one another by appearance, wealth, and social masks, Nastya searches for very different foundations for closeness.

When her classmates discuss what they would do with an imaginary million dollars, Nastya says she would spend the unexpected fortune not on herself but on special equipment for blind children at a boarding school she visits with her parents. The conversation further distinguishes her from girls who equate happiness with purchases and prestige. Their mockery does not make Nastya abandon her convictions.

7. An Act of Courage That Says More Than a Declaration

When Nastya returns to school after her illness, she is quieter and sadder than before. During a history lesson, her teacher, Alexey Alexeyevich Venichkin, notices her distraction and mocks her in front of the class, repeating the hurtful nickname ‘white crow.’ The other students laugh. Although Andrey believes Nastya has rejected him, he cannot sit silently through her humiliation. He demands that the teacher apologize.

The argument reaches the principal, Taisiya Danilovna. Venichkin tries to portray the exchange as threats from a pupil, but the principal establishes what happened and reminds him that a teacher’s task is not to humiliate a child but to help that child grow. Andrey realizes that he must control his own sharp temper; the teacher is forced to consider the limits of his authority. Nastya thanks Andrey for standing up for her. The gesture matters more than any school gossip: even wounded and resentful, Andrey cannot turn away from injustice.

Confused and distressed, Nastya confides in her favorite literature teacher, Natalya Vladimirovna. Rather than trying to dictate her pupils’ feelings, the teacher encourages her to watch Andrey’s actions more closely. At a school concert, Nastya reads a poem she has written, and Andrey realizes that it is meant for him. Still, instead of talking to her, he remains trapped in doubt. Pavel practically persuades him to go to her home. Andrey reaches the door but cannot bring himself to ring the bell. He turns back and tells his friend that Nastya has rejected him again. Born of the fear of another humiliation, this lie prolongs their separation.

8. Sveta Takes Another Step

Separating two people does not mean winning the love of either one. Svetlana is beginning to grasp this painful truth. Andrey still longs for Nastya, and none of Sveta’s efforts can turn his sympathy into romantic feeling. Irina Bakhtura continues offering confident instructions on what Sveta should wear, how she should apply makeup, how to speak and walk, what to conceal, and what to emphasize. Instead of becoming more assured, Sveta begins to see herself through the eyes of other people’s often merciless judgment.

At last she decides to act without Irina. She spends a long time preparing, dresses carefully, and visits Andrey to tell him plainly that she loves him. There is real pain and desperate hope in her words, alongside her old contempt for Nastya. Andrey neither laughs at her confession nor humiliates his classmate. Nor does he make a promise he cannot keep. He tries to explain that love cannot be demanded and that friendship does not become romance simply because one person wishes it would.

Sveta tries to obtain at least the formal right to call herself his girlfriend, but Andrey cannot promise even that. He asks for time to understand his feelings. She leaves heartbroken. Having achieved her original goal of destroying her rival’s relationship, she discovers that she has not gained the one thing she wanted: Neverov’s freely given, sincere love. This contradiction becomes the heart of her own journey toward maturity.

9. Old Ignat and a Different Understanding of Love

Alongside the romantic intrigue runs Andrey’s unusual friendship with an old man named Ignat, who lives nearby. The neighbors consider him eccentric, almost mad. He bows to passersby, invents odd amusements, and walks through the streets with little tin bells, reminding people of the need to cleanse their souls. But in their conversations Andrey gradually begins to see a rare spiritual clarity behind the old man’s strange appearance.

One day Andrey accompanies Ignat out of the city to ‘breathe the wind.’ Their outing, during which the old man shares his simple lunch and his unconventional thoughts, becomes one of the novel’s most important moral encounters. Ignat explains that love must not be treated as a bargain. If we demand affection in return merely because we ourselves are in love, we turn love into a transaction. True love, he believes, means wanting another person to be happy—even when that person cannot or will not stay with us. He urges Andrey not to lie to himself, not to rush events, and not to confuse the pain of unrequited love with the right to direct another person’s life.

Andrey argues, grows angry, and asks uncomfortable questions. He finds it difficult to accept that love can be selfless. But Ignat’s words stay with him. The old man speaks, too, of loving people in general without expecting anything in return. Only much later will Andrey learn how a man who has lost so much has retained such an extraordinary capacity for kindness.

10. The Neverov Home: Love as Everyday Responsibility

In this novel, love is tested not only through confessions and separation. While Andrey struggles with his own heartbreak, he must also care for his family. Young Ksyusha and Kirill are funny, unpredictable, and, in their own eyes, wonderfully independent. One day they quarrel over the ‘proper’ way to say things; another day, with the best of intentions, they decorate their mother’s white work blouse with felt-tip pens. Andrey can be strict, but he is fiercely protective of them.

When Anna Andreyevna falls ill, her boss, Vladimir Konstantinovich Belozyorov, visits the house. He brings flowers and fruit and looks after her tenderly. Andrey realizes that their relationship has long since moved beyond work. Later, Vladimir proposes marriage. Embarrassed at first, Andrey supports his mother’s decision, recognizing how much loneliness and strain she has endured while devoting herself to her children.

A very different picture of adult life emerges when Andrey’s former stepfather, Veniamin Mokrousov, reappears. He has not come to see Ksyusha and Kirill. Instead, he wants to persuade Anna Andreyevna once again not to demand child support. Andrey is outraged: this man calls himself a father, yet contributes almost nothing to his children’s lives and remembers his duties only when they inconvenience him. The contrast between Mokrousov and Belozyorov raises a central question: what truly makes a family—blood ties, words and promises, or the daily willingness to take responsibility for those we love?

11. Ksyusha and Kirill Disappear

One of the novel’s most frightening episodes begins at the kindergarten. Andrey arrives to collect his younger siblings, only to discover that they have vanished. The teachers panic, the police are called, and the adults search frantically through the neighborhood. Andrey dreads telling his mother what may have happened, yet he cannot conceal it. He searches courtyards, questions passersby, and checks the entrances to apartment buildings. Every passing minute is torture.

At last, a lead takes him to a girl he does not know, Galya. Ksyusha and Kirill are with her. It turns out they left the kindergarten after spotting a hungry puppy beyond the fence. Determined to feed it, they ran after the animal and ended up far from familiar surroundings. To them, this was not an escape but an act of kindness that simply had to be done. After several hours of genuine terror, Andrey can barely contain his anger, relief, and tenderness all at once.

The children return home with the puppy, whom they name Pushok. Anna Andreyevna has been waiting outside their building; her first response is to embrace the missing children rather than scold them. After a family discussion, they decide to keep the dog. The episode brings suspense, humor, and a deeper meaning to the novel: compassion for a defenseless creature can be sincere even when the way it is expressed seems terribly reckless to adults. Andrey understands the value of family more profoundly than ever.

12. Ignat’s Death: The Secret of Four Lives

One day Andrey sees a coffin in the courtyard and learns that Ignat has died. Only recently they were walking together, arguing, and talking about love. The news shakes the boy deeply. He decides to accompany his neighbor to the cemetery. Only at the funeral does he discover the history Ignat had never told him.

Many years earlier, Ignat’s wife Vera was driving with their three children when a drunk truck driver caused a head-on collision. His wife and two of the children died at the scene. Their youngest daughter died in hospital without regaining consciousness. In a single tragedy, Ignat lost the four people dearest to him. Relatives remember that at first he no longer wanted to live. Over the years, people came to think of him as strange and to pity him. Yet Andrey remembers their conversations: a man who seemed to have every reason to hate the world had consciously chosen the opposite—to offer kindness to everyone he met.

Now Andrey finally understands Ignat’s mysterious reference to ‘four lives’ and to an approaching reunion with those he loved. Ignat’s philosophy was not an elegant speech but the hard-earned wisdom of someone who had survived unbearable grief. The episode opens the story of adolescent love into a larger meditation on forgiveness, loss, and the human capacity to resist bitterness.

13. The Chance Encounter That Restores the Truth

While Andrey still does not know how to repair his relationship with Nastya, Pavel Pyatnitsky is dealing with an ordinary work assignment: he needs a short advertising video. Andrey, who has only recently begun learning to edit footage, suggests finding a professional through an advertisement. Pavel contacts Vasily Lyakhov—the very cameraman who filmed and edited Nastya’s ‘theatre audition’ for Sveta and Irina.

During their meeting, Vasily shows Pavel an archive of recordings featuring young performers and aspiring actresses. Pavel unexpectedly recognizes Nastya’s face. When he learns that she had been reading a passage from a play, he asks to see the original footage. Vasily, who has kept the source files out of professional habit, plays the full recording. Everything cut from the forged ‘video letter’ is there: the theatrical setting, the beginning, and the end of the scene. Pavel immediately grasps the scale of the deception.

He summons Andrey, but first rebukes him for his earlier lie. The boy had claimed that he had visited Nastya and received another rejection in person, when in fact he had not even dared to ring the doorbell. Together, they watch the complete recording. Andrey realizes that he trusted an edited video, condemned an innocent girl, and allowed wounded pride to take the place of a real conversation. Devastated, he cannot imagine how to ask her forgiveness.

Pavel, however, has already arranged the final step. Nastya walks in from the next room. Their long estrangement ends in a face-to-face meeting, where neither of them can hide behind someone else’s words or a video file. Andrey and Nastya finally speak openly and find their way back to each other.

14. Not Exposure, but Forgiveness

Once Andrey learns how the deception was created, he is ready to confront Sveta with all his anger. Nastya proposes something altogether different: no public exposure, no revenge, not even telling Svetlana that her scheme has been discovered. Andrey cannot immediately accept this. In the end, he agrees for Nastya’s sake.

Anna Andreyevna supports Nastya’s decision and explains to her son that forgiveness is necessary first of all for his own sake. Resentment carried endlessly inside can destroy a person. She even suggests that the ordeal exposed weaknesses in both lovers: they had trusted their fears, assumptions, and other people’s words instead of trusting each other. To love someone also means trying to understand them and refusing to turn a desire for justice into a hunger for revenge.

The novel could end with the first couple reunited, but the epilogue makes the story more complex—and more humane. By the end of the school year, Svetlana Lunko and Vasily Lyakhov fall in love. The young man who helped create the devastating recording unexpectedly becomes the person with whom she finds genuine, mutual affection. Not only does Andrey stop holding a grudge against her: the two couples become friends and sometimes go to the cinema together. He never tells anyone of Sveta’s earlier confession of love. Despite the suffering she caused him, he protects her secret.

15. Epilogue: Life Goes On After First Love

The characters’ lives continue to unfold. Irina Bakhtura leaves school before completing the eleventh grade; only rumors remain about what becomes of her. After ninth grade, Svetlana enrolls in a medical college. Andrey and Nastya decide not to part and continue their studies together through the tenth and eleventh grades.

Anna Andreyevna marries Vladimir Konstantinovich Belozyorov. Her former husband, Veniamin Mokrousov, agrees to let Vladimir adopt Ksyusha and Kirill. Their mother and the younger children take the Belozyorov surname and move into Vladimir’s home; Andrey remains in the family’s old apartment. Pavel Pyatnitsky and his wife welcome a baby daughter, whom they name Nastenka. Pushok, the rescued puppy, grows into a huge Caucasian Shepherd Dog and lives at the Belozyorovs’ country house, devoted to the little children who saved him. He even makes peace with their cat, Kosmos—although he will not allow Kosmos to eat from his bowl.

At the beginning of the novel, the author explains that the book is based on real events. At the end, he honors a friend’s request to close the story with the words: ‘Only #love can save this world!’ The title thus means much more than a teenage romance or a fashionable hashtag. One story contains many kinds of love: first love and love that goes unanswered, a mother’s love and a brother’s, care for someone who may not love us back, compassion for another creature’s suffering, fidelity, and the courage to forgive hurt. The characters grow up not at the moment their feelings are returned, but when they begin taking responsibility for their feelings and their actions.