One

Annarita Crosetti didn't want to get up in the morning. She didn't want to get up most mornings, but today was especially bad. After she killed the alarm clock, she just wanted to roll over and go back to sleep. But she couldn't. She knew it. She had a Russian test first period, and a Young Socialists' League meeting after school. That meant she'd be up late with school-work tonight, too, and sleepy again tomorrow morning.

Even so, she didn't want to get up.

When she didn't start moving fast enough to suit her mother, she got shaken and pushed out of bed. She muttered and groaned in protest-she had trouble talking till she was really awake, which took a while.

Her mother showed no sympathy… and no mercy. "Come on. Get dressed," she said. "Breakfast will be ready by the time you are."

"Si, Si," Annarita said. By then she was standing up. Her mother went away, knowing she probably wouldn't lie down again.

Because there was a meeting, Annarita put on her Young Socialists' League uniform. It made her look ready to change a tire: marching boots, khaki trousers, dark green blouse. But all the Young Socialists-the up-and-comers-would be wearing the same thing today, so what could she do? Not much. Not anything, really.

She put on the crisscross sashes, one with the badges of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin and Putin, the other with badges of Moroni and Chiapelli and other Italian Communist heroes. The badges of the Russians and the founders were edged in gold, those of the Italians in silver. Annarita didn't know how many times she'd put on the sashes, but she'd never even thought about that before. It was as if her own countrymen were runners-up in the race for fame.

She shook her head. It wasn't as if. Italian Communist heroes were heroes only in Italy. Other Socialist people's republics had their own national heroes. You saw them, grim and unsmiling, on foreign postage stamps. But the founders and the Russians were heroes all over the world. They should be, she thought. If not for them, Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism might not have won. And then where would we be?