“Yes, I was four when they invaded. I will be twenty in December. The four years the Soviets occupied my country were difficult. We did not cooperate.” Sophie rolled her eyes at the understatement.
“My mother stayed in Orlisia through the occupation, even though Father begged her to come to America when the diplomatic corps was evacuated. He was attached to the American embassy in the capital city of Vollka at the time, you see, and they were unmarried. I was born out of wedlock, as you Americans call it.
“My mother was a dancer with the Orlisian National Ballet, and felt a duty to help keep the spirit of Orlisia alive during its darkest years. Once we were free of Soviet rule, she danced her final performances. We came to New York within a year.” He smiled. “They married the day after we arrived. I was my father’s best man.”
Sophie imagined Michael as an innocent child in a suit, seeing his parents together at last. She felt Michael wipe away a tear that had escaped down her cheek.
“What have I said to make you cry?” he asked softly, reverting to Orlisian. It made the question feel very intimate.
“It’s a happy ending,” she said. “It moved me.”
“Very much like a woman.” She smacked the back of his hand, and he grinned. “I hold traditional values about many things,” he warned, “especially women.”
“Spare me.” They spent the meal discussing Orlisian history, and their free time until curfew sprawled on the floor of the hallway outside Sophie’s dorm room, talking.
“If you grew up in Orlisia, why do you have a Western name?” she asked.
“My mother knew one day we would come to America, so she chose Mikael for me, a name suitable for both cultures. She still calls me that.”
“Mikael,” Sophie repeated with a smile. “It suits you.”
Sophie tossed her head and looked at Michael curled up asleep at the back of the bus with Mirielle Desmarais running her fingers through his black hair. Jealousy settled into her stomach like a hard lump.
They were six weeks into their tour and having the time of their lives. Life was perfect. Or it would be, were it not for Michael Nariovsky-Trent. He made her so angry!
Their promising friendship had collapsed within a single language lesson. What had started as a disagreement about verb tense had somehow turned into a full-blown shouting match in seconds.
“You need to back the fuck off,” Sophie had snapped when Michael had gotten in her face about conjugation. “What kind of a teacher are you?”
Michael’s face had gone dark with disapproval. “This language is unacceptable for a woman. You speak as an uncivilized child.”
Sophie had scrambled up, enraged. She’d stood several inches shorter than him, but just as defiant.
“I speak as I please,” she’d hissed. “This isn’t a backward society where women are treated as subordinates. This is America, not Orlisia.” Anger had flared in his eyes at the snub, and he’d spat an obscenity at her. “Your language is no less disgusting than mine.”
“It is different for a man.”
She’d shot him a withering look, picked up her books, and stalked away, tears of anger stinging her eyes. She’d sworn never to speak to him again – yet when he’d approached her a few days after and humbly asked her forgiveness, she’d been unable to deny him.
They’d fought and made up again two days later. And again. And again. Yet there was no one she felt closer to in the class. And it would seem he felt the same way.
Their first city in Africa was Senegal, and Sophie hit the ground running. She had a weeklong volunteer assignment lined up with Crisis International, a midsized aid agency with a solid reputation for its relief work.
“Sophie Swenda?” A tall, blond-haired man wearing cowboy boots appeared in the doorway of the makeshift hut where she waited. “William Temple.” He tossed her sunscreen and a Crisis International shirt. “Go cover yourself in sunscreen and put that shirt on, Red.” He looked at her sneakers doubtfully. “I guess those shoes will do. Do you have a strong stomach?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” she said, heading into the tiny bathroom to change. “And don’t call me Red!”
“I like you already!” he shouted after her.
They worked together for one stomach-churning, heartbreaking week in the urban slums of Dakar. For a first experience in the field, it was everything she could have hoped for and more – even if she had tossed her breakfast at the smell of her first slum.
“You did good work here, Sophie,” said Will on her last day in Dakar when he dropped her back at the hotel. “I hope you know that. You touched some lives.”
“Not enough.”
“It’s always like that in our line of work,” he said. “There will always be more who need help than we have resources. You learn to find the small victories where you can.” He handed her a business card and an envelope. “My card and a recommendation I wrote for you.”