Two Worlds Apart

Liliya Kovalenko

Alexei texted me at approximately eleven o'clock at night. He said he'd heard about the War and wanted to come to Ukraine to fight. He also said his father was the head of the Army in Russia. I asked him where he planned on staying and he hadn't replied. It is now seven in the morning, and I was up and ready for school. I was worried about Alexei but, I knew he'd probably be okay. From the pictures he's posted he looked pretty tough and strong. "Liliya! shkil'nyy avtobus tut"! My mother yelled. That meant my school bus was here. I grabbed my bag and sprinted out the door. My mother and I never had a good relationship. The only thing that we have in common is that we both love and miss my father, who had gone to fight in the Iraq War when I was first born and never came back. I don't remember much about my father, but what I do remember is that he always loved my mom. I never knew why, but my mother never seemed to be interested in my life. She had always seemed so busy with work. The bus was freezing, as usual. I sat with the only friend I had, Alice. She moved here from America three years ago, I always thought she had a funny accent, but I've admired it for some time now. I showed her a picture if Alexei and she freaked out. I didn't understand why at the time. Alice said that Alexei's father was in charge of some sort of military branch and knew Vladimir Putin. She also said he was rich. Just as I was starting to wrap my head around this seemingly important war, our bus pulled up to school. We stood up while the bus was still moving so we could move Alice's trombone to the front of the bus. We realized when we were young that the driver on our school bus would let us off the bus early if we had a big instrument, so Alice chose the trombone, she wasn't very good at it though. Just as everyone stepped over the threshold and into the big brown building, everybody's phone buzzed. I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my American Eagle jeans, that Alice brought back from her summer vacation in America, and I stood in horror at the news i'd just received.