Barba's New Life

Prologue Pt. 1 : How They Met

The air was frigid, Sophie wasn't used to the cold. She zipped up her parka and sipped the warm coffee for comfort as she meandered through Williamsburg. Her new apartment was there, a cute little flat with a small outdoor space. She generally killed plants, but maybe she should try again when the weather broke. She shuddered when she thought of all the dozens of boxes yet to be unpacked, taunting her with belongings that she didn't care about. Maybe she should just leave them on the street and give them better homes.

She had traveled out of a suitcase for over a decade, the lack of responsibility of owning things was a welcome reprieve for her. Growing up, her family was poor. Anything that they had, they needed to care for and keep in immaculate condition. Her mom forced her to scrub their sneakers every night after school with the shoe brush and soap, while her sister Emilia hand washed their uniforms because the laundromat was "too rough on clothing" according to their mother. The kitchen cleaning and living room vacuuming was also done every night. The bathroom was bleached and scrubbed with toothbrushes nightly after showers. Sophie didn't understand the need to compulsively clean but her mother always clucked

"Just because we're poor, doesn't mean we're filthy."

"No one thinks that mom" Sophie remembered so clearly rolling her eyes

"No one around here does, because we're all poor. But the people who don't live around us? They do. And that's who you need to be wary of" her mother, Shelly, had warned them, constantly, until they were simultaneously terrified and frustrated at the thought of this unseen force of judgment

Big load of good all that work did, Sophie thought bitterly. Her mother had died of a stress induced heart attack when she was fifty four years old and she was twenty nine. Sophie hadn't even been in the country when her mother died, she was in Panama working with an advocacy group to raise funds for child laborers. Emilia had been distraught, begging Sophie to come home and help her. But she couldn't. She couldn't leave her work. Couldn't face the fake sympathy of people who couldn't be bothered to help her mother while she was alive. Couldn't face the small apartment that they had squeezed into for their whole lives; the tight hallway they shared with five other apartments closed in on her. Maybe that had been the wrong choice.

Emilia chose to cremate their mother and hadn't spoken to her since in spite of her monthly messages. Three years of silence. The irony was not lost on her that she spent her life helping others while she couldn't even keep her own life from spiraling out of control.

Sophie supposed she didn't blame her sister, she had always been kind of selfish. Emilia wasn't much younger than her, 13 months. They had been polar opposite different as kids despite being so close in age. Emilia had always been lighthearted and sweet. She made friends easily, spending as much time as possible at their houses as she could. Everyone loved Emilia and sung her praises. She tried to get Sophie to join, but Sophie hadn't understood. Why be around people who you had nothing in common with?

Sophie only saw injustices. She joined all the academic teams she could, joined debate and environmental science clubs. She raised money for field trips and humanitarian causes. She got a job as a dishwasher at fourteen, switching around jobs until she graduated early at sixteen and applied to as many colleges as possible. Georgetown accepted her with a scholarship, and she found a job close to campus with an immigration law firm.

The lawyers there helped her figure out how to focus her passions, how to use the law to get what she wanted, how to make things happen. Maybe she was overzealous but she had a lifetime of repression to break free from.

Shaking herself out of her memories, she drew in a deep breath of icy cold air and promptly started coughing. The amount of air pollution per square inch in this city was suffocating. The city lights began to twinkle in the last dregs of light before dusk. She probably shouldn't walk around after dark, but she felt safer here than most other cities in the world. Plus, a mugger was no match for Krav Maga and a barely legal knife in her sleeve.