Home Leave: A Novel by Brittani Sonnenberg

Author:Brittani Sonnenberg [Sonnenberg, Brittani]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

Mom was right: it did get better. Kind of. At least, Sophie started to love it. She found a bunch of expat kids from our apartment building to play hide-and-go-seek with, except in Shanghai they called it manhunt. I would play with them too, halfheartedly; I felt lame sitting in my bedroom alone. But once I got outside I always missed the quiet calm of my desk and my books. I loathed crouching in the bushes, and the haunted, lonely feeling I got looking for people when I was it. Sophie, of course, adored the game and liked nothing better than ambushing me, screaming like a banshee, laughing her head off at my cry of terror, and sprinting away. She even concocted a manhunt uniform for herself, to maximize invisibility: her ubiquitous black hooded sweatshirt, black leggings, and black sneakers. We played with Jillian, a Swedish girl from the fifteenth floor; Nan, the daughter of the marine sergeant, from the ninth floor; and Ji-Mun and Seok-Jin, Korean twins from the sixth floor who always hid together and were easy to find.

Outside our apartment complex, on Shanghai’s streets, Sophie still got mad when people touched her hair and called her a boy. But she had learned how to say saucy things back in Chinese, which always impressed them. Then they would launch into an elaborate speech about how brilliant her Mandarin was, which Sophie couldn’t get enough of.

And I had finally found a best friend, or at least something close to it. It turned out my instincts had been right about Evgenia, and we started hanging out together at lunchtime. She had the same sense of humor, and it made the days less lonely. But her father was really strict and wouldn’t let her go anywhere on the weekends or after school.

I had a strange feeling I was getting younger, not older. I knew my friends back in the States weren’t playing hide-and-go-seek anymore. But it wasn’t like there were movie theaters we could go to in Shanghai, aside from the marine’s apartment, where they would screen American films every now and then. There were other kids in my grade who got together on the weekends, but I’d hung out with them a couple times and it horrified me. The first time, we’d spent the whole Saturday throwing eggs at Chinese people from a taxicab. I’d sat in the middle seat after throwing one egg and hitting a lady on her bike, messing up her dress. Everyone had given me a high five and I’d wanted to die of shame. I knew those kids (Joan, from the States; Zara, from New Zealand; Brad, from Australia) went out to bars and clubs on the weekends—if you were white, the bouncers just let you in—but that sounded worse than manhunt to me.

In fact, contrary to what Mom had promised, the longer we were in Shanghai, the more I missed the States, maybe also because I felt like I’d lost Sophie as a partner in crime, now that she had turned so enthusiastic about the city.

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