Blue Voyage by Renn Diana

Blue Voyage by Renn Diana

Author:Renn, Diana [Renn, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2015-09-17T07:00:00+00:00


Around seven-thirty, guests began trickling down to the tables, just as Mom and I had finished setting up the buffet. We greeted them in the small dining area off the lobby. Mom dashed outside to the patio garden to pick flowers for bud vases we’d set on the tables. She was smiling and humming to herself; I hadn’t seen her so happy in a long time. Mom liked to work, and I could see that this lifestyle agreed with her more than a leisurely cruise. She bossed me around, and I scurried to get place settings on all the tables, managing to drop a whole stack of them on the floor just as Mustafa and Nazif arrived.

I was sure I saw Nazif smirk as I surveyed the scattered cutlery. I gave him my best glare.

But then he surprised me, stooping to help pick up forks and knives. “Let me help you,” he said.

“I got it,” I snapped. I bent down, too, and added, as we both picked up knives, “You know what you said yesterday? About the Lycian Society?”

He nodded.

“When you said there were ‘bad people’ there, you meant they were, like, snobby, right?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I meant exactly what I said. I do speak English, you know. My father made me take English classes starting when I was five. And I watch a lot of American TV shows.”

Now I was really confused.

“I cannot speak of it again,” he added, looking down. “I should never have said anything.”

“But why? Why are they ‘bad people’?”

Nazif looked around, chewing his lip.

“Come on,” I said. “You can’t just drop something like that and walk away. Just tell me why you think they’re dangerous. Or,” I added, with a meaningful glance toward Mustafa at the front desk, “I’ll tell your dad you were being rude to me.”

His eyes grew wide. “When? When was I rude?”

“Right now. I’m a guest who needs help, and you’re not helping me. I know how important hospitality is to him. Plus you could have offered your phone right away yesterday, when you saw that I needed to make a call and the connection didn’t work in my room.”

His face clouded over. “I thought maybe you were different, but I was wrong. You are a typical American.”

His words smacked me in the gut. “What does that mean?”

“You think the world revolves around you. You feel entitled to demand things. Like so many of the Americans we see in this hotel.”

“You don’t even know me!” I burst out. “How can you say I’m just like every other person from my country? I don’t think you’re just like every other person in your country. And I do not think the entire world revolves around me. Anyway, you’re changing the subject. This is really important to me. They hired my uncle as a guest speaker. I want to understand who he was working with.”

At the mention of my uncle, his face changed. His eyes met mine, unblinking. “All right. Because I



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