STORY SO FAR: Milosevic has finally surrendered, and NATO has won. Eager to finally go home, Meli can’t believe it when her father tells the family that they’re going elsewhereto America.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Vermont, USA

At first I hated the thought of leaving the refugee camp. It would mean giving up any hope of going back to my old life. More than anything in the world, I wanted my old life backour homey apartment over Papa’s store; my little brothers wrestling in the backyard; Mehmet laughing as he teased me. Still, the longer we waited, the more impatient I became to leave, just to go anywhere and really start living again.

Then, suddenly, we were goneflown from a world that, however temporary and hard to bear, felt safe and sane compared to the confusion of the next few months. An Albanian-speaking counselor met our huge jet and walked us for what seemed to be miles through a New York airport to board a much smaller plane. Then we headed for a place I’d never even heard of, a place called Vermont.

When we stumbled off that plane, there was a small group of people waiting to meet us. They all kept smiling and sort of half bowing. Despite my exhaustion, I tried to smile back.

“Hello,” I said in my best English. “My name is Meli Lleshi. I come from Kosovo. What, please, is your name?” But none of them seemed to understand. Mama wanted to ask about the toilets, but they just kept smiling and nodding.

“What’s the matter with these idiots?” Mehmet muttered. “Don’t they understand their own language?” In the camp we had worked hard to learn English.

Finally an apologetic translator came running up. She guided us to the rest rooms and then helped the greeters lead us out to where two large cars stood waiting. The smiling Americans put Mama and me and Vlora in one and Papa and the boys in the other. For a minute I panicked. I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t Kosovopeople didn’t just disappear in this countrybut I kept turning and looking out the back window to keep the other car in sight, just in case. When I could relax enough to look out the side window, I saw, to my astonishment, snow-covered mountains. I felt a great wave of homesickness for my own Sharr range, with its high pastures where the wild horses run free. Were we free now? I wondered.

The cars pulled up at last in front of a huge house in which, the translator explained, we’d have a second-floor apartment. It lacked the welcoming feel of our old home, but it was far better than a tent. I meant to say thank you to the big, smiling Americans, but when they showed me the little room where Vlora and I were to sleep, I fell like a rock on the nearest bed.

Those early days were hard. The Americans talked so loud and so fast. I tried to speak, but I soon gave up and, for the first few months, mostly listened. I’m not sure when those torrents of words broke into sentences that I could understand, but before the school year was over, American English was beginning to make sense to my ear and feeling far less strange in my mouth.

We went to school in the summer as well. I liked it in summer because, with such small classes, I could understand so much better. As for Mehmet, he found boys to play soccer with, so he was more content than I had seen him in over a year. When he was invited to join the practice for the high school team, he discovered, to his delight, that he was one of the best players.

Then a wonderful thing happened to me. The girls’ soccer coach asked if I would like to try out for her team. At home I had only watched from the sidelines as the boys played, but the coach said that if my brother was such a good player, surely I must have talent as well. Papa hesitated to let me try out, but Mama said, “This is America. Things are different here.” So they let me, and I hope I am not being too immodest when I say that, by the end of summer practice, I too was turning into a very good soccer player. I even started to make my first American friend, Rachel, who played sweeper.

The news from Kosovo was not so happy. Granny stayed in bed all the time now; thank God, Uncle Fadil said, that there was a bed for her to lie in, for the rascals had destroyed so much else. Relief teams had brought in food, and the NATO troops were trying to keep order. But when our Serbian neighbors fled north, the KLA came and burned their house.

“I asked,” Uncle Fadil wrote, “Why do you burn a perfectly good house? My cousin and his family could live there.’ But they wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Hate makes no sense,” Papa said.

We heard the news at school: at first it was a rumor, and then a teacher announced it in math class. Terrorists had crashed airplanes full of passengers into the two tallest buildings in New York City and another into the big military headquarters in Washington, DC. Most of us were frightened, but I could tell, from the glitter in their eyes, that for some of the kids it was as unreal as a disaster movie; the fear would come later.

“But who did it?” a boy asked. “What terrorists?”

“We don’t know yet,” the teacher said. “But we mustn’t panic. If we are at war, we’ll all need to be brave and clearheaded. I’ve been asked to announce that there will be no after-school activities or sports practice this afternoon. Everyone is to go straight home.”

I could hardly breathe. Unlike my classmates, I knew what war was like. Had we fled it in Kosovo, only to be plunged into the midst of it in America?

(To be continued.)

Newspaper shall publish the following credit line in each installment of the work:

Text copyright 2005 by Katherine Paterson

Illustrations copyright 2005 by Emily Arnold McCully

Reprinted by permission of Breakfast Serials, Inc.

www.breakfastserials.com

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Pronunciation of Albanian proper nouns:

Mehmet (Mm-m?t)

Meli (Ml-lee)

Lleshi (L?y-sh?)

Fadil (F?-d?ll)

Vlora (Va-lra)

Sharr (?h-?rr)

Milosevic (Me-LOW-sheh-vih-ch)

Kosovo (KOH-so-vohSerbian pronunciation; Koh-SOH-vahAlbanian pronunciation)