Free Stolen Child by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch

such a mean thing to do. I noticed that his brown hair was carefully trimmed short around the ears and was left a bit longer on top. He probably hadn’t combed it since the morning, but it looked perfect. I was sure that it was a barber who had cut it, not a soldier. Had he ever had his hair hacked off for lice? Could he even imagine such a thing? How dare he judge me.
    I looked up and down the rows of children in front of me. Each boy and girl looked well-fed and clean. No one was dressed in rags. They probably all had parents. My heart ached with jealousy. How I wished I lived a simple life that had never been touched by war.

Chapter Nine
Mychailo
    I knew that Mychailo was the only other Ukrainian student at Central School, but I didn’t see him until afternoon recess. He was tossing coins against a wall with some other boys and caught my eye. He nodded and went back to his game.
    I saw him later walking home about a block behind me. I waited for him, but he was with some other boys. He walked right past me as if he didn’t know me, so I walked the rest of the way home by myself.
    Since I was the first one home, I began to peel some potatoes for supper. I had just filled a pot with water when there was a knock on the front door. It was Mychailo, a sheepish expression on his face.
    “So, suddenly you know who I am?” I said.
    “Come on,” he said, shuffling his feet. “You didn’t expect me to talk to you when I’m with a bunch of guys, did you?”
    “I don’t see why not.” I left the door open, but walked back to the sink. He followed me in and sat down on a kitchen chair, watching me peel the potatoes.
    “Want to go to the library?” he asked.
    I did want to go to the library, but I was still angry, so I didn’t answer.
    “Are you going to cook them on low while we’re gone?” he asked.
    I shook my head, but still didn’t say anything.
    “You are going to go with me, aren’t you?”
    I liked that. It sounded a little like an apology. I finished peeling the last potato, rinsed them all off and put them in a pot of water. I didn’t turn it on. Marusia had told me never to do that.
    “I can go to the library for a short visit,” I said. “I’ll boil the potatoes when I get back.”
    Mychailo was silent for the first few minutes of our walk, then he said, “Sorry for not talking to you before.”
    I didn’t say anything. I knew why he didn’t talk to me. He didn’t want to be teased. But it felt awful to have him treat me like a stranger.
    When we got to the library, Mychailo went right to a trolley of books that were waiting to be re-shelved. “I discovered this a few days ago,” he said. “All the best books are right here on this trolley.” His eyes lit up as he pulled out a dog-eared novel called
Black Beauty
. “You’d like this,” he said. “I read it last year.”
    I took it from him and flipped through it. All text and no pictures. And the text was small. “I can’t read this,” I said. He should have known. I had only taken out picture books so far.
    “It will take you a while to read it,” he said, “but I think you would like the story.” He grinned at me then, and said, “It’s a girly book.”
    “But you liked it.”
    He blushed a little bit at that, then shot back with, “It’s got good action too.”
    He shuffled through the other books and found one on hockey, one on rocks, and another novel.
    “What’s the novel?” I asked, grabbing it out of his hand. It took me a bit to sound it out, and even once I did, I couldn’t understand it. “
Freddy Goes to Florida
? What does
Freddy
mean?”
    “Freddy,” he said, “is a name, like Mychailo or Nadia. This particular Freddy is a talking pig.”
    “A talking
pig
?” That made no sense at all. “And what is
Florida
?”
    “It’s a place,” he said, as if he couldn’t understand my confusion.
    “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Pigs don’t talk and pigs don’t go places unless they’re taken by