Free Angel of Mercy by Lurlene McDaniel Page B

listening but wanting to yell,
“Stop! Don’t you know children are dying over here? Don’t you know that
there’s something more important going on in the
world than you being grounded?”
But she didn’t interrupt.
    “Mom and Dad hate me, Heather,” Amber said, her voice suddenly low and sad. “I’d give anything if you’d come home. Can you? Can you just leave Africa early and come home right away?”

11
    "Amber, I can’t just pick up and leave. People are counting on me.”
    “But I need you,” Amber wailed. “Things are impossible around here.”
    “How impossible?”
    “Just yesterday, Dad took away my car keys.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he’s mean. And he hates me.”
    “Amber . . . ,” Heather said in her best tell-me-the-rest-of-the-story voice.
    “All right, so I’d gotten a parking ticket.”
    “And . . .?”
    “A speeding ticket too. But it wasn’t my fault. Marsha was driving my car, and she got stopped for speeding, not me. But Dad says it’s my responsibility because it’s my car.”
    Heather sighed. Would her sister ever grow up? “Well, you can’t make Dad change his mind once it’s made up, so you’ll just have to live with it.”
    “But school’s started and I can’t even drive to school! And he won’t let Dylan take me either.”
    “School’s already started?” Heather couldn’t believe it. It seemed as if only yesterday she’d set out on the Mercy Ship. She had less than three months left in Africa.
    “Hell-o,” Amber said, drawing out the two syllables. “It’s September. Don’t you have a calendar over there?”
    “Life’s a bit different over here. . . . So, tell me, how are you getting to school?”
    “The housekeeper’s taking me. Can you imagine the humiliation of getting out of our housekeeper’s car every day? I’m the joke of the senior class!”
    “I can’t change things for you, Amber. Even if I was stateside, I wouldn’t be at home. I’d be in college and I couldn’t come running home over every crisis.” She heard Amber sigh.
    “I know . . .but I can ask, can’t I? Oh, before I forget, Joanie stopped by last week. She’s on her way to college and wanted to make sure I told you she’d see you at Christmas.”
    “I appreciate the message. Listen, the line for the phone is growing, so I’ve got to go. But do yourself a favor and get Dylan out of there after we hang up. If Mom and Dad catch you, you’ll be grounded until Christmas.”
    There was a moment of silence. “Okay,” Amber said glumly. “But only because
you
asked me to. Before you hang up,” she added in a rush, “are you all right? Are you having fun?”
    There were a thousand things Heather wanted to say, but she was out of time. “Sure. Things are fine with me. Busy, but fine. I’m glad I came.”
    “How’s Ian? You still revved about him?”
    “Still revved,” Heather said. “Tell Mom and Dad I’ll write when I get to Lwereo. And take it easy on them, sis. They’re old, you know.”
    Amber laughed. Once they’d hung up, homesickness swept over Heather. Her friends were going off to college, just as she would have been doing if she’d been home. But she wasn’t home. She was where her dreams had taken her. She was in a world more different than even she had realized was possible. She loved her sister dearly, but Amber was a child—a petulant child who had no clue that two-thirds of the world did not have the luxury of a car. Or a home. Or food on the table every day.
    Heather slipped from the phone booth, back into the world she’d come so far to see.

    “Where are we going now?” Heather asked as she walked with Ian down a long, narrow sidewalk.
    She had waited for him to finish his call home, and then he’d taken her by the hand and said, “Come with me.”
    Now he said, “We’re going to the Delta. That’s where all the cabs in Kampala wait for their fares.”
    “You mean the cabs don’t come to the passengers?”
    “How can they? Few