Author Bio

BERGITA BUGARIJA

UNTOUCHED

Our Lady of Peace looked into the sky, suppliant, her mouth agape and eyes rolled back, brown locks falling from her blue veil. A halo of patinated gold stars circled her plaster head attached to her plaster nape by a crooked wire. She didn’t mind me below, circling her on bare knees, eyes level with the plaster snake silently screaming its last breath beneath the Virgin’s pedicured feet. It was the start of the novena—the first of the nine evenings of prayer before the feast of the Assumption—in Western Herzegovina, where my parents took me every summer to visit grandparents, reconnect with my roots, and pray for salvation. America’s sinful ways infiltrated our ranch house on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, and my compromised soul needed a yearly cleanse from all the shallow entertainment, contagious teenage pregnancies, frozen food, and ripped jeans.
       “Are we redeemed yet?” I whispered to my cousin Rada, who was sliding ahead of me like a pro.
       Rada broke her pious handclasp to signal four more rounds. Her knees were protected by oversized band-aids. She’d offered me some, and I’d snickered. Now my knees grew chafed with each Hail Mary.
       It was still better than being stuck in muggy Monroeville, Pennsylvania, watching reruns of 90210. That was the fate I’d nearly been sentenced to after my brother had a bicycle accident on the last day of school that necessitated foot surgery and the cancellation of our annual trip. But I begged, and my parents finally agreed to send me alone. What’s more, they let me stay with my cousin Rada’s family in town, instead of in the remote outlying village with my grandparents. There were conditions, though. I was to attend all the novenas leading up to the Assumption, and do all the rest that my exemplary, straight-A student cousin Rada did.
       I was disappointed Rada didn’t come with my aunt to pick me up at the airport. She wasn’t at the house either, having gone out with friends. I was too tired to wait up for her and fell asleep on the pull-out sofa bed in their living room. But Rada was there in the morning. Fighting a haze of jetlag, I sat up in bed and watched her eat bread she’d baked, drenched in buttermilk she’d cultured from a goat she’d milked
       “Faljen Isus i Marija,” I said when she caught my gaze. People in Herzegovina rarely greeted each other with any secular hello. I used Praised be Jesus and Mary liberally, in a near-perfect dialect, to humor relatives and show that my parents had done a good job preserving the homeland values.
       “Vazda Isus i Marija,” she said, bringing me some bread and buttermilk. But she hardly had time for me after that. She vacuumed all three stories of the house and wiped surfaces with rags soaked in rakija. She took out the trash. She cleaned the bathroom and the kitchen. Then, to relax, she whipped a silky palačinke batter without using a recipe or measuring cups, expertly eyeballing the ingredients. I was stir crazy and desperate for company by the time she finally suggested we go to church.
       Rada and I were down to our last two rosary decades, and I was eager to be finished. Now that we were fifteen, her parents had given us permission to hang out in čaršija, the town center, after church. I was sweating and hoped there wasn’t a dark circle at the crotch of my jean shorts. There were no traces of perspiration on Rada. It was as though she, only two feet away, operated in a different climate. She wore a silky blouse and a draped midi skirt, none of which screamed charisma, but she had it nonetheless. She also wasn’t pretty. Her nose was arched and long, her jaw wide, her chin pointed. But there was something about her—a power, a know-how, a grown-up confidence. Even on her knees circling the Blessed Virgin, Rada was in charge.
       When we finally stood up, my kneecaps ached. Rada’s skirt dropped like a curtain over her band-aid-covered knees. She made a sign of the cross and lowered her rosary into her satchel.
       “I think this many Hail Marys will tide us over for eternity,” I whispered.
       “Shh,” she said, her face devoutly immovable save for a slight quiver of her lips as she fought a smile.
       She smiled again as we left, informing me that my outfit wasn’t appropriate for church. “I’m surprised the priest didn’t come down from the altar and pull you out by the ear,” she said as we descended the dirt path to town, sounding almost disappointed.
       I was wearing cutoffs, a tight black T-shirt, white canvas Keds, and a red Marlboro trucker hat with my ponytail pulled through the snapback. I glanced at the loose denim threads grazing my thighs. “I didn’t want to be stuck in my Sunday best for going out,” I said.
       “Rookie mistake,” she said. At the bottom of the hill, she stopped behind a low rock wall, ripped off the band-aids, took off her skirt, and tucked it into her satchel. Out came a miniskirt she wiggled into. She undid the three bottom buttons of her blouse and tied the corners high up under her bra, baring her midriff. She pulled out a pair of dangly rhinestone earrings and pushed them through her earlobes. Finally, she put on some bright coral lipstick, her faint mustache somehow making her look even more badass. This probably wasn’t the getup my mother had in mind when she’d lectured me on Rada’s chaste virtues while complaining about a lace crop top I was wearing.
       The sun was setting as we reached čaršija, which was swarming with people. We started to cross the bridge over the river at the heart of town, where three main streets converged. Young couples pushed strollers, music blasted from cafes, showy cars cruised by, and the last of the old kerchief-clad church ladies hurried through the bustle lest their penance be undone by exposure to the rowdy youth.
       Halfway across the bridge, Rada leaned on the guardrail while cliques of boys and girls passed us, some saying hello, others whispering and looking at me as though I were some species of peacock. Two boy-men walked toward us, one slender in a blue polo shirt, hands in pockets, and the other pudgy, twirling car keys, his belly bulging above a hefty belt buckle.
       “I’ll be damned. They have legs,” Rada said, and the boys smiled. “What happened to your swank rides?”
       “That’s where we’re headed,” the chunky guy said as they both glanced at me. “Time for patrolling.”
       “This is my cousin, Mala.”
       I swallowed my protest. Our grandma nicknamed me Little One when I was born, six months after Rada. It never bothered me that it stuck—until now.
       “The one that lives in the La-La Land,” she added.
       “The American girl.” The boy in the polo shirt had azure eyes and wavy blond hair. He shook my hand and said his name, but I didn’t catch it. I was surprised and a little flattered that Rada had told them about me.
       “Left bank in five,” Chunky said, and they walked off.
       “What was that about?” I asked.
       “90210—you watch it, right?” Rada asked.
       I nodded.
       “Well, we live it.”
       Up and down the three streets, Mercedes, BMWs, and Audis were lined up bumper-to-bumper, windows rolled down to reveal buzz-cut boys and girls decked out in silky dresses and stage makeup.
       “I thought you had to be eighteen to drive here,” I said.
       “Wrong,” Rada said. “You have to be eighteen to get a driver’s license.”
       At our American dinner table, Mama and Tata celebrated Herzegovina’s verve and lamented its downside: the lack of regulation and habitual lawlessness, which were the main reasons they’d emigrated before the disarray claimed them like fungus. They traded spice for America’s bland stability. To me, Herzegovina held the delicious whiff of freedom.
       We walked down the steps to the other side of the bridge, where Chunky and Azure waited for us like taxi drivers, each leaning on his driver’s side door. Rada got into Chunky’s BMW and disappeared behind its tinted windows. I stood in front of Azure’s white Golf. 
       “Ready?” he asked.
       I shrugged. I had some idea what I was in for, but I was not going to embarrass myself by asking for clarification. The mystery of it sure beat pining for boys from the sidelines with my best friend Josie. Plus he was really cute. Inside, his car smelled of caramel. He played an English music station, an atypical choice for this place, where the local folk preferred local folk tunes.
       “How are things in America?” he asked.
       “American?” I said, trying to be witty.
       He gazed at me as he drove, albeit slowly, navigating the sharp curves from memory. Strangely, his off-the-road eyes relaxed me. Repeatedly we stopped in the middle of the street to chat with people in other cars. No one honked because everyone was doing the same thing. At the end of the road, where the crowd thinned and the woods started, we turned around and headed back. We repeated this pattern on the other two streets that converged at the bridge. Patrolling, indeed. No wonder Azure knew the route by heart and didn’t have to watch the road. He turned up the volume and kept looking at me in a way that made me feel shiny and new. After we completed the circuit, he parked at a clearing in the Little Pines park by the springs, a place the adults joked about.
       Azure turned off the ignition, the headlights giving way to soft moonlight. The web of canals distributing water to the fields and villages murmured around us. He turned to me, smiling.
       “Your car smells nice,” I blurted. “Like Karamela candy.” I fidgeted with the bonbon-shaped air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, tangled up in a wooden rosary.
       “I like you, American girl,” he said.
       The next thing I knew, we were kissing, and it was hot, nothing like the time Dorian Mayberry ambushed me behind the school and licked my mouth like an anxious poodle. When Azure hoisted his sinewy body onto mine, it felt like that apron they give you for X-rays at the dentist office, solid and calming. His moves were restrained. Now and then he gazed into my eyes, asking for permission to proceed. I ran my teeth over his chin, scraped lightly like I did with an Oreo filling. I could feel him harden inside his jeans, taut against my thigh. As he sucked on my earlobe, I slid my hand under his shirt and opened my eyes in the dim light, wanting to remember everything.
       Something beeped. Azure peeled himself off me and slid into the driver’s seat, pressing a button on his watch. The beeps stopped. He offered me a stick of gum and I took it. He lit up a cigarette. As he drove, the radio played No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak,” and we didn’t. He kept his hand light on my thigh, lifting it only to shift gears on the narrow, dark curves. We slowed down at the riverbank under the bridge, back where we’d coupled up. Rada and Chunky were smoking next to his car, Rada’s foot sliding up and down Chunky’s shin.
       Azure shut off the Golf’s engine. “My American girl,” he said, leaning over and grazing the tip of his tongue where my lips parted. I couldn’t wait to see him again.
       Rada threw her cigarette on the gravel. As soon as I got out of the Golf, Chunky opened his car door and struggled to fit his belly between the seat and the wheel. Their calmness vexed me. I was so excited and full of energy; I felt like screaming, doing pushups.
       “Pull yourself together,” Rada said.
       I turned to wave to Azure, but he was already in his car, merging into the traffic behind Chunky, the back of his blond head the only part of him bidding me farewell.

The next day, Rada was back to being her perfect self. She went to the market for her mom (who, in a dire need of a coffee reading, got held up at a friend’s), and then she went out again to get cigarettes for her dad (who was in a dire need of a long nap). While the lady next door was at the hair salon, Rada watched her baby. Then she came home to make zucchini fritters and hose off the terrace. I helped as best I could but mostly felt like I was in the way, just another person Rada had to take care of. All the while, I wanted to talk about what happened the night before, rehash my first proper kiss, but Rada deflected my overtures, intent on her chores. To her, the evening ritual was routine and banal, not even worth discussing.
         It was a relief when we finally went to church and an even bigger relief to finish our prayers and head into town.
       “I didn’t know you smoked,” I said to Rada on our way down the hill.
       “I don’t,” she said.
       “I saw you,” I said.
       “Oh, yeah?” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”
       “Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry.”
       I didn’t want to make her angry, especially since I was relying on her to deliver me to Azure again. But as we walked the main street, Rada kept alerting me to other boys, categorizing them as winners and losers based on the cars they drove and their body mass index.
       “I like chubby guys,” she said. “Something to grab onto. The skinny ones are weak.”
       Exasperated, I was about to drop a hint about Azure when he materialized on the sidewalk up ahead, a vision of blue eyes and short golden curls. My knees trembled, and I worried my voice would fail me, but it ended up not mattering. As he passed, Azure nodded to Rada but wouldn’t meet my eye, and then he was gone. I stopped and gasped.
       “Forget about him,” Rada said. “His fiancée is back in town.”
       “Fiancée?” I asked. “How old is he?”
       “Seventeen. That’s prime engagement age around here.”
       I felt tricked and used, and it must have shown on my face.
       Rada scoffed. “He did you a favor, you know. So did I. I handpicked him for you because he’s one of the nice ones. Doesn’t brag about who he’s been with.”
       As if on cue, a Mercedes sedan stopped in front of us. The guy riding shotgun yelled, “Hey, vaginas!” The driver laughed.
       “Faljen Isus i Marija, dickheads,” Rada said and then turned to me. “You see what I mean about the nice ones?”
       But then she surprised me by opening the door and getting into the back seat. I had little choice but to follow. Apparently these guys were the flavor of the night. I didn’t care who they were or where we were going. All I wanted was Azure. Accordion-heavy turbo-folk was blasting from the radio so loud that we couldn’t talk, which was a relief. After a few circuits up and down the three streets, we exited čaršija and drove to a neighboring town, where we did a couple of circles around the main square, the dickheads yelling to Rada and each other over the radio about cars and people I didn’t know. Then we went to a bar for a shot of Jägermeister, which tasted like spoiled cough syrup. They smoked too much, and I coughed my way through the first three cigarettes of my life. On the way back to our town, I asked them to stop so I could puke on the side of the road. When I was done, the driver handed me a bottle of water over his headrest without turning around.
       On the outskirts of town, we stopped at Little Pines, and the driver turned down the music.
       “See you in an hour,” Rada said, and climbed out of the car with the guy who’d called us vaginas. I watched their silhouettes move toward a bench partially behind the hornbeam trees, where Rada straddled the guy and they began kissing.
       The driver, who had acne and too much gel in his hair, looked back at me and tapped the shotgun seat. I was still nauseated and not in a mood to make out, but by now I understood that getting in the car was consent that couldn’t be revoked. The front seat was still warm from Rada’s guy, and the driver didn’t say anything, just leaned in and started kissing my neck. I didn’t like it but I let him, not wanting to test how “not nice” he was. I was imagining Acne was Azure, and when that didn’t work, I just went along. I convinced myself that I didn’t have to like it, that I was advanced for just doing it. As Acne rubbed against my legs, I laughed at Josie, who made a big deal of sneaking little kisses under the bleachers with TJ. If she could only have seen me now: way ahead. We, the people of wild West Herzegovina, couldn’t care less about rules, emotions, names. We were animals, using each other for lip meat and sweet saliva.

I lost track of the novenas. Was it the sixth evening? Eighth? The days and nights were a blur of cheap cocktails, cigarettes, and reckless rides with boys.
        “You’re a good wing-woman,” Rada said after mass as she adjusted a tube dress over her breasts behind the stone wall.
       “A good what?”
       “You didn’t see Top Gun?” she said. “How is it I know Hollywood lingo better than you?”
       I shrugged and peeled the large band-aids from my knees. Then I changed into a corset top I borrowed from Rada, pairing it with my cutoffs. She tossed her lipstick at me. I caught it and put it on blind.
       Using her thumb, she wiped some off my bottom lip and said, “I hope you’re moving beyond smooching.”
       I’d learned early on that Rada didn’t care to compare notes on our trysts, so aside from cryptic remarks like this, I had no idea whether what I’d been doing was sufficiently advanced in Rada’s book.
       “But I also hope you’re being smart,” she said as we started for town.
       I allowed myself one question. “Smart like what?”
       “Like, you wouldn’t want to sin,” Rada said.
       “Sin?”
       “You know, give in to the temptation.”
       I guessed she meant going all the way, but she needn’t have worried. I was too scared for that. Even so, the line between exploration and consequences, fun and sin, was elusive. The boy I’d necked with a couple of days ago reminded me of Azure, and in the heat of our making out, I’d let him stick his finger inside me. The next morning, I saw a drop of blood in my underwear. It was a pretty lame way to lose my virginity, but at least it was better than Josie, who’d lost hers to a tampon.
       Rada pulled down her dress, which kept hiking up as we walked. “You don’t want to go too far,” she continued. “You don’t want to walk into the realm of Satan—like you’re about to do in four, well, three steps.”
       I froze. “Fuck!” Up ahead, where the dirt road gave way to asphalt, a small viper lay coiled, its horned nose raised, the shiny copper streak down its back matching the red soil.
       “See?” Rada said. “In its midst and you’re already cussing, dear cousin.”
       In America, kids are taught to avoid snakes, but in Western Herzegovina, we were taught to kill them. Every year my grandmother insisted on giving me a refresher, and every year I knew I’d never put it to use. But Rada was a different story. Moving decisively, she found a stick and began tearing the bark off its tip, making a point.
       “Can’t we just leave it?” I said.
       Rada ignored that. “I’m kidding, Mala,” she said. “Sin all you want. Boys think they’re the only ones who get to do what they please.”
       She slid out of her heeled clogs, picked up a big rock, and warily approached the snake. I gasped as she stabbed its body with the stick and brought the rock down on its head again and again. When it finally lay still, she stepped on the snake’s tail with her bare foot, striking a pose like the virgin and smiling at me.

The last novena, on the eve of the Assumption Feast, was the party night, dernek, when everyone dressed up to sit in bars and cafes, smoking and drinking. Rada wore a ruffled miniskirt and a striped fuchsia halter-top. I retired my cutoffs in favor of a black jumpsuit with a wide cloth belt and copper buttons, clothes Mama made me pack for the occasion. Days ago, this outfit would’ve felt too serious, but now it made me feel powerful, grown up. After mass, Rada and I sat in a cafe with some boys and drank bitter, syrupy shots of gorki pelin, the cheaper, local version of Jägermeister. In their identical military cuts and polo-jeans-sneakers uniforms, the boys had started to look the same to me, all of them except Azure. I was going home in two days, and I ached for him, for the feeling I’d felt that first night. Lighting up a cigarette, I feigned interest in the boys at our table, but it was a guy at another table who caught my eye. Blue eyes, blond curls. He wasn’t Azure, but the resemblance was uncanny. Rada noticed my staring and smiled.
        “That’s his cousin,” she said, reading my mind. “Want to meet him?”
       “Sure.” If I was going to make out with a stand-in for Azure, why not make out with one who looked the most like Azure.
        The boys at our table scoffed. “That old guy?” one of them said. “He’s like twenty-five.”
       “Shit,” I said, swigging some pelin. “That is old.”
       “Oh, don’t be a scaredy cat!” Rada said. “You might learn something. Besides, you’re out of here in two days. Back to your glitzy American life.” She  reached for my cigarette and took a drag, the corner of her lip curled in contempt.
       I almost had to laugh. My glitzy American life most typically consisted of a few laps around the mall with Josie on a Saturday night, followed by an Orange Julius at the food court. But Rada didn’t have to know that. I admit I enjoyed seeing her jealous.
       “Okay then,” I said, and followed Rada across the cafe to the table where Azure’s cousin sat with a group of guys. They pulled up two chairs for us, and I sat next to him. Emboldened by the pelin and the strides I’d made with men in the last nine days, I slid off his gold-framed glasses and stared at his face.
       “Wow,” I said, “you look so much like him.”
       “What the fuck,” he said.
       “My cousin, Mala,” Rada said, rolling her eyes, and everyone at the table laughed, everyone but me. I was still staring.
       One of the other guys elbowed Azure’s cousin. “What are you waiting for, man?”
       He returned my gaze, not quite grinning. “Wanna get out of here?”

In his Mercedes he tried to make small talk, asking me about the States, but his accent was heavier than Azure’s, which made it harder for me to project Azure onto him. 
       “How about some music?” I said, fiddling with the radio until I found a station playing turbo-folk. By then, the cheap riffs and yodel-like singing had grown on me. I sang along to “Hani,” which was the big song that summer, and twirled his hair. It felt like Azure’s, only it was longer in the back, a mullet, a hairstyle I would have ridiculed back home. But I didn’t care about that or the fact that he was a surrogate, a cheap tribute band, not the real thing. I just wanted to be closer to Azure.
       Soon he turned onto a steep, unpaved mountain road.
       “Where are you taking me?” I giggled.
       “This nice spot I like,” he said. “Great view of the valley.”
       “Nicer than Little Pines?”
       “Little Pines is for kids.”
       He stopped at the top of the hill. It was dark, but I could see the silhouettes of forklifts, the concrete shell of a sprawling building.
       “My uncle is building a wholesale center,” he said.
       “Where’s the view?” I asked.
       He put his glasses on. “Hm, I guess it’s too dark.”
       He turned up the music, lowered my seat, and began kissing my neck. He was clumsy, he stank of vodka, and his hands were sweaty and cold. I pulled back, bumping his glasses. He looked nothing like Azure. Unfazed, he leaned in to kiss me on the mouth. This time I pushed him away with both hands.
       “What the fuck?” he said.
       “Take me home,” I said.
       He smirked. “That’s not how this works,” he said. “You know that.”
       When he put a hand on my breast, I wanted to push him away again, but I was afraid, and my body betrayed me. I began to cry.
       “Okay, jeez, don’t freak out,” he said. Tenderly, he tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “The least I deserve is a kiss, don’t you think?”
       I stared out at the construction site and considered making a run for it, but I was afraid he’d leave me there, stranded on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere.
       “Come on,” he said, “we’ll keep it Little Pines style.”
       I let him kiss me and tried to convince myself that it wasn’t that bad, just a harmless game. I had to try harder when he unbuttoned my romper, pulled down my bra, and sucked on my nipple. As he leaned into me and dug his hand into my underwear, I told myself it was stuff I’d already done, stuff everyone did. Then he stuck his fingers inside me and undid his zipper with the other hand, guiding my hand to his dick. That’s when I couldn’t pretend anymore. I wished I had a rock to smash his face, but I didn’t, so I punched his balls instead. He let out a cry and rolled away from me, clutching his crotch.
       “Crazy bitch,” he yelled, flailing at me, but I was already out of the car, stumbling around in the dark, making my way toward the outlines of forklifts and machinery, hoping for a place to hide. Behind me, he started the car, and then I was bathed in the glow of the headlights, totally exposed. He gunned the engine and drove straight at me, as if he intended to run me down. I tensed and screamed. He braked at the last second and stuck his head out the window.
       “Glupa kurvetino,” he shouted. Stupid whore.
       Then he reversed and disappeared down the dirt road.
       When I could no longer hear the engine, I straightened my bra, buttoned my romper, and began to walk. The lights in the valley flickered like salvation.

In the pale light of dawn, I made it to Rada’s house, slipped inside without waking anyone, and vomited into the toilet, having already retched twice on my long walk home. Rada had prepped the sofa bed for me, and I lay on it but didn’t have the energy to undress. I was shivering. All I wanted to do was go home, go to school, do my chores, pray the rosary.
       When I heard someone coming downstairs, I pretended to sleep. Wearing a robe and curlers, my aunt went into the kitchen, and I heard the clang of pots and pans. Rada came down next. In low voices the two of them went over the final preparations for the evening’s feast. Then my aunt went back upstairs, got dressed, and left for the pre-mass confession with my uncle. I got up and went into the kitchen to find Rada in a white daisy-print dress with her hair pulled back.
       “You should start getting ready for mass,” she said, barely glancing my way.
       I went to the sink and poured myself a glass of water as she covered the kitchen table with newspapers and brought out a knife, a cutting board, a peeler, and a bag of potatoes. She peeled with the efficiency of a machine, placing each potato into a mixing bowl filled with cold water to prevent the potatoes from darkening. She’d taught me that a few days back.
       “Why do you do it?” I asked her.
       She stopped peeling, looked up at me. “Do what?”
       “Go out with a different boy every night then pretend to be a girl who’d never do that?”
       She went back to her work. “Why do you go out with a different boy every night?”
       “Because I was told to do as my perfect cousin does.”
       Rada considered this as she began slicing a potato. “You don’t strike me as a follower,” she said. “I think you do it because you want to. Because you can. Just like me.”
       “I was drunk. He was older.”
       “Don’t come crying to me,” she said. “You did what you wanted to do.”
       Hearing that, I was on the verge of crying, but I didn’t want to give Rada the satisfaction. I went upstairs and took a shower. When I got out, I started to put on the cinched-waist dress I’d borrowed from Josie, but I no longer want to be looked at, appraised, so instead I put on a blouse and a pair of navy dress pants Mama bought on sale at Kohl’s because she said I needed something classy for high mass.
       When I came back down to the kitchen, Rada had finished slicing the potatoes and was frosting the cake she’d baked the night before. The radio murmured the pre-mass chants and devotional prayers I now could’ve recited by heart.
       O Immaculate Virgin, fill our hearts with a distaste for earthly things. Crown us with the pure robe of innocence and grace on earth, and with immortality and glory in Heaven. Body and soul, untouched by decay.
       Rada took one look at my outfit and said, “Speaking of immaculate virgins, you should be safe in that.”
       I looked down at my clothes, as shapeless as a potato sack, and chuckled. Then Rada dissolved into laughter, dropping the spatula she was using to smooth the frosting. When she finally got control of herself, she reached for a bowl of halved strawberries and began placing them on the cake.
       “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Maybe next summer we switch it up. I could come stay with you.”
       Standing there in her dress, scrubbed clean for mass, she looked disarmingly hopeful, and I tried to picture the two of us in Pittsburgh, Rada’s disappointment in my unglamorous life, a life I missed and was eager to get back to. The thing was, at some point, without quite admitting it to myself, I had already decided I would never visit Rada again, and certainly she would never visit me. I scooped a handful of strawberries and joined her in decorating the cake.
       “You’re going to love American boys,” I said. “We’ll have a blast.”