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"Huh? I don't understand."

He waited as I carefully constructed my words. I knew what he was thinking. If I was attending such an expensive school in England, why was I so underprivileged in America?

"I'm part of a program sponsored by wealthy people, a charity. You could say I won the lottery or something," I added.

"You mean you won a contest where the prize was going to school in London?"

"Something like that."

"So it's like a scholarship? Did you perform something? Sing something in order to win it?"

"I performed," I said, feeling bitterness like rot in an apple spread through me and my memories. "I'm still performing."

He looked even more confused.

"Something's being lost in the translation here," he said shaking his head.

I fixed my eyes on him. I could feel the heat in them myself, cooking up the memories I would have rather left on the shelf.

"I come from a very poor neighborhood in Washington, D.C. My family lived in governmentsubsidized housing, in apartments called the projects."

"What about your parents?"

"My father was a drunk and always lost his job or wasted his money. My mother worked in a supermarket."

He nodded, but I had a feeling that what I was describing was so far out of his experience, it was as if I was telling him the plot of a science fiction movie.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" he asked.

"I had a younger sister, Beni. She was killed, murdered by gang members."

"Really?" He sounded shocked.

"I wouldn't want to make any of this up, believe me," I said. "I have an older brother who is in the army. He's in Germany now."

Randall just stared at me for a moment as if a mask had dropped off my face and he was looking at the real me.

"Do your parents still live there?" he finally asked.

"My father's in jail and my mother died recently," I said. "Depressed enough?" I muttered and got up and started away.

"Hey!" he called and caught up with me. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you in a bad mood."

"You didn't. I was born in a bad mood," I commented.

"I would never know it by talking to you. No, I mean it," he continued when I stopped to look at him skeptically. "When I first started to talk to you at the school, I just thought you were someone different," he added.

"Different? Yeah, Randall, I'm different," I said laughing coldly. "That's for sure. It didn't take you long to spot that."

"No, I didn't mean in a bad way. You're...I don't know ...not like any girl I ever met."

"I'm not surprised." Suddenly his white-bread world annoyed me. His whole life looked like a soft slide downhill and he had been born with a wonderful talent too. Who decided all this? Was there some judge who considered you when you were about to be born and with a wave of his hand, he sent you to this family or that, this world or that? What could I or Beni or Roy have done to be given this destiny as opposed to the one Randall had been given?

"You were brought up with a silver spoon in your mouth. You just said so yourself," I told him. "Private schools, rich parents, beautiful home...art galleries and theaters. Your family took you on expensive vacations. You were shocked to learn I hadn't even been to New York City!"

"No, I just..."

"You know why I seem different? I'm as good as an alien to you. You wanted to talk to me because you thought I was different?