Stage lights warmed Elena’s skin as she beamed at the crowd. People were clapping. The noise should have been overwhelming, but instead it created a sort of clarity, an electrifying high. She had actually won. Elena panned the audience. The people’s faces and voices all blended together, a giant conglomeration of celebration. They clapped for her, smiled for her, voted for her, and now she was the winner. She was homecoming queen, and it felt like sunshine.

Elena’s boyfriend stood at her side wearing a crown that matched her own. His perfect white teeth glistened, contrasting with his sun-kissed, California skin. Elena’s friends were clumped at the back of the stage. Saccharine smiles painted their faces, but their eyes spoke of disappointment. Losing must be rough. Still, they were Elena’s people. They would persevere. After all, Elena’s victory wasn’t much of a surprise. She and James were perfect, the quintessential prom royalty. They had everything, including two sparkling, plastic crowns.


Elena slid down against the door, as if the heat of her emotion had melted her legs, leaving only a pitiable pile of goo. She had nothing. Her mother banged against the other side of the door. The knocks sent vibrations through Elena’s already throbbing head, but moving her body seemed impossible. Speaking seemed even less likely. Besides, her mother didn’t deserve anything from her, not even a murmur.

Africa. Elena mouthed the word, carefully forming each syllable but producing no sound. She repeated her silent chant, slowly mutilating the word until it was unrecognizable, simply a flowing stream of her own breath. The world held no meaning for her. All she could think of were little babies with distended stomachs, mosquitoes, and AIDS. Those things were tragic, but they weren’t real. Reality was the chemistry test she desperately needed to pass tomorrow, the insane sale at the mall next weekend, and the rhinestone tiara displayed proudly on her bureau. How could her parents ask her to do this? She was a senior. She wouldn’t even get to go to prom. She had been searching for the perfect dress for months, all in anticipation of that one glorious night where she would get to be a princess. The closest she would get to a prom in Africa is dancing with an elephant, and that only happens in Disney movies and on really bad acid trips.

Moving to Africa wasn’t like moving to Washington or Iowa. It was leaving the country, hell, leaving the continent. It was saying goodbye to everything she loved, because it’s not like they have Internet and phone lines over there. It wasn’t fair, but Elena was sixteen, and her parents had the final decision. She was moving to Africa.


Elena walked through her new “home”. She had grown up wealthy, accustomed to a certain style of living. Her father was a doctor, which, ironically, was the reason for her being in Africa. He took a job with Doctors Without Borders, so she was stuck in a hut. God, they didn’t even have plumbing.

Elena had been up for over twenty-four hours. Her muscles ached and her eyelids were beginning to twitch, like little moth wings batting against her eyes. She found her room and lay down on the bed that felt nothing like her own. Her exhaustion should have allowed sleep an easy passage, but her mind refused to settle. She didn’t imagine prisoners slept well on their first night either.


When Elena was a little girl, she used to camp out under the dining room table whenever she was upset. She would shriek and howl, but the very moment her parents came to comfort her, she would cease. She would clench her eyes shut and hum, pretending that her little ditty could drown out their existence. She rejected their comfort; she wanted to stay angry, to hold onto that little bit of hatred for as long as possible. As a teenager, she hadn’t changed, though luckily she now sought refuge in her room rather than under a table.

Elena avoided her parents for weeks. They disposed of her entire world in a single instant, without even an afterthought. Nothing was left in the wake of their destruction: not her boyfriend, not her jealous friends, not her childhood home, not prom, not even school. Everything had slipped through Elena’s perfectly manicured fingers, sucked down by the whirlpool of her parents’ heartless decision.

On her twenty-third day in Africa, Elena’s father came into her room smiling like a loon. She hated it when he smiled. It was like he was rubbing his pleasure in her face. Working in Africa was his lifelong ambition, but he was far too egocentric to see that fulfilling his dream was crushing her own.

“Lena, sweetie, I want to show you something.”

Elena glared at him with ice in her eyes.

“Alright,” he sighed, “I get it. You hate me and I’m the worst dad ever. I know. But if you don’t come to see this, you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life. Please, Lena. It’ll take an hour tops.”

Elena remained silent. The pair held eye contact, neither willing to buckle first. After an entire symphonic concert of silence, Elena yanked her eyes away, stomped to her dresser, and threw on a clean shirt.

“Let’s go,” she snapped, shattering the silence.


Elena sat in the safari jeep. Her father refused to disclose their destination, so Elena was left in the dark once again. She contemplated the African landscape as they drove by. For miles, all that was visible was dry grass and dirt. The grass wasn’t even a lush green; it was the color of straw, dying from a lack of water. Elena searched for beauty, but found only dust and despair.

The ride lasted about forty-five minutes, a waste of valuable time. Then again, every minute spent on this God-forsaken continent was a waste of time. Nothing here had any value, any worth. Everything was dead or dying. The grass was brown, the people were sick, and Elena had yet to see a single animal. She couldn’t fathom her father’s reason for bringing her on this charming little excursion.

Then she saw it.

In sophomore year biology, Elena learned that humans had originated in Africa. On some level, knowing this was why Elena was so opposed to moving to Africa in the first place. She had always been focused on moving forwards, leaving the past in the dust. She had no respect for beginnings because she only had eyes for endings.

Elena absorbed the sight before her. She had never seen anything like it. In Los Angeles, animals weren’t like this. She had seen plenty of squirrels and waddling, overweight pigeons, but their dull grays and browns quite literally paled in comparison to the range of color before her. Giraffes stood tall. In actuality they were shorter than the skyscrapers back home in L.A., but the life flowing in their veins made them seem like the tallest thing on the planet. A heard of zebras were gathered a bit further away, swatting each other playfully with their tails. Their stripes were all unique, works of divine art telling a completely different kind of tale. There were elephants too, gentle giants with near-human wisdom in their eyes. The animals were brought together by a pool of translucent water, reflecting the hot, African sun in sparkling shards of broken light. Elena had never imagined that a watering hole would be the most breathtaking sight of her life.

Elena tried to hide her excitement, but her eyes betrayed her. Elena’s father saw the light behind them, the same light that had been a constant presence during Elena’s childhood. Anticipation of this very moment was the reason Elena’s father had decided to take the job in Africa. He was not as selfish as his daughter loved to think. He had never thought Los Angeles was the right place to raise children. People there didn’t truly live. They inhaled thick city smog, not the fresh safari breeze. They couldn’t see beauty because they were so focused on getting ahead, on moving forward. Elena’s father loved his daughter, but he felt like he was losing her to the city of supposed angels. He knew she resented him for moving their family across the world, but he was simply being the best parent he knew how to be. Her hatred was a small price to pay for preserving the light in her eyes.

Elena locked eyes with her father. Unlike their earlier deadlock, this one was not silent. They didn’t speak, but she had never understood him more clearly. Elena felt a tightness in her face, one that she had not felt in a long, long, time. She traced her cheek with careful fingers, only to discover what she had already known in her heart. She was smiling.