HOPE'S WAR
COVER PAGE
TITLE PAGE
Gentlemen: I am known as a brutal dog. Because of this reason I was appointed as a Reichskommissar of the Ukraine. Our task is to suck from the Ukraine all the goods we can get hold of, without consideration of the feeling or the property of the Ukrainians.
Gentlemen: I am expecting from you the utmost severity towards the native population.
There are no prisoners of war, there are traitors.
We are against Russian Communist-Bolshevism and German National-Socialism....[we are] for the equality of all citizens of Ukraine regardless of nationality, in state, public rights and duties, for equal rights, for labor, wages and rest.
COPYRIGHT
HOPE'S WAR
MARSHA FORCHUK SKRYPUCH
Copyright © Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
Editor: Barry Jowett
Copy Editor: Julian Walker
Design: Bruna Brunelli
Printer: Webcom
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Skrypuch, Marsha Forchuk, 1954—
Hope's war
ISBN 1-895681-19-7
1. World War, 1939–1945—Ukraine—Juvenile fiction.
2. Ukrainian Canadians—Juvenile fiction. I. Title.
PS8587.K79H66 2001jC813'.54C2001-902187-9 PZ7.S6284Ho 2001
2345050403
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program, The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
www.dundurn.com
CHAPTER 1
KAT BALIUK FELT like a traitor.
She hugged her books to her chest and stepped onto the sidewalk as the bus stopped in front of Cawthra School for the Arts, then she turned and waved faintly to her friends. They were staying on until the next stop: St. Paul's Catholic High School. No one waved back. They were already involved in animated conversations without her. Kat's older sister Genya was also staying on the bus with a group of her friends until the St. Paul's stop, but Genya did turn and wink reassuringly at her little sister just as the bus pulled away.
Kat ran her fingers nervously through her dark blonde hair, hoping that it didn't look as flyaway as it felt. Classes didn't start for another twenty minutes. She looked through her wirerimmed glasses towards the concrete steps leading into the school and searched the faces of the students loitering there. Not one she could call a friend.
She felt so odd coming to school without a uniform. Last year in grade 9 at St. Paul's, it was a no-brainer getting ready for school, but she must have spent forty-five minutes this morning deciding what to wear. The low-slung cargo pants and midriff-baring tops that the cluster of girls on the bottom step wore were a far cry from grey uniform pants and white blouse. She didn't feel too out of place with the choice that she made for this day: baggy hip-hugging jeans and a T-shirt.
As she walked past the girls, she noticed from the corner of her glasses that they appraised her, discounted her, then continued with their chatter. Probably dance students, she calculated, noticing their tight bodies and hair pulled back into little buns.
There was a group of guys just in front of the school's front doors discussing something with great seriousness. They too looked up for a moment, assessed her, then ignored her. Drama, she figured.
Kat opened her binder, found her timetable and pretended to look up the room number of her first class. Room 113, Visual Arts was already imbedded in her brain. She must have taken that timetable out a hundred times over the summer! But at least she looked occupied.
"Hey there!"
Kat turned, thankful that someone had actually wanted to speak with her. She did her best not to gasp at what stood before her: a Goth in full regalia. Right down to the black lipstick and eyeliner and leather coat held together with hundreds of safety pins. The hair was bright turquoise gelled to bed-head perfection, and the plain silver nose-ring was downright painful to look at.
"Name's Ian, what's yours?" he asked, extending a hand covered with tarnished silver rings.
Kat clasped his outstretched hand limply and introduced herself. She noticed that the girls on the step were watching her and smirking.
"You're from St. Paul's, right?" he asked. "I was there for grade nine last year too."
Kat tried to hold back her surprise. She tried to imagine Ian's head pasted onto a body wearing the white shirt and grey pants, but the image was too absurd.
"I didn't last long," he explained. "They kicked me out one minute into day two when I showed up in a kilt."
"A kilt?" exclaimed Kat. "And you're wondering why you got kicked out?" Even the girls at St. Paul's didn't wear the kilts. She would have loved to see the havoc Ian created when he walked through the door. How was it that she had been there the whole year and hadn't even heard of this incident? The mind police must've been working overtime on that one.
"You're hardly one to talk," said Ian, smiling.
"What do you mean?"
"You're here for pretty much the same reason that I am." Kat hadn't thought of it that way, but there was some truth in the statement.
"What's your specialty?" she asked.
"Music," Ian replied.
Just as Kat thought.
Right at that moment, the bell rang so Kat and Ian headed in. "See you around," said Ian.
Kat watched as his turquoise head disappeared down the hallway.
Kat made her way to the end of the hall and then walked down the staircase and past the cafeteria in a sea of other students going in the same direction. Soon room 113 was in front of her and so she pushed the door and walked in.
The actual layout of the art room wasn't that much different from the one at St. Paul's. There were three rows of two-student art tables with stools instead of chairs taking up the main part of the room. Off to one side was a huge supply cupboard, and beside that was an alcove with a table in the middle holding stacks of paper and drawing boards.