Chapter six

As the car sped down the highway I made inane conversation with Andrei over the radio which was tuned to a jazz station , to be honest I wasn't a big fan of jazz but I wasn't going to start complaining this early in our relationship so I tried to pretend to enjoy it while trying to suppress a yawn. To distract myself from the mind numbingly dull music coming from the speakers I started looking out the window at the passing scenery.

At first the only thing I saw were the fields and the small shrubs zipping by as we passed them but slowly they started to get replaced by small houses and eventually the small houses were replaced by larger buildings until we turned a corner and I saw St Petersburg for the first time. I had spent my whole life at the orphanage and however much I begged Veronica and Alexandra they would never allow me to go with them on one of their many trips to the city so this was the first time that I saw St Petersburg and it took my breath away.

There were large buildings everywhere , I even saw a castle that looked like the ones from the picture books that I read at the orphanage. There were also large buildings that looked like they were made entirely of glass. Everywhere I looked countless cars of every kind passed by , from small cars to giant trucks. Now and then I would catch glimpses of large bodies of water and to top it all off I saw more people than I could have imagined. All this may sound mundane to you but I have never been to a big city, never seen such big buildings except in pictures, never seen so many people(I didn't even know there were so many people in the whole world) and the biggest body of water I have ever seen is a puddle of water I made with Anna to float our paper boats so as you can imagine I was very excited and turning my head every which way to catch all the new things around me. Andrei just glanced at me and chuckled slightly.

We made our way through the city until Andrei parked the car in front of an imposing gray building.

Then he got out of the car came to my door and dragged me out saying, "Come on, it's time for your surprise."

I could not imagine what kind of surprise I could get from a building like this. Andrei dragged me through the parking lot and into the front door of the building. The inside wasn't an improvement on the outside, it wasn't ugly or anything in fact it actually looked kind of nice with its mosaic like floor tiling and shiny wooden furniture but the atmosphere was so miserable that I nearly chocked on it. It was filled with people, so many people that there were lines everywhere and from all the faces around me I didn't see a single person with a smile. I started to wonder why Andrei would bring me to this place of misery where smiles weren't allowed, what where we doing in a place like this?

He dragged me to one of the windows that were miraculously free and when we got there the man behind the window spoke in a monotonous voice,"Welcome to the St Petersburg government office, how may I assist you?"

So that was the name of this terrible place, why would Andrei bring me here?

"I would like to change the name of this young lady over here."

"Do you have proof that you are her guardian? Then you can fill out this form, pay a small fee at the cashier and take it to the office at the end of the hall, have a nice day."

He thought that we were going to leave him alone and go about our way but what he didn't count on was the very heated argument that we would have about my new name right there in front of his window. Finally unable to take it anymore the annoyed clerk said," For the love of God, it is not that complicated. She is a cute little girl , just name her Sophia!"

And that was how I got my name, because of the suggestion of an irritated clerk I became Sophia Belikova.

* * *

Afterwards Andrei took me to a restaurant to celebrate. There I stuffed myself with delicious food until I was full. We left the restaurant and drove some more until we reached a residential area. The houses around us were all large and fancy looking, I had a feeling that only rich people lived here, all the cars were shiny , all the people wore fancy clothes and all the lawns and gardens were perfectly manicured.. We passed mansion after mansion until we drove up one of the driveways . Andrei was looking at me enjoying my reaction as I slowly realized what this meant,

"Welcome home Sophia."