It's a Whole Spiel

by It's a Whole Spiel- Love, Latkes

  I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I would’ve made a decision tree, but the kids burst in for gaming, and I had to scramble to get everything out for them. The hour and a half was a blur. Two of my regulars got in an argument over how many wheats one of them needed to trade in if she didn’t have a dedicated wheat port, and two boys whose names I didn’t remember nearly got into a fistfight over a contentious round of Uno. I was so distracted I completely failed to help a group of kids learn a new game where you tried to grow a forest, and they ended up just playing checkers until the dinner bugle sounded.

  Yes, Camp Winatoo has a dinner bugle.

  The moment the kids left, I sprinted to the dining hall, then realized I hadn’t checked my phone, so I didn’t actually know anything new to tell Levi when I saw him. I pulled it out of my shorts, and sure enough, the battery had died.

  Oh no. Decision-tree time.

  Okay, so going back to the bunk was not an option, but I couldn’t stand there outside the dining hall, muttering through a catastrophic decision tree while kids streamed in, all red-faced and loudmouthed from their afternoon activities.

  My salvation appeared in Jackson Kimmel, like a rescue launched from Kennedy Space Center. He scuttled up from the lake, mysteriously dry, and I wondered for a moment what deceit he’d come up with to avoid swimming. (I’d always used the journeyman lie “My stomach hurts.”)

  “Jackson!” I called him over. “Any news?”

  He shook his head. Campers weren’t allowed to use their phones during activities, so of course he didn’t have any news, which meant I didn’t have any news, which left me exactly where I’d been. But I was a counselor! Sort of! I could give him permission to use his phone!

  “Sorry,” he said. “I left it in my bunk when I changed for swimming. I was gonna ask you for news.”

  “But—” I realized it was as stupid to point out that he hadn’t actually gone swimming as it was to argue with a ten-year-old about how he should have information about a catastrophe unfolding in low Earth orbit so I could flirt with another counselor, who may or may not actually care about said catastrophe or know that when I said depressurization for controlled breach egress, I was actually saying Please let me taste the ChapStick on your lips.

  I sighed a little too loudly and promised Jackson I’d find out for him, and decided I had to risk going back to charge my phone, regardless of the probable outcomes. It was the only possible choice that might give me something to say to Levi Klein-Behar. This would be my Hail Mary pass, which was a terrible metaphor for the moment, being so overtly Catholic and so aggressively sportsy. But desperate times called for desperate metaphors.

  No one was in the bunk when I got there, thankfully, so no one saw my mad scramble for the one outlet. I plugged the phone in and sat on the edge of Jeff’s bed, which was next to the outlet. Jeff was a college junior, which made him the senior counselor in this bunk, and he hated when campers sat on his bed while they charged their phones, and he considered me nothing more than a glorified camper. He also coached tennis and liked to make snarky comments about me and my “indoor kids,” so I didn’t really care about ruffling his sheets.

  It took forever before I had enough power to restart and then a second forever until I got onto Twitter. @GeekHeadNebula had the same message that everyone else seemed to have: media blackout.

  No one was allowed to talk to the press, which meant either they didn’t know what was happening, or the worst had happened and they were preparing a grim press conference.

  @RogueNASA’s last tweet confirmed that all combustion events were safely contained, but there was no news about the ammonia situation. For all anyone knew, the ISS could be orbiting the globe at 17,150 miles per hour with five dead bodies on board.

  “Shit,” I said, and I looked at the crew’s Instagram account again. The most recent post was a still from their last story, Commander Frisch giving the thumbs-up. What if they were already dead? What if they were in the process of dying while I looked at their picture? I hated not knowing. I hated this tension! This wasn’t some beautiful moment of connection to God! This was a bunch of disasters cascading on top of each other, and why did Levi care anyway, and why’d he have to act so interested and screw up my totally mundane day?

  I threw the phone down onto Jeff’s bed and cursed again. “Shit shit shit.”

  I knew it made no sense to be mad at Levi, but I didn’t know where else to hurl my anger. I didn’t want to go back to the dining hall to eat too-dry mashed potatoes and too-wet mac ’n’ cheese while the astronauts might be dying and killing my chances of kissing Levi with them—and what kind of jerk conflates those two things anyway?—so I just sat there on the edge of Jeff’s bed, listening to the crickets start their chirping while I ground my teeth, hated myself, and regretted that I’d let my first maybe sort-of date hinge on the worst tragedy in modern spaceflight.

  I’m not sure how long I sat there bathed in self-loathing. The bunk was my own sealed capsule, hurtling through my own void of a life, where the odds of anything ever happening were even less than the odds of a catastrophic impact with space debris. Nothing ever leaked in or broke out. I was a lonely astronaut, but as long as I stayed in my capsule, I was safe.

  “You didn’t come to dinner.”

  I sat bolt upright on Jeff’s bed, and there was Levi, clicking his stupid beads while he leaned against the doorframe. He loved leaning on things. He looked so damn good leaning on things. Somehow, night had fallen. Gnats buzzed around him in the puddle of light in the doorway.

  I held up my phone on the end of its cord and wiggled it. “Charging,” I said.

  “You shouldn’t nourish your technology before you nourish yourself,” he told me, like he was quoting something. Most of what he said sounded like he was quoting something. It was cute before. Now it annoyed me.

  “Not sure how nourishing canned green bean casserole is,” I replied. I was proud of myself for how cool I was playing it.

  He came into the bunk and bent down in front of me. “You okay?”

  “Yeah? What? Why?” I said too fast, and realized by his expression that my eyes were puffy. I’d been crying. So…not playing it that cool.

  “Worried about the astronauts?” he asked, and I was ashamed to tell him that that wasn’t exactly it. That I was worried about myself and about how badly I wanted to kiss him and how not badly he wanted to kiss me and how every time I spoke, I’d just make it even less likely. So I just nodded.

  He put his hand on my shoulder, and the heat of it nearly ignited me.

  “There’s a new plan,” he said, and before he could go further, Jackson burst into the bunk, shouting, a horde of kids following him like a comet’s tail, kids who didn’t normally pay any attention to him.

  “They’re coming down!” he yelled. “They’re coming down! They’re coming down!” He repeated it, bouncing, and the quiet bunk was transformed into absolute mayhem as boys shouted over each other. Jackson, in his element for probably the first time in his life, shushed them all, and they actually, shockingly, shushed. “Camp Director Cheryl made an announcement. NASA said that they rigged the crew’s module into a kind of ILV—improvised landing vehicle—and they are going to use that piece of the space station to attempt reentry and splashdown. They think it’ll hold, but they have never tested this scenario. They could suffer complete hull collapse or burn up in the atmosphere, but they decided the risk was worth it because they had no other choices. Their air levels were at critical—”

  “Okay, okay, slow down,” I told Jackson. “Breathe.”

  “We’re going to be able to see it from the Northern Hemisphere!” he shouted.

  “What? The reentry?”

  “That’s what Cheryl said,” Levi clarified. “Everyone’s going to the Big Green to watch. We’ll be able to see the lights cross the sky in, like, twenty minutes.
”

  “If it burns up, it’ll be like the brightest shooting star ever.” Jackson bounced, then remembered he was talking about human beings who might die, and he looked down at his sneakers, ashamed he’d only been thinking about himself. I knew the feeling. “Not that I want that. I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “I know what you meant. Let’s go out to the green, then?”

  He nodded and bounded off. The other kids followed him, the sciencey ones in the lead for once.

  “I hope I didn’t freak you out with all that God and death stuff,” Levi said when we had the bunk to ourselves again. “I can be…intense.”

  What was he saying? Had he been worried about me judging him this whole time? “How would you have freaked me out? I’m the one who—”

  “Hey! Sheldon!” Jeff crashed into the bunk like a meteor. “Get the hell off my bed or you can’t use my outlet anymore!”

  Jeff always called me Sheldon, like from that TV show.

  Jeff was a prick.

  I grabbed my phone at thirty-eight percent and stood up. Levi and I rolled our eyes in unison.

  “Follow me,” Levi said as he led me outside, where we slipped around to the back of the cabin. He grabbed the window frame and started to climb the wooden lattice to the cabin’s roof. “Come on. We won’t have to smell all the Axe on the Big Green.”

  “But won’t they wonder where we are?” I kept both feet on the ground.

  “We’re indoor kids at a sports camp,” Levi answered. “No one ever wonders where we are.”

  He was right about that, but the cabin was not made for climbing, and he was already halfway up. I wanted to follow him, and I was terrified to follow him.

  Time to work the problem.

  Decision-tree ti—

  “Come on!” He thrust his hand down to help me.

  There was no decision to be made.

  I climbed.

  When I reached the top, I sat down on the sloped roof, my feet tingling even though we weren’t really that high up. I pressed my hands against the wooden shingles, as if my palms could hold me if I fell.

  “Relax,” Levi said, standing with arms open. “Look up.”

  “I am relaxed,” I told him, keeping my butt firmly against the shingles. “It’s just, sometimes relaxing means keeping a low center of gravity to keep myself from plummeting to my death and— Whoa.”

  I’d looked up.

  I loved looking at the stars and always had. That was nothing new. I could name the constellations and explain why the planets burned in different colors, and, if he wanted, I could tell Levi all about the Doppler effect and the expansion of space, the nature of black holes and the firewall paradox and on and on like a wannabe Carl Sagan. The stars were not why I’d whoa’d.

  I’d whoa’d because I’d looked up at him. It really did look like he was bathing in the stars.

  “Stand up,” he urged me, extending his hand one more time. I took it and let him help me to stand and keep me steady, and I looked at the stars surrounding us.

  “I am not dancing up here,” I told him.

  “We’re all dancing up here,” he said, which meant nothing, but he still hadn’t let go of my hand, and he was smiling and his braces glimmered like a mouthful of stars, so it didn’t matter that half of what he said was nonsense. It was beautiful nonsense. “Is that it?” He pointed at a dot of light moving fast toward the horizon.

  “No, that’s a satellite,” I said.

  “How about that?”

  “That’s Venus,” I laughed. “It’s not moving.”

  “Where is it, then?”

  “Well…” I tried to focus on the sky, even though every part of my brain was in the space where our fingers had intertwined, and I was sure he could feel my pulse racing in my hand, but if he could, he didn’t seem to mind, because he hadn’t let go, and when my weight shifted, he held my hand tighter. “I don’t think we’ll be able to miss it.”

  “How’ll we know if they’ll make it without burning up?”

  “We won’t, I guess,” I said, scanning the night sky for movement. “We’ll just have to live within that tension.”

  He squeezed my hand when I quoted him back at himself, and I don’t know if God lived in between the stars and the astronauts or the lion and its prey, like he said, but I felt like there was a supernova in the spot where our palms pressed together, and I’ll probably never know what a space station careening through the atmosphere looks like, because I wasn’t looking up anymore. I was looking at him and smiling, and he was smiling back at me, and his braces were gleaming like starlight, and he whispered, “Shehecheyanu,” and I leaned forward, and I pressed my lips against his stars.

  TWO TRUTHS AND AN OY

  BY DAHLIA ADLER

  Three dresses. Two pairs of jeans. Five—no, six—shirts. I have no idea what people wear to college, but this has gotta cover two days of it, right?

  I add two cardigans, just in case. Yeah, it’s June, but New York City gets chilly at night, and what if I go out?

  I’m gonna go out, right?

  It’s college orientation, Amalia. Of course you’re going to go out. With your new friends. That you will make immediately. Because how can they not realize how funny and brilliant you are?

  Thank you, brain.

  Satisfied, I zip up my little rolling suitcase just as Mom calls, “Mali, you ready?”

  Ha ha, no.

  “Yep!” Ironed into submission, my hair looks as good as it’s gonna get, and I went for the natural look with makeup, which means I’m wearing fourteen products on my milk-pale skin to make it look like I’m wearing two. Eyebrows have been waxed, teeth have undergone bleaching, and…that’s it, because I know shockingly little about putting myself together for a soon-to-be college freshman. But I do know if I stand here trying to figure any more out, I will drive myself up the wall and probably scare myself out of going, so.

  I’ve never even seen NYU. That didn’t seem weird to me when I was applying early, or even when I sent in my deposit. But now, as I get on the Metro-North to get from Westchester to the city, it strikes me as a little weird that I don’t really know what awaits me on the other end.

  But I do know what doesn’t, and that was so much of the point.

  There’s no dress code forcing me to wear tank tops under my shirts in case the neckline is too low or make sure my skirt hits my knees. I can wear jeans to class. Flip-flops too. Tank tops, if I’m feeling truly daring, but I haven’t decided whether College Me wears sleeveless yet.

  There won’t be an absurd network of literally everyone knowing everyone else’s business. I might actually get to introduce myself without hearing “Oh, I’ve heard of you” in response.

  There won’t be a stupidly expensive unofficial school uniform I’ll feel compelled to buy because it’s easier than figuring out how to dress myself.

  And most of all, there won’t be a whole second curriculum of Tanakh, Talmud, Hebrew, and other Judaic studies—not unless I want to supplement my education with those things. And let’s be real, after thirteen years of it, including a year of learning in Israel, it isn’t bloody likely that I will.

  I am finally done with yeshiva life, and then I have one last super-Jewish summer at camp before I become a Normal Person.

  And the next two days are going to be the perfect preview.

  My mind is whirling as I stare out the windows of the train, then switch to take the 6 down to Astor. I know where I’m going, but I also don’t at all. I grew up right outside of New York City, but I’ve never actually been below Thirty-Fourth Street. It’s the fastest and slowest trip in the world, and then I’m looking at the map to find my way to the dorm where I’m staying and then I’m there and I’m checking in and I’m upstairs and a girl I’ve never seen before in my life
is going to be sleeping on a bed a few feet away from me and she holds out her hand and says, “Hey, I’m Marie.”

  I look at her hand a few seconds too long before I realize I’m supposed to shake it. I’ve never really been in a shaking-hands situation; my people are not the physically touchy kind. I recover too slowly and say “Amalia” while wrapping my fingers around hers, unsure whether my grip is too tight or too loose. “Are you from New York originally?” I ask, because it’s something to say.

  “Indiana, actually.”

  “Oh! I’ve never met anyone from Indiana.”

  “Insert some joke about flyover country,” she says with a smile, sweeping up her thick, dark hair into a ponytail.

  Oh God, was I being offensive? Stereotypical New Yorker? “No, no,” I rush to explain. “Indiana is totally cool and exotic to me. It’s just, I’m Orthodox Jewish, there aren’t so many Orthodox Jews in Indiana, I’ve only really known Orthodox Jews, so.”

  I hate myself for the explanation the minute it comes out of my mouth, especially because I promptly see her give me a once-over, her eyebrows drawing into a question as she takes in my short sleeves, my jeans, my shoulder-length hair. The words “Orthodox Jewish” always conjure up men in black hats and payos, women in long skirts and snoods. “Modern Orthodox,” I clarify, though I don’t know why I had to say anything about being Jewish at all. “I wear pants and don’t, like, have to cover my elbows or collarbone or whatever.” As if she knows the rules of tznius.

  She smiles, a little lopsided this time. “I guess we’re even, because I’ve never met an Orthodox Jew before.”

  Of course you haven’t, I wanna say, but don’t. She didn’t have to know she’d met one now, but I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth shut about it. My tongue sticks to my palate as I try to figure out what to say next, but then she speaks. “I’m gonna take a shower—do you need the bathroom first?”

  I shake my head, and a second later, she’s gone.