She pressed the stop button with a hard click. “What?”
“What do you mean what? The dinner? The disaster?”
“I thought they were going to get into a fistfight,” she said.
“Well, there’s always dessert,” I mumbled. “Look, we have to figure this out. What if they mess up my bar mitzvah? And if they mess up mine, they’ll probably mess up yours.”
“Maybe I’ll just take a trip,” said Lauren calmly. “I could go to Israel.”
I wish I had thought of that.
I grabbed a few pinecones and tossed them into a white plastic bag. Bao Bao inspected a fire hydrant.
“What are you doing?” Lauren wanted to know.
“Something Wai Po does,” I said. I started to explain. I swung the bag around like a helicopter blade. It made a whipping noise as it sliced through the air.
Then my bag hit something and I had even more explaining to do.
Here’s another question for the How to Talk to Girls category of Trivial Pursuit. Say you just whacked Kelli Ann Majors in the face with what’s supposed to be a bag of poop. Do you:
Continue to pretend that the bag is full of dog poop, and thereby forever create, in her mind, a link between you and dog poop?
OR
Cop to only pretending to pick up dog poop, and thereby forever create, in her mind, a link between you and fake dog poop? And lying.
I ended up doing something else altogether, which was trip over Bao Bao’s leash and fall to the ground while saying something suave, like Garoooaggaaa.
Lauren and Kelli Ann leaned over me. Bao Bao wrapped the leash around me one more time and began licking my face. Considering the last thing I saw him doing with that tongue, I was not too excited about this.
“Are you okay, David?” said Kelli Ann. “I didn’t mean to freak you out.” She adjusted her hat. It was green, which made her dark eyes more noticeable.
“He’s fine,” said Lauren, less sympathetically. She grabbed my hand, pulling me to my feet. “You’re so weird.”
“The button girl!” Kelli Ann said.
“That’s Lauren,” I said.
Kelli Ann pointed to my bag. “I don’t want to ask. But is that dog …”
I quickly decided—fake dog poop was still better than dog poop. “Poop?” I held up the bag and let out a big laugh, like the last thing a person would have in a bag while walking a dog was poop. “No, no. It’s pinecones.”
“Pinecones?” Kelli Ann shook her head. “Why are you carrying pinecones in a plastic bag?”
Why indeed? I looked at Lauren, who gave me the you’re-on-your-own look.
“Why am I carrying pinecones in a plastic bag?” I said, stalling for time.
“Ye-esss.” From the tone of her voice, Kelli Ann was no longer worried about my physical well-being. It was my mental state that was now in question.
I looked at the Masons’ house; it was across the street from Grandma’s house, and they’d already started decorating for Christmas, which is something people around here do on Thanksgiving Day, don’t ask me why.
“For a wreath,” I said. “A pinecone wreath.”
“A wreath?”
“Yes.”
“’Cause we’re Jewish,” said Lauren, not-so-helpfully. I gave her the evil eye behind Kelli Ann’s back.
“Hanukkah wreath,” I mumbled. I’d never even seen a Hanukkah wreath, probably because they didn’t exist. But it sounded like something that could exist. The Abrams put up blue and yellow Christmas lights and called them “Hanukkah lights.”
“Wait,” said Kelli. “I thought you were Chinese?”
“I’m both,” I told her. “You can be Chinese and Buddhist, or Chinese and Taoist, or Chinese and Jewish.” I managed to stop blathering before I paired being Chinese with every religion on earth.
“But there aren’t too many Chinese Jews around here,” I added. It almost felt like a trivia question. How many Chinese Jews live in Virginia? Answer: Ha-ha-ha—what are you talking about?
Kelli Ann knelt on the ground and stroked Bao Bao. He was sniffing around, the way he did right before he dropped a load. Please don’t poop, please don’t poop in front of Kelli Ann, I thought. Wonder of wonders, Bao Bao seemed to hear me. He stopped sniffing and wagged his tail. “He’s cute,” Kelli Ann said. She looked up at me. “You don’t look—”
I thought she was going to say Jewish. A lot of people say that. Even my great-aunt Seal said that when I was born, which is one of the reasons my grandmother doesn’t speak to her. But what Kelli Ann said was, “like a crafty person.”
Did she mean crafty like a person who does crafts, or crafty, like sneaky? The truth was, I wasn’t either.
“So how do you make a Hanukkah wreath?” Kelli Ann asked.
“Well, uh, you put dreidels and gelt on it,” I said. “And, uh, a menorah and Star of David.” I went through every Hanukkah icon that existed, except potato latkes. Then I waited for lightning to strike. The wind blew a little, but the sky stayed clear.
“And pinecones,” Lauren added.
“Is that a Jewish tradition?” said Kelli Ann. “I’ve never seen a Hanukkah wreath before.”
“It’s not a tradition,” I said. “It’s new.”
“Totally,” Lauren said. “You should come over and see it when David’s done.” I waited until Kelli Ann looked at Bao Bao again before I mouthed I’m going to get you at Lauren and made the international sign for strangling.
“If it’s this weekend, I can’t. Gotta do the divorced parent rotation, you know.” Kelli Ann twirled her finger in her hair. “I have to eat two complete Thanksgiving dinners. My dad’s girlfriend’s parents live over here. Well, over there, actually.” She pointed behind her. “I should probably be heading back. I said I was just coming out for some fresh air.”
“Hey, me too,” I said.
“You’re missing out,” Lauren said. “David’s Hanukkah wreaths are the best.”
“The best,” I agreed.
“I’ll probably be back over before Christmas—I mean, winter break,” said Kelli Ann. She turned and did a fluttery thing with her fingers. “Bye.”
Say something, you idiot. Tell her she’s amazing. Tell her you’ll save her a spot in the bomb shelter.
Uh.
“Yee lou sater,” I said.
Kelli Ann turned back around and wrinkled her nose at me. “What?”
“See you back at school,” I said.
I watched her walk away. “You like her,” Lauren said, nudging me.
“Shut up.”
“I think she likes you.”
I couldn’t help myself. “You do?”
“I’m pretty sure,” said Lauren. “Did you notice how she started to say Christmas break, and then switched to winter break? She’s trying to be considerate.”
I thought this over. The signs of someone liking you were pretty hard to spot.
“It’s really too bad,” said Lauren.
“Why? Why is it too bad?”
Lauren curled Bao Bao’s leash in her hand. “’Cause Granny M’s going to kill you when she finds out you’re making a Hanukkah wreath.”
I made a Hanukkah wreath anyway, in case Kelli Ann decided to come over. It wasn’t attractive, but it definitely said Hanukkah. I spray-painted the pinecones blue and yellow. I found some plastic dreidels in a box in the basement. I also cut out Stars of David from aluminum foil. I bought some gelt and glued that on, too.
Granny M didn’t kill me when she saw it. But she sighed enough to blow over a small shed. Then she made a request.
“I want you to start calling me safta,” she said. “It means ‘grandmother’ in Hebrew.”
“What’s wrong with Granny M?” I asked.
“Safta is more Jewish.”
“I thought bubbe was more Jewish,” I said.
“My sister, Seal, uses bubbe,” she said. “You know what my nephew called her when he was little? Booby. No, I think I make a better sa
fta. Using Jewish words will help you get in the spirit of things. You’re not in touch with your Jewish roots.”
Wai Po wasn’t going to let that fly by. “I think you should also be spending some time learning Chinese. We can speak it together,” she said. “Ni jiao shenma mingzi?”
I knew a little Chinese, but it was pretty rusty. I took a chance. “I’m twelve,” I said.
Wai Po narrowed her eyes. “I just asked you what your name was.”
Mud, I thought. My name is mud. I called Scott and asked him if we could work on the hole.
When I got to the hole, Scott had a whole setup: soda, candy, and Funyuns. Most impressively, though, he had brought a boom box so we could listen to the radio.
“No reason why preparing for the end of the world can’t be a little fun,” said Scott. He turned on the radio and fiddled with the antenna.
“Nice,” I said.
“It’d be better if it was a TV, with Battlestar Galactica,” said Scott.
“No way! Star Trek is way better.”
Hector and I had never debated the relative merits of Star Trek versus Battlestar Galactica because Hector did not like science fiction. He hadn’t even seen Star Wars. Once I told him I wanted a light saber for my birthday, and he wanted to know if he could get one at Sears.
Scott was ready to argue, though.
“Nah. Star Trek’s all, everybody gets along on the Enterprise, tra-la-la, and we have to teach people on other planets to be like us,” he said. “That’s garbage. As long as there are people, there are problems, you know?”
The radio was playing “Let’s Dance” when the music was interrupted by an annoying whine. It was the Emergency Broadcast System, testing to make sure all the radio and TV frequencies were working. It came with an announcement that everyone could recite from memory because it seemed to come on all the time. The high-pitched tone was only supposed to last about thirty seconds, but it always seemed longer.
I was going to reach over and turn off the radio, but Scott stopped me. “You need to listen to it now. If there’s an attack, this is one way we’ll find out.”
My heart sped up. I’d never thought about that—only how irritating it was to wait. At the end, when they said it was just a test, I realized I’d been holding my breath. The announcement ended, If this had been an actual emergency, the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news, or instructions.
Scott chuckled and said, “One down, about a million to go.”
“I can’t imagine them saying anything except it was just a test. What are they going to say, this is real and you’re probably going to die?”
“Maybe.”
“I’m not sure I’d want to know.”
“Forewarned is forearmed,” said Scott. “Let’s just keep digging.”
The Emergency Broadcast System had put a damper on our mood, even though the radio station started playing music again, as if nothing had happened. Scott opened the bag of Funyuns, pulled out a few rings, and then handed the bag to me.
“Okay,” said Scott. “Think about this. Things You Need and Can Take. Things You Need and Cannot Take.”
“Huh? Take where?”
Scott pointed at the hole. “The shelter. Gotta think ahead.”
“Oh, okay. We need food and can take food. Nonperishables, like tuna and peanut butter.”
“How about Chun King?”
“Chinese food from a can will not help anyone survive,” I said. I wondered what food would help us the most. “We might need more water than we can take.”
“Excellent point,” said Scott. “We’ll have to figure out how to ration out water, because we’ll die of thirst before we’ll die of starvation.”
“Right,” I said.
“Now, Things You Want and Can Take.”
“I’d want to take books.”
“Yeah, books and magazines. Have you read Douglas Adams?”
“Everyone has,” I said. Except Hector, of course.
“I have a set,” said Scott. “I’ll bring them. Do you play chess?”
“I know how the pieces move, but I haven’t played that many games.”
“I’ll bring a chess set, too. Chess is the best game, because it doesn’t depend on luck. Also, it takes a long time to play.” Scott pushed the shovel into the ground with his foot. The hole was slowly getting deeper, but it still needed to be widened. “We’re going to have a lot of time to kill.”
“I’ll bring cards,” I said. Hector would hate this, I thought. Talking about science fiction and chess. Hector hated board games, too, except for Trivial Pursuit. When we were little, he hated Candy Land because he didn’t want to be the winner or the loser.
Scott handed me the shovel. “Okay, last one. Things You Want and Cannot Take.”
The first thing I thought of was Hector and Kelli Ann and my family. But that wasn’t what Scott meant.
“What’s on your list?” I asked.
“Television and my Atari,” said Scott. “A real bed.”
“Juice, going to the movies, and …” I thought about it. “School?”
“School?” Scott kicked at the pile of dirt next to the hole. “You’d miss school?”
“Well, not homework and tests. The fun part, like seeing friends.” Like Hector, I added silently.
“If you mean friends, then say friends,” said Scott. “No one says what they mean anymore. My parents, they’re the worst.”
I thought about my family, being together at Thanksgiving. It wasn’t a Norman Rockwell portrait of a family gathering, but it was us.
“I’d miss my family,” I said.
Scott shook his head. “Not me. And you shouldn’t, either.”
“You said to say what I mean.”
Scott took the shovel to scrape some dirt off his shoe. “You can’t think of those things. Don’t think of things you can’t have, even after you survive. I can have a soft bed again, or food that doesn’t come in a can. Don’t go for, whaddayacallit, intangibles.”
“I think you mean people,” I said.
“I’m talking about things that can’t be replaced,” said Scott. “Focus on juice.”
“Maybe we won’t have trees,” I said. “After.”
“We can bring some seeds,” said Scott. “In fact, we should bring different kinds of fruit seeds, just in case we need to plant trees. Apples, peaches. Maybe bananas if the climate changes.”
I had to give it to Scott. That was a good idea, even if I wasn’t sure what banana seeds looked like. I jumped down into the hole. Only my head and shoulders were above ground. It was almost deep enough to make one of us safe. “It’s looking pretty good, huh?”
“Yeah,” said Scott. “We should start expanding soon. Then we can get a cover to put over the top.”
Soon? If we couldn’t even stand up straight, things were going to be pretty cramped. “Doesn’t it need to be deeper?” I said. “Especially for you, since you’re taller?”
“Why? You want to dig to China?”
That saying’s always bugged me. Why China, especially since, if we dug straight through from where we were standing, we’d actually end up in the Pacific Ocean? And then I wondered: What do kids in China say when they’re digging a big hole?
“We have to hurry,” said Scott. “You want to get fried just because you wanted roomier quarters?”
The problem with planning for a nuclear war was that you never knew exactly when it could happen. It was any time between never and five minutes from now.
“I’m going to miss standing up,” I said.
Scott laughed.
I thought of something. “You know, we could bring our families. We could just make the hole wider.”
“No,” said Scott. “No families.”
Sometimes when people say no, you can hear a yes in their voice. Maybe it’s because they hesitate before they speak, or they fudge their answer with words like not right now. But the way Scott said no
, you could tell that his answer was not about to change.
“Look,” said Scott. He was standing at the top of the hole, so he looked twice as tall. “Once you involve families, you start making choices. Like you and your crazy grandmothers. They fight, right?”
“You could say that.”
“So what if they’re driving everyone crazy, and finally you decide that one of them has to go. How would you choose?”
I reached up and put my hands on the ground, and then used them to pull myself out of the hole. Considering how many pull-ups I usually completed for the Presidential Physical Fitness Test, this was a pretty big accomplishment. “Maybe they’d stop fighting if they knew one of them was going to get kicked out.”
“No,” said Scott. “They’d keep fighting. They can’t help it. You have to choose one.”
“Come on,” I said.
“No, really. You have to. Choose.”
I closed my eyes and tried to choose, but all I could imagine was one of the grandmothers outside the shelter, crying and begging to come back in.
Last year, Mom and Dad saw this really depressing movie called Sophie’s Choice. It was about this woman who could only save one of her children from the Nazis. How could she choose? How could anyone?
“I can’t,” I said.
“See?” said Scott. “No families.” His tone softened. “It’s just the way it’s gotta be. It saves a lot of trouble, trust me.”
As I was getting ready to leave, Scott reached into his backpack and handed me a book.
It was the fourth Douglas Adams book, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. No one had this book.
“Whoa—where’d you get this?” I turned the book over in my hands. It wasn’t even supposed to come out until next year.
“It’s an early copy, for book reviewers and stuff. My dad’s friend gave it to him.”
“Nice.” I tried to hand him the book back.
This Is Just a Test Page 7
