This Is Just a Test

by Madelyn Rosenberg

  Hector was the first to arrive on New Year’s Eve. He was frowning when I answered the door.

  “My mom said I had to come,” he said. “For practice.” He wasn’t carrying anything for a sleepover.

  Part of me had hoped that Hector would just show up, and everything would automatically be okay again. But I was going to have to work harder than that. It’s like Rabbi Doug was always saying about my Torah portion: It wasn’t going to seep into my brain by osmosis; I needed to work.

  It didn’t get any better when Scott showed up with his mom.

  “Call me, for any reason, okay?” she fretted. “I just don’t know if this is too soon.”

  “I’m fine,” said Scott, even though he was leaning on crutches.

  Normally, Hector would have said something—he was good with older people, parents especially. This time he just stood there.

  Mrs. Dursky brushed Scott’s hair out of his eyes. “You boys won’t roughhouse, will you? The doctor said no roughhousing.”

  Scott jerked his head away from his mom’s hand. “We’re playing Trivial Pursuit, Mom.”

  After she left, my mom put Scott’s backpack in the living room instead of the basement so he wouldn’t have to go up and down the stairs. Then it was just the three of us. Hostile (Hector), Irritated (Scott), and Nervous (Me). We were like the rejects of the Seven Dwarfs, the ones who didn’t make the cut.

  “Let’s get this over with,” said Hector. “I told my parents I’d call them as soon as I was done.”

  We set up the game board and started running through the questions. Hector was all business. He didn’t even eat any of the snacks my mother had set out for us.

  Hector landed on Science & Nature and got an easy question about the initials FM. This was for a pie piece.

  “Freddie Mercury!” I shouted. Hector’s favorite band was Queen. I hummed a little “Bohemian Rhapsody” and waited for everyone to laugh. They didn’t.

  “Frequency Modulation,” said Hector. He reached into the bag and got his green pie piece. He sounded almost bored.

  Was this the way it was going to be from now on? No more joking around?

  At least Scott seemed to be feeling better. He got three pie pieces early on. And in typical Scott-know-it-all fashion, he supplemented his answers. After informing us that the “first hole” in golf is in St. Andrews, Scotland, he added, “St. Andrews is the home to the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, you know.”

  “Got my application in right now,” I said. Hector didn’t say anything, though he did take a chocolate pudding pop when my mom brought some of those into the living room. She must have known what was up, in the way that moms know that sort of thing, because she usually has a no-chocolate rule where the living room was concerned.

  Even though Scott was doing well, he kept getting impossibly hard Entertainment questions. “Why would anyone even know these?” he asked.

  “It’s called Trivial Pursuit,” said Hector, “not Real and Important Things Pursuit.”

  He had a point. But sometimes it was nice to know a little about a lot of different things. Just last week, Safta made a comment about Tony Bennett, and I mentioned “Boulevard of Broken Dreams.” I thought she was going to fall over.

  Hector got two more pie pieces in a row, which meant he had them all. He made it to the center of the board, where Scott and I got to pick the category for the final question. We picked Sports & Leisure. Hector always got stumped by Sports & Leisure.

  I didn’t want the game to end. The end of the game would mean that Hector would go home, and that would be it.

  Then Scott said, “You guys should spot me a piece.”

  “What?!” This was the most emotion Hector had shown all night. “Why?”

  Scott spread his arms open. “Because I almost died.”

  Hector had been fiddling with the cards, flipping them back and forth in the box, but now he stopped. “Yeah, you almost died, you jerk. Because you built your stupid survival hole without me.”

  “It’s called a fallout shelter,” corrected Scott.

  “You would have let me die.”

  “You should be thanking us,” Scott said. “If you’d been building it with us you could have died. Without a nuclear war. You could have been the one in the hospital. Not including you was the nicest thing we ever did.”

  This was the clearing-the-air part, only the air still felt polluted. How was I supposed to apologize for what we did? For what we didn’t do. Sorry I made you eat Spam and lied to you and sorry that we were going let you die when the bomb hit. Want another pudding pop?

  “Come on, don’t you think a sick person should get one measly pie piece?” Scott shifted on the couch. “And by one measly pie piece, I am referring to the pink one.” Pink was Entertainment, the hardest one.

  “No,” said Hector. “I don’t think so. Just give me my question.”

  Scott and I exchanged looks. Scott shrugged, as if to say, give him what he wants.

  It was my turn to read the question. I read it slowly, to make it last longer. “What numbers on the first roll of the dice make you crap out?”

  Hector wrapped his hands around his head and stared at the ceiling. “I know this,” he said. “My dad played craps in Vegas once. It’s two.”

  “Two?” I said, trying to delay the end.

  “Yes, two,” said Hector. “Definitely.”

  “Is that your final answer? This is for the win.” I used my game announcer voice.

  “Yes, that’s my final answer.”

  “Number two?”

  “Yes!” shouted Hector impatiently. “NUMBER TWO MAKES YOU CRA—”

  Hector never did finish his sentence. At least, I couldn’t hear him. Scott and I, and then, finally, Hector, were laughing so hard that my mom came in from the kitchen to see what was going on. Scott said that laughing made his ribs hurt, but it seemed like the pain wasn’t so bad as before.

  “You guys reek, you know that?” said Hector.

  “Maybe it’s number two,” I said, which set everyone off again.

  And maybe that was how you forged peace: You wore the other side down until they couldn’t be mad at you anymore. You made them realize they didn’t hate you as much as they thought.

  Or maybe you just waited for one really good poop joke.

  We woke up early on New Year’s morning, even though we’d stayed up late the night before. Hector had borrowed my pajamas, which were way too small on him, along with a toothbrush, which we let him keep.

  Scott wanted us to go see the fallout shelter.

  I wasn’t sure that was a good idea, but Scott said he hadn’t even been in his father’s backyard since the night the tunnel had caved in.

  So when my dad drove Scott to his dad’s, who had New Year’s custody since his mom got Scott for Christmas, Hector and I went along. While the dads talked about football, we went to the backyard and stood around the hole. Hector looked a little awkward, like he didn’t know if he should be there or not. The hole was smaller than I remembered. You could still see the footprints from the firemen’s boots.

  It was a brand-new year: 1984. It was also 5744, according to the Jewish calendar, and in a few weeks, it would be Year of the Rat, on the lunar calendar. Being Chinese-Jewish-American meant that there was always a fresh start coming somewhere; I had a feeling I might need them all.

  “You know,” said Scott, leaning over the hole, “if we put in some supports …”

  “NO,” Hector and I said at the same time.

  “Okay, okay,” said Scott. “I was just speculating.”

  “I want to know,” said Hector. “Did you guys ever think about where you were going to take a dump in your fancy hole?”

  Scott and I traded glances. That was a detail we had overlooked.

  “So much for two heads being better than one,” I said.

  “Three would have been better,” said Scott. “Though I still say not including you may have been the nicest thing we ever d
id for you.”

  “Just don’t do it again,” said Hector.

  I looked back into the hole and wondered if we could have made it more than a day down there.

  “We should fill it up,” I said. “So some little kid doesn’t fall in.”

  Scott still couldn’t do much, so Hector and I kicked some of the dirt back in, careful to stay on flat, unbroken ground. After about twenty minutes, it still wasn’t full, but it didn’t seem quite as dangerous. The hole was officially closed.

  “My dad will probably fill it in some more,” said Scott. “He’s going to put this place on the market.”

  “I thought he just bought it,” I said.

  “He wants to live closer to the city,” said Scott.

  “Does that mean you’ll change schools?” asked Hector.

  “No,” said Scott. “My mom’s not moving, just my dad. You guys are stuck with me.”

  “Darn,” said Hector. “Because I was all ready to take over as captain.”

  “Next time we do a project like this, we’ll do more …” I said. I looked at the hole and tried to find the right word. Preparation? Research? Planning? Then I looked up at Hector and I knew what I should say, because what we needed to do was more talking and less leaving others out. “Next time we’ll do better,” I said.

  Hector looked at me and nodded, as though he had heard not just the words I said out loud, but the other words that were inside my head. And then I said those words, too. “I’m sorry.”

  Scott didn’t say anything, but he nodded. And for Scott, that was saying a lot.

  I didn’t get much mail on my birthday because everybody was saving cards for my bar mitzvah. But I did get a letter from Alexi. I had pretty much given up on him so I was surprised when it came in the mail, with blocky handwriting. One stamp had a picture of ship on it, and another of a guy with a beard who looked like our assistant principal. I didn’t even wait to go upstairs to open it.

  It was a short letter and it didn’t answer any of the questions I had asked him. He told me that Moscow was the capital (duh) and that it had many great buildings and the most beautiful subway in the world. I’d been on the subway in New York, which no one would ever call beautiful, and the one in DC, which was sleek and new, but not what I would call beautiful, either. I suppose the Russians tell their kids stuff like that all the time so they’ll be proud of their country. He also told me they had the world’s greatest hockey team and had won the gold in five different Olympics, so there was a lot of bragging about Russia but there wasn’t much personal bragging about himself, which was a good thing.

  He didn’t say anything about Scott and he didn’t offer me any ideas for ending the tensions between Russia and the United States, so maybe it was like Wai Po said, and he hadn’t received my letters.

  But he did say “thank you.”

  “My family tells me what you are doing for me,” he said. “Someday we will meet and I will shake your hand.” Alexi never used the words bar mitzvah, but I knew what he meant. I looked in the envelope again and saw something I had missed: a photograph, no more than three inches tall.

  It was a black-and-white photo, but you could tell Alexi had light-colored hair. He was wearing a thick sweater that looked like it itched. It was not the kind of thing you would see a kid wearing around Eisenhower Junior High. He had serious eyes and didn’t smile. We did not look like twins. We didn’t even look like brothers. But I thought, even with the dorky sweater, he looked as if he could be my friend.

  I put the letter in my desk for safekeeping. Then I got out a piece of paper so I could write back. I decided I wouldn’t mention the US gold medal win over the USSR in men’s hockey at the last Olympics. Not until we knew each other better anyway.

  We all went to the trivia tournament: me, Lauren, Mom, Dad, Safta, Wai Po, and Bao Bao. Bao Bao had squeezed through the front door when we were leaving the house and hopped into the station wagon. Wai Po didn’t have the heart to put him back in the house. “He is tired of being lonely,” she said.

  “He’s going to be alone in the car,” pointed out Safta.

  “He’ll be less lonely,” said Wai Po. He sat in the middle, near her, while Lauren and I climbed into the wayback.

  Bao Bao—the answer to the question Who is the world’s most spoiled dog?

  The contest was at Robinson. On our way into the school, Bao Bao started barking. Wai Po turned around and looked at him instead of the stairs. She fell with a thud.

  “Mom, are you okay?” My mother knelt down by Wai Po. Dad tried to give Wai Po a once-over, but she scowled and shook her head.

  “Check on Bao Bao,” she insisted. “I’m fine.” Then to me, she said, “Go on in. And don’t miss any questions on China.”

  “Or Israel,” added Safta.

  No pressure.

  Our seats were up on the stage. From there, I spotted my family sitting together. I also saw Scott’s parents, sitting apart. Mrs. Dursky was sitting with Hector’s parents.

  “This is it.” Scott gave us the world’s shortest pep talk as he stored his crutches under his seat. “Don’t blow it.”

  Right away, the team from McLean showed that they were the team to beat. They got question after question correct. They even knew that James Madison was the shortest president.

  We huddled together. “Would you have gotten that?” asked Scott.

  Hector and I shook our heads. “Everyone knows Lincoln was the tallest, but no one talks about the shortest president,” said Hector.

  The McLean team missed the next question, which meant that they lost ten points. No one buzzed in with a guess. We were holding on to every point we’d earned.

  The team from Chantilly got the next question.

  Then the moderator asked: “Whose basketball court in Washington, DC, is known as the highest court in the land?”

  The room was silent.

  “Do you think they mean the Bullets?” whispered Hector.

  “I’ve been to a Bullets game,” I said. “The Capital Centre isn’t particularly high, and besides, it’s in Maryland.”

  “Thirty seconds,” said the moderator.

  “The highest court in the land is the Supreme Court,” said Scott. “And it’s in Washington, DC.”

  “Judges play basketball?” asked Hector.

  “Let’s find out,” said Scott. “No risk, no reward.” He raised his hand. “The Supreme Court.”

  “That is correct,” said the moderator. “There is a basketball court on the fifth floor of the Supreme Court building.”

  Yes. We were on our way.

  An hour into the game, we were smack in the middle of the pack, ahead of the teams from Falls Church and Arlington, but behind McLean and Chantilly.

  We knew that the first woman in outer space was Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, that 10 percent of the earth was covered with ice, and that Dolly Parton’s middle name was Rebecca. We knew a bunch of sports questions, too, including the distance between first base and third base (127 feet) and that Sir Barton was the first horse to win the Triple Crown.

  Slowly, we inched into second place. We needed one more question to tie, and two more to win.

  I’d been feeling bad because Scott and Hector had answered the questions in the crucial moments of the game, to get us started and to edge ahead of Falls Church.

  “Complete with artwork, chandeliers, and marble walls,” the moderator read, “what Moscow institution also served as an air-raid station during World War II?”

  Scott leaned over and whispered: “Too bad your Commie pen pal isn’t here.” Even after his near-death experience, Scott was still Scott.

  “The Kremlin,” said the captain from Chantilly.

  “Incorrect,” said the moderator. “Anyone else?”

  “That’s what I would have guessed,” whispered Scott. “The Commie bigwigs would protect themselves first.”

  “Wait,” I whispered. My mind churned through the information I knew about Russ
ia, information from books and information from letters, like the one I’d gotten from Alexi.

  He said he took the Moscow Metro to school, the most beautiful subway in the world. If their metro was like ours, part of it would be underground.

  “The Moscow Metro,” I said. “Their subway. That’s the answer.”

  Scott gave me a look. “Where’d you come up with that?”

  “No one?” said the moderator.

  “It’s the Moscow Metro.”

  “I don’t think they even have subways in Russia,” Scott said.

  “It’s not like you know any better,” I argued. Now I felt like I was playing for me and Alexi, for pride, for world peace. Maybe even for Kelli Ann, who had dance class and couldn’t make it. “Say Moscow Metro. No risk, no reward, remember?”

  “If you’re wrong …” Scott said. But I knew what would happen if I was wrong: we’d be down another ten points. Down, and possibly out. He raised his voice. “Moscow Metro.”

  “That is correct.”

  I needed to ask Alexi more questions about his hometown. And to say “thank you.”

  In the end, McLean won by buzzing in on a couple of easy questions before the moderator even finished speaking. Was there any kid in America who didn’t know that Pluto was Mickey Mouse’s dog? Still, I’d gotten a number of questions right. I knew how many people were at the Last Supper, which Scott said was weird since I was Jewish. I knew that all the raisins in the United States came from California, that the Chinese had invented the compass, and that Daniel Boone was a member of the General Assembly of Virginia. I spoke out and did my best. And second place was pretty good.

  “Especially against the eighth graders,” Lauren pointed out.

  “Good job,” said Safta. “I only wish I could have heard more of the questions.”

  “The acoustics were fine, Ma.”

  “No,” said Safta. “I couldn’t hear because of the moaning.” She pointed at Wai Po. “She’s not fine.”

  Wai Po had her right hand hidden in her coat. “No, no. Everything is okay.”