This Is Just a Test

by Madelyn Rosenberg

  Listen to what others are telling you and what they’re not telling you.

  Speak up. Especially for those who can’t speak for themselves. Or when poison ivy is involved.

  Respect your family—they got you to where you are, and you’re not going anywhere without them.

  Don’t leave anyone out.

  Support your friends and construction projects.

  Be brave, especially when it’s hard, because that’s when it’s the most important.

  Think big, whether it’s a fallout shelter or science fair project.

  Apologize when you’re wrong.

  Work for world peace by making peace where you are.

  No matter how bad it gets, never push the button.

  I saw some people nodding when I got to the button part; that meant that they had seen The Day After, too.

  “Today I am being bar mitzvahed for myself and also for Alexi Abramovich, a Soviet Jew who cannot have a bar mitzvah of his own,” I said. “We have never met, but I know that he’s thirteen, like me, and that he likes hockey. I don’t skate”—people laughed at this part—“but maybe someday I will. Maybe someday I’ll find out more about Alexi. Until then, I hope his country and our country can find a way to solve problems together.”

  Then I thanked a bunch of people and everyone pelted me with candy that my cousin Ashley carried around in a small basket like she was a flower girl.

  It was almost over.

  Then the rabbi called my parents and sister to join me on the bimah. My mother squeezed my hand. “Now we will say a blessing with the people who helped get David to this day.” I looked out in the front row and saw my grandmothers. They had helped get me to this day, too. I signaled at them to come up. Safta caught my look and came up immediately. My mother smiled and made room. Wai Po must have seen my signal, too, but she sat where she was. Come on, I mouthed, and signaled again. My whole family had helped get me to this day. The Jewish side. And the Chinese side. Because I was Jewish and I was Chinese. I wasn’t half of each; I was all of both. Finally, Wai Po stood up and joined us. Rabbi Doug nodded, and gave the blessing.

  Then we got to the part in the program that I had added just before we took it to the printer.

  “Now,” said Rabbi Doug, “we’d like to invite David’s sister, Lauren, to lead us in the singing of ‘Adon Olam.’”

  Lauren joined me on the bimah with a big grin on her face, and I moved the microphone away from me and put it in front of her.

  “Adon Olam” is a song that usually everyone in a congregation sings together. But my sister’s voice was so sweet and strong and perfect that most of the congregation just listened instead. I think that surprised her, because she wavered for a minute, but then she kept going, center stage, like she was Pat Benatar. Or Lauren Horowitz.

  When she was done, I gave her a hug without anyone even forcing me to.

  Nobody choked on anything at the lunch at our house, which was just for out-of-town relatives. Mom brought an older woman in a dark purple dress over for me to meet. She looked very familiar.

  “David,” she said. “This is your grandmother’s sister, your great-aunt Seal.”

  From the way Safta always talked about Seal, I had expected a towering force of bar mitzvah themes and invitations, and maybe some fangs and claws. Instead, there was a tiny woman who smiled just like Safta.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” I said.

  “Hmmph. I expect you have.” Seal held up one of the shumai. “Now this is something I haven’t seen at a bar mitzvah before. Chinese food. I think I’ll tell my daughter about it when she gets back from her ski trip. Your cousin Missy’s bat mitzvah is in a year and a half.”

  I was a little surprised that she would want something Chinese at Missy’s bat mitzvah, since her family had already achieved perfection with Jacob. I didn’t think it would be Jewish enough for her. I didn’t think I was Jewish enough for her.

  She must have known, from my expression, what I was thinking. “For the record, I did say you didn’t look Jewish once. I also said you were a beautiful baby. And now you are a handsome young man. You could be a rabbi, a speech like that.” She reached out and pinched my cheek, which didn’t seem like something you should do to a young man, but I was new to the position and didn’t know all the rules yet. I could tell from the pinch, though, that she thought my bar mitzvah had been done right, too.

  I couldn’t wait to tell Safta about my conversation with Seal, from the shumai to the rabbi comment. Maybe it could be the beginning of another conversation.

  The reception was at the Sheraton in a room downstairs. We had a DJ instead of a band, and we served dessert instead of a full meal so that we could keep things, as my dad liked to say, “within a budget.”

  Still, the photographer took a picture of him standing next to the table with his pockets turned out like I’d totally bankrupted him. (The photographer said he did this at most events, especially weddings.)

  During the hora, everyone in my family took a turn in the middle, even Wai Po. Then my dad and some of his uncles and my parents’ cousins, who I guess are my cousins, too, put me in a chair and lifted me up and I didn’t fall off. Scott held on to the chair, too, but he wasn’t in the circle going around it, because of his crutches.

  After the hora, the DJ slowed things down so we could all catch our breath. “True,” the sort of slow song I imagined playing for Kelli Ann in the fallout shelter, came out of the speakers. Now was the time. I looked around for Kelli Ann but she was on the other side of the room. I started walking. The room must have been a mile wide. I wondered if my parents paid extra for that.

  “Faster! Faster!” screamed my cousin Ashley. Maybe she just wanted the music to go a little faster, but it sounded like she was urging me on. I picked up the pace.

  Kelli Ann was wearing a lacy peach dress and she had her hair loose and sort of curled under.

  “Faster! Faster!” screamed Ashley.

  I went through a quick checklist.

  Breath? Check.

  Closed fly? Check.

  Words in the right order? Check.

  “Want to dance?” I asked Kelli Ann. For a minute I worried that she would say no. But when I saw her smile, I knew I’d be okay.

  “Sure,” she said.

  I reached for her hand.

  “Hey, folks,” the DJ said at the very moment the song went into super-romantic mode.

  “We’re going to change things around at the request of my new friend Ashley. Here’s ‘My Bologna,’ by Weird Al Yankovic!” The first strains of accordion blared out of the speakers.

  Oh no oh no oh no. My first dance with Kelli Ann was not going to be to a song about lunch meat.

  But Kelli Ann smiled even bigger. “I like this song, too,” she said. And my heart lifted.

  “Thanks for coming to my party,” I said when we were dancing.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “I never thanked you for saving the trivia team,” I said. “I know maybe it seemed dumb, but …”

  Kelli Ann smiled. “The game might be about trivial things, but friendships aren’t,” she said.

  Man, this girl was smart. And pretty. And nice. But I didn’t tell her that, because there were some things you didn’t say out loud until you were totally, 1,000 percent ready. The important thing was, I was actually talking to her. And she was talking back. And Safta was on the side of the dance floor taking a picture, so there would be photographic evidence if her thumb didn’t get in the way.

  I thought about all the things I had to look forward to, like spending more time with my friends in a world that had not yet blown up, and eating all those leftover knishes and shumai. I was even looking forward to reading 1984 in 1984. We’d gotten through the first three chapters, and they were pretty good. But between my bar mitzvah speech and my paper for Mr. Hudson, I realized that the future didn’t just mean the possibility of war; it meant the possibility of peace, too.

 
; And maybe, just maybe, saying more things out loud to a girl I really liked.

  We were the last ones to leave the reception, of course. Seal gave Safta a small nod of approval before she left. They still weren’t speaking—maybe they’d forgotten how—but I like to think my speech helped them connect. Then Safta and Wai Po came over to us with their purses and coats.

  “We’re going out,” announced Safta.

  “Now?” said Mom. “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Marjorie wants to check out a new restaurant for Chinese New Year,” said Wai Po. “I told her Saturday night is the best night for checking on restaurants. It will not take long. We can check very fast.”

  “I’m driving,” said Safta, as if that was a good thing.

  “You drive like a crazy person,” Wai Po said.

  “I drive like a New Yorker,” Safta said, standing up straighter.

  They walked out together, and about one minute later, we heard the sound of a car scraping its way over a curb.

  “I think we might have been better off when they didn’t like each other,” said Dad.

  Even though it was late when we got home, I stayed up another two hours to open my bar mitzvah presents. It took a long time because my mother said we had to write everything down so I could send the appropriate thank-you notes. There were a lot of checks, enough for me to get something nice—a new bike or an electric guitar maybe—and enough to help Alexi.

  So even though I was practically crawling up the stairs when it was time for me to go to bed “for real, this time,” my mother said, I pulled out a piece of paper and started a new letter.

  The Day After aired on one of television’s four channels on November 20, 1983, when we were both in high school. We watched the show. Everybody did. And we were haunted by it. But we’d been fearful even before that. Cold War tensions left the specter of a mushroom cloud over much of the 1980s. When The Day After aired, it put our fears into moving pictures with special effects. The impact was far reaching—to the point that many believe the movie influenced President Reagan to begin working to limit nuclear arms. So when we began working on this story together, we knew that The Day After needed to be in there.

  When we talked to other people about our idea for this story, we could tell who had seen the movie at the same time we had, by the way their eyes widened. But every generation has had its own concerns. Children growing up in the 1950s had to practice “duck and cover” in school. Friends remembered being haunted by the Vietnam War. By the Cuban Missile Crisis. By September 11. By gun violence. Each generation has had an overarching threat and a corresponding fear. And each generation has had to learn not to be controlled by those fears. It is our hope that, like David in our story, we will all continue to look for solutions, to speak out for what we think is right, and to reach out to those who need help instead of pointing fingers and pushing buttons.

  Peace,

  Madelyn and Wendy

  Thank-you notes for books (like those from bar mitzvahs) are endless. And what if we forget somebody? So many people helped make this book possible.

  Thank you parents, husbands, brothers, and mishpocha. Thank you to our kids: Graham and Karina; Matthew, Jason, and Kate.

  Thank you, Lisa Sandell, for your careful reading and enthusiasm. Thank you, Scholastic, for your support of writers—and readers.

  Thank you, Tracey Adams and Susan Cohen, for your wise and joyful words.

  Thank you, Sara Lewis Holmes, Elisa Rosman, Lucia and Camille Saperstein, Evelyn Khoo Schwartz, and Mia Sorongon, for reading this story and for your insights into blending cultures. Thank you to our writing group, for supporting us in much more than writing: Jackie, Marty, Liz, Anamaria, Ann, Anna, Marfé, Carla, Moira, and Laura. Thank you Virginia authors and illustrators; we are so lucky to be a part of this writing community. An extra shout-out to Cece, Tom, Mary, Meg, Anne Marie, Rachael, Cecilia, Jeff, SCBWI, One More Page Books, and Hooray for Books.

  For anyone who was traumatized by The Day After, this story is for you.

  Longtime friends and critique partners, Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang began writing together when they figured out just how much dumplings and kreplach had in common.

  Sports: What author held her school record for the flexed-arm hang?

  Madelyn is the author of the How to Behave books, the Nanny X books, and The Schmutzy Family, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for Illustrated Children’s Books. She is also the co-author of Dream Boy, with Mary Crockett. Visit her online at www.madelynrosenberg.com.

  Entertainment: What author can sing the alphabet backward flawlessly?

  Wendy is the author of The Great Wall of Lucy Wu, which was awarded the Asian/Pacific American Award for Children’s Literature, and The Way Home Looks Now, Virginia’s pick for the National Book Festival Great Reads list. Her website is www.wendyshang.com.

  Copyright © 2017 Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rosenberg, Madelyn, 1966- author. | Shang, Wendy Wan Long, author.

  Title: This is just a test : a novel / by Madelyn Rosenberg and Wendy Wan-Long Shang.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Scholastic Press, 2017. | Summary: In 1983 seventh-grader David Da-Wei Horowitz has a lot to worry about—his bar mitzvah is coming soon, his Jewish and Chinese grandmothers argue about everything, his teammates for the upcoming trivia contest, Scott and Hector, do not like each other, he is beginning to notice girls, and Scott has persuaded him to begin digging a fallout shelter just in case the Cold War heats up.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016037804 | ISBN 9781338037722

  Subjects: LCSH: Ethnicity in children—Juvenile fiction. | Jews—United States—Juvenile fiction. | Chinese Americans—Juvenile fiction. | Families—Juvenile fiction. | Grandmothers—Juvenile fiction. | Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | Humorous stories. | United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Juvenile fiction. | United States—History—1945—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Ethnicity—Fiction. | Jews—United States—Fiction. | Chinese Americans—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction. | Grandmothers—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | United States—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction. | United States—History—1945—Fiction. | LCGFT: Bildungsromans. | Humorous fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.R71897 Th 2017 | DDC 813.6 [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037804

  First edition, July 2017

  Cover art © 2017 by Chris Danger

  Cover design by Nina Goffi

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-03774-6

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

 

 

 
re this book with friends