Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust

by Leanne Lieberman

  LAUREN

  YANOFSKY

  HATES THE

  HOLOCAUST

  Leanne Lieberman

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2013 Leanne Lieberman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Lieberman, Leanne, 1974-

  Lauren Yanofsky hates the Holocaust [electronic resource]

  / Leanne Lieberman.

  Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0110-3 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0111-0 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8623.I36L39 2013 jC813’.6 C2012-907466-7

  First published in the United States, 2013

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012952950

  Summary: Lauren, a Jewish teen, is sick of hearing about the Holocaust but must make a tough choice when some friends play Nazi war games.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by Gary McKinstry

  Author photo by Bernard Clark

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B PO BOX 468

  Victoria, BC Canada CUSTER, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  16 15 14 13 • 4 3 2 1

  For Robbie Stocki

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Acknowledgments

  One

  On the first morning of grade eleven, my mom is waiting for me in our kitchen. She’s made me a plate of eggs and toast and tucked an envelope under my glass of orange juice. She glances at my ripped jeans but doesn’t say anything about them. Her shiny white suit seems a little over-the-top for her nutritionist job at the hospital, but then Mom is often overdressed.

  I sit down at the table and hold up the envelope. “What’s this?”

  Mom slides her gold-streaked hair behind her ear and keeps making my brother Zach’s lunch. “Just open it.”

  I sip my juice and frown at the return address. It’s my parents’ temple, which means it’s from either the Jewish youth group or the Hebrew school. I chuck it aside and dig into my eggs and toast.

  Mom is very involved at the temple. Her latest project is a mitzvah, or “good deed,” committee that brings food to elderly people or baby presents to new moms.

  Mom ignores the fact that I’ve tossed the envelope aside. “So, first day of school,” she says.

  “Yep.”

  “Excited?”

  “No.” I am a little bit, but I wouldn’t admit that to her.

  Mom says, “The temple’s after-school program also starts today.”

  “I’m aware of that.” I squint at the envelope.

  “Your father and I are hoping you’ll go this year.”

  “Not a chance.” I shovel eggs into my mouth.

  Mom sighs. “It’s only two nights a week.”

  I glare at her. “I’m not going. Ever.”

  “Don’t you want to get your driver’s license?”

  Because I’ve refused to do any Jewish activities lately, I haven’t been allowed to get my license. “It’s better for the environment to walk or bike,” I mutter.

  Mom shuts the refrigerator a little more forcefully than necessary. “It’s not like we’re asking a lot.”

  I stand up and wrap my remaining toast in a paper towel and shove my dishes into the dishwasher. “When are you going to give this up?”

  “Lauren…” Mom says, but I’ve already grabbed my lunch from the fridge, picked up my bag and am headed to the front door.

  It’s a beautiful, crisp morning, sunny with a light breeze. I take a moment to clear my head and put on some lip gloss. Then I head down the street toward school.

  I love my walk to school. All the years I went to Jewish day school, I was confined to a car pool, squished in the backseat of either my mom’s wagon or Shayna Shuster’s van, which always reeked of her perfume. Now that I go to regular high school, it no longer matters to me what time Mom manages to pry Zach out of bed; I leave on my own time.

  First I walk down my street, with the maples rustling overhead. Then I cut through the park, the dew collecting on my flats. The mountains are a deep blue against the lighter blue of the sky. On the other side of the park, a few blocks away, is my school.

  I am lucky because not only do I have a great walk but also a pretty good school. There are no metal detectors or drug busts or gangs, just regular kids coming to school.

  Okay, so most kids don’t take the time to appreciate their school—it does sound pretty pathetic—but on the first day, I’m always thankful, because I wasn’t supposed to go to public high school. I was supposed to attend (cue the music from Jaws) The Akiva Jewish High School. My parents wanted me to spend five more years with the same cliquey, mean kids I’d endured since kindergarten.

  But I put my foot down. I pulled out all the stops, including my trump card: I told my mother I’d stop eating if I had to go to Hebrew high school. This was very effective because Mom works with anorexic girls. I even went on a two-day hunger strike, although I cheated and ate a steady supply of licorice and Ritz crackers when no one was looking.

  Here are the six reasons I gave my parents for letting me go to public school:

  1. Public school has a better basketball team.

  2. Public school kids are nicer, especially my friends Brooke, Chloe and Em.

  3. The whole world is not Jewish, and no one should pretend it is by going to a school that is all Jewish.

  4. Akiva was sure to be social purgatory for me. Did my parents want me to need many, many years of expensive therapy?

  5. Public school is free. My parents could save the tuition and take our family to Hawaii instead.

  6. Public school has better language programs. What if I wanted to take Mandarin or Cantonese? The Jewish school doesn’t offer these, and if I want to go into business, another language would be a huge asset.

  Okay, so number six is a little weak. I’ve had three years to learn a new language and I’ve stuck with French. Also, I have no intention of going into business.

  When I get to school, I make my way to D wing, where my friends and I always have our lockers, near the cute boys from our class.

  Brooke is already shoving her bag and running shoes into her locker and attaching a magnetic mirror to the locker door. She tightens her blond ponytail and waves at me when she sees me coming down the hall. Brooke has been my best friend since we met on a soccer team when we were ten. Now we play on the basketball team together, and since we’re in grade eleven this year, we’ll both be starters. Most of the time I can beat Brooke when we play one-on-one, even though she’s a couple of inches taller than me. I can be surprisingly fast, and I have longer arms.

  “What’s your first class?�
�� Brooke asks. We compare timetables and give each other a high five when we realize we both have biology first period and phys ed after lunch.

  The first bell rings, and after checking to make sure my hair hasn’t frizzed, Brooke and I head up the stairs to class. We choose seats in the middle of the room, not too close to the front, or we’ll look like geeks, but not so far back that we’ll be tempted to whisper to each other and get in trouble.

  Brooke and I are talking with Mac Thompson and Tyler Muller, two guys who have lockers in our wing, when Brooke grips my hand under the lab table. She’s staring at the doorway, where Jesse Summers stands, scanning the room for a place to sit. There are still plenty of empty seats, but he looks right at me, smiles and then heads toward us. I think Brooke might faint. I have to shake her hand off mine so Jesse doesn’t see us holding hands and think we’re weird.

  Jesse slides onto the stool next to me and says, “Hi, Lauren.”

  “Hi.”

  “How was your summer?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Good, really good.”

  Before my stomach actually catapults my breakfast out of my mouth, the biology teacher, Mr. Saunders, starts handing out textbooks and course outlines.

  I’m trying to focus on Mr. Saunders, but sitting beside me is the cutest guy in our school. No, possibly in the universe. Jesse is tall and lean with dark skin and hair. He also has the most beautiful cheekbones, what Brooke calls “radiant facial structure.” Personally, I’m more interested in the way his jeans hang off his hips and the way he flips his hair out of his eyes. Brooke and I spent a lot of time last spring walking by his house when he got back from boarding school. “That’s where he lives,” Brooke would say, and then we’d both sigh. I would rather have been playing soccer or hanging out at Brooke’s, but Brooke always wanted to walk by and see if he was around.

  Attractive guys we know usually fall into one of two categories: (1) cute, goofy guys we wouldn’t date because we’ve known them for years or (2) cute guys who don’t go to our school who we would go out with, if only they’d ask.

  Jesse fits into a whole other category: guys who are so gorgeous and so untouchable, we can only stare. And it’s not like I’m gorgeous myself. I have clear skin and an olive complexion, and I’m dark enough that sometimes people at my parents’ temple ask me if I’m a sabra, which means a native-born Israeli. Other than that, I have ordinary dark eyes and a biggish nose. My most challenging feature is definitely my hair. It’s long and dark brown and very curly. I’ve been begging to get it chemically straightened, but Mom won’t let me.

  I endure a whole hour of Brooke sitting on one side of me while Jesse lounges on his stool on the other side, foot tapping, pen flipping, totally distracting me. I know she’s dying to text me to say WTF? or OMG.

  When class ends, Brooke and I hurry out of the room, our shoulders pressed together. “Omigod,” she says, “I can’t believe he talked to you.”

  “I can’t believe he sat next to me.”

  “We’ll probably sit like that all term.” She elbows me in the side. “Lucky girl.”

  I’m so nervous all I can do is tug on the ends of my hair.

  Brooke and I split up after that because I have English and Brooke is off to math.

  When I get to English class, Jesse is sitting by the windows. “Holy fuck,” I whisper to myself as I find a seat on the other side of the room, at the back. I take out my phone and text Brooke. U won’t believe who’s in English.

  God? she writes back.

  Yes.

  It’s destiny.

  I don’t think so.

  Then the bell rings, and I put my phone away.

  I have Mr. Willoughby for English again, which is great. Some of the guys call him a fag and make fun of the way he uses words like Augustine or imperative or disingenuous. It doesn’t matter to me if he’s helping us understand Steinbeck by lecturing on the social structure of farm labor or the boll weevils of the dust bowl—I’m riveted. It’s not what he says, it’s how he says it in his British accent, his long arms waving around his fiery red hair.

  But today, not even Mr. Willoughby can distract me from the back of Jesse’s perfect head.

  By the time I get back to my locker for lunch, Brooke is already there, chatting with our friend Chloe. I can tell from the dreamy expression on Brooke’s face that they are talking about Jesse. Chloe is shorter than Brooke and me and curvier, despite being on a perpetual diet. She has blond hair, recently cut to a bob, and green eyes. She dances competitively and has really strict parents. Her dad is so mean, he doesn’t even talk to us when we come over.

  Chloe puts her arm around my shoulders. “I hear you are the luckiest girl ever.”

  “It’s not that big a deal.”

  “Are you kidding?” Chloe elbows me in the ribs. “He talked to you.”

  “Well, that’s ’cause we used to know each other.”

  Chloe shakes her head. “It’s really not fair.”

  “Guys, get a grip. He said, ‘Hi, how are you.’”

  “An excellent start,” Brooke says. “Now you need to renew the friendship.”

  I roll my eyes and pull my lunch bag out of my locker.

  “I wonder why he’s in our grade this year,” I say.

  “I heard he flunked out of a bunch of stuff at boarding school, then dropped out for a while,” Brooke says.

  It’s weird. I used to know Jesse really well because he lives down the street from me. When I was in grade seven and he was in grade eight, we played a lot of basketball after school. That was the year my closest school friend, Alexis, moved to Seattle, and Rebecca Shuster formed the I-Hate-Lauren clique at my Hebrew day school. I was taller than all the other kids, my hair had erupted into this giant Jew-fro, and I had glasses and braces. I spent every recess playing basketball with the boys while the girls snickered. I’d come home after school, friendless and miserable, and play more basketball with Jesse. I was already five foot eight, and Jesse was only five foot three. Now he is taller than me.

  When I started high school, we stopped hanging out together. His locker was in another wing of the school, and I felt too shy to talk to him. While I was hanging out with Chloe, Brooke and Em, he was skipping classes and getting expelled for breaking into the school gym to shoot hoops on weekends.

  Before anyone can say anything else, Em comes racing down the hallway, dodging guys from the basketball team and Smoker girls. Em is the youngest of five kids, all much older than her, so only one sister still lives at home. Em lives in the biggest house I’ve ever seen. It has two staircases, but most of it’s really shabby. The kitchen hasn’t been renovated since at least 1980, and there’s real shag carpet in the basement.

  Red hair flying, glasses slipping down her nose, she skids on her flats and has to grab Chloe. “You won’t believe what the musical is going to be this year.”

  “Oh, do tell us,” Brooke says, sounding totally bored.

  Em ignores her and takes Chloe by the shoulders.

  “It’s Grease!”

  They start hugging each other and jumping all over the hall. “This is amazing,” Chloe shouts.

  The guys stare at Chloe and Em, and Brooke and I step away.

  Our high school puts on a musical every second year.

  Last time it was The Pajama Game, and Chloe and Em were in the chorus because we were only in grade nine. Since there won’t be a musical next year, this is their year.

  And, oh yeah, they’re obsessed with Grease. They already know all the songs and choreography from the movie. All through grades eight and nine, on a typical Saturday night we watched either High School Musical or Grease or reenacted scenes from them. Even I know all the lyrics to “Summer Nights” and I can’t carry a tune. Chloe and Em’s favorite song is “You’re the One That I Want,” which they sing at the drop of a hat. It’s cute, but also sort of annoying.

  I go to the bathroom to distance myself from Chloe and Em, and when I get back, Br
ooke isn’t where I left her. I gaze down the hallway and see her sitting on the floor with Chantal Matthews and some of the other Smoker girls. I don’t really know Chantal. It’s not that I don’t like her or anything; she’s just not into basketball or any of the theater stuff that Chloe and Em do. Chantal’s always wearing too much makeup and showing too much cleavage. Her long red fingernails make me think of vampires. She usually sits at the back of every class, although I know she’s smart at math. I saw her test by accident last year, and she got an almost perfect score, even on the story problems.

  I walk back to where Chloe and Em are sitting. “What’s up with that?” Chloe says, tilting her head toward Brooke.

  We all stare down the hall a moment, and then I sit down and get out my lunch. Chloe and Em start talking about Grease again. Chloe wants to know if the boys will get to sing the raunchy lines from the “Greased Lightning” song and if they’ll have to smoke onstage. I try to catch Brooke’s eye, but she and Chantal get up and start heading down the hall toward the doors leading to the back field. Chantal usually spends her lunch hour with the rest of the Smokers under the big willow at the back of the field. After Brooke and Chantal go out, I slowly make my way down the hall to the double doors. I catch a glimpse of Brooke as she disappears under the long, drooping branches of the tree.

  Two

  After lunch I have phys ed, followed by history with Mr. Whiteman. I had him last year too, and he’s my favorite teacher in the whole school. He doesn’t tell a lot of jokes or give you projects like making a comic strip about Quebec nationalism, but the essays and debates he assigns always make you think.

  At the end of the day, Chloe and Em are off to a youth-group event at their church. Em has always been religious—she even goes to Bible study in the morning—but I’m pretty sure Chloe only goes to check out the guys.

  Since Brooke was late for gym class, I don’t have a chance to talk to her until the end of the day, when I corner her by her locker. “What’s with eating lunch with the Smokers?”

  “Drama talk is for losers.” Brooke pulls out her bag.