by David Hopen
Oliver scoffed. “Fucking understatement of the year.”
Noah nodded. “Ev’s been through some hell.”
“If you ask me,” Oliver said, running his hands over the steering wheel, “it’s why he’s doing all that weird reading shit.”
I studied the triangles. Something about them made me nauseous. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” Oliver said, “he’s always ingesting some secret philosophical or religious or whatever book now, isn’t he? I know it’s pissing off Amir.”
“I mean, it makes sense,” Noah said. “He has the sort of brain that’d cope by turning to life’s big questions, things like that.” He strained his gaze through the window. “I know he can come across a bit harshly, Drew, especially when you’re still getting to know him, but we can’t underestimate how much he’s hurting.”
“Tell him about the Rosenbaum thing,” Oliver said. “New perspective.”
“When we were sophomores,” Noah said, “there was a freshman who was a bit nerdy, super shy. What was his name?”
“Johnny? Tzachi?”
“No, it was . . . Mikey. Whatever, nice guy, just had a hard time transitioning into high school. Apparently he was getting picked on by older kids. I guess Evan was strolling down the hallway one day when he sees three or four seniors messing with Rosenbaum, moving shit from his locker, calling him stuff, whatever. And Evan calmly walks up to them, puts his arm around Rosenbaum and warns them—these are seniors, bear in mind, Ev’s a sophomore—that, if another person so much as looks the wrong way at Rosenbaum, he will make sure their lives are ruined.”
I spun my phone on my lap. “Evan did that?”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Oliver said. “He’s no bully.”
“No, I just—so did it work?”
“Sure did,” Noah said.
“Why’d those seniors listen?”
Oliver shrugged. “He’s Evan fucking Stark. He could destroy them a million different ways.”
“Point is,” Noah continued, “I end up hearing about this story months later, since Evan never breathed a word. At the end of the year, Rosenbaum’s mom shows up at school, pulls Evan out of a classroom and gives him a huge hug, in front of all these seniors, going on and on about how Evan doesn’t even realize he saved her son’s life. Anyway, that’s random, and unfortunately the kid ended up switching schools the next year, but you should know Ev’s a good dude, deep down.”
“Yeah, I mean, of course,” I said quickly. “I never implied—”
“I know. But we grew up with Ev,” Noah said. “And you’re just seeing recent events. So I can’t blame you for forming certain . . . opinions.”
“I can,” Oliver said, scrolling through his phone. “Damn, the Fish lost in extra innings. There goes two hundred bucks.”
“He’s different lately,” Noah said, “I realize that, but I think grieving is the reason he’s been acting a bit—I don’t know. Erratic?”
I accepted this, pressed no further. We waited another few minutes for Evan to emerge, lapsing into deferential silence, save for Oliver tinkering awkwardly with his SiriusXM stations.
“Eden,” Evan said pleasantly, sidling next to me when he finally came out. I was struck with the impulse to offer belated condolences but nothing came to mind. He noticed my indecision, narrowed his eyes. “What’s with you?”
“Not a thing.”
Evan leaned toward Oliver as we began driving. “Have anything?”
“Does a chicken have lips?” Oliver rummaged in a compartment near his legs, forcing Noah to steady the wheel so as to avoid drifting into someone’s front yard. He returned to the wheel with a baggie of weed. “Try this.”
Evan took a lighter from his jeans, flicking it on and off. “Want the first hit, Eden?” He handed me the lighter: silver, rectangular, Cartier. Inscribed in faint cursive, just beneath the initials HLA, was a Hebrew pasuk: הֲלוֹא כֹה דְבָרִי כָּאֵשׁ. Is not My word like fire? “My maternal grandfather’s,” he said, allowing me to admire it. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I said, quickly returning it to his hands.
“Just a thought,” Noah said, “but maybe you guys want to not be stupidly high while praying for repentance?”
Evan coughed his way through a hit. “Noah, remind me when you turned into Amir?” He blew smoke toward my face. “Was it when this guy arrived?”
Noah opened his window. Smoke released into the night. He gave me a look through the rearview mirror. “Jesus, Oliver. Can you actually see out the windshield?”
“Not really,” Oliver said. “But maybe it’s my eyes starting not to work, I don’t know. This shit’s powerful.” He flicked the roach out the window.
We managed to arrive without incident, though I wondered if I’d worn down my molars from gritting my teeth throughout the ride. We were led by Rabbi Feldman into the assembly hall, where the seats closest to the stage had been removed, clearing space for students to sit on the floor in concentric circles. The lights were off; dozens of candles illuminated the room, casting pensive shadows. Onstage sat Rabbi Schwartz, equipped with a guitar, strumming solemn melodies. We joined an outer circle, endured the singing: Noah immediately began belting tunes (“Achaynu Kol Beis Yisroel”), and even Oliver was high enough to be reduced to respectful, albeit incomprehensible, humming. When midnight rolled about, Rabbi Bloom took the stage to offer a brief analysis of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy before leading us into prayer.
The service concluded by one in the morning. Though normally I disliked Shabbat singing, I actually enjoyed the program and was experiencing a pleasant mixture of spiritual fulfillment and drowsiness. As we loaded into the Jeep, however, Oliver suggested assembling a crew and stopping at some nearby lake. I intended to decline and find another ride home, until Noah mentioned that Sophia would be accompanying Rebecca. Oliver began firing text messages. I shrugged in surrender.
It was a clear night, no clouds, the moon projecting aqueous spheres of light. Our group sat in damp grass by dark water. Evan disappeared, holding hands with a junior girl. Oliver was soon unconscious on a nearby bench, with people crowding him, capturing the sight on Snapchat. Noah and Rebecca wandered off into the trees, Noah giving me an encouraging head nod. Somehow, to my delight, this left me alone at the foot of the lake with Sophia, bathed in silvery lunar light.
“So that was all surprisingly tame in school,” I said, attempting to break the ice, “wasn’t it?”
“It was selichot,” Sophia said. “What’d you expect?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’m at the point where I’m surprised if they don’t, like, break into riot at the first opportunity.”
“You’re not entirely wrong.” She studied the trees. “Your friends do have a habit of occasionally resembling animals.”
A light, unstrained pause. Moonlight fell through the branches above. “Can I say something weird?” I asked, mustering courage.
“I don’t see why not.”
“Your music.”
“What about it?”
“It hasn’t left my head.”
She stared into the water, a faraway look in her eyes, her skin a raw white in the dark. “Pardon?”
“The Appassionata.”
“Oh.”
“It was really—haunting.”
“I suppose all great pianists aspire for that kind of praise. To be awkwardly told they play haunting music.”
“No, no, it was beautiful, of course, I only meant—”
She allowed her hand to linger briefly over mine. “I know.”
“I hope,” I said, holding my breath, “I’ll be lucky enough to hear it again.”
“Maybe a different piece. A happier one.”
“I’d settle for listening to you warm up.”
“There’s a recital next weekend, if you’d like to come along. Unless you prefer your usual method of sneaking up on me while I’m practicing.”
I star
ed helplessly at her thin lips, her slim wrists, her gold bracelet, her light-pinned eyes. “You have your own recital?”
“It’s through the school. A fundraiser.”
“But Kol Neshama asked you to perform?”
“They did.”
“Well, that’s pretty cool.”
“Not that I had a choice.”
“You didn’t want to do it?”
“I don’t like having decisions made for me.”
“By Bloom?”
“By anyone. But God, no, it wasn’t Bloom. My parents.”
“I thought your parents didn’t approve of you playing?”
“Not when it comes to going to music school and becoming a professional. But to be featured at a high school fundraiser?” She offered a brief, exasperated laugh. I was aware, watching her laugh, that I was experiencing a moment that would fundamentally alter the equilibrium of my life. I accepted this without question, even as I failed to understand it. “Now that’s a great honor, they’re convinced. That’s prestigious. That’s good for me.”
“Good for you how?”
“Actually I’d rather talk about something else.” She smoothed her shirt, regarded me with half-closed eyes. “Tell me about you.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Give me a glimpse into that rich inner life of yours.”
I waited for panic to set in at the prospect of being tested, but it never came. Being alone, vulnerable to her probing, was a rare opportunity to impress her. “Who says I have one?”
“You play the stoic card, but I’m unconvinced.”
“Yeah, well, you’re totally right,” I said. “I’m actually fascinating when you get to know me.”
She paused. “Do you miss home?”
I inhaled, cemented my tongue against the roof of my mouth. “No.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Isn’t everyone supposed to love home?”
“Yeah, maybe. But I don’t think I ever did.”
She leaned forward, legs crisscrossed, hands on her knees. “What did it feel like there?”
Fierce, undefined longings. Incommunicable unrest. “I felt this overpowering sense of—of strangeness there,” I said. “Almost as if I were, I don’t know, unlived.”
She picked at the grass near her feet. “That all sounds quite poetic.”
“It didn’t feel too poetic. But possibly that’s my own fault.”
“Strangeness, boredom—that’s your own fault?”
“This is when I’m supposed to tell you that the mind is its own place, right? It can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven, a Zion of Brooklyn, a Brooklyn of Zion?”
She was startlingly close now, close enough to study the rhythm of her breathing, close enough to memorize the nexus of veins on her eyelids, close enough to inhale her perfume—vanilla, heady. “I have absolutely no idea what to make of you,” she said. “Nobody does.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“Don’t you know why?”
“I have my suspicions.”
“It’s because you don’t belong here. Like I said before—you’re different.”
“That doesn’t sound like an especially good thing.”
“On the contrary.” She pulled up more grass, allowed it to scatter, wiped her hands together. “I like your unbelonging. Don’t you?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Do you belong?”
“I used to think so. I always thought I’d miss home terribly when I finally leave for college.” She organized her mouth into a wistful smile. She did so in a way that felt rehearsed, as if she’d practiced how best to appear natural, relatable. I was beginning to believe she had a way of transmitting emotions without actually being capable of feeling them. “It’s a wonderful place to grow up.”
“But you stopped believing that?”
Weak light scattered through black trees. “I think it’s more that eventually we all need to get away.”
“At least you have an escape.”
“I do?”
“Yeah,” I said, “music.”
She shook her head, fingering her bracelet. “Did I forget to mention I have a strict rule? No psychoanalysis. Especially about my music. That’s just way too . . . depressingly prosaic.”
“Sorry, right, point taken.”
“Anyway, music isn’t for escaping. It’s for, well—” She looked out beyond my body, focusing on something I couldn’t see, even when I turned and tried. Moonlight hurled triangular fragments of light over her face. “For seeing things as they really are.”
“That sounds kind of fitting,” I said.
“Fitting with what?”
“The answer you gave in Hartman’s class on the first day, the one you used to reject mine? About how tragedy doesn’t purify broken things?”
“There you go. Likening my music to tragedy. Another surefire way to charm someone’s heart.” She rubbed at her eyes. “Well, we love what makes us miserable. Someone once told me that.”
“Who? I don’t think it was Shakespeare.”
Twigs snapped behind us. Out from the trees stumbled Evan, the junior draped to his waist, one of Oliver’s Grey Goose bottles in his hand. “Well,” he said drunkenly, “isn’t this heartwarming?”
Sophia’s eyes settled on the girl, who returned her look with measured courteousness. “Hey, Jen.”
Evan avoided my eyes. “This unlikely pairing again. You two must be becoming well acquainted.”
“It’s late,” Sophia announced, rising suddenly to her feet. “I’m going to find Rebecca.” Before I could mobilize, she slipped into the forest dark, leaving me behind. I looked at my phone. It was half past two. To be safe, I composed a text to my mom, claiming I’d be home soon, only to decide not to send it.
“Jen,” Evan said, “have you met my new friend here?”
She hesitated briefly, looking at me with confusion before shaking my hand. “Jen Benstock.”
“Ari Eden. Nice to meet you.”
“Careful,” Evan said. “He has a thing for girls I used to date. Isn’t that right, Eden?”
Jen looked up at Evan. “What the hell?”
Ignoring her, Evan went on giving me a hard, drunken look. “Why do you think that is, Eden? Is Jen your type, too?”
Jen recoiled, releasing her hand from Evan’s grip. For a moment, she looked up at him as if to strongly consider striking him. Instead, she stomped off into the trees, illuminating her way with her iPhone flashlight.
“Eden,” he said, waiting until Jen’s footsteps were no longer audible. He wore a glassy smile, fumbled to light a joint. He was drunker than I’d realized. I wondered what he’d remember in the morning. “A word of warning?”
I stood.
“To be loved by her,” he said, swaying on his feet, “is to be impaled.”
We waited in silence. Soon enough, Sophia reappeared with Noah, Rebecca and Jen in tow. Jen was slightly tear-stained and refused to say much to anyone but Rebecca, whom she knew from softball; I offered her a tissue, though this made me feel even more self-conscious. Noah and Rebecca, holding hands, seemed annoyed to have been interrupted. Sophia led us back, refusing to rest her eyes on anything above the ground.
Rebecca left her car in the school parking lot, and so she and Sophia piled into the Jeep with us to be dropped off. On the way back, Oliver stopped for gas and disappeared into the station, reemerging with a Gatorade and a large plastic bag of snacks. We drove to school in silence, Sophia breathing sharply beside me, our arms touching slightly, her very smell suffusing me with irrational happiness. When we arrived at the parking lot, Noah walked the girls to their car. As we watched the girls drive off, Oliver reached into the plastic bag and pulled out a tray of eggs.
“What the hell are you doing with that?” I asked, massaging my eyes, wishing I were already in bed.
“Take some,” Oliv
er said, opening the carton.
I refused. “I don’t get it.”
Evan, however, grabbed the carton and threw open the door. Eggs in hand, Oliver and he walked to the entrance of the school. I heard Noah yell in surprise, and I stuck my head out of the window curiously just as eggs began raining upon the roof, the walls, the front door. The Lord rained hail on Egypt, I thought, on every man and animal that has not been brought in. Jagged shells littered the grass. Yolk bled from the model temple, oozing onto the pavement.
“There’s blood in this one,” Oliver cried, examining a cracked egg. Noah grabbed him before Oliver could wind up. He forced Oliver to drop his weapon and physically returned him to the Jeep.
“What the fuck was that?” Noah yelled once they were all back inside the car. He urged Oliver to drive out of the parking lot as quickly as possible. “Why would you morons possibly do that?”
Oliver laughed hysterically. Evan, from the passenger seat, only smiled. “Rosh Hashanah is coming,” he said. “We need reasons to repent.”
* * *
GOSSIP IN SCHOOL ON MONDAY revolved around what was quickly being dubbed Night of the Yolk. Retribution, as expected, followed the sunrise minyan precedent. Oliver and Evan were summoned to Rabbi Bloom’s office and each given a full-day suspension. Despite the school-wide chatter about the incident, however, Rabbi Bloom offered only administrative silence, allowing this latest incident to dissolve as some newer indignity arose. Noah was questioned, as were Rebecca and Sophia, given that we were all captured on the parking lot camera. Throughout the remainder of the day, as such, I prepared myself for interrogation. All day I waited for my turn. The call never came.
* * *
ROSH HASHANAH, FOR THE FIRST time in my life, was an uninspiring affair. In Brooklyn, the High Holidays were majestic, the prayers evoking reverence, or at least fear and trembling. I remember, as a child, standing beside my father, his talis over his head, his body shaking, his eyes closed. In those moments I considered whether he might be one of the tzadikim nistarim, the thirty-six hidden righteous for whom the world exists. I pondered this when he brought me into his talis, when he cried softly during Unetanneh Tokef.
This year brought no such awe. We sat in an overcrowded row in the rear of the shul. The air-conditioning was out. I gave my father the aisle, which meant I sat beside Mr. Cohen, a gruff, hulking friend of Eddie Harris, who bombarded me with stories from his youth.
