by Hopen, David
“And so, I stand before you without offering a commitment to liberalism or Torah or, for that matter, the administration. What I offer, what I will continue to offer irrespective of today’s outcome, is resistance. Integrity. Action. And I do this because the Academy’s operations should not be allowed to prove inconsistent with the basic religious values we’ve been spoon-fed all our lives. What I’m calling for is not simply transparency, but a new paradigm of authenticity. A paradigm in which we finally take matters into our own hands and make our own moral judgments. In which we expose all that is hypocritical—”
“That’s quite enough, Mr. Stark,” Rabbi Bloom said, snatching the microphone. But it was over: Evan, face blank, half bowing, had won the crowd. The room erupted into boisterous applause. It took several minutes to restore order, especially with Oliver springing from chair to chair, flinging confetti into the air. (Rabbi Feldman, finally, escorted him out.) Amir, legs crossed, turned green while he waited for the commotion to dissolve. Sophia, maintaining the intensity of her gaze, stared at her wrists.
She fought admirably. She likened the school to a sukkah, protecting and nurturing us while we adorned it. I tried catching her eye, though succeeded only in briefly meeting Rabbi Bloom’s wandering gaze. (“Just flawless, isn’t she?” Kayla whispered unhappily into my ear, her tone loosely accusatory. “Yeah,” I told her, “actually I think she might be.”) Amir, on the other hand, was entirely unnerved. Certainly he was equipped for leadership—he was intelligent, he was intensely responsible—but he was hopelessly overshadowed by Evan. He kept losing his train of thought, sputtering on with some lackluster analogy likening the Academy to ancient Egyptian architectural principles. He was still struggling to put it together when Rabbi Bloom mercifully called time. Amir descended from the stage with his head bent in defeat.
Voting stations were set up in the parking lot. I made my way to a booth, having quickly separated from Kayla, and found myself behind Amir at the back of the line.
“It was a fine speech,” I said meekly. “Really.”
Amir shook his head, biting his lower lip. “He ruined me.”
I wanted to comfort him but couldn’t think of anything effective. “I’m voting for you,” I finally said, when it was my turn. It felt like the right thing to do.
He nodded, said nothing. I stepped into the booth, circled Sophia’s name and waited for Noah by his car.
* * *
I WAS RELYING ON VACATION to catch up on the workload, which, with the onslaught of holidays, was teetering on disastrous. Dr. Flowers was attacking our curriculum at a breakneck pace—“Kindly do us a favor and leave if you don’t like it,” she’d warn, usually while staring forbiddingly in my direction—hurling us into the lovely world of fixed osmium tetroxide membranes. I retained little from these lessons, and would turn frequently to Sophia in desperation. “Dr. Winter,” I’d burst out, hurrying after her in the hallways, dodging flustered underclassmen busy conducting double takes at the sight of me trailing Sophia Winter, “did you happen to catch that?”
Playfully, hiding a smirk, she’d accelerate her stride. “Which part, Hamlet?”
“How about every last bit,” I’d say, panting to keep pace, breaking into an unabashed smile. “I didn’t understand a single word.”
In math, however, my grades were improving steadily under Kayla’s guidance. My initial distaste for her had given way quickly to genuine appreciation. It was rejuvenating to befriend someone who also laid claim to neither unimaginable wealth nor unassailable beauty. Over lunches together we’d dissect recent gossip (“can you please explain how Evan hasn’t been expelled or promoted to Head Ubermensch by now,” Kayla joked, long after my math notes had been returned to my backpack) and throughout the school day we’d trade droll texts:
was just asked by remi y i didn’t dye my hair. or cut it. or just do something to “relieve the aesthetic nightmare”—didn’t know she knew that word
Yikes. What did you say?
that i’m auditioning 4 the role of simone weil
I suspect she did not find that funny.
she blinked 4 several seconds & then told me i’m much better off replicating simone adamley’s look
Who is that?
from ferris bueller. girl who hears from sister’s bf’s bro’s gf etc. that ferris is sick. astonishingly apt response, right?
I have no clue what you’re talking about.
good grief
Generally, I wondered why nobody else seemed to worry about schoolwork. Amir’s work ethic was legendary, his extracurricular life equally impressive—he headed the Debate Society, founded the Journal for Business Affairs—and any anxiety on his part exclusively concerned how others compared to him. Noah hardly ever mentioned the workload, besides asking for my help on the occasional paper. Oliver, of course, cared little about so much as completing homework, shielded as he was by his parents’ colossal annual donations. And then there was Evan, whose brilliance was unquestioned, even feared.
“Ev used to be first, you know,” Noah once revealed during a car ride home.
Briefly, I touched my cheek to the burning window. “First in what?”
“The whole freaking class.”
“Evan?” I knew he’d routinely receive A+ marks, even on tests he took while impaired, but his apathy rivaled Oliver’s, making it difficult to believe he could sustain pace with the machinelike dedication of students like Kayla, Amir and Davis.
“Yup,” Noah said quietly. “Up until, you know. Until his mother passed.”
After a respectful pause: “What’s he ranked now?”
“Dunno. Fifth? Sixth?”
“Wow.” I didn’t want to think about my own ranking. “Who’s ahead of him?”
“Me.”
“Really?”
“In my dreams. I know Davis is third. Amir, bless his little jealous heart, is second. Take a wild guess who’s first.”
I hesitated. My cheek singed.
Noah laughed. “Say it.”
“Of course she’s first,” I said.
“Your girl’s impressive. But I bet he could still come back, if he cared. Ev is frightening like that.”
“What does that mean?”
“How his brain works,” he said. “One day you’ll see.”
English was my lone bright spot. Mrs. Hartman had finally returned our Iliad papers. An impressive start, she wrote in thick, green ink. I look forward to reading future work. Grade: A.
“I knew I chose the right tutor!” Noah said, breaking into dance, thus infuriating Amir.
Amir ripped my essay from my hands. “An A,” he hounded, “or an A-minus?”
“An A,” I said uncomfortably, finally beginning to resent his academic hypersensitivity.
“But nobody gets an A from Hartman.” He said so too loudly, in earshot of others. Sophia, standing several feet away talking to Rebecca, turned to observe me. I cringed. “Especially not on the first paper!”
“Well, I did,” Sophia said, nodding in my direction. “But welcome to the club, Hamlet.”
My mother was even happier than I was. To her, the mark validated years of effort, unappreciated by my father, to save my intelligence by making me seek refuge in the library. “I’m beyond proud,” she said, overruling my objections to taping the paper to the refrigerator. I couldn’t blame her for her enthusiasm, given that I gave her few other occasions to shep nachas. This paper, sadly enough, represented the first semblance of achievement we’d ever known, all the while assuring her that normalizing to Zion Hills—returning, in some way, to her life before my father—was still possible.
* * *
SUKKOT FELL ON SHABBAT. I spent Saturday sitting in the sukkah, agonizing over my biology textbook while admiring my mother’s many decorations: dangling apples, clusters of flashing grapes, colorful paper chains, weathered Hebrew posters from preschool. Unlike Sukkot up north, where we sat cozily in pre-winter air, Sukkot in Florida bordered on torturous.
Down here, as it turned out, confining yourself to prehistoric huts, with sunlight soaking through a bamboo rooftop, inspired little more than heavy perspiration, mutant-sized mosquito bites and, on balance, physical misery. Despite my father’s insistence that we do everything in the sukkah (“‘you shall dwell in the sukkah for seven days,’” he’d scold, doused in sweat, flirting with heatstrokes, “dwell, not lounge, and that means eat, study, talk, sleep”), I gave up after a few hours and retreated for air-conditioning. I again tried studying on Saturday night, declining to join Noah and the others for drunk bowling, though ended up asleep before eleven, my twenty-pound textbook rising in harmony with my breathing. On Sunday, I skipped dinner so as to avoid my father, who wanted a definitive answer as to whether I was attending Meir’s upcoming bar mitzvah. By nine, I conceded defeat at the hands of my geometry homework and shuffled across the street.
“Ari!” Noah answered the door with a Corona in hand. I submitted myself for a fraternal half-hug. “Where’ve you been?”
“Trying to work. Failing miserably.”
“Dude, this is vacation. We’re celebrating how our ancestors trekked through deserts! We’re waving phallic symbols! You should be letting loose. You work too much.”
“I don’t work enough, actually.”
“Well,” he said, “now’s a good time for a break. Parents are out and the girls are over.”
Noah led me into the living room, where Rebecca was lying upside down on the enormous couch. “Ari,” she said, grinning. “Greetings.”
I pretended to turn my face upside down. “Hey Rebs.”
She kicked her feet around in the air to right herself. “Excellent timing. We’re looking to make moves.”
“Who else is here?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Ms. Mozart is in the ladies’ room,” Rebecca said, immediately surveying my facial reactions, which probably did not disappoint.
“Want a beer, Drew?” Noah called from the kitchen. I could hear him digging raucously through his snack cabinet, which, once opened, typically vomited some assortment of chocolate, sour candies and half-vinegar-half-jalapeño chips.
A voice down the hallway: sweet, stomach-turning. “Doesn’t beer ever repulse you? Maybe, just once, try a proper cocktail? Ah, Hamlet’s here.” Sophia emerged, her mouth assuming one of its sly contortions. She wore a white tank top tucked into jeans and her hair in a simple braid. Something in my chest somersaulted. “Decide what we’re doing tonight. We’re dying of boredom.”
Noah returned from the kitchen, a bag of miniature pretzels under his arm. “They find my house boring.”
“We can’t always just lie around on your couch, admiring your mom’s cookbooks,” Rebecca said. “Though I could go for some of that banana cake from Yom Tov, if she froze any of it.”
Sophia perched lazily beside me on the couch, bouncing her legs slightly so that her right knee, exposed in ripped jeans, rested gently against my left leg. “This is what becomes of us in adulthood? Supreme boredom? Drifting in and out of rooms, asking what we’ll do tonight, year after year?”
“Hashem Yisbarach, I really hope not,” Rebecca said. “Could you turn down the morbid tonight, Soph?”
Sophia turned to me. “Ari doesn’t find me morbid, do you?”
I shrugged. “No more than the next guy.”
“And for your information, life doesn’t end at graduation.” Rebecca gathered Noah’s head in her lap, though only after flinging away the salty remains of the pretzels. “It just starts over, doesn’t it, Noah?”
Sophia’s knee stopped moving. I could feel it balanced against my calf, though dared not look down to see for myself. “Okay, Ari. Save us, please.”
“Well, uh,” I said, groping for an idea. I realized, pathetically, that I had no grasp whatsoever on what was considered fun. “Yeah, I mean, maybe we can—”
Sophia was smiling fixedly. “Aren’t you supposed to be relatively articulate?”
I turned my attention to one of the room’s glass cabinets, crammed with sky-scraping basketball trophies. How odd it must feel, I found myself thinking, to be so objectively good at something. “Not when I’m so rudely interrupted.”
Noah yawned. “What about Ocean Drive?”
“Boring,” Sophia said.
“Design District?”
“No,” Rebecca snorted. “Please no.”
“Fine,” Noah said. “Should we bite the bullet and get a table at LIV? We can drop Oliver’s name.”
Sophia shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Nikki Beach?”
Rebecca pulled on Noah’s collar. “You really think Ari wants to go clubbing?”
I reddened but didn’t argue otherwise.
“Cool,” Noah said. “I give up.”
“How about we get dinner and call it a night,” Rebecca said.
“Not if it’s that repulsive burger place,” Sophia said.
Rebecca frowned. “I kind of like those burgers. So where, then?”
“What’s the name of the Japanese one? Shalom L’Japan? Sushi Olam HaBa? Whatever its latest name is.”
“I’m down,” Noah said. “They have that all-you-can-eat deal.”
“Do you really want mercury poisoning?” Rebecca said. “You’re not having that.”
“Watch me.”
“I’ll tell Rocky on you.”
“Drew, end our misery,” Noah said. “Vote for sushi or burgers.”
“Nameless sushi it is,” I said. “What Sophia said.”
“You do know you don’t need to agree with everything she wants, right?” Rebecca said.
Sophia took my hand, hoisted me from the couch. “Sure he does.” Her hand felt smooth, warm. “Shall we?”
It was a cozy, almost upscale restaurant: white tablecloths, a discolored shade of red on the walls. We sat out back, overlooking a canal, surrounded by yachts.
“Let’s take a boat out this week,” Rebecca said absently, scanning the menu. “We never do that anymore.”
“Remi’s motorboat is fun,” Sophia said. “We can take that.”
We ordered a behemoth sushi platter and Noah, with the help of his fake ID, coaxed the waiter into bringing us Cabernet Sauvignon. Mr. Carraway, however, remained hidden in my wallet.
“So,” Rebecca said, picking at a rainbow roll. “Where are the others tonight? That Three Amigos bar?”
“Probably busy with whatever degenerates do.” Sophia held her chopsticks with impeccable form. I nervously dropped mine, submerging a piece of salmon-avocado in soy sauce. I tried probing for it, but the piece unraveled. “Hamlet, your sushi dexterity is appalling.”
After we paid, the check considerably more expensive than I anticipated, emptying whatever was left in my wallet, Noah and Rebecca excused themselves to wander the docks. They left us with a wink.
Sophia drained the last of her wineglass. “Left alone again.”
“What is this, the third time now?” I said. And then, stupidly: “It’s a chazakah.”
She smirked, leaning her head to the side, looking me over. “Finish your wine,” she decided. “Then we shall walk.”
It was cool and still out, a gentle breeze rippling the water. We sketched long circles around the dock, admiring the yachts, doused in bright, humming lights.
“Last we spoke, before the awfulness with the eggs,” Sophia said, ending our silence, “you remember what I told you?”
“How could I forget?” I surveyed my outfit, wondered whether there was any possibility that it failed to register in Sophia’s mind, which actually would have constituted a not insignificant victory, blending in among what was fashionably inoffensive. “You said I didn’t belong.”
“I’m beginning to rethink that.”
“Really? I hope not.”
“Why’s that?”
I plunged my hands into my pockets. “You’ll like me less.”
Light poured off us, crowning Sophia in Technicolor. “You know I saw
you, right? At the recital. You left without saying hello. Nobody told you it’s impolite to leave without praising the pianist?”
I laughed. “My apologies for being uncouth. The pianist was busy being swallowed by rabid fans.”
“I appreciated that you came,” she said quietly. “I did.”
“Well, you were amazing. I’m glad I was there.”
“Ari,” she said earnestly, as if something pressing had only just occurred to her, “I don’t even know what you’re doing next year.”
“That’d put you in good company,” I said.
“You don’t have ideas?”
“I’m not sure.” I grimaced at how serious, how unnatural, my voice sounded. “I mean, college, I suppose.”
“You suppose? Of course you’ll be in college,” she said. “You’ve begun applications, haven’t you?”
I admitted I hadn’t. This made her recoil. “You’ll study literature,” she said, chewing her lower lip. Pink-cheeked. Sharp-nosed. Misty-eyed. “Yes, perfect, it’s decided, your say in the matter is no more. You’ll go to a great liberal arts school, you’ll study English, you’ll write some ridiculous, overly idealistic dissertation on Nabokov’s Hamletic anxiety of influence, dedicated to one S. Winter, and you’ll veer far, far away from biology.”
“That so?” My cheeks flushed. “You won’t want me bothering you with science questions?”
“Good point. Okay, I’ll allow a single biology class. But only the one.”
“And what about you?” I asked. “What’s your master plan?”