There’s a commotion ahead of us. Right at the doorway stands Sheriff Ocasek, blocking the way of a short pudgy man with a tripod resting on his shoulder.
“But I’m invited,” ReelTok is trying to explain. “The Rowleys have agreed to let me livestream the ceremony to TokNation!”
“Sorry,” the sheriff says gruffly. “My orders are to keep you out.”
“Orders from who?” the vlogger demands, his unibrow arching into a V shape.
“From me,” Ocasek replies. “I’m the law around here. I didn’t like you before, and I like you even less now that I know you’re only here to make trouble for this decent little town.”
Now that he’s at full outrage, Adam Tok looks very much like he does during his famous rants on YouTube. “Hasn’t the news about freedom of the press made it to Chokecherry, Colorado?” He scans the crowd indignantly until his eyes light on Dana. “She’s the one who invited me! Tell him, Dana!”
She smiles sweetly. “I didn’t invite him. I just told him because I knew he would blab about it to his followers. It was the fastest way to spread the word to the whole town.”
I gawk at her. “That’s how you got everybody to come? By telling him?”
She beams. “It worked, didn’t it?”
The sheriff addresses the vlogger. “There’s a park across the street. You probably remember it. Maybe it’s not too late to get your tent back.”
Then ReelTok spots me. “Link—I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye. But I’ve been good for you. I’ve been good for this town. The publicity that comes from millions of followers is pure gold. That doesn’t have to be over! Think what the power of TokNation could mean for your future!”
I pull up short. It drives me crazy when my own father—who loves me—harps on my future. To hear it coming from this sleazoid puts me over the edge.
I round on the vlogger. “Mr. Tok, you did exactly one thing that was good for me. You told the whole world what I did and that forced me to face it myself. So thanks for that, and please don’t take it personally when I tell you where you can stick your millions of followers.”
My folks and the Levinsons close in around me, and together we sweep past the sheriff and the vlogger into the school.
I’ve walked into that building hundreds of times before, but nothing could prepare me for what’s laid out before me now.
The school is gone. Oh, I know it’s still here, but the walls have been replaced by a supernova of color. Every single surface is hung with loops of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and every imaginable shade in between. For an instant, I’m so dazzled by the sheer impact of it that I can’t put two and two together and figure out what it is.
A little gasp comes from my mother. “Link! It’s—”
“The paper chain,” I half whisper.
As we make our way through the halls, it’s literally everywhere. There are no walls, no windows, no lockers, no doorways. Mr. Brademas has to scissor his way into his own office. I’m a little nervous about meeting him. Even though it’s the weekend, I’m still kicked out of this place. But he greets me warmly and even says, “Welcome back, Lincoln. I talked to your rabbi and I know you want to make amends. This is your chance.”
We’re inching along the corridor, rubbernecking, unwilling to miss a single link. It seems to go on forever, down every hall and up every stairwell.
Awestruck, I turn to Dana. “You did all this?”
“I called Caroline,” she replies. “She rallied the troops. Practically every kid came in to help us. Michael was the job foreman. Parents drove back and forth to the warehouses, picking up loads of chain. The whole town pitched in.”
“Is this all of it?” I ask in amazement. “You know, all six million links?”
“Every single one,” she confirms. “We even brought in everything from the silo. Mayor Radisson drove the city plow out there himself.”
Up till now, there’s been a fantasy quality about all this, but hearing names like Michael and Caroline makes everything very real. It raises a lump in my throat the size of a bowling ball, and I start to wonder if I’m going to be able to mumble a whole bar mitzvah past it.
As we turn the corner to the auditorium, a group of kids burst in from the faculty parking lot. They are laden with chain, multicolored strands wrapped around waists, arms, shoulders, and even necks.
“We almost forgot the Vardis’ attic!” a girl calls to Dana. Then, spying me, the group races off ahead of us, amid stage whispers of “It’s him!” and “Link’s here!”
The auditorium is packed with people and blazing with color. Kids are everywhere, taping paper chain to the walls, and custodians are atop tall ladders, covering the higher, harder to reach places.
The Levinsons take my parents to special reserved seats in the front row. That leaves me totally alone—the focus of every eye. With the chairs in the orchestra pit, our auditorium seats over six hundred, and there are people packed into the aisles, and rows of standees at the back. Have you ever kicked out of snow boots and into shoes with a giant crowd watching? At least I can’t fall. It’s too crowded.
My bar mitzvah folder under my arm, I edge my way to the stage. There’s a podium up there waiting for me and also a computer to provide the Zoom connection. It’s the loneliest walk I’ve ever taken in my life. It reminds me of something Dana once told me—that the true purpose of a bar mitzvah is to make you so terrified that no matter what happens later in life, it won’t be the most scared you’ve ever been. Finally, I understand what she meant. I could go swimming with great white sharks and it wouldn’t compare to this.
I set my folder on the podium and turn my attention to the computer screen. It’s my first ever look at Temple Judea of Shadbush Crossing, other than the inside of Rabbi Gold’s office. It’s smaller than I expected but nice, with stained-glass windows and rows of polished wooden pews. I wrap my tallit around my shoulders and put on my favorite kippah—the one with the logo of the Denver Broncos. At first I was afraid it was too un-Jewish, but Rabbi Gold assured me it’s fine.
Speaking of Rabbi Gold, he’s right there, beaming at me from the screen. The time is 10:15 on the nose. I know this is a religious ceremony, but the phrase that pops into my head comes from the Indy 500: Gentlemen, start your engines …
“Good morning, Lincoln,” the rabbi greets me. “Before we get started, I have some people who’d like to say hello to you.”
Two white-haired figures lean into the frame—Grandma and Grandpa!
“You made it!” I blurt.
“It takes more than a little snow to stop these two old fogies,” Grandpa declares heartily.
“We’re so sorry we can’t be there in person,” Grandma adds. “But we weren’t going to miss this. We’re so proud—” Her voice catches for an instant. “I’m so proud of you for what you’re doing.” My grandma, now an old woman but once a helpless baby, handed over into safety by her doomed parents.
Rabbi Gold ushers someone else into view. It’s a man a little younger than Grandma and Grandpa, with a mustache and a shock of gray hair. In his arms, he carries a very old Torah scroll, the simple fabric of its cover threadbare and torn. “My name is Milton Friedrich. My father was a young soldier when he found this Torah in a Belgian village he helped liberate in 1944. It’s been in my family all this time. We’ve always known it was important, but we’ve never known quite what to do with it—until we heard your story. And yours,” he adds to Grandma.
On the screen, Grandma lets out a sniffle of emotion. I look down from the stage and see Mom dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief in the front row.
“We’ve come an awfully long way,” Mr. Friedrich goes on. “I’m sorry the weather has left some distance between you and our Torah. But we’ll use it to follow along as you perform your bar mitzvah. And as soon as the roads clear, we’ll bring it to you in Chokecherry to display beside the remarkable memorial of your paper chain.”
As nervous as I am, I pick
up my laptop, turn it around, and pan the room with its webcam, giving Temple Judea a view of the big auditorium, hung with miles of paper chain. “This is only a fraction of it,” I say. “It’s all here, filling the whole school. Three hundred seventy-eight miles of it, according to Michael Amorosa—and he’s never wrong.”
The rabbi’s voice is husky. “All six million links?”
We’ve gotten kind of used to the paper chain, but I’m suddenly seeing it through Rabbi Gold’s eyes—every single loop commemorating a life lost but not forgotten. Who would understand that better than a rabbi?
“Every single one,” I confirm.
Rabbi Gold takes a long moment to get himself together while I set the laptop back in place on the podium. Then he starts the service, and before you know it, I’m on.
But something feels wrong. I’m not ready to start yet. I’m standing before my friends, my classmates, and a pretty fair chunk of my town—a town I plunged into a lot of hassle with my stupid, thoughtless actions. Before I start chanting at them in a language they don’t understand, I owe them something important—in plain English.
“Rabbi Gold?” I ask. “I know this is a strange request, but would it be okay if I do the speech part first?”
He peers at me intently, and even over Zoom, I can tell he understands why I need to do this.
He nods. “Very well.”
I’ve already written a speech as part of my bar mitzvah. It’s about Jacob and Esau, whose story my Torah reading covers. But that’s not the speech I’m planning to give. I’m going to have to wing this one. And I’d better get it perfect, because nothing I’ve ever said is this important.
“In the past few days,” I begin, “I’ve said the words I’m sorry more times than I ever thought I would in my whole life. I won’t make excuses, because there are none. The best I can do is say it one more time. I’m so, so sorry.
“The fact that you’re here means everything to me. Because of what I did, there’s been a lot of negative attention on our town. Some of that comes from stuff that happened a long time ago, and some comes from stuff that’s more recent. But we also got something great—our paper chain, six million links long, which is all around us. I hope it proves that, when we work together, it’s possible to take some of the bad and turn it into good.
“Today, I will become the first bar mitzvah in my family since my grandmother’s father—a man she never even knew. He was killed in the Holocaust, so if this isn’t a chance to turn bad into good, I don’t know what is. The Nazis tried to cut off my family line. With your support, I’m here to show that it’s still going.”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure I’m worthy of something that huge. I know what I did was unforgivable. I’d give anything to be able to change it, but that’s not how the world works. We can’t change the past. All we can do is work hard to make things right in the future. I promise that, for me, that starts now.”
And with a deep breath, I launch into my bar mitzvah.
At the beginning, my voice comes out higher than I expected, and the Hebrew words sound alien, the way they did when I first started trying to learn all this. I know a new kind of dread—one that has nothing to do with how badly I’ve messed up my life in the past few weeks. Dana warned me about this. It’s something all bar and bat mitzvah kids share: a paralyzing fear of making a fool out of yourself in front of everybody you know and quite a few that you don’t.
For an instant, it’s like I’m hovering above my own body, watching the proceedings and wondering what’s going on. How did Lincoln Rowley end up in this place, surrounded by these people, doing this thing?
Just as I’m about to fall apart, the endless hours of practice kick in and I’m sailing along in complete control. It’s not so much that I know what I’m doing. It’s more like autopilot. It’s really strange. It starts as Please don’t let me mess this up, but pretty soon, I’m not just surviving, I’m nailing it!
On the screen, I can see Rabbi Gold, following along and nodding his approval. In the front row, Mom’s gaze is riveted on me. Dad clenches the arms of his seat, his knuckles white. A few seats away, Dana is beaming with pride, like she invented me or something.
A little farther back, Jordie is pumping his fist, like he’s watching a soccer match and I’m on a breakaway. Next to him, Pouncey is making faces at me. Sophie has him by the ear, trying to get him to stop.
I see Michael in the control booth, regulating volume and lighting in the auditorium. His lips are moving, and I’m pretty sure he’s mumbling along with me. I spent so much time practicing while paper-chaining that he learned my entire bar mitzvah by sheer repetition! Caroline is with him behind the glass, scanning the crowd like she considers herself the owner of the school, so these people are all her guests.
By this time, my confidence is soaring. As I head into the final prayer, even my voice has settled down to normal. I can’t tell what’s going on at Temple Judea, but in the auditorium at Chokecherry Middle School, you could hear a pin drop. I have plenty of experience being the center of attention—on a soccer field, a basketball court, a baseball diamond. That’s nothing compared to hundreds of people hanging on your every word, even though they haven’t got a clue what those words mean.
When I get to the final phrase—M’kadesh hashabbat—I really drag it out, my own personal opera. The Chokecherry crowd, who don’t know any better, leap to their feet in a thunderous standing ovation. That’s not supposed to happen. I don’t know any better either, so I actually take a bow, totally thrilled with myself. Anyway, it can’t be that wrong, because they’re clapping at Temple Judea too.
Grandma’s cheeks are streaked with tears. “Wonderful! Just wonderful!” She says more than that, but I don’t have a hope of hearing it, because things are pretty loud in the auditorium.
Kids mob the front row, cheering and calling for me to stage dive. I catch a glimpse of my mother, waving her arms and shouting, “Don’t you dare—”
That’s all it takes. I don’t dive, exactly, but I step off the edge and allow the forest of reaching arms to catch me. It isn’t very bar mitzvah, but it wouldn’t be me unless I did at least one stupid, impulsive thing. Hands high-five me and slap at my back and shoulders.
One of them belongs to Dad. He leans in and bellows into my ear, “I never should have worried about your future! The way you pulled that off—”
I miss the rest of it, because the kids bear me away. I haven’t been carried since I was a toddler, and it’s a weird feeling, bounce-rolling toward the auditorium exit with zero control over where I’m going.
“Duck!” Dana yells.
I flatten myself to the mob a split second before the low doorway would have taken my head off. Then I’m out in the hall, bobbing and weaving through walls of endless paper chain.
I manage a feeble “Hey, you guys, put me down,” but I don’t think anybody hears me. My crowd of bearers keeps growing. We’re a tidal wave rolling through the school, with me like a tiny canoe being carried away on it. I’m actually starting to get a little seasick.
I struggle to make sense of the voices that are boiling up all around me.
“That was awesome, Link!”
“I don’t know what it was, but you killed it!”
“You’re getting another shot—don’t blow it!”
“How did you learn all that? It isn’t even in American!”
Jordie barks, “Best mitzvah ever!” Like he has anything to compare it to.
Pouncey adds, “You should have warned me it was going to be boring.”
“The student council is proud of you!” Caroline pants up at me.
She’s out of breath because the crowd is picking up speed in the hall, the paper chain walls blurring into a cascade of color. I peer ahead and see the front entrance, the sunlight reflecting brilliantly off the newly fallen snow. I’m starting to worry about where all this is going to end. Am I about to be hurled through a plate-glass window into a snowbank?
“Stop!” I’d know Michael’s voice anywhere. “You’re ripping the chain!”
They don’t drop me—it’s more like the group that’s supporting me disintegrates and I get dumped on the floor as everyone rushes to fix the fallen links.
A hand yanks me back to my feet. Dana.
I brush off my suit. “So how’d I do?”
“It was … adequate,” she replies before breaking into a big grin.
“I can’t believe you did all this for me,” I tell her honestly. “I can’t believe everybody else went along with it. Not after I was such a jerk.”
“We all do jerky things,” she assures me. “It’s what you do next that matters. What you did next inspired a lot of people.”
That’s when I realize that we’re in the atrium, right at the base of the stairs. I gaze up at the blank wall, and for the first time in forever, I don’t see the swastika I put there. Oh, sure, it’s been washed off and painted away for months now.
But today, it’s finally gone.
Caroline is already bugging me to be her running mate when she goes for eighth-grade president next year. She says it’s because I’m “the right person for the job,” but I know she’s just trying to glom off my reputation as the main guy behind the paper chain project. I’m more high-profile than ever now that the Guinness Book of World Records is coming to Chokecherry to photograph our chain for their new edition. In this town, if you need somebody who can count up to six million, I’m your man.
But I don’t tell her any of that, even though it’s true. I just say that I’m going to be busy enough as president of the art club next year.
Have you ever tried to say no to Caroline McNutt? It isn’t easy.
“How can you pass this up for stupid art club?” she demands. “Not that art club is stupid. But in student government, you can change the world!”
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