Next to me, Steve makes a wet, bubbling fart noise with his lips. Danny shoves him, and we all stumble away, giggling. I’m a terrible person.
In the hallway we pause. “Everyone’s in for tonight, right?” says Danny, lowering his voice and looking around furtively. The makeup D&D session. We all nod. “You’re not going to miss this time, right Isaac?”
“I’ll be there.”
“You sure?”
“Positive. I’ll be there.”
“And you’re coming Thursday to my birthday party, right?”
The annual tradition: Danny’s birthday party at a local pizza place.
“Of course.”
The mention of the party sparks something in Steve’s head. “Dude.”
“What?”
“Your parents are both gone, right?” he says.
“Yes.”
“Dude,” he says, “you should have a party!”
It stops Paul and Danny dead in their tracks. Obviously they think this is a fantastic idea. None of them know about the no-party contract.
“Dude.”
“Dude.”
“Dude! Girls and booze!”
“Invite Heather Paulson! She’ll friggin’ sleep with anyone!”
“Invite Sarah Blumgartner.”
“OOOOH!!!!!”
Hideous Sarah, fellow tribe member, another troll at the elf party. She never leaves me alone, which is a source of great hilarity for my friends.
“Gotta have a party,” Steve says.
“Dude! Think of the tail!”
“Let’s get wasted!”
“We could get weed!”
“Think of the pussy!”
“Weed, dude!”
I look at my friends. Baby-faced Steve has pizza sauce in the corner of his mouth. Not one of us has ever smoked a cigarette, or even seen a real joint. I’ve had a few sips of gloppy sweet Manischewitz wine on Passover. Paul once French-kissed with his second cousin.
“We’ll totally get laid,” says Danny, whispering it.
I pause for a moment, as if I’m actually considering the idea.
“Yeah, maybe I will have a party,” I say, nodding, and they cheer and we high-five, because we all secretly know that our fantasies about weed and getting wasted and having sex are no more real than fighting Orcs and that we’re perfectly safe, because we never will have that party.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MY GOAL AND THE TROLL
The instant we’ve parted ways I check my watch, curse, start racewalking. I have to hurry or I’ll miss my daily moment of happiness, and I really need it today.
I move as quickly through the halls as my rubbery legs will let me, keeping myself at a pace just under that which would draw the attention of a hall monitor. I pass the basketball courts and the music room, then cross the wide common area near the auditorium, walking along the endless glass display case with its rows of hockey trophies and framed magazine covers indicating that our school was once again selected as one of the top ten in the country. As I hurry along I keep an eye out for danger: the Assholes and their crew; or worse, Sarah Blumgartner, who lurks around here and will lock on to me like a remora if she spots me.
I make it to the corner near the auditorium just in time and assume my customary position, leaning casually against the dark brown brick wall. Hands in pockets today? No, out. No, one hand in, the other arm hanging at my side. Slouch a bit more. Good.
My brother has goals for me. I have goals for myself.
Or at least one goal.
And here she comes now.
Her name is Patricia Morrison.
She’s rounding the corner from the hallway that branches off about thirty feet from where I’m standing. Her locker is number C-138, and every day she goes from there to Mrs. Halgren’s English class at this time, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. Today she’s alone. I’ll have about twenty seconds to look at her: ten as she approaches, and then another ten as she disappears from view.
She has sandy blond hair that falls straight to her shoulders, and perfect skin. She is slim but not skinny. She’s athletic but not a jock. I’ve seen her smile—a great smile, absolutely great—and she’s cool, but not mean cool, not one of those vicious popular girls, walking around with their copies of Gossip Girl and The A-List books. A few following-in-her-wake-in-the-hallway research sessions have confirmed that she smells good. Her eyes are grayish blue, or at least I think they are, because I’ve never really been close enough to get a good look.
I’ve never spoken to her.
Not once, not in four years.
I am embarrassed to admit this.
I’ve known her, or at least watched her, since I was in third grade. I saw her one day during recess, playing foursquare, and it was like someone flipped a switch. You know that really old song by the band the Police, called “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”? Listen to it. It pretty much says it all, especially the part where he talks about feeling like a total idiot and not being able to talk to the girl he’s in love with.
I have never told anyone—anyone—how I feel about Patty.
So, my goal. My goal is to talk to her. That’s all I have to do, talk to her. Have a conversation of some sort. I decided at the beginning of the semester that I would do it before summer vacation, no doubt, no way out. Of course, I made that same decision last semester and the semester before and the semester before that, and so on and so on and so on, back to the day I first saw her. And now here I am, standing in the hallway each day, waiting for my big chance. I’m not exactly sure what form that chance will take, but here are some potential scenarios I’ve been working through:
She drops something. I pick it up. This naturally leads to talking.
She is walking with someone I know. This is unlikely. Our social circles don’t overlap in the least. But somehow she is with someone I know, I greet that someone, and talking with Patty follows.
There is an incident: maybe a fire, or a wall collapses, or a rabid dog, tornado, flood, geologically unlikely earthquake, crazed shooter, et cetera, and I pull her to safety. Again, talking.
I say hello to her as she passes. This is the least likely scenario of them all.
She’s getting closer. I deepen my slouch and try to look at her while giving the impression that I’m looking elsewhere. Josh, I’ve noticed, looks very cool when he stands this way. I’m hoping that, at the very least, I’ve been registering somewhere in her mind, slowly building up an unconscious impression so that when we do finally talk, she’ll already be thinking, Hey, it’s that cool guy.
Here she comes. She’s passing. She’s past. She’s walking away.
I sigh. None of those scenarios will ever happen. There will be no fire, no building collapse, no dog, I’ll never say hi to her, she’ll never drop anyth—
And then she drops her textbooks.
The world goes slow motion.
My heart begins to pound like it wants to leap out of my chest and run away. It’s here. It’s happening. It’s now. Now is my chance. Now. All of this is racing through my mind before her books have even hit the floor. They’re hitting now, splaying open to random pages, and she’s turning, realizing what’s happening, and I have to go help her now now now, but I can’t, I’m stuck to the wall and the floor, but then I manage to push myself up from my slouch and I’m taking a step—
“Hi, Isaac!”
NOOOOOOO!!!!
Sarah Blumgartner looming in front of me, blocking my path with her braces and big nose! NOOOO!!!
“What are you doing? Are you going to math now? Did you do the homework? Did you figure out number seven?” she’s saying, her movements mirroring mine as I dodge back and forth, trying to get around her or at least see past her explosion of thick, wiry, Airedale terrier hair.
“What? Uh, I just—I need—” I splutter, watching Patty gather her books, and now—NO!!! Someone’s helping her! ARGH! It’s Tim Keavy! Tim Keavy, with his blond hair and nice sweate
rs, retrieving the books and saying something as he hands them to her, something that makes her giggle. ARGH!
“ARRGH!” It escapes from me before I can stop it.
“Whoa. Are you okay?” says Sarah. “You’re acting, like, psycho.”
“What? I’m fine!”
Now Tim and Patty are talking. They’re laughing and smiling and talking and walking off together. NO, NO, NO!!
“Hey, are you ready for—what are you looking at?” She twists to follow my gaze.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Oh.”
Patty is vanishing with Tim, along with any hope I’ll ever have of talking to her. I realize that Sarah is still standing in front of me, expectant, grinning stupidly at me. “So, are you going to math?”
OF COURSE I’M GOING TO MATH, YOU IDIOT! AND NO, I DON’T WANT TO WALK WITH YOU, AND YOU’RE RUINING MY LIFE!
“Yes” is what comes out.
“Great. Let’s go.”
I grind my teeth as we walk together, Sarah babbling on about whatever. I had one chance, and she destroyed it. I’d be talking with Patty right now if Sarah hadn’t materialized like a Semitic nightmare. Without a doubt.
“So I’m, like, totally tripping about my bat mitzvah,” she’s saying, but I’m not paying attention, because I’ve spotted Patty up ahead. She’s not with Tim anymore! She’s stopped in the hallway, talking to two other girls, kids swirling past on either side! She’s talking to . . . who is that . . . Gina Ueland and . . .
Kelly Thorenson!
I know Kelly Thorenson!
It’s my second chance!
“Are you?” Sarah says next to me.
“Whu?” I say.
“You know, freaked out.”
“Uh, no. Not really.”
“You’re not?”
“Not what?”
“Freaked out.”
“About what?”
“Your bar mitzvah?”
“Oh, yeah, totally freaked out, totally . . .”
Patty’s conversation with Kelly Thorenson is ending. They’re saying goodbye! I have to get to them!
“Isaac, what’s going on?” says Sarah, once again twisting around to figure out what I’m looking at. “You’re truly acting psychotic.”
“Nothing. I have to use the bathroom.”
“I’ll wait.”
“No, I’ll catch up with you.”
“Okay. Well . . . I’ll see you in math.”
I duck into the bathroom, count to ten, peek out the door. Patty is still talking with Kelly. Sarah is gone. No excuses. Here it is. My second chance. I’ll just say hello to Kelly and start talking. Just say hello. One, two, three, go. One, two, three . . . Go. Two, three, go. Go. Go. GO!
Of course I don’t.
Maybe tomorrow.
“Dude, I can’t believe this.”
“Danny, I can’t help it! It’s my brother!”
“You said you could make it! We’re all here again!”
“Isaac,” calls my brother from the other room, “we’re not done yet. You’ve got ten seconds to get off the phone.”
“Danny, can we do it tomorrow?”
Danny talking away from the receiver: “He wants to do it tomorrow.” Groans, catcalls. Steve shouting, “Don’t be such a pussy!” in the background.
“Seriously, Isaac, this sucks,” says Danny.
“You think I want to do this? Look, I promise that we can meet tomorrow.”
“For sure?”
“Yes, for sure. I’ll go—”
“Ten,” says Josh, hanging up the phone for me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SON OF THE 613
I got home at three fifteen, and Josh was waiting for me when I came in. He was holding the Xbox.
“Kiss it,” he said.
“Kiss it?”
“Yes. Kiss it goodbye, because this is the last you’re seeing it for a while.”
He put the Xbox on the top shelf of his closet, paying no heed to my keening and wailing. Then, equally deaf to my explanations that my friends were expecting me, he sat me down in front of the computer in his bedroom to practice with the cheesy bar mitzvah DVD my parents bought.
Except for the brief phone call from Danny, we’ve been sitting here for two full hours, surrounded by an audience of Navy SEALs and Marines and Israel Defense Forces commandos who stare at us grimly from the posters that cover the walls. My sister watched for a while, until she got bored and wandered off. I tried to wander off. Josh wasn’t having it.
“I want to show you something.”
He rolled up his sleeve to indicate the tattoo on his shoulder, a Jewish star with some Hebrew writing in the middle.
“You know what this says?”
“Kiss me, I’m Catholic?”
“It says six hundred and thirteen. That’s the number of commandments there are. You know what it means to be a bar mitzvah?”
“I get a pen from Pop-pop.”
“It means you’re a son of the commandments. A son of the six hundred and thirteen.”
I wait.
“Which means you better take this shit seriously, dumbshit.”
Ah.
“Again,” says Josh.
I groan and start hacking my way through my haphtarah for the thirtieth or four hundredth time, Josh reminding me when I forget sections and interrupting to correct my pronunciation. I have to hand it to him; for a guy who nearly flunked out of school, he knows his biblical Hebrew. He can read it for real, not the slow, pulling-teeth, sounding-it-out way that I can.
My parents are not very good Jews. They’ll say it themselves.
Mom (serving pork chops): Jesus, we’re terrible Jews.
But when I was young they still tried to keep up appearances and raise us correctly. It all fell apart around the time I was eight. It was Passover, when you’re not supposed to eat any bread or even have it in the house. Instead you enjoy delicious, wonderful matzo, which is like toasted cardboard, if that cardboard was made with a substance that removed all flavor not only from your mouth but from your memory itself. I walked into the den, and my dad was parked in his favorite chair, eating a bratwurst sandwich. On rye toast. A triple-decker. Pork on bread. It was like opening up his closet and having a dead body fall out. I was horrified.
“What?!” said my dad. “I’m hungry!”
And so they stopped pretending. Which is when Josh decided to go in the other direction and do the SuperJew thing: the yarmulke, synagogue every week, keeping kosher, making us light the Sabbath candles. I don’t want anyone to know I’m Jewish. Josh wanted every- one to know, so they could make fun of him, and then he could punch their lights out. He even had peyes, the little sidecurls, for a while. It all worked: It drove my parents insane.
Imagine Josh stalking around Jew-free Edina like that, glowering at people.
Imagine now that you are a well-meaning, innocent exchange student from somewhere in rural Germany who had somehow never met a Jew. Excitedly approaching the beyarmulked Josh in the common area of the school, seeing an opportunity to finally unburden yourself of the crushing weight of your country’s collective guilt and shame (which, yes, you should share). An opportunity you’ve been awaiting for your entire sixteen years. Little knowing that your counterpart, a suburban Jew, had likewise never met a real live German and had also been waiting his entire life for such an encounter, but with a very different agenda, one apparently involving a German person and a German-person-size garbage can.
Well done, Josh, my father said later, you’ve just turned that young man into a Nazi.
From my mother’s reports I gathered that she saved Josh from expulsion through some lengthy diplomacy with the school administration and skillful wielding of the phrase “descendant of Holocaust survivors.” Which, by the way, is not true at all—it was the Russians who slaughtered our ancestors.
After a while Josh got tired of being SuperJew—my guess is because he ran out of people stupid enough to t
ease him for it. But even now when it’s time to read the blessings at Passover dinner, we all turn to him.
I finish my haphtarah.
“Jesus,” says Josh, “maybe we can lie, tell them that you’re turning twelve so they’ll postpone it for a year.”
CHAPTER NINE
AN UNEXPECTED NIGHTTIME OUTING
MERIT BADGE: UNDERAGE VISIT TO BAR
I’d been worrying about what I’d have to blacken for my evening meal, but instead Josh stood up and announced that we were having pizza.
He lets me sit with him and Lisa at the table as we eat. He listens with an indulgent smile as Lisa tells him all about her day and what she did and the project she’s working on and the book she’s reading and about Debbie Frank’s new dog, a poodle. He ignores me completely, other than to tell me to clear the table and do the dishes before he gets up and walks off.
A little past ten and we’re watching The Ultimate Fighter, that show where they put a bunch of MMA guys in a house and they beat the crap out of each other.
I once asked Josh if he’d thought about fighting in the UFC. He revealed that he’d actually fought in some local events, lying about his age to get in.
“What?! What happened? How’d you do?”
He’d looked at me, confused, like I’d asked if he was potty trained. “How’d I do? I won.”
“So why not do the UFC?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just sort of takes the fun out of it.” He seemed genuinely sad.
At the moment I’m settled into the big overstuffed recliner chair, my overtaxed muscles cramping into rocks. Lisa is asleep in her room. So far Josh hasn’t mentioned the tent, and I’m not about to bring it up. The day seems to be drawing to a relatively uneventful end.
Then Josh checks his watch and stands up, turning off the TV with the remote.
“Let’s go.”
“What? Go where? To bed?”
“No. We’re going. Come on.”
I follow him out to the car, which is parked in the driveway. The night air is chilly, and I pull my jacket tighter.
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