A muscle twitched in my jaw like it was going to try to burst free, showering Isabella Lynch and the golem and all the other kids with my blood and guts. “They are not your friends. You’ve known them for what, two minutes? Can I talk to you for a minute? Now?”
“You’re being so mean,” the golem said. Her eyes went wide, her lips trembly.
“Yeah, why are you being so mean to Elsa?” a girl across the table chimed in.
“Elsa is our friend,” Isabella said. Up close, I could see her eyes were as dark as mine.
I took a deep breath. It stuck somewhere in my throat and didn’t go all the way down to my lungs, which meant I started to get dizzy. I had to say something, but anything I could think of would come out sounding stupid. If I kept arguing with them about how Elsa wasn’t really their friend, they would just double down on how mean I was, and I would become a complete social outcast. It wasn’t like I could tell them that Elsa was a golem and I’d created her and she didn’t belong here.
“I didn’t mean to be mean,” I said, and my voice came out froggy, like I was trying not to cry, even though I wasn’t, but now that was the worst thing because everyone would think I was trying not to cry, and only babies cried at school. “I just … I didn’t expect to see you here, and…”
I trailed off because I had no idea where else to go with that. I was standing there in front of Isabella Lynch and her friends, and they were all looking at me like I was an alien who’d just crashed through the cafeteria ceiling in a mini UFO, and—oh God—the Three Ds were probably staring at me from our usual table and whispering all like, What’s gotten into Leah? Is she losing her mind?
I focused on the golem. A triumphant little smile was playing over her lips. She was doing this on purpose, I realized. I hadn’t thought she was sophisticated enough to manipulate me like this. She hadn’t been earlier—I couldn’t picture the creature who spun that story about skydiving and talked about human food behaving like this. Was she evolving? Or playing dumb … which was also a form of manipulation?
When I’d created her, I had been thinking about how I wanted to be better at working other people …
Just as I was thinking that, she spoke. “It’s okay. I understand. You guys,” she said to the rest of the table. They all leaned in a little bit to hear her, the way flowers turn their faces to the sun. “Leah is my neighbor, and she’s great. I should have asked her to sit with us. Leah, do you want to sit with us?”
The table was silent, and I died a little bit, but then everybody murmured in agreement, nodding along with the golem. “That wasn’t what I was…,” I started, but the golem was already standing, and the girl on her other side was scooting down, and the golem was ushering me into my new seat next to her. One person away from Isabella Lynch.
Well. This wasn’t what I was expecting, but … would it really be the worst thing to sit here for a little bit? It wasn’t like the golem was going to rush out to Zaide’s house right now anyway. Lunch was over in like ten minutes. Zaide could wait another ten minutes. But ten minutes could change my life. It wouldn’t take nearly so long for Isabella Lynch to muse, Leah, you have such a pretty face except for that nose. Please let me show you some ways to apply makeup to make it look smaller. We can be best friends then, and you’ll belong.
I sat. “Thanks,” I said grudgingly to the golem because it would have seemed weird if I hadn’t. I left my lunch in my bag. I’d finished most of it anyway, and who knew what Isabella Lynch and her friends would think of a turkey sandwich with pretzels and orange slices? Maybe they were vegetarians. Or allergic to citrus. I didn’t want such a stupid thing as my lunch to make them think I was a loser, not when I already had this nose to battle.
“So, you’re new, aren’t you?” Isabella Lynch said to me. She had her head cocked to one side, and she was looking at me that way you’d look at a new shirt you’re thinking of buying in a store. “Both of you.”
“We are,” the golem said. She took a voracious bite of her pizza. I blinked. It was real pizza, a greasy triangle slice dotted with pepperoni, not the square white slice we could get from the cafeteria on Fridays. Where had she gotten that? I hoped she hadn’t ordered it to Zaide’s house. He kept kosher, and pepperoni was pork—something forbidden. It wasn’t supposed to touch his dishes.
“Yeah,” I said a moment too late. Ugh. Already starting out bad.
“Where are you from?” Isabella asked. She still seemed relaxed, didn’t even raise an eyebrow at my faux pas. Whew.
“I was going to a school in Japan,” the golem said breezily, taking another bite of her pizza. She chewed slowly and daintily, not getting so much as a drop of grease on her porcelain skin.
That distracted me for a minute from what she’d actually said. Japan. What?
“My family and I were traveling the world,” she continued. The kids around the table were rapt, their attention on her like they were paper clips and she was a magnet. “My mother is a model and my father is a famous photographer, and they are always scouting new designers to model and new locations to photograph. So we were in Japan for a year. Before that, we were in Kenya. Before that, Sweden. Before that, Brazil. Before that…” She went on listing places, definitely more than twelve. She couldn’t have logistically spent a year in all those places, but everybody nodded along like she made complete and total sense.
Isabella Lynch smiled when the golem finally stopped talking. “Of course your mom’s a model, you’re so pretty,” she said. “Why’d you come here?”
The golem fluttered a hand through the air to the tabletop, a butterfly landing. “My great-grandparents were kings and queens of Lichtenstein, and the current rulers of Lichtenstein didn’t like having us so close, because they worried we’d come to reclaim the throne. So we came to America, where everyone is supposed to be equal.”
Lichtenstein? Was that even a real place? But beyond that, a backstory of royalty? That sounded familiar. I’d thought about wanting that when I was creating the—
“Lina?” Isabella was waving her hand in front of my face. I snapped back. Oh no. She’d gotten my name wrong. It would be too embarrassing to correct her right now. I’d just have to change my name. Go by Lina for the rest of my life. It would be a shame. I liked my name. Leah was one of the biblical matriarchs in Judaism, so whenever the prayers talked about her, I got to pretend they were about me. I would miss that, but—
“It’s actually Leah,” the golem said, leaning forward and blocking my view of Isabella. “Her name.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. That’s pretty,” said Isabella. The golem leaned back, and I found Isabella smiling at me. Really? That was it? That easy? Maybe just because the golem was the one who’d done it. Isabella thought she was a world-traveling model/princess, and I was definitely not. “Leah. Where are you from?”
I hoped I didn’t say anything wrong this time. “Um…” was what came out, and not even in my regular voice—in a high pitch like I was about to start singing. Good start, Leah. Way to not be embarrassing. I cleared my throat. “I moved here at the beginning of the school year from Pickering. In New York. It’s like two hours away.”
“Pickering?” one of the other kids repeated. “Oh, I know Pickering. I used to live near there, too. That’s the town with all the Jews with the long beards and black hats.”
I tried not to sigh. By “all the Jews” she meant all the ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Schechter wasn’t an ultra-Orthodox school, and I, obviously, was not ultra-Orthodox, or else I probably wouldn’t be at a public school. Ultra-Orthodox Jews weren’t the only Jews in Pickering, only the most noticeable. My family considered ourselves Conservative Jews, though that didn’t mean conservative like in politics or dress—it was kind of like a denomination of our faith, like how a Christian could be Episcopalian or Baptist or Methodist. I thought of it as medium religious, between the hard-core Orthodox Jews and the more relaxed Reform Jews, but there were other, smaller pockets in there, too.
“Well, I’m Jewish, too, but not that kind of Jewish.” My words all tumbled out in a rush. I felt a twinge of guilt at the way I’d said it, like I was abandoning my people, but banished it. Hashem would understand.
Isabella’s eyes brightened further. “Oh, you are? I didn’t realize.” She examined my face like she was a doctor and I was a patient; I shifted uncomfortably as her eyes bumped up the bridge of my nose, traveled over my thick eyebrows, crawled along the path of my hairline. “But you do look Jewish. So I shouldn’t be surprised.”
A girl on Isabella’s other side dropped her sandwich in surprise, blinking in disbelief, like Isabella had said something incredibly insulting. I, too, was left with the vague feeling that she had, even though everything she’d said was true. I was Jewish. It shouldn’t be an insult that I looked it, right?
“You have to come over to my house sometime,” Isabella said, and just like that, the vague sense of unease vanished, replaced by a warm sparkly glow. Isabella Lynch. Invited. Me. Over to her house.
Be cool, Leah. Don’t show too much enthusiasm. I wanted to nod like I was headbanging, but I limited it and said slowly, “Oh, sure. That would be fun.”
“Maybe next week,” Isabella continued. “On Monday? I have student government that day, and the late bus doesn’t care if you take it home with me.”
“Maybe,” I said casually, like my insides weren’t doing cartwheels and somersaults right now. “I’ll check with my parents.”
The bell dinged overhead. I crumpled my brown paper bag in on itself and floated after Isabella and her friends as they left the cafeteria. I glimpsed the Three Ds from the corner of my eye, and it looked like they were giving one another looks again, but I didn’t care. I’d been invited over to Isabella Lynch’s house! It took all the way till we were in the hallway outside, people breaking off to stop at their lockers, for me to remember that I really, really, really needed to talk to the golem.
I didn’t bother trying to convince her this time. It hadn’t worked at the table, and I was sure she’d discovered a way to outmaneuver me now, too. Instead, I waited until Isabella and most of the others were looking the other way, then grabbed the golem by her arm and yanked her behind a bank of lockers. She yelped, but the noise was lost in the clamor and din of the hallway.
Once I had her in a marginally more quiet location, I backed off and crossed my arms, fixing her with as intense a glare as I could manage. “What are you doing here?” Another thought occurred to me. “How did you even get here? You weren’t on the bus. Where are you even going?” My stern tone faded into curiosity as I went on. “You’re not enrolled in any of the sixth-grade classes. Nobody notices an extra face in the lunchroom, but any teacher is definitely going to notice a random new student showing up.” Back to anger as I remembered why I was interrogating her in the first place. “And what about Zaide? You’re supposed to be keeping him safe!”
She wilted a little bit. “How am I supposed to answer all of those questions? Should I just go in order?”
“I guess,” I said.
She raised a hand and started ticking off her fingers. “One: What I’m doing here is meeting new people and having fun because I was bored. Two: How I got here is golem magic, and the specifics are none of your business. Three: Where I am going is through the hallway with my new best friends. I’m not going to class—that would be extremely boring. And four: Zaide is sleeping. He takes a nap every day around now for a couple hours because he wakes up at like four in the morning. Nothing bad is going to happen to him while he’s sleeping.
“Besides,” she continued. “I’ve kept him safe a lot already so far. Two nights ago he got all upset and tried to call the police because his wife was missing, and I stopped him. And the other day he wanted to go for a drive to some old soda shop that isn’t there anymore, and I stopped that, too.”
I couldn’t help but soften a bit at her explanation. Still. “What if he wakes up while you’re here and wants to call the police again?”
Something flashed in her eyes. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it unsettled my stomach a little. “He won’t.”
Okay, now my stomach was churning. “Is he…? You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”
Elsa rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, Leah, I did not kill your great-grandfather. He’s just sleeping. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, taking a deep breath. “But you still shouldn’t be here. I should…” I trailed off. What I was going to say was that I should give her new orders: to stay with Zaide no matter what. Because it was true, I’d given her orders to keep him safe, but I hadn’t explicitly told her to stay by his side at all times. And it sounded like she was a little genielike, meaning she’d do exactly as I asked her but look for as many loopholes as she could.
But then I remembered lunch today. I wouldn’t be able to sit with Isabella and her friends without Elsa. And I wanted to. I wanted to go over to Isabella’s house on Monday and become her friend. I wanted to be popular and feel like I really belonged and fit in. I wanted people to think I was cool.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the golem said smugly. “You want me here.”
I stiffened. Maybe I wanted her here, but I didn’t have to act like it. “Whatever,” I said. “As long as Zaide is okay, I don’t care what you do.”
Her smile widened, and for a moment, her rows of bright white teeth reminded me of a shark. “Wait,” I said hastily. “I don’t mean that. Your instructions are still to keep Zaide safe and okay, but if you would like to leave for a half hour while he’s taking his nap and magically teleport here for lunch or whatever, I guess that would be fine.”
She gave me a salute. This time I was sure she was mocking me. “Whatever you say, boss.” She turned like she was going to go, except I blinked and she was no longer there. Okay, so she did have magic golem teleportation powers. That was kind of cool.
Not as cool as I was going to be, though. I hurried down the hallway after Isabella and her friends. I couldn’t see them anymore, but if I walked fast enough, I could probably catch up.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE THREE DS STARED AT me when I took my seat back in class. I shrugged at them apologetically. It wasn’t like they would care where I sat at lunch. They’d probably be happy to have their table back all to themselves.
Besides, my insides were all still fizzing and popping like a shook-up soda can. If I tried to talk, I would explode with excitement. I couldn’t believe it was the golem that put all of this in motion.
Our teacher clapped her hands at the front of the room. Relieved, I turned to the front. The way the Three Ds were looking at me was making me squirmy. But there was nothing like a math test to jolt that feeling right out of you.
It came right back, though, when Deanna stopped at my desk just before the bell rang. “Hey,” she said. She was smiling, but not as wide as usual. “So your friend goes to school here?”
“I guess so,” I said. “She just kind of … appeared.”
Deanna laughed, even though I hadn’t been making a joke. Still, that made me feel bold enough to maybe make another joke. Also, it didn’t matter as much what she thought of me now. I didn’t have to stress out. I’d been invited over to Isabella Lynch’s house. “I wish I could appear and disappear like that. Like, pop quiz?” I snapped my fingers. “Poof. Now I’m gone. Sorry, Ms. Bunce. You’ll have to torture the rest of the class instead.”
She laughed again. Kind of a warm feeling fluttered inside me. I realized I liked making her laugh. “Only if you take me with you.”
The warm feeling turned into a kind of surprise. She’d really want to go with me? Or was she just saying that?
“I was thinking maybe you could come over one day soon.” Deanna shifted her books from one arm to the other. “We could make plans for our chess club, and then Dallas and Daisy could come over
afterward, because they’re peasants who don’t have the patience for the greatest game.” She wrinkled her nose to show she was kidding.
“Chess club?” I asked.
“Yeah, remember? You said you might want to start one up.”
I wanted to go over to Deanna’s house, but was she just inviting me because she wanted someone else to play chess with? She’d just said her other friends didn’t want to do it. And a chess club? That felt weird. It felt like taking my thing with Zaide and making it … not my thing with Zaide anymore. Like saying I’d given up on him. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said vaguely.
Something flickered over her face. After a moment, Deanna asked, “Is this because you’re sitting with Isabella now?”
“What?” I asked, surprised. I felt a small pinch of guilt in my chest. “I—”
The late bell chirped. My next period teacher, Mr. Castro, was a stickler about timeliness. “I have to go,” I said, hoisting my books up. “Can we talk about this later?” I was out of the room before I heard her response.
* * *
Mom and Dad weren’t home when I got there, so I decided to stop by Zaide’s. Mostly to say hi. Definitely not because I was worried that the golem had lied to me and she’d actually done something terrible to him while he was napping.
Yeah. Definitely not.
Zaide’s door was unlocked, as always. I walked in quietly. Usually the only sound to greet me was the blaring TV, or the blasting radio, or sometimes the death-metal jangling of the phone as the Christmas lights lit up overhead in a blazing rainbow.
But not today. Today Zaide was speaking. On the phone? Had one of his other grandkids or great-grandkids called?
But no. Someone was speaking back, in rapid-fire Polish. Or Yiddish. The golem. I crept forward, still out of view.
I had no idea what they were saying. If they’d been speaking in Hebrew about a world or the night or any of the numbers between one and ten I could have picked that out, but I didn’t know any Yiddish or Polish. The golem finished speaking, and Zaide dove right into his response. He spoke like I’d never heard him speak before, like he still had all his teeth and no waver from old age had set in. Like he was still young.
The Trouble with Good Ideas Page 8