Next Year in Israel

by Sarah Bridgeton

  ~ * * * ~

  “What time did you get in last night?” Ben asked Mia before history class started the next day. Our teacher hadn’t arrived by the time the bell rang.

  She picked up her head from her desk. “Two. Oh, that’s right—we were supposed to come by your dorm. We forgot. Sorry.”

  Ben laughed as if she had told a hilarious joke. “We played quarters.”

  Mia rubbed the wall with her hand. “Look.” She tossed the white particles on the floor.

  He sat down next to her. “Shabby paint.”

  Jordyn stood up and placed her fingers on Ben’s neck. “Caleb loves this kind of massage. You’ll never believe it, but Rebecca danced on the stage with me.”

  I tapped my leg. The entire world didn’t need to know I had danced on a strobe-lit stage.

  “It was totally cool,” Jordyn rubbed her hands up and down his neck.

  I looked at the blank blackboard, proudly. Had I misjudged Jordyn? She had dressed me up for a girls’ night out, and she was including me in everything. Even more amazing was that I got through it—dancing included—without a major episode.

  Jake switched his seat and sat down next to me. “Did ya?”

  I doodled in my notebook, not wanting to answer, even if Jordyn and Mia would have broadcast it.

  “Don’t ya love the lazy schedule here?” Jake asked. “Teachers late and all.”

  My school at home didn’t allow teachers to mosey into class five minutes late. “It must be an unwritten rule. An Israeli thing.”

  He took a pencil out of his backpack. “Will you help me with my English homework? Mia said you’re good at English.”

  What else had Mia said? “Yeah. I always get A’s.”

  He bent his head closer. “I’ll help you with calculus if you tell me who you want as a boyfriend.”

  I was thankful I had a cover. “I don’t need help with calculus.”

  Leah walked into our classroom. “All right, class. Your teacher’s ill. I’m subbing today. Get out your history books.”

  I moved my face away from Jake’s and reached for my backpack. He kicked my foot. “Better idea. Let’s do homework together and hook up.”

  My stomach rumbled. Jake usually stopped flirting after the first brush-off. It had to be a joke—charming guy embarrasses gawky girl. I stared at Leah’s black skirt and beige blouse. “Nah.”

  “Jake and Rebecca, stop talking unless you want to share with the class,” Leah said.

  Jordyn quickly ripped out a piece of notebook paper.

  “Get out your textbook and read chapter eleven.”

  Jake kicked my foot again. “C’mon. Let’s do homework together.”

  “Jake and Rebecca, stop talking.”

  I opened my book and checked Jake’s. He highlighted his book with a blue marker. He sensed my stare, looked up, and mouthed, “Let’s study.”

  I looked down. Why did I have to stare at him? What happened at home proved I couldn’t trust anybody. Just like with Jordyn and Mia, I had to be extremely careful around him and not let myself get attached.

  Jordyn tapped my shoulder lightly and slipped a note on my desk.

  I smiled. She had passed me a note earlier with the words strawberry daiquiri underlined. I lifted the top of the paper slowly as if it were a prized certificate. Jordyn’s loopy handwriting listed three Israeli guys and slutty Mia’s done them.

  Leah stood up from her desk. “I’ll pass out a worksheet in a moment.”

  My hand trembled. After three years of being called Pugly, I’d hoped my nickname would be dropped once middle school began. It was sixth grade, and we were at a new school, but Derrick’s locker was ten away from mine, and he yelled Pugly or barked at me every day. I did my best to pretend I didn’t care, even if it felt like sharp pieces of glass were cutting me on the inside. Lunch had been tricky because Derrick was there, we didn’t have assigned seats anymore, and I was unsure where to sit. With Derrick and his entourage laughing at me, nobody was going out of their way to save me a seat.

  But Grace had the same lunch, and we sat together. I was so grateful to have a friend to sit with. It made school somewhat bearable until I started to get anonymous “Pugly’s a slut” notes. I found the notes in my locker, written on notebook paper that had been folded into fat squares, thin rectangles, and my personal favorite, uneven triangles. That stupid nickname! It had turned school into Hell. I had a stack of notes that proved other people hated me. Who was writing them? How many people hated me?

  Jake kicked me again. “You spaced out. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I mouthed. I could either hide the note and stay loyal to Mia, or pass it and switch my alliance to Jordyn. Being in Jordyn’s camp was like an extra coat of protection; it would give me short-term immunity. But did I want to backstab Mia? Somebody would give her the note or leave it in a place where she would see it, like the slut notes I found in my locker.

  Jake’s hand swooped down and snatched the note. My heart dropped to the floor. How many kids at home had passed those notes about me? I was being the type of person who had let me down.

  “Cruel,” he whispered and tore it up.

  Chapter 8

  GRANDMA INSISTED I CALL HER Israeli friend Tova, once I got settled at the kfar. As promised, I called Tova, and I was surprised by her invitation for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I figured she’d invite me to dinner on a regular day and not necessarily a holiday, but I accepted because she was Grandma’s friend.

  The day of my visit, I knocked on her apartment door apprehensively. Who invites a total stranger to their home on a high holiday? Grandma didn’t talk about her much. Once in a while, she’d mention her “friend in Israel” as if she were a distant cousin who we saw at weddings and funerals. For all I knew, she was the type of grandmother who refused to replace her hearing aid battery and discussed politics endlessly.

  “Shalom.” Tova was Mom’s fortyish age. “Was the bus okay? Come in.”

  I smiled politely. “Your directions were great.” She couldn’t pick me up at the kfar because she didn’t have a car, and she’d given me directions on how to get to her apartment. The floors creaked as I walked in, and I smelled roast beef cooking. A small kitchen and dining room table were to the left of the short hallway. Directly past the hallway was a living room and balcony.

  “Yosi, Avi, Rebecca’s here,” Tova screamed, then lowered her voice to say, “Avi’s your age.”

  Grandma didn’t tell me about a son my age. Then again, she didn’t tell me Tova was younger than her usual friends. Yosi, Tova’s husband, limped into the hallway. Avi was right behind him.

  I noticed his blue eyes right away. His jean shorts and red Nike shirt were Americanized, but instead of tennis shoes or flip-flops, he wore brown Teva leather sandals, also fairly popular back in America. My mind went blank. I was glad to be wearing Mia’s Tel Aviv University tee shirt. I didn’t want to look like a tourist.

  Avi took my backpack, which had a change of clothes. Tova had insisted I stay the night for the holiday. “Nice to meet you,” Avi said in perfect English. “I’ll put your bag in Ilan’s room. By the way, Ilan’s my older brother.”

  Talk about good fortune. There I was following a good-looking guy who could speak English well. This was my chance to move up from one-word conversations with boys. Ilan’s room was decorated with basketball posters. I shifted my weight as Avi put down my backpack. What kind of question should I ask? Where do you go to school? Nah, that was something my mom would say. What’s your favorite subject? That was even worse.

  “I’ll show you my room,” he said.

  Please don’t let him be into sports like his brother, I thought. We’d have nothing to talk about.

  He had a Beatles poster on his wall. It got better when I saw his bookcase. He had hundreds of CDs, ranging from classic rock to pop and rap. There was even a concert stub from a Black Eyed Peas concert. The CDs stacked haphazardly on the floor were Israeli bands I
had never heard of.

  “I like it all,” he said.

  His room gave me an idea. “The Black Eyed Peas played here in Israel?” I asked.

  “This isn’t Greenland. They played here a couple of years ago. Have you seen them in concert?”

  “Not yet. My last concert was Bruno Mars.” It had been my only concert. Dad got tickets for my birthday, and I had been relieved to have somebody to go with, even if it was Dad.

  “What’s the word I’m thinking… cool. You want to listen to music?”

  “Yeah.” I smiled like Mia and Jordyn did around guys.

  He turned on his CD player.

  I sat down on his bed. His mattress was five times as thick as the thin plank I slept on at the kfar. I had to say something before I lost my chutzpah. “How many encores did the Black Eyed Peas do?”

  “Two. I’m missing one of their CDs. See if you can figure it out.”

  His CDs were slopped together according to artist, so I alphabetized them. “What happened to Bridging the Gap?”

  “Borrowed. Did you know some of the students at your school… behave badly?”

  “Delinquents. They seem okay. It’s like a kibbutz,” I said, although he wasn’t the outdoorsy, farmer type, and I couldn’t picture him living on a commune.

  “Kibbutz,” he said, as if it were beneath him. “Do you like the kfar?”

  “Yeah.” What wasn’t there to like about not being a loser? “Do you like your school?”

  “It’s one of the best in Tel Aviv,” he said.

  “What’s your favorite subject?” Oops, that slipped out.

  “Music,” he said.

  “For real?”

  “Science. What’s your favorite?”

  “English. You speak well.”

  “Thanks. I watch Saturday Night Live. Do you speak Hebrew?”

  “Nah.”

  Tova popped her head in. “Dinner’s soon.”

  I got up and walked toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Avi said.

  “To change for dinner.” Mom and Dad insisted I dress up on holidays at home.

  Avi squinted, puzzled. That confused me. “Don’t you celebrate Rosh Hashanah?” I asked stupidly.

  “Yes, there’s no school tomorrow.”

  “I’ll go change,” I said.

  “You don’t have to change.”

  “Okay,” Casual clothes were fine by me. Maybe there were Israeli customs I didn’t know about, like dressing up after dinner.

  At dinner, I sat down at the table across from Avi. Tova handed me a plate with potatoes, green beans, and two slices of roast beef. Yosi spoke in Hebrew that I didn’t understand.

  “He doesn’t speak English,” Avi said.

  “How’s the kfar?” Tova asked.

  “Good.” The roast beef had a distinct taste from a mysterious spice, but the potatoes and green beans were mouthwatering.

  Tova poured me water. “What’s your job?”

  “Landscaping.” I wasn’t sure what to say next. Certainly, I didn’t want to complain about my jerky supervisor.

  Tova continued the inquisition. “What are your roommates’ names?”

  “Mia and Jordyn.”

  “Are they Israeli?” Avi asked.

  “American.”

  “Do you get along with them?” Tova said.

  Tricky question, considering I was living with an unpredictable backstabber and a kindhearted social queen who were frenemies. “Yes. Dinner’s delicious. Much better than kfar food.”

  “Toda,” She beamed and turned to Avi. “What’d you get on your Arabic test?”

  Avi rolled his eyes. “Ninety-five.”

  “When will the new school basketball court be done?” she said.

  Avi answered her in Hebrew.

  I wondered what kind of prayers Avi, Tova, and Yosi would say when the sun set and Rosh Hashanah officially began.

  “Can we be excused?” Avi said.

  I stopped cutting my meat. Leaving the table early must have been a regular occurrence because Tova didn’t seem to mind when we stacked our plates in the sink a few moments later.

  In Avi’s room, he pulled out his desk chair, turned it around, and sat down.

  “What time does temple start?” I tried to sound peppy. I had packed my blue flowered dress and strappy sandals to wear.

  “Don’t know.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Didn’t everyone in Israel go to temple on Rosh Hashanah? It was a national holiday.

  “I don’t have to go to temple to be Jewish,” he said.

  I was beginning to like him more and more.

  “You can go with my parents.”

  “Nah.” I said.

  “What’s nah?”

  “No.”

  His mouth opened slightly. “You mean lo.”

  My pulse raced. “Lo. I don’t want to go. Do you do Shabbat prayers?” I thought of Leah lighting candles at the kfar every Friday.

  “Lo. You say them at home?”

  “Never,” I said. “We say them at the kfar.” I had memorized the prayers by the third time.

  “If you come next Friday, I’ll ask my parents to say them for you.”

  I smiled at the thought of another visit. “Who borrowed Bridging the Gap?” Was it at a girlfriend’s house?

  “I loaned it to my friend.”

  “Does he still have it?” I said.

  Avi turned down the volume. “I guess. He tells me he forgot it. Finally, I’m at his house months later and ask for it again. He tells me it is lost, but he doesn’t offer to replace it or let me download the songs using his account. He’s not my friend anymore.”

  “The word is ex-friend.” Kind of drastic for a CD. I would have let it slide to maintain the friendship.

  He picked up a CD from the floor. “You want to listen to Israeli music?”

  I nodded. Sitting on his bed, I closed my eyes for a moment. Thanks to Grandma and music, I was talking to a pretty boy. What a turnaround from the horrible situation at home!

  Not that I never tried to change things there. Two weeks after I received the first slut note, I’d decided I couldn’t take it anymore. Was my secret admirer right? Was I a slut? A whore? Ugly? Obviously, I was kind of a loser; otherwise, Derrick wouldn’t be dissing me. Whatever I was, it wasn’t who I wanted to be, and the respect that I had for myself was slipping away. I needed to take charge and become me again. When Mom came home from work that evening and tossed her purse on the kitchen counter, I begged her to transfer me to a different school.

  Mom had given me a hard look, and I knew from her puffy eyes she was exhausted from sitting in traffic after a long day of work, and she’d rather I tell her school was wonderful and let her ooh and aah at my schoolwork. Like always, she thought I was overreacting to the name-calling. I ran to my room, slammed the door shut, and called Dad, hoping I could transfer to the school in his neighborhood. But Dad said Mom and I lived near the better school. Well, he had said it all: I was strictly a weekend daughter, and that was how he wanted to keep it.

  Avi turned up the volume on his stereo. “I love this song.”

  “Louder,” I insisted. He moved the CD pile over and sat down on the floor, then threw an Israeli CD my way. “Put it in the pile by your hand.”

  I caught it and smiled. Whatever we were listening to sounded different than anything I had heard before: hip-hop and folk music mixed together. I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I was happy to listen to it, because I was with Avi.

  Later, we raided the refrigerator for leftover falafel and my new favorite: red-pepper hummus. Tova and Yosi came into the kitchen as I dipped my last piece of pita into the hummus. Yosi spoke too fast for me to understand, but I watched his light blue eyes, anyway. Eventually, he limped over to the couch and turned on the TV. Tova opened the fridge and put another bowl on the counter.

  Avi ladled his pita into the bowl. “Baba ghanoush.”

  I dunked a new piece of p
ita in. The consistency was the same as hummus, and it tasted similar except that eggplant replaced garbanzo beans as the main ingredient. “Good.”

  Tova nodded and spoke Hebrew to Avi. She took out a jar of honey from the cupboard and grabbed an apple from fruit basket. Avi poured honey into a bowl.

  “Will you be coming to synagogue tomorrow?” Tova asked.

  I waited for Avi to answer.

  “Lo,” Avi said.

  “Rebecca?” Tova sounded like Grandma would have. There was a slight You-should-come in her tone.

  “Lo. Thanks for the offer, though.”

  Avi handed me an apple wedge. I dipped it in the honey.

  Tova wiped the counter with a sponge and said something in Hebrew, ending it with, “Rebecca.”

  My face flushed. I should go to temple. A good guest follows the hostess, yet I was acting as if I was part of her family by refusing to go.

  Avi puckered his mouth. “Lo.”

  She shooed her hands at him, then a dry laugh bubbled from her mouth.

  Avi and I should have sat down at the table to eat properly. Snacking at the counter like I lived there was rude.

  “No English for the rest of tonight,” Tova said. “We take away your crutch.”

  She couldn’t be serious. “Don’t you want to practice English?” I asked. “Everybody at the kfar practices their English on us.”

  She walked over to the couch and sat down next to Yosi.

  “I told her we should wait,” Avi said.

  “Thanks.”

  “The word is toda.”

  “Toda,” I said, loud enough for Tova and Yosi to hear as we walked past them to his room.

  He turned on his stereo. “Ma sh’mech?”

  “English,” I pleaded.

  “Lo.” He blinked his black eyelashes.

  “Rebecca,” I said, like a baby. He wrote my name with Hebrew letters on his notebook. We both stayed quiet for the next hour while we listened to music.

  Later, I found a radio station playing English pop music.

  “Can we speak English yet?” I begged between songs.

  “Lo,” he said.

  “Please.” He didn’t answer. I threw in the Hebrew word for please: “Be׳vakasha.”

  He finally smiled at me. “Okay, Rebecca. We break the rule for music.”