The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

  I was lying on my bed, staring miserably at the ceiling, when Mom knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” I said, not getting up or tearing my eyes away from a crack in my ceiling, which, if you squinted, looked vaguely like the coast of California. It had been there for as long as I could remember, probably since Hannah was a kid, which was a strange thought: Hannah as a kid, long before I was even born.

  Mom took a seat on the foot of my bed. “I understand why you’re feeling unsettled. I wish I could fix it, but I can’t.”

  She put a hand on my shin and sighed. I sat up on my elbows. “She’s your sister. She loves you. And I know you don’t remember very well, but you love her, too.”

  “Okay,” I said, unconvinced.

  “When you were born, Hannah was eleven,” Mom said, the words barreling out in a gush of nostalgia. “She wanted to hold you always, and she’d get angry if anyone else besides Dad or I tried to. You used to stare into each other’s eyes and smile. Every day, right before she got home from school, you would cry, and then she would come through the door and you would light up and reach out your arms for her to take you. You adored her, and that’s what she’ll remember. So don’t act like a brat when she moves back in. It’ll upset her.”

  “Wouldn’t want that,” I said under my breath.

  “Don’t you miss her?” Mom asked. I knew my mother well enough to understand what she was really saying: I miss her. And it was crazy, but I could feel the jealousy creeping up my throat, putting me in a choke hold. If they missed her so much, did that mean I wasn’t enough?

  “No!” I cried. “She could be anyone moving into the house. If you told me you were going to take in some distant cousin, I wouldn’t be happy about that, either.”

  “How is that even remotely the same thing?”

  “I don’t want her here.” I kept saying it, but they weren’t listening. They didn’t want to hear. It was like we were speaking different languages; theirs was the language of the past, mine the language of the present. Why couldn’t they just understand?

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “Because I like our family the way it is! I don’t want things to change.” I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what having Hannah in the house might be like. What it might be like to have her sitting across from me at the dinner table in what for years had been just an empty chair. What it might be like to shop with her, watch TV with her, argue with her, laugh with her. How bizarre to have a sister and still be an only child. How was I supposed to know how to live with someone with whom the only thing I shared was DNA?

  “Don’t think of it as change,” Mom advised. “Think of it as everything going back to the way it was.”

  I let out a laugh, harder and harsher than I had intended. “Do you really think that’s what’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I really hope so.”

  2

  It probably would’ve been simpler for the Sisters of Grace to put Hannah on a plane to Chicago, but they were nothing if not old-fashioned. Hannah was coming home by train.

  Technically, Hannah could’ve switched lines in the city and taken another train straight into town, but Mom was adamant that we meet her.

  “She’s been in that convent for years, and we hardly ever went into the city back then,” she fretted, when I brought it up. It was a week later, Friday, and Hannah was scheduled to arrive the next day. My parents were noticeably on edge, especially Mom. She’d scrubbed every surface in the house until it gleamed, gone on a grocery-shopping tear, and even weeded in between the bricks in the front walkway, her most despised chore. I helped her, but she was still running around like a maniac, finding every random thing that had to get done before the weekend, trying to make everything perfect. “What if she gets lost, or hit by a car or something?”

  “Mom, she’s twenty-seven,” I pointed out. “She knows how to cross a street.”

  “She’s not used to all the people! And the noise and the confusion—it’ll be hard for her. Can’t you sympathize with that at all?”

  I couldn’t, really, but I let it go. “Okay, fine, chill out.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Dad said without bothering to look at me.

  “No way. Absolutely not. I won’t.”

  “You will,” he said calmly—too calmly, like he was forcing it. Like he wanted to reach across the table and smack me, and he probably did. For a second I wondered why I was doing this, torturing my parents with stubbornness, insisting on being mean about Hannah just to be mean. But then he said, “It’s no use arguing,” and I did what I always did in that situation—I argued.

  “I have homework to do,” I said.

  “It’s summer,” Mom said.

  “Yeah, but I have to prepare for the first week,” I reminded her. “That’s what happens when you’re forced to enroll in four AP classes—they give you tons of crap to do over the summer. I need to finish.”

  “We’re not picking Hannah up until tomorrow afternoon,” Dad said. “Finish tonight.”

  “I can’t tonight! It’s Erin’s first day back from her grandmother’s. We’re going to hang out.” I didn’t tell them that Erin’s parents weren’t home and she was inviting more than just me over, of course.

  “Yeah right,” Dad said. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re going to stay home and finish your summer work so that you’ll be free as a bird to pick Hannah up with us tomorrow. And that’s final.”

  I glanced at my mother, but all she did was nod to emphasize Dad’s decree.

  I wasn’t going to stay in all night doing homework. I was much further along than I’d told my parents, and anyway, I had plenty of time. I couldn’t admit that to them and ask permission to go to Erin’s, but luckily for me I had a lot of experience sneaking out of the house undetected. I said good night to my parents, who were already in bed, propped up on pillows watching television, then went downstairs, closed the door to my room, and shut off the light. Ten minutes later I left the room silently, pulling the door closed with the handle still turned, so there was nothing but the slightest click when I let go. I left through the garage, exiting the side door and unlatching the gate. Then I walked quickly to the corner and flagged down Reb, who’d come to drive me to Erin’s.

  The party was already in full swing by the time we got there. Reb dragged me into the kitchen and poured me a very strong vodka and Red Bull, which I chugged to catch up to the others. Erin walked into the kitchen draped all over Peter Armand, who played baseball for our high school. She looked drunk and happy; his cheeks were lightly smeared with pale pink lip gloss. She threw her arms around me and squeezed tight.

  “I missed you!” she cried. “I’m so glad to be out of my grandmother’s house, I can’t even tell you. There’s only so much Wheel of Fortune a girl can watch, y’know?” She grinned, but at Peter, not at me. He smiled back.

  “Isn’t he cute?” she whispered. “I didn’t think he’d come, but I texted him anyway and he showed up! Can you believe it?”

  “Sure,” I said, glad for her. She’d been goofy over Peter for months, since midway through the past semester, but Erin was goofy over a lot of guys; her affections ebbed and flowed like the tides, so you never knew who she liked at the moment until she told you.

  “Yes, we’re all thrilled,” Reb said, rolling her eyes. “Lucky you, Erin. He’s a real hunk of meat.”

  “Oh shut up,” Erin said, swatting at her with a dish towel. “Just because you haven’t gotten any since—”

  “Conversation over!” Reb cried, grabbing my hand and dragging me out of the kitchen. “Have fun with your boy toy!” she called back to Erin.

  “Ugh,” Reb said, tossing herself onto a vacant sofa. “I love her, but seriously, Peter Armand? Just the thought of him bores the crap out of me—boys should be wild and mysterious, not dumb and beefy. Erin has some taste issues.”

  “More for us,” I said, finishing off my drink and trying not
to grimace as the vodka stung my throat. I had a chronic beer-face condition; no matter what I was drinking, I ended up looking like I’d just eaten a live tarantula. It was very sophisticated.

  “Seriously,” Reb said. “So what’s up, buttercup? You’ve been pretty quiet since we got here.”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just drinking it all in.”

  She smiled and shook her head at me. “It is pretty exciting. I mean, a house party? In the suburbs? Who would’ve thought such a magical thing could exist?”

  I laughed.

  Reb folded her legs underneath her and tipped her cup at me. “So you excited for school to start, brainiac? I hear some of the whiteboards got replaced over the summer,” she said in a singsong.

  “Is anyone ever excited for school to start?” I asked. “Are you?”

  “Oh, God, no.” She scoffed. “But that’s because they’re making me retake geometry—did you know that a D-minus isn’t a passing grade?”

  “Really? I thought Ds got degrees,” I said, acting puzzled. Reb wasn’t a great student, which wasn’t to say she wasn’t smart; she just hated doing what she was told, which included completing homework and studying for tests. Her parents were always on her case about it, but when I asked her why she didn’t just put a little more effort into getting her grades up so that they would back off, she narrowed her eyes at me and said, “And give them the satisfaction?” There was no convincing her. Reb was who she was, and she knew what she knew, and she wasn’t apologizing for it to anyone.

  “Urban legend.” She yawned. “School sucks, but what can you do? It’s been a pretty good summer.”

  “Sure,” I said. Actually, it’d been a nerve-wracking summer—for me, at least. I’d spent way more time than I would’ve liked to admit worrying about what Derek was doing at camp hundreds of miles away, anxious about every missed phone date or unanswered email, even at times doubting that we had ever been together in the first place. I hadn’t expected Derek to like me, or to want to date me, and when it happened, I had been so taken by surprise that when he left for camp soon after, I started to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing.

  “When does Derek get back?” Reb asked, sensing, as was her gift, what I was thinking about.

  “Tomorrow. I was going to go over to his house after he got home but—” I stopped midsentence, wondering if I should tell anyone about Hannah. Reb and I met in high school, and by that time Hannah was long gone. It was possible Reb didn’t even remember that I had a sister. It felt like a lot of explaining to do.

  “I have this family thing,” I finished lamely. “Can’t get out of it.”

  “That sucks,” Reb said. “When’s it over?”

  “Never,” I sighed. She cocked her head and looked at me questioningly. “I don’t know. It could be a long day.”

  “Bums,” she said. I didn’t know if she was shortening “bummer” or talking about my parents. Either way, it was a little incongruous and funny. Reb was funny-looking, too. She had this weird hair that was straight in some parts and curly in others, mixed up all over her head. She didn’t own a brush, so it always looked wild and ridiculous, but in a cool way. She had long thin legs and long thin arms, freckles, and a little bit of a belly, and guys were always telling her how sexy and gorgeous she was. Not that Reb needed their approval. She said and did whatever she wanted and didn’t care what anybody thought, or never let on if she did.

  Erin was different. Girls like her were the reason the word “cute” was invented. She personified it, with her big blue eyes, pert nose, and diminutive height. She was the only girl I knew who owned real pearls and actually wore them, regularly and unironically. And contrary to Reb, Erin was as boy-crazy as they came, to the point of casually dating several boys at once.

  I was … well, it was hard to say. If I had to make a judgment about my looks, I would say I was inconspicuously nice-looking. I was tall, with blue eyes and thick, wavy blond hair that I wore down and long. I could’ve stood to lose a few pounds, but I was too lazy and not vain enough to do anything about it. I wasn’t as confident as Reb, or decent at faking confidence, like Erin, so I sort of faded into the background of most social situations, including school.

  During my awkward phase I spent more than a little time staring at Hannah’s graduation picture over the fireplace and wondering if someday I might look like her. Hannah was gorgeous, at least before she entered the convent, because that’s how unfair the world is. What a waste. If she was going to be a nun, couldn’t she at least have been ugly? Who knew what she was going to come back looking like, but in her graduation photo, which still had its prized place on our mantel, she was radiant. Long blond hair and blue eyes—like mine, but way prettier—great skin, tall and effortlessly thin. She got all the good genes and at the first possible second covered everything up with a habit.

  “Did Derek like camp?” Reb asked, clearly trying to draw me out. “Have you heard from him?”

  “Got a letter a couple of days ago,” I told her. “He’s having a lot of fun up there. Ever since we got together he’s been talking about that camp and finally going back as a counselor—or junior counselor, I guess. You don’t get to be a full counselor until you’re eighteen. He’s sad to be leaving.” Derek got shipped off to the same summer camp six years earlier when his parents were finalizing their messy divorce, and he said that rather than making him feel abandoned and lonely, the camp saved him. If they had it year-round, that was where he’d choose to be, he said.

  I was excited about Derek’s return, but I was nervous, too. We’d known each other pretty well for about a year before he asked me out, and when he came home at the end of the previous summer, he bragged about all the girls he’d made out with under the dock, which I guess was an amorous place at summer camp. I hadn’t had the guts to ask him before he left if our relationship status applied while he was in Wisconsin, and it seemed ridiculous to put the question in a letter and wait in agony for a response, so I decided to have a little faith. It was a hard thing for me to do, and very soon I was going to see whether it was justified. The thought of it made my stomach drop.

  “Reb?” I asked tentatively.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you think it’s possible that Derek cheated on me at camp?”

  Reb thought about the answer before giving it, as was her way. “I don’t know,” she replied finally, saying the words slowly. “I mean, I think he really likes you. But I don’t like to predict people’s behavior because it puts funny ideas in your head and then half the time you’re wrong. So.”

  I was silent.

  “I know that’s not the answer you wanted to hear,” she said after giving me a quiet minute. “But I don’t want to make you any promises just to soothe your ego or whatever.”

  “I know,” I said, secretly wishing she’d just said she didn’t think he’d ever look at another girl now that he was with me. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” She smiled broadly and yanked me off the couch. “I think you need a refill.”

  We wandered into the kitchen. Erin had the contents of her father’s liquor cabinet displayed on the counter, and Reb set to preparing me a drink; when she was the designated driver, she liked to play bartender, and since she was the only one of us with her own car, she’d gotten pretty good at it. I was more than a little buzzed by then, but I didn’t want to let on and look like a loser. Reb handed me a Solo cup full of something that smelled like nail polish remover and fruit snacks.

  “Reb,” I said. “Do you believe in God?” The second I said it, I realized I had no idea why I was asking, and from the look on her face, neither did Reb.

  But that was what I loved about Reb—she was always game. She took a while to consider the question, then said, “Oh, I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Probably?” Reb was usually so sure about everything, one way or the other. It was odd to hear her expressing anything like doubt or uncertainty.

  “I mean, I’m Jewish, r
ight?”

  “Right,” I said, not exactly sure where she was going with this.

  “So it’s really tough to say no,” she continued. “It’s not like my family is very observant or anything—I don’t think I’ve been to temple since my bat mitzvah, which was, like, a zillion years ago—”

  “Three,” I reminded her. I didn’t meet Reb until freshman year, so I didn’t go to her bat mitzvah, but knowing Reb, I was sorry to have missed that party.

  “—but God always had a place at the table, I guess,” she finished. “He was always around, somewhere, like a—a crazy uncle? ‘Crazy’ is the wrong word.… You know what I mean.”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Why do you ask?” Reb took a leisurely sip of whatever mocktail she’d whipped up for herself, peering at me with interest over the rim of her cup.

  I shrugged. This would’ve been the moment to talk about Hannah—she was the reason I’d brought the subject up in the first place—but I didn’t like to start conversations without having some idea where they were going. I let it drop. “Just curious. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it.”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, as if it was obvious. “Nobody talks about that stuff, really.”

  “True,” I said. Now that I thought about it, I realized I had no idea if Erin believed in God, or Derek, either.

  “Do you believe in God?” she asked, as I knew she would.

  I sighed. “Jury’s out,” I said. “Empirically, there’s no evidence. You can’t prove it—scientifically, I mean.”

  Reb laughed. “Oh, Caro,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’re such a nerd.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What I mean is you’re so up here all the time,” she said, jabbing a finger at her temple. “I’m pretty sure most people who believe in God don’t think about him scientifically.”