Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust

by Leanne Lieberman

  Jesse starts the car and pulls into the traffic. He keeps his eyes on the road the whole way home, and I focus on trying not to cry. When we get to my house, I get out of the car without even looking at him. Then I slink up the stairs, lock myself in the bathroom and get in the shower. As soon as the hot water starts to pound down, I let myself cry, sobbing as if the world is ending.

  I spend the rest of the weekend crying in my room, alternating between hoping Jesse will text or call and trying to convince myself that he never will. He doesn’t. I call Alexis and tell her everything. When she says I did the right thing, I hang up on her in a burst of fresh tears. When I’m not crying, I stress about sitting next to Jesse in biology and whether he’ll tell the other guys I turned in the armband. I check Facebook over and over, but no one has any new comments about the armbands.

  On Sunday evening Zach comes into my room, carrying the wooden frame of a star lantern. “I made your lantern for you,” he says. “I thought we could do the tissue part together.” I look up from my damp pillow. Zach’s made the frame of a star lantern, but it’s a six-sided Jewish star, not the five-sided star I’d imagined.

  I start to cry again. “It’s not supposed to be a Jewish star, it’s supposed to be a regular star, five-sided,” I whimper.

  “Oh.” Zach lifts up the lantern and peers into it. “I couldn’t find your design. No wonder all the measurements were funny.” He hesitates. “I could fix it maybe or make another one.”

  “Don’t bother,” I grumble.

  Zach’s face falls. “I just wanted to cheer you up, so you’d stop crying,” he says.

  “I’m not crying,” I mutter into my pillow.

  “Yes you are.”

  “Zach, go away.”

  He leaves quietly, and I feel even worse for being mean to him.

  By Monday morning I’m exhausted from crying. My eyes ache, and my face feels as stiff as a mask. I get ready for school, going through the motions of eating and dressing. At school I go straight to the biology lab and sit on my stool with my coat on. Jesse comes and sits down next to me but doesn’t glance my way. I feel like crying again, but I’m too tired. Instead I focus on breathing calmly, until Mr. Saunders announces we’ll start the fetal pig dissection tomorrow. Then I let my head fall to the lab table. I can’t work with Jesse, but I also can’t dissect a disgusting dead pig myself. I’m feeling desperate enough to ask Brooke and Chantal if I can work with them, but they’re not here today.

  At lunchtime I don’t bother going back to my locker. I just walk out of English class and head home. I eat my lunch in front of the TV, staring blankly at a talk show.

  Two weeks pass in the same suspended state: school, lunch at home, running and homework after school. My hand heals enough for me to start playing basketball, and I shoot hoops alone in my driveway for hours. Chloe and Em press for details about why Jesse and I aren’t talking; I tell them we had a fight. Jesse and I do the dissection together without making eye contact. Actually, Jesse does the dissection and I watch, a hand over my mouth. When an involuntary “Ew” escapes me at the first incision, he stops to glare at me. He hates me, I think, and I can’t blame him. He cuts up the rest of the pig according to the handout and points things out in a monotone, without looking at me. After a while he becomes so engrossed, I think he forgets I’m there. He even asks Mr. Saunders if he can take his pig home to get help from his dad, who is a doctor. Mr. Saunders says, “No, dissections can’t leave the school or even the room. Remember grade eight? Remember the cow’s eyeballs in the cafeteria?”

  Jesse blushes and says, “Gotcha.”

  The only good news is that Brooke has hooked up with this guy Ray, so everyone’s talking about them and not the Nazi armbands. Ray’s new at our school, and according to rumors, he’s nineteen and does hard drugs. Brooke skips the entire week of biology and pig dissection. Chloe says she’s heard Brooke’s living with her dad, which is crazy because she hates him. It’s as if Brooke’s a different person now, one I don’t know anymore.

  At home, everyone focuses on Zach’s bar mitzvah preparations. Zach works every afternoon with his tutor on his Torah portion and the prayers, although he refuses to meet Rabbi Birenbaum. Eventually Zach compromises (with my help) and chants his Torah portion for the rabbi over Skype. Mom and Dad have their fingers crossed that Zach will shake hands with Rabbi Birenbaum, but I think it’s unlikely. The guest list swells to twenty-four, but Zach doesn’t seem to mind. The only people he wants to invite are his teachers from school.

  Mom plans an airplane-themed party with vintage-aircraft napkins and a giant biplane cake. She even finds a biplane tie Zach likes. Dad books a jazz trio to play in the front hall for the party, and I work on the decorations with Mom, which is a good distraction. Mom loves my suggestion of hanging Zach’s plane lanterns in the backyard. It’s too cold to have the party outside, but the lanterns will glow through the glass at the back of the house and look really cool. I also suggest we line the front walk with paper-bag lanterns, like at the lantern festival. We sit up late one night eating popcorn and using a hole punch to cut Stars of David and airplanes into the bags. I cut a few bags with the five-pointed stars I originally designed for a lantern. Mom tries to ask me about Jesse, but I hold up my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She doesn’t press any further.

  When we’re finished all the bags, we go outside to the front steps and light a candle in one of the bags to try it out. Goose bumps run up my arms as a golden biplane glows through the lantern. I want to light all the bags right then in a circle on the front lawn and lie down in the middle of them.

  The Friday before Zach’s bar mitzvah, Mom and I have appointments with the hairdresser; then we all have family photos—Zach’s promised not to tell me to fuck off—and finally a family dinner at Aunt Susan and Uncle Steve’s house. Zach is excited and formally greets each of our aunts and uncles at the dinner, shaking their hands. He’s wearing his biplane tie, even though it’s supposed to be for tomorrow, because he likes it so much. “Tomorrow is my bar mitzvah,” he tells everyone, as if they didn’t already know. Zach looks so happy that for the first time since the run with Jesse, I feel my spirits lift.

  Back at home, Zach retreats to his video games and Mom and Dad drink scotch in the living room with my Aunt Barb and Uncle Dan, who are staying with us. I get into my pajamas and read in my room for a while, but I’m too excited to sleep, so I wander down to the basement and sit at the workbench. Next to Zach’s plane lanterns lies the frame of the star lantern he made for me. He’s glued it together so neatly, even building in a space for a candle. I sigh and decide to finish it up, to say thank you to Zach. I work until past midnight, carefully gluing on blue tissue in neat strips and adding a string to hang it. When I’m done, I leave it outside Zach’s door so he’ll see it in the morning.

  Saturday morning Zach leads the whole service and chants his Torah portion without once looking up at the congregation. When he finishes chanting, Mom has to call his name so that he’ll look up and see us throwing candies at him. I manage to hit him right in the head with a Lieber’s gummy candy, his favourite. Then we all have to wait while Zach chews the candy he’s stuffed in his mouth. Zach does manage to shake the rabbi’s hand, but he decides to skip the second half of the lunch and walk all the way home. We find him sleeping in a lawn chair in the backyard when we get home an hour later.

  By 7:00 pm our house is a flurry of party preparations. The jazz trio is hanging out in the living room, and the caterers have taken over the kitchen and dining room, setting out trays for the party that has swelled to thirty guests. Zach doesn’t care about the party because Dad has given him an incredibly complicated new model-plane kit and set him up at a card table in a corner of the dining room. At first Mom doesn’t like the way the card table and the messy kit look, but Dad explains, “This way he’ll stay downstairs for most of the night, or at least until he finishes the kit.”

  Mom beams. “Brilliant!” Then the
y kiss even though the caterers can see them from the kitchen.

  Once I’m dressed in the beautiful black velvet cocktail dress with spaghetti straps that Mom bought me, I head to the front yard to set out the paper-bag lanterns and hang Zach’s star. The planes are already hanging in the backyard.

  It’s a beautiful night, crisp and clear, with the stars glimmering through the bare tree branches. I shiver as the night air cools my bare arms.

  Just as I’m hanging the star lantern from a branch of the Japanese maple beside our front door, I hear someone on the path behind me. I imagine it’s an early guest, but when I turn around, Jesse is standing on the flagstones.

  I draw in my breath. “You scared me.”

  “Oh, sorry. Hey, you look really nice.”

  “Thanks. It’s Zach’s bar mitzvah party tonight.” Jesse also looks great. He’s wearing the toque that makes his hair fall into his eyes the way I like. I start to blush, so I turn away from him and focus on lighting the candle in the star lantern. The candle glows and flickers, making the tree’s shadows look ghostly beautiful.

  “Did you make that?” Jesse points to the star.

  “Well, sort of. I started it—it was supposed to be a five-pointed star—but Zach finished it, and, well, it turned into a Jewish star instead.”

  “It looks cool.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So,” Jesse says slowly, “what are you doing now?”

  “Well, I have to finish up some decorations. People will be here soon.”

  “Oh, I should go then.” Jesse starts backing away.

  “You could help me, if you wanted to,” I blurt out.

  “Um, sure.”

  I hand Jesse a stack of the paper-bag lanterns. “We need to set these up along the walkway and then light candles inside them.” I show him how to fold the tops of the bags out to keep them open. Jesse nods and takes the bags, and we work silently in the dim light, adding the candles and then lighting them with Dad’s long barbecue lighter. I don’t look at Jesse the whole time, because I need to keep my nervousness under control. When all the lanterns are lit, I step onto the sidewalk. Jesse follows me and we stand in silence, gazing up the walkway. The lanterns glow like a row of little bonfires, leading up to the star in the tree. The effect is enchanting, and I shiver and wrap my arms tight around myself.

  Jesse asks quietly, “Why a star lantern?”

  At first I can’t think of an answer. I shrug. I mull it over, trying not to think about why Jesse is here, although I can feel a flicker of excitement start to burn in my heart. I look up at him. “Maybe because it’s something that burns, but it’s beautiful and far away and doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  Jesse nods. “I tried texting you before I came over, but I didn’t hear back from you.”

  “My phone’s up in my room.” I hesitate. “Why did you text?”

  “I wanted to know if I could come over.”

  “Oh. So here you are.”

  “Yeah.” Jesse pauses. “I guess I just wanted to see you.”

  I smile and hold out my arms. “Well, here I am.” I spin around on one of my high heels. Jesse smiles at me, and then he reaches out one hand and pulls me toward him. He wraps his arms around me, pressing me to him. It’s more of a big squeeze than a hug, almost too rough, but it says everything I want it to, and that’s enough for now. We stand there, locked in each other’s arms, for what feels like forever. When he finally lets me go, I silently take his hand and lead him back to the front yard, into the midst of the flickering lanterns. We stand there, not looking at each other, not speaking, just admiring the glow of the small flames.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Carole Lieberman, Lucien Lieberman, Dianne Scott, Sarah Tsiang and Jeff Waller for their advice and suggestions on this book. I am especially grateful to Sarah Harvey for her careful editing and to Pamela Paul for her support.

  Leanne Lieberman is the author of two other novels for young adults, Gravity and The Book of Trees. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, with her husband and two sons. For more information, visit www.leannelieberman.com.