Sure, that sounds fun.
Awsome, can’t wait.
&n
bsp; We make plans to have dinner beforehand, and even though he misspelled “awesome,” I’m grinning when Adi returns with candy.
“What is it?” she asks.
“Nothing,” I say quickly, shoving my phone on the bedside table. “Just the movie. What’d you get?”
She spreads her haul on the bed. I snatch the M&M’s and she chooses a bag of jelly beans, both of which are kosher. They’re the types of candy we used to get when we went to the movies together. More accurately: when we sneaked in candy from the drugstore next to the theater.
Adi in pajamas, her long hair in a messy ponytail, carefully picking out all the peach and pear jelly beans because those are her favorites, looks so innocent and childlike. It makes the reality of what will one day happen to her—to her body and her mind—seem more unjust.
She never wanted to know.
“Adina,” I start gently, gently, because I have to acknowledge it if we’re going to move forward. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for forcing you to take the test. That should have been your own personal decision.”
She chews loudly on a jelly bean. “I don’t want to talk about it, Tovah.” But she doesn’t say it in a mean way, and when the movie ends and another one starts, we don’t turn off the TV.
During the opening credits, after the actor’s names flash onscreen, I say, “I love Camila Rivera’s production design.”
I watch Adi, waiting for her to grin. She does, remembering our game.
“Oh, yeah, and don’t even get me started on Richard Potter’s music supervising,” she adds as his name pops up. “Truly top-notch.”
We used to do this all the time: pretend we knew the crew the same way we’d know the actors.
“They got Yvonne St. James to do the casting? She’s my favorite!”
We’re both laughing now. The game reminds me that for most of our lives, we were inseparable. Our parents begged the school to put us in different third-grade classes because they thought it would be a good idea to get us out of our comfort zones. By the end of the first week, I’d made three new friends and Adi had cried twice. So back I went into her class, where I had an automatic partner for every classroom activity, group project, and presidential fitness test, which we both failed because we couldn’t touch our toes with our fingertips.
After a while, we fall back into relative silence. We don’t talk about college or boys or any of the things I talk about with Lindsay. Every commercial break, I want to interrogate her. Who were you texting all day? How are your conservatory applications coming? When are you coming back to synagogue, and what do you do when you’re not there? How are you doing with all this? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?
But I don’t. I keep the questions locked inside because even though we only open our mouths to make fun of a particularly cliché line of dialogue, Adina and I never have this anymore. In a few days we’ll be back at home, but for now it’s just me and her, and I let myself pretend this can last longer than tonight. That we can have this when our futures turn real again.
Winter
Fifteen
Adina
DECEMBER IS FOR DEAD THINGS. Only a few leaves cling to tree branches, and a raccoon corpse is pancaked on the side of the freeway. I read somewhere that more people die in December than any other month of the year.
I’m thinking about death as I sit across from Maureen, the genetic counselor, because even though her office is aiming for cheery, with its lavender walls and paintings of sunsets, death is everywhere. This is the place where I learned my life would change, and where, ostensibly, I will learn how to handle it.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Maureen says. Her chin-length blond hair frames her face, and she’s dressed casually in a black sweater and dark jeans. There’s a whole-note-shaped birthmark beneath her left eye.
“Really?” I came only because this is my chance to finally get answers to the questions Tovah’s research sparked. My parents still want me to meet with our rabbi, and though I’ve reluctantly begun attending synagogue with them again every week, a religion I don’t believe in won’t give me the answers I need. An old man in a kippah cannot possibly understand what I am feeling.
“Sometimes people test positive and I never see them again,” she says softly. “This is a good step, a huge one, even if you don’t realize it.”
“Oh.” I tear at a loose thread on my tights. “Thanks. I think.”
Maureen offers a sympathetic smile that scrunches up her birthmark, turns it into a whole rest and makes me wonder how much bad news she’s given over her lifetime. “Tell me how you’ve been these past few weeks.”
The past few weeks have been a seesaw of bad and good. Bad: everything this office represents. Good: everything with Arjun.