You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

I used to think I was lucky to have my family. My parents were present, caring, kind. They are genuinely good people. They pushed us, but not as hard as we pushed ourselves. True ambition has to come from within—I’ve always believed that. These days, though, at least one person is missing from the dining room table at any given meal. It makes me wonder if my family will ever be whole again. With Adina on the other side of the country in the city I was supposed to be in, maybe not.

Maybe it was wrong of me to think I was ever entitled to that place simply because I worked hard. Surely I could have done more. Taken extra classes, applied to other science programs? God, the past eighteen years have exhausted me. I can’t imagine having worked any harder.

“What do you two have planned tonight?” Tess asks.

“Someone on student council is throwing a senioritis party later,” I say. “We’re all supposed to bring an old essay to throw into a big bonfire. Or in Zack’s case, an old art project?”

Zack’s decided on the Rhode Island School of Design, and I have already teased him multiple times that the RISD mascot is Scrotie, a giant walking penis.

“Senioritis party. I love it,” Mikaela says.

No one talks about where I’m going because that is still a mystery. Zack’s careful not to mention Johns Hopkins, and he must have asked his parents not to say anything about my college decision either.

Tess glances at her watch. “We should probably get going if we want to get good seats. We have tickets to a lecture on green homes at Town Hall. You two mind cleaning up here?”

“Sure,” Zack says as he starts stacking plates. “I’d hate for you to have bad seats for a lecture.” Meanwhile, I try to act casual about the fact that Zack and I are about to be left alone in his house and nearly drop a glass of water.

After his parents leave, it takes us only ten minutes to clear the table and load the dishwasher. I don’t know how long a lecture about green homes can last, but probably not an insignificant amount of time.

“Your parents left us alone,” I say, stating the obvious, anticipation forming goose bumps on my skin.

“They did.”

“Your parents trust you to be alone in the house with . . . me?”

“Are you not trustworthy?” he asks with a sideways grin, leaning back against the counter next to me, bumping me with his hip. “I’ve racked up a lot of good-son points over the years. I may not get the best grades, but my moms and I talk about everything. So, yes. They trust me.”

I position my body in front of him and run my hands up his chest. “Does that mean we shouldn’t go upstairs to your room?”

“It means we absolutely should,” he says, but once we’re up there, something pulls my attention from him.

“Quite a collection you’ve got,” I say, pointing to a shelf of Holocaust books.

“Yeah. I went through a phase when I was younger.”

“Didn’t we all?” I say.

He sits down on his bed next to the bookshelf. “You too?”

“My shelf is practically your shelf’s twin.”

“My grandparents gave me Jewish books every holiday, every birthday. I got worried I might get desensitized to it all, but nope. I’m not.” He pats the bed next to him, and I sink down and lean my head on his shoulder.

“Did you feel different from everyone else? Like, because you didn’t celebrate the same holidays?”

“My family’s pretty secular—not nearly as Jewish as yours, as you know—but yes. Every December my teacher made me get up in front of the class and talk about Chanukah, so I told the story about the light burning for eight nights and that’s why we my parents gave me eight presents, one on each night. I probably embellished a lot. I don’t think Batman or Spider-Man were in the original version.” He gives a sheepish grin. “I didn’t know why I celebrated Chanukah or why I didn’t celebrate Christmas. I just knew that it made me different.” Zack wraps an arm around my shoulders. “For a while I didn’t get it,” he says, “why we didn’t have a Christmas tree or lights, or egg hunts for Easter. But you understand.”

“I do. Have you heard the phrase ‘klal Yisrael’?”

He shakes his head. “Something . . . about Israel?”

“Ha-ha. Yes. It means all of Israel—that all Jews are connected.”

He smiles. Warm. “I feel that way all the time.”

No matter what else changes, religion is constant. Every time I read a portion of the Torah at synagogue or say a prayer in Hebrew or observe a holiday, I’m awed that people have been doing this exact same thing for hundreds of years.

I don’t know if I can verbalize exactly how important Judaism is to me, how it makes me feel that I’m not alone. With Zack, I feel less alone too, even when everything else is falling apart.