She pours herself a glass of orange juice, and we do an awkward dance in the kitchen for a few seconds as we try to get out of each other’s way. Then she sits at the table across from me. Casually. Like staying out all night is something she does all the time.
“Were you with that guy?” I ask. “Your mysterious boyfriend?”
Adina shrugs. Takes a sip of juice.
She was. She was with a guy the whole night. On Shabbat.
“Did you have sex with him?” The word isn’t frightening anymore. After all, Zack and I are on the precipice of it.
“I have been for a while.”
“Oh,” I say softly.
He’s not my first, she said before her audition trip. I assumed she meant first boyfriend. First kiss. Not the first everything else.
I guess I thought, even after everything we’ve done to each other, that she’d tell me when the first everything else happened. I can’t believe I missed it. That I have no idea who it was or when it was, if it was good and if she felt different afterward.
“It isn’t a big deal,” she says, unwinding the scarf and fluffing her hair.
My sister looks calm. Relaxed. Happy. Is it because of the sex? Maybe she should be having as much sex as she wants. Why shouldn’t she?
If I’d tested positive instead of my sister, there’d be no Zack. I’m sure of that. There’d be none of these Adina mind games. Would I have been as heartbroken over Johns Hopkins? I planned so much for both outcomes, but none of this is what I expected. At all.
Adina is the person I’m going to have to take care of the rest of my life. We’ll always be tied together like this. Every day of my life, I’ll face this nightmare of my supreme genetic luck. Over and over and over.
I force myself to drink a third of the protein shake; if I don’t, I’ll feel miserable my entire run. Adina smiles at something on her phone, draws a design on her glass with a fingertip, hums something off-key under her breath. God, she really is happy. Evil eyes glint on her wrist.
“You’ve been wearing the bracelet every day too, right?” I say, searching for some common ground between us. Like after everything we’ve been through, maybe all we have in common is a piece of jewelry.
“Oh.” Her eyes dart from her bracelet to mine. “The bracelets from savtah.”
“Yeah.” I take a closer look at hers. The bracelets are nearly identical. The beads on hers are larger, a deeper blue. I haven’t noticed before.
“Well, mine belonged to savtah,” Adina says, and when I raise my brows in confusion, she continues: “Ima only had one actual heirloom. She found yours online and told me not to tell you. I guess yours does look a little cheap.”
“What are you—,” I start, shaking my head, not sure if she’s telling the truth or merely trying to hurt me. “You—you’ve been skipping school,” I wind up firing back at her, fighting for leverage in this conversation. “Your teachers have been asking me where you are.” To be fair, it was only one teacher we have in common, Ms. Hawkins, who teaches both regular gov and my AP US Government class. She mentioned to me yesterday that she hadn’t seen Adina in more than a week and calls to my parents had gone unanswered.
“Why does it matter? I’m going to Peabody next year anyway.”
A pause. I blink at her.
“You’re . . .” The words dissolve on my lips. She’s strapped me to an operating table and cut out my tongue. “Peabody, as in the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins? You’re going to Baltimore??
??
Her lips twist into a strange smile. She drags the scalpel from my mouth to my heart. “Yes. I am. My acceptances arrived yesterday. I got in everywhere I auditioned, but it was an easy choice. Baltimore was incredible when I was there, Tovah. I loved it. All the old architecture, and how artsy it is, and the cute little neighborhoods . . . There’s so much history there, you know?”
Of course I fucking know.
“And the Peabody campus is much prettier than Johns Hopkins. JHU looks like any old college campus, but Peabody is like something out of a movie.”
Any old college campus. How dare she make it sound ordinary.
She continues to babble about Baltimore. My Baltimore. She’ll walk those cobblestone streets and absorb all the energy of a brand-new place. Maybe she deserves exactly that. Surely she does. She tested positive, so she gets everything else she wants, and I get indecision and confusion and choices, choices, choices.
“I was supposed to be there,” I say hollowly, as though I had some claim to it. I wasn’t good enough. Adina knows it. I know it. The entire city of Baltimore knows it.
“You didn’t get in.” She finishes her juice and gets up, leaving her empty glass on the table. “Hey, since you’re the expert, do you think I should take any classes at Johns Hopkins my freshman year?”