You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

I’m so numb, I can’t even feel her scalpel anymore. Peabody students are allowed to take classes on the Hopkins campus, but I can’t imagine what kinds of courses would interest Adina.

I shrug like I don’t care, though there are few things I care about more at the moment.

She stands. “I’ll figure it out later, I guess. I’m going back to sleep.”

I wash out her glass and place it in the dishwasher so our parents don’t have to deal with it later. Typical careless Adina. Then I roll the evil-eye bracelet off my wrist and slip it into my pocket.

Suddenly it seems like I’m the one struggling more than she is. I’m the one stuck deciding where to go to school. I’m the one suffocating beneath all this guilt. I’m the one who can’t figure out how the hell to be happy with my own result.

“Why did you pick it?” I call as she climbs to stairs to her room.

Halfway up, she pauses. Doesn’t even look back at me. Then she says, as though it really is that simple: “Because you wanted it so badly.”

After I get home from my run and shower—another activity only occasionally prohibited on Shabbat, but it’s up to the individual and this individual needs a shower—it’s time for Saturday-morning services at the synagogue.

“Is Ima coming?” I ask Aba, who’s waiting for me in the hall.

He shakes his head, then readjusts his kippah. Ima knitted it for him. “Not feeling up to it. And Adi’s still sleeping. I didn’t want to disturb her.”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek so I don’t say anything. Of course, better not disturb my doomed, beautiful sister.

Our walk to the synagogue is chilly and filled with Aba’s chatter about his ivrit class. He asks me about my impending college choice, but I give only vague, one-word answers.

We’ve been going to the same synagogue since Adina and I were children. We had our bat mitzvah here, and Rabbi Levine, a six-foot-tall man with short silver hair, still leads the congregation. Aba exchanges hellos with the Mizrahis and his other synagogue friends, both American and the few other Israeli transplants like my mother, who all pull pitiful faces when they see she’s not here.

Rabbi Levine talks about this week’s Torah portion, Terumah, in which God tells Moses to collect an offering from the Israelites to build a sanctuary so God can live among them. If my life were a movie, the Torah portion would parallel whatever problems I’m facing. I’d emerge from the synagogue with new energy, full of solutions.

It doesn’t. And I don’t.

“It’s a shame Adi missed that,” Aba says afterward.

Right. It would have meant so much to her, I’m sure. I pull my coat tighter around me as we trek outside. It’s too cold for April. “Did you know Adina’s been skipping school?” I’m a tattletale. I don’t care.

“The principal has called a few times,” he says. “Ima and I are still deciding how to bring it up to her.”

“Seriously?” I sputter. “She gets a free pass to act however she wants now? Even with her parents?”

“She’s fragile, Tov.” He hunches his shoulders, shielding himself from either the cold or my accusation. “You know your sister. She can be . . . volatile. I love her, but I don’t always know how to act around her. I’m still figuring it out.”

“You and me both,” I mutter, wondering if I’ll ever figure it out.

Though there are only a few months left of senior year, I drop out of student council, too. My afternoons are now wide-open, lonelier even than my sister’s. She’s never been involved in school, and now it’s my turn.

Since seventh period is now free, I spend it in the library mulling over my college acceptances. I got into a half-dozen public and private schools in Washington and across the country. The pain of losing Johns Hopkins has dulled to a bruise. It hurts only when I imagine Adina there next year.

Someone taps my shoulder, and I twist in my seat to find Zack.

“What are you doing here?”

“Abusing my hall pass privileges.” He shows me a wooden paddle with GET OUT OF CLASS FREE written on it. Gently, he bops my arm with it. “You’re cute when you’re concentrating hard. What are you working on?”

I show him my pros and cons lists. “Trying to plan out my entire future.”

He kneads my shoulders, and I lean into him. A librarian shakes her head at us, smiles, and looks away.

“You’ve been grinding your teeth a lot.”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s annoying.”