October

Surrounded by hordes of men, absorbed in all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world—such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood . . .

—Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death

On Sunday night, after an hour-long failed experiment with styling mousse, I headed to Sophia’s recital. The evening, advertised as an exhibition of Kol Neshama’s brightest musical talent, doubled as an important annual fundraiser. Tickets ranged from one hundred dollars to well over a thousand for our most esteemed donors—the Bellows, the Harrises—though I procured a student rate of thirty-six dollars. My mother tried accompanying me, eager as she was for anything vaguely cultural, but I convinced her it would mostly be a student affair, that I was better off attending with friends and that adult ticket prices were, anyway, prohibitively expensive.

In truth, I wanted to go alone. I wanted, after our lakeside conversation, to impress Sophia, to be the conspiratorial eyes in which she could find refuge when her parents proved overwhelming. Such hope was delusional. I spent a solitary moment pacing through the model temple outside, the Kohen Gadol observing me as I tried fixing my tie and forcing deep breaths and guessing which notecards belonged to whom (Get into Michigan; Stop eating nonkosher pizza; Score 3 goals in soccer game). Then I walked inside to find her real friends—Remi, Rebecca, Noah—in attendance.

“Ari?” Noah excused himself from his parents at the cocktail reception, greeting me and examining my outfit and hair with an amused, almost paternal smirk. “So they let you in, huh?”

“It took some convincing.”

He raised his glass. “What’re you doing here?”

“Seemed like a cool event,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, silly me,” he said. “Forgot you’re a die-hard classical music lover.”

“And you are?” I asked stupidly, hands buried in my pockets.

“Hell no, though Sophia makes it tolerable. But Rebs said attendance was nonnegotiable. Obviously I’d rather be at the Heat game. My dad’s client offered second-row tickets tonight.”

“Right.”

“Listen, I don’t mean to dissuade you. Keep planting seeds, my man. You know that I applaud the effort.” I reddened. He slapped my shoulder, straightened my tie for me. “For future Sophia pursuits, though, and all things cocktail related? Wear a jacket, yeah?”

Rabbi Bloom, from the center of the room, tapped a fork against his champagne glass and announced that it was time to wander into the hall. He looked at ease in a tuxedo, more like a college dean than a yeshiva principal. I imagined him in decades past, in his previous life, regularly attending such soirées. I wondered if he ever woke on certain mornings missing what he’d given up, experiencing those stabs of remorse to which my mother, I was certain, was not infrequently subjected.

“Mr. Eden.” Rabbi Bloom caught me by the door and offered his hand. “Have you come alone?”

“Yes,” I said, immediately irked that my presence at such an affair proved glaringly, perhaps laughably, conspicuous.

“Wonderful of you to support your classmate.”

“The music’s pretty good, too.”

He readjusted his bow tie. “You’ve heard Ms. Winter perform before?”

“Only informally,” I mumbled. “She was just practicing.”

“Sometimes such sessions prove more meaningful than the real thing, don’t you think?”

“Er, yeah,” I stuttered, regretting having unnecessarily provided such information. “Maybe.”

“And from what I hear, that’s something of a rarity. Ms. Winter is rather private about her music. Not everyone earns that privilege.”

“I got lucky.”

He smiled faintly, as if registering useful data within an extensive mental filing cabinet. “In any event, enjoy the performance. You’ll continue to find Ms. Winter most extraordinary, I’m certain.”

My assigned seat was in the very last row of the assembly hall, next to the entrance. The hall had been transformed. Large TV monitors, positioned strategically around the room, provided detailed views of our pianist. A band of pale light shone beneath the piano. The lights were dimmed, making the possibility of Sophia spotting me, I realized, my heart sinking, wildly unlikely.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” Rabbi Bloom took the stage, microphone in hand. “Thank you for supporting Kol Neshama and for joining us for what will undoubtedly be an evening of magical music.” Light applause. “The Aseret Yemei Teshuva are a fitting time for this event. With Rosh Hashanah behind us, with Yom Kippur nearly here, we are tasked with self-improvement: through penitence, through charity, through prayer. Yet equally critical is the effort we put into self-reflection, for change hinges on both the spiritual and emotional hemispheres of our souls. It’s for this very reason, indeed, that our Academy bears its name—Kol Neshama, Voice of the Soul. In this light, what better way to engage in self-reflection, in singing out to God, than through music? A soul moved to dance, whether in shul or in the concert hall, is a soul yearning for holiness. Tonight, I am confident, our neshamas will receive this opportunity to be given over to music. Without further ado, I introduce a true virtuoso, our very own Sophia Winter.”

The room fell into abrupt silence as she ascended the stage. She wore a blue strapless dress, hair pinned back, no makeup. Her face was expressionless, her eyes vacant, as she made her way to the piano. Ignoring the delayed, polite applause, she sat unnaturally, her back perfectly straight. She studied the piano for half a minute, unblinking, the muscles in her neck straining. As the house lights dimmed further and her hands hovered above the keys, a shadow crept down the aisle, climbed over my knees and assumed the seat beside me.

“Evan?”

She began to play—softly, deftly, eyes closed. It was a soothing opening, a slow tempo. The screens showed a close-up of her fingers moving leisurely. Her nails were unpainted.

“I suspected I’d find you here.” Evan wore a navy suit, no tie, his hair gelled back. Even in the dim light, I could tell his eyes were red.

“Are you seriously high right now?”

He put a finger to his lips, nodding toward the stage. Sophia was playing freely now, lingering over certain notes, allowing them to reverberate through space, gradually adopting a feverish pitch, quietude giving way to a fury of sound. I watched her hands convulse, fly backward, dance arrhythmically. The older woman seated directly before me drew sharp breaths and fanned herself.

She began a somber minor-key episode that made me feel physical, almost violent despair. “This is it, Eden,” Evan said. I imagined myself alone with her at the piano, sitting there while the external world decayed. “The black pearl variation.”

The variation seemed to stretch longer than the piece entailed. At Oliver’s party, Sophia appeared out of control, and yet here, detailed in white light, she was restrained, even as soft tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Beside me, Evan hardly breathed.

The music lasted nearly forty minutes. When she finished, she stood and, in a swift motion, delivered a single bow before gliding off the stage. The lights returned: rolling applause, standing ovations, dazed looks. Sophia hastened toward the side exit near the front of the room but was engulfed by her parents, her mother blond and heavily made up, her father lean and well dressed with what looked like newly gray hair and a habit of arranging his lips arrogantly as he searched the room. Wearing an unfocused smile, Sophia bobbed her head at admirers.

“My cue,” Evan said, sidling from our row.

“What’s with the weird entrance and exit?”

“Sometimes you respect when you’re persona non grata.”

I looked to the front of the room. Sophia was taking pictures with her brother. “She told you not to come?”

“I just don’t think she’d be delighted to see me.” The hardware in my chest, irrationally, felt lighter. Evan moved toward the aisle, only to pause suddenly. “On second thought.”

“What?”

He pointed a dozen rows up, where Rabbi Bloom was conversing with someone in an expensive navy suit. The man had dark hair, a sharp jaw, a vaguely familiar coldness to his features.

“Who is that?”

“Don’t recognize him?”

“That’s not—your father?”

“The great Julian Stark,” he said. “He doesn’t know I’m here.”

Julian whispered into Rabbi Bloom’s ear. Rabbi Bloom, in turn, listened carefully, nodding on occasion.

“Are they friends or something?” I asked. “They look close.”

“Bloom should have nothing to do with him.”

I frowned. “Why are we watching this?”

“I want to see how Bloom reacts.”

“To what? What are they talking about?”

“I have a feeling my father is about to make him an offer.”

“What does that mean?”

“Long story,” Evan said. I stood with him, staring blankly while Rabbi Bloom made a concerted effort to maintain an expressionless face as Julian whispered. After a minute or so, however, Rabbi Bloom began blinking unnaturally, almost as if in involuntary recognition. Seeing this, Evan nodded and turned away. “Need a ride home?”

“I walked.”

“Why don’t you join me for a drink. Maybe I’ll explain then.”

“I, um, I think I’ll stick around a bit longer,” I said, awkward at the thought of revealing my motivation for remaining behind.

Rabbi Bloom locked eyes with Evan. Blood drained from Rabbi Bloom’s face; he whispered hurriedly to Julian and started in our direction. Yet Evan, without another word, disappeared into the exit, leaving Rabbi Bloom behind to struggle against the crowd.

I lingered awkwardly in my row, watching as the room emptied, hoping to catch Sophia on her way out. Davis, wearing oversized coattails, introduced me to his father, and I stood idly by as they worked themselves into a fiery debate over whether Watergate catalyzed the millennial obsession with high school internships on the Hill. I excused myself and tried inching toward Sophia, who briefly met my eyes from afar, but I was quickly swallowed by Eddie and Cynthia. Just as I finally broke free—after doing my best to offer handshakes, receive kisses to the cheek, present absentminded impressions of Zion Hills—Sophia was whisked away by her mother to meet a bald man in a garish suit. I conceded defeat and left.

* * *

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, FOLLOWING AN IMPROMPTU quiz on the Golden Age in early Muslim Spain for which I was wildly unprepared (Mr. Harold grinning vengefully when we turned our papers in), Mrs. Janice announced over the intercom that sixth period was canceled and that all grades were to file quietly into the assembly hall. Rabbi Feldman greeted us at the door, instructing us to quickly and respectfully find seats. Sitting onstage beside Rabbi Bloom was none other than Julian Stark, dressed in a pin-striped blazer, legs crossed, fingering his phone, whispering to Rabbi Bloom.

“What is this?” I asked Noah. I looked around the room for Evan. “What’s he doing here?”

Noah fidgeted with his collar. “You don’t know what today is?”

“No?”

“It’s been a full year,” Noah said, dropping his voice further. Julian, catching Noah’s gaze, bent his head in recognition. Noah nodded politely. “Today is Evan’s mother’s yahrzeit.”

Amir slumped into the seat on my left and leaned over me toward Noah. “How’s this going to work?” he asked, covering his mouth. “This’ll be excruciating.”

“Yeah, well, not if he’s not here,” Noah said, still searching for Evan.

Finally, just as the room filled and Rabbi Feldman went to close the door, Evan and Oliver stumbled in, red-eyed and dazed. Evan stopped in place at the sight of his father. Rabbi Feldman, after hesitating momentarily, wrapped Evan—face slackened, body stiffened in surprise—in a bear hug before letting him pass.

“Good God,” Amir said, clasping his neck, “they’re high, aren’t they?”

Evan and Oliver took seats in the very last row. Rabbi Bloom, upon seeing Evan present, finally stood, turned on the microphone and cleared his throat.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said tenderly. He faced Julian, who nodded in approval. Rabbi Bloom turned back to his audience. “One year ago today, Zion Hills lost one of its most magnificent residents. Caroline Stark, wife to Julian Stark, mother to Evan Stark, was a brilliant woman: an accomplished physicist, a leader in the community, dedicated to gender equality, to human compassion, to learning and, above all, to family.” I stole a side-eyed glance at Evan: tight-jawed, expressionless, eyes dark and unblinking. “Parsha Chaya Sarah emphasizes the ethics of grief. We are to come together, as Avraham Avinu did, lispode vi’livkosah, to mourn and to wail, to eulogize and to weep. Ours is a tradition that embraces the emotional vitality of the human spirit, that demands we reckon properly with loss. Gemara Shabbat teaches that attendees at a funeral are charged with shedding tears, and that such people are forgiven for all their sins. Why? Because an emotional life doesn’t just make us human, it solidifies our reality of being created Imago Dei, B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. As we learn in Gemara Sotah, worshipping Hashem—walking in His ways, cleaving to Him in all aspects of life—amounts to imitating Him. How do we do so? By emulating the Divine Attributes. By comforting mourners. By offering solace and love.”

He surveyed the room. Handwringing, head bowing, gentle sniffling. Noah had his face in a tissue. Sophia had her face in her hands. Niman had been reduced to tears, despite my suspicion that she had never actually met Caroline Stark. Evan, however, remained perfectly stoical, even as Oliver, visibly panicking at the necessity of expressing some semblance of warmth, finally gritted his teeth and awkwardly placed his hand upon Evan’s shoulders, only to immediately withdraw and mumble an apology.

“Later this year, you’ll learn how Gemara Berachot describes Rav’s vision of Olam HaBa: a world without earthly burdens, a world without hatred, a world where the righteous wear crowns and bask in kedusha. All those who knew Caroline Stark live with confidence that she is crowned among the righteous. For Caroline’s life was always devoted to others. Before beginning her doctorate at Stanford, she spent two years in South America, building homes, planting crops, teaching children. As a scientist, she encouraged young girls to become involved in her field. Upon moving to South Florida, she was a backbone of the community, constantly volunteering with underserved students, even as she battled illness. She led an exceptional life and raised a brilliant and, above all, fundamentally good son”—a brief pause, his eyes on Evan—“of whom I am immensely and continually proud. Alcibiades, eulogizing his teacher, praised three things: Socrates’ resolve, valor and originality. These three qualities, integral to Caroline’s character, remain equally applicable to her son.” The room tipped into sobs.

“To commemorate this yahrzeit, as well as all for which Caroline Stark stood, I now welcome Mr. Julian Stark for a special announcement.” Rabbi Bloom pivoted toward Evan’s father. “Julian?”

Julian stood rigidly, shook Rabbi Bloom’s hand. He rubbed his clean-shaven chin, offering a diffident smile. “Firstly, thank you all for having me and, oh—” He pulled back, grimacing, realizing he’d spoken too loudly into the microphone. “Sorry. Okay. Thanks also, Rabbi Bloom, longtime friend of the family, for sharing such thoughtful words.” He waited for a round of light applause. Eventually, catching on, we clapped clumsily, at which point he ungracefully cleared his throat. “I’m here to announce a new program I’m starting in memory of my late wife. These last years have been difficult, to say the least, for my son and for me. Caroline was sick a long time. She fought and she fought, but she was suffering and—well, now I know she is, at last, at peace.” A strained smile: he squirmed on his feet. “Caroline was tremendously talented. I took the more lucrative finance route but she chose physics, because science was her first and most enduring love. She especially valued sharing this love with young women. And so, I think it’s only fitting that I create the Caroline Stark Initiative to actively facilitate greater female participation in the sciences. We’ll provide grants for research projects, mentorship from local college professors, summer internship placements, support groups, whatever. No expense will be withheld. That’s—that’s my promise in Caroline’s name.” He was enjoying himself now, loosening his posture, raising his voice over another round of applause. “This upcoming summer, additionally, we’ll build a state-of-the-art science lab, named for Caroline.” Even more applause, this time led by Rabbi Bloom, whose own gaze was averted to the floor. “My vision is to do everything in my power to ensure that Caroline’s name lives on and that the causes she believed in—”

Julian fumbled the microphone. I twisted in my seat to see Evan storming from the hall. Whispers, people moving about in their rows. Oliver, blinking in confusion, tried mouthing to Noah, uncertain whether he was supposed to follow Evan. Julian, mortified, turned to Rabbi Bloom, who sprung to his feet, urging us to retake our seats. And then Sophia, eliciting sharp gasps, sprinted into the aisle and out the door.

* * *

WE DARTED UP TO THE balcony after the assembly’s awkward conclusion—Rabbi Bloom hastily dismissing us, Julian lingering onstage, conferring furiously with Rabbi Bloom—expecting to find Evan, but he wasn’t there. Leaning over the terrace, Amir pointed out the absence of the parking lot’s lone Aston Martin. My heart hammered at the thought that Sophia had disappeared with him.

Noah checked his phone for a message from Evan. Nothing. “Think he went home?”

Amir shook his head. “Can’t imagine he’s going to want to face Julian right now.”

“Jesus,” Noah muttered.

I was still searching for signs of Sophia below. “Can someone explain what just happened?”

Amir looked uncomfortably at Noah and Oliver. Noah nodded at him. “There are . . . rumors, let’s call them, about what happened between Evan’s parents.”

Oliver snorted. “Rumors? Let’s not whitewash it. Julian’s a piece of shit and everyone knows it.”

“There was always tension between Caroline and Julian,” Amir explained. “Even when we were little we could sense it. Stolen glares. Little remarks. Hushed conversations in the kitchen while we were in the other room.”

“My mom was pretty tight with Caroline,” Noah cut in. “Smartest person she ever met, my mom always says. She noticed things weren’t entirely . . . cohesive in that house.”

“I mean, you must’ve picked up on some of it during the speech,” Amir said. “The crap about career choices? The implication that she looked down on him for his job? I don’t know, just seemed like there was always resentment on Julian’s part for being made to feel guilty or lesser or something like that.”

“And you have to understand, Drew, that Evan and his mom were like this.” Noah wrapped two fingers around each other. “Ev worshipped her. They’d do everything together, they’d have these long debates nobody else could follow. She was the perfect mentor for him, and that definitely drove a wedge between Julian and Caroline. And when Evan lost her? It shattered him.”

“Think that’s why Evan and Sophia broke up?” Amir asked. I examined my sneakers so as not to display the extent to which my face was suddenly reorganizing itself into a canvas of unjustified hurt. “Things were just . . . falling apart?”

Noah shrugged noncommittally and looked away.

“Bottom line,” Oliver said, cleaning his fingernails, “Julian’s an animal.”

I glanced down at the temple, where freshmen were tossing a football from the inner to the outer courtyard. “What does that mean?”

“It means his wife was freaking dying and that sleazebag didn’t even care,” Oliver said. “He was sleeping with anyone he could, barely hiding it. Right in her face, in her last months, while she was sick as a dog. Torturing her.”

Noah shook his head. “Ev never ever speaks about it, but we all know.”

“And so for Julian to play the part of bereaved widower, trying to fix everything with money?” Amir combed his beard with his fingertips. “You can see why that’d send Evan over the edge.”

“At Sophia’s recital,” I said, putting pieces together, “Evan got really upset when he saw his dad with Rabbi Bloom.”

“He probably figured they were planning something,” Noah said. “Must’ve been beside himself that Bloom would let Julian in like this.”

“Maybe Bloom doesn’t know about these issues?” I asked, feeling inexplicably protective of Rabbi Bloom.

Oliver laughed. “Bloom and Evan? There aren’t too many secrets there. But money talks, Drew. I’ll vouch for that firsthand. Offer a sizable enough donation, and maybe your kid isn’t expelled freshman year for hot boxing the first-floor bathroom.”

Amir frowned. “That was you? I knew it.”

For effect, Oliver pulled a ragged joint from his pocket. “Build a lab, create scholarships—how can a principal turn that down in good conscience?”

“It’s almost kind of hard to blame Bloom, isn’t it?” Noah said, pulling at the ends of his long, blond hair. “Like, he knows he can do a ton of good with that money, even if he’s got to grit his teeth and shake hands with that asshole. He’s acting in the best interest of Kol Neshama. As a—what’s the word? Pecuniary?”

“Fiduciary,” Amir said.

“Right, that.”

“But Evan blames him,” I said.

“He expects real loyalty from Bloom,” Amir said. “They’ve been so close for such a long time, I guess Evan’s taking it as a personal betrayal.”

Noah nodded. “So therefore Evan is making Bloom choose between him and the best interest of the Academy?”

“Well,” Amir said, “Bloom’s made his choice, hasn’t he?”

Noah tugged at his Adidas socks. “So, like, the shit on Donny’s roof? Or throwing eggs? All this is to get revenge on Bloom and basically just make his life difficult?”

“I guess that’s why he’s running for president,” I said.

The bell rang. Nobody moved. “Family,” Amir finally said. “It can really mess us up, can’t it?”

* * *

ELECTIONS WERE HELD BEFORE SUKKOT break. It was a chaotic stretch, Rosh Hashanah bleeding into Yom Kippur, our classwork disrupted. (“How the hell will we get anything done with another holiday every five minutes?” Dr. Flowers thundered, as if we were responsible for the timing of God’s revelations.) Presidential campaigns, meanwhile, reached a feverish pitch. Davis circulated a five-page manifesto (“A spectre is haunting Kol Neshama—the spectre of a lazy education . . .”) and Amir began tutoring underclassmen in exchange for votes. Evan did little, though The Rebellion posters resurfaced on occasion, something he denied doing himself. And, just days before the race, a fourth candidate emerged: Sophia Winter.

“Sophia,” I called out, catching her at the end of biology. “Rumor has it you’re running.”

She turned. “Why do you look so shocked?”

“Not at all, I—”

She tugged at the straps of her backpack. “I mean, I don’t think this race needs to be a boys’ club affair, do you?”

“Wait, no, of course not—”

“So,” she said, daring me with her eyes, “what’s the question?”

“Nothing,” I said lamely. “I guess—I just didn’t know you were interested in that. But I’m excited for you.”

“Well, I’ve been convinced,” she said briskly, breaking away to make her next class. “Now I want it.” The thought of her sprinting after Evan made its way unpleasantly through my mind. When she arrived at the classroom door, however, she turned once more. “But Hamlet?”

“Yes?”

“You’re voting for me,” she said, disappearing into calculus.

* * *

ELECTION DAY. EACH CANDIDATE WAS to give a short pitch before the student body voted. I took a seat in the back of the assembly hall. Kayla, to my surprise, plumped down beside me. “All right if I sit here?”

“Yeah,” I said, “of course.”

“Lovely. Just wanted to be sure you’re okay being seen with me.”

“What’re you talking about?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes I get the distinct sense you prefer speaking only in private.”

I felt strangely ashamed at the prospect of having offended her. “I have no idea why you’d say that.”

I watched underclassmen filter into the hall. Oliver walked by, stationing himself toward the front. He presented me with a look of severe disapproval when he saw I was with Kayla.

“See? That right there,” Kayla said. “Kind of what I’m referring to.”

“He’s just being weird,” I said unconvincingly. “He does that to me all the time.”

“Sounds like a great guy. Real mensch.”

“A mensch he’s not, but he means well,” I said, mostly attempting to persuade myself. I realized I sounded awfully like Noah when he was defending Evan. “At least I think he does.”

“You know who I like? Amir. He’s the only one in your group who acknowledges my existence, though probably because he wants to know my grades. But still. It’s something. I think I’m voting for him.”

“Yeah, I mean, he is great.”

“Still. I have a slight feeling I know who you’re supporting.”

“I don’t even know who I’m—”

“Ari, Ari.” She patted my arm. “Please. You’re voting for Sophia. That’s the one certainty in this entire school. Not that it matters. It’s inevitable he’ll win.”

“Who?”

“Evan, of course.”

“Why do you say that?”

She looked at me as if I were stupid. “Don’t you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look around the room. They love him, they fear him, but more than anything they want to be him.”

I felt strangely deflated. I opened my mouth to object but stopped myself. It was true. Effortlessly brilliant, startlingly defiant and, as had quickly been established throughout my first weeks in Zion Hills, undeniably attractive: Evan, though intimidating, seemed almost universally revered. It was difficult to imagine him losing.

Rabbi Bloom ascended the stage and raised his hands for silence. “Quiet please, ladies and gentlemen, for the candidates to whom we owe respect. The rules are simple. Each candidate has three minutes to best represent his or her ideology. These speeches have been approved by the administration”—his gaze landed on Evan, sitting in the first row, as if to issue a silent warning—“and candidates are expected not to improvise. Lots have been drawn to determine the sequence of speeches. So, without further ado, I invite Mr. Aaron Davis to speak first.”

Davis smiled broadly and raised his fist, despite tepid applause. Wearing an old-fashioned corduroy suit, he accepted the microphone and gestured for someone in the back to begin playing “Battle Hymn of the Republic” from an iPhone. “Ladies and gents of this fine institution, as literary editor of the yearbook, I stand before you today much like Lincoln did in Gettysburg . . .”

“Has he always been like this?” I whispered to Kayla.

“Put it this way,” she said, leaning into my ear, “in third grade, he entered the school Purim costume contest as Henry Clay.”

“. . . as school president I’ll seek knowledge, which, as is the case with all endeavors, requires a chemistry of Aristotelian virtues and an impeccable grasp of Tory political theory. I vow to sow virtue, not the mindless fun promised by my opponents . . .” He rambled on, undeterred by growing laughter, until Rabbi Bloom, watching for time, placed a forceful hand on Davis’ back.

“Thank you, Mr. Davis, that was quite . . . rousing,” Rabbi Bloom said, signaling for the hymn to be cut off. “Our next candidate is Mr. Evan Stark. Evan, we look forward to hearing your preapproved speech.”

Evan rose slowly, glared coolly at Rabbi Bloom as he accepted the microphone and then broke into a smile. “With deep apologies to Rabbi Bloom,” he said, inverting his pockets, “I’ve misplaced my speech and must instead speak from the heart.” Small laughs broke out. Rabbi Bloom, standing at the foot of the stage, paled. “Let’s keep this brief,” he said, pacing about. “Initially I had no intention of running for president. I was content to watch others serve ineffectively—”

“Ad hominem!” Davis cried, leaping from his seat.

“—until I realized this would endorse a certain status quo.” He trailed off, his gaze meeting Rabbi Bloom’s. “And that’s something I can’t do. Why? Because our current way of life is corrupted. We attend a school supposedly dedicated to moral values. And yet, I ask you, what happens behind closed doors? How often do we see shuls turned into miniature kingdoms controlled by those seeking power? How often do we see dishonorable people achieve influence and piety through financial success while the righteous suffer and lose and—” He paused for a moment too long. At first I assumed this was merely for dramatic effect, until I recognized uncharacteristic vulnerability in his eyes. He looked, to my disbelief, as if he might cry. “And die of cancer,” he said firmly. He took an extra breath, banishing that look of undisguised humanness, even as an air of cold shock settled over his audience. “How often do we witness the miracles we pray about three times each day? How often, may I ask, do we take seriously the notion that belief—real belief—ought to survive the crucible of doubt?

“And so, I stand before you without offering a commitment to liberalism or Torah or, for that matter, the administration. What I offer, what I will continue to offer irrespective of today’s outcome, is resistance. Integrity. Action. And I do this because the Academy’s operations should not be allowed to prove inconsistent with the basic religious values we’ve been spoon-fed all our lives. What I’m calling for is not simply transparency, but a new paradigm of authenticity. A paradigm in which we finally take matters into our own hands and make our own moral judgments. In which we expose all that is hypocritical—”

“That’s quite enough, Mr. Stark,” Rabbi Bloom said, snatching the microphone. But it was over: Evan, face blank, half bowing, had won the crowd. The room erupted into boisterous applause. It took several minutes to restore order, especially with Oliver springing from chair to chair, flinging confetti into the air. (Rabbi Feldman, finally, escorted him out.) Amir, legs crossed, turned green while he waited for the commotion to dissolve. Sophia, maintaining the intensity of her gaze, stared at her wrists.

She fought admirably. She likened the school to a sukkah, protecting and nurturing us while we adorned it. I tried catching her eye, though succeeded only in briefly meeting Rabbi Bloom’s wandering gaze. (“Just flawless, isn’t she?” Kayla whispered unhappily into my ear, her tone loosely accusatory. “Yeah,” I told her, “actually I think she might be.”) Amir, on the other hand, was entirely unnerved. Certainly he was equipped for leadership—he was intelligent, he was intensely responsible—but he was hopelessly overshadowed by Evan. He kept losing his train of thought, sputtering on with some lackluster analogy likening the Academy to ancient Egyptian architectural principles. He was still struggling to put it together when Rabbi Bloom mercifully called time. Amir descended from the stage with his head bent in defeat.

Voting stations were set up in the parking lot. I made my way to a booth, having quickly separated from Kayla, and found myself behind Amir at the back of the line.

“It was a fine speech,” I said meekly. “Really.”

Amir shook his head, biting his lower lip. “He ruined me.”

I wanted to comfort him but couldn’t think of anything effective. “I’m voting for you,” I finally said, when it was my turn. It felt like the right thing to do.

He nodded, said nothing. I stepped into the booth, circled Sophia’s name and waited for Noah by his car.

* * *

I WAS RELYING ON VACATION to catch up on the workload, which, with the onslaught of holidays, was teetering on disastrous. Dr. Flowers was attacking our curriculum at a breakneck pace—“Kindly do us a favor and leave if you don’t like it,” she’d warn, usually while staring forbiddingly in my direction—hurling us into the lovely world of fixed osmium tetroxide membranes. I retained little from these lessons, and would turn frequently to Sophia in desperation. “Dr. Winter,” I’d burst out, hurrying after her in the hallways, dodging flustered underclassmen busy conducting double takes at the sight of me trailing Sophia Winter, “did you happen to catch that?”

Playfully, hiding a smirk, she’d accelerate her stride. “Which part, Hamlet?”

“How about every last bit,” I’d say, panting to keep pace, breaking into an unabashed smile. “I didn’t understand a single word.”

In math, however, my grades were improving steadily under Kayla’s guidance. My initial distaste for her had given way quickly to genuine appreciation. It was rejuvenating to befriend someone who also laid claim to neither unimaginable wealth nor unassailable beauty. Over lunches together we’d dissect recent gossip (“can you please explain how Evan hasn’t been expelled or promoted to Head Ubermensch by now,” Kayla joked, long after my math notes had been returned to my backpack) and throughout the school day we’d trade droll texts:

was just asked by remi y i didn’t dye my hair. or cut it. or just do something to “relieve the aesthetic nightmare”—didn’t know she knew that word

Yikes. What did you say?

that i’m auditioning 4 the role of simone weil

I suspect she did not find that funny.

she blinked 4 several seconds & then told me i’m much better off replicating simone adamley’s look

Who is that?

from ferris bueller. girl who hears from sister’s bf’s bro’s gf etc. that ferris is sick. astonishingly apt response, right?

I have no clue what you’re talking about.

good grief

Generally, I wondered why nobody else seemed to worry about schoolwork. Amir’s work ethic was legendary, his extracurricular life equally impressive—he headed the Debate Society, founded the Journal for Business Affairs—and any anxiety on his part exclusively concerned how others compared to him. Noah hardly ever mentioned the workload, besides asking for my help on the occasional paper. Oliver, of course, cared little about so much as completing homework, shielded as he was by his parents’ colossal annual donations. And then there was Evan, whose brilliance was unquestioned, even feared.

“Ev used to be first, you know,” Noah once revealed during a car ride home.

Briefly, I touched my cheek to the burning window. “First in what?”

“The whole freaking class.”

“Evan?” I knew he’d routinely receive A+ marks, even on tests he took while impaired, but his apathy rivaled Oliver’s, making it difficult to believe he could sustain pace with the machinelike dedication of students like Kayla, Amir and Davis.

“Yup,” Noah said quietly. “Up until, you know. Until his mother passed.”

After a respectful pause: “What’s he ranked now?”

“Dunno. Fifth? Sixth?”

“Wow.” I didn’t want to think about my own ranking. “Who’s ahead of him?”

“Me.”

“Really?”

“In my dreams. I know Davis is third. Amir, bless his little jealous heart, is second. Take a wild guess who’s first.”

I hesitated. My cheek singed.

Noah laughed. “Say it.”

“Of course she’s first,” I said.

“Your girl’s impressive. But I bet he could still come back, if he cared. Ev is frightening like that.”

“What does that mean?”

“How his brain works,” he said. “One day you’ll see.”

English was my lone bright spot. Mrs. Hartman had finally returned our Iliad papers. An impressive start, she wrote in thick, green ink. I look forward to reading future work. Grade: A.

“I knew I chose the right tutor!” Noah said, breaking into dance, thus infuriating Amir.

Amir ripped my essay from my hands. “An A,” he hounded, “or an A-minus?”

“An A,” I said uncomfortably, finally beginning to resent his academic hypersensitivity.

“But nobody gets an A from Hartman.” He said so too loudly, in earshot of others. Sophia, standing several feet away talking to Rebecca, turned to observe me. I cringed. “Especially not on the first paper!”

“Well, I did,” Sophia said, nodding in my direction. “But welcome to the club, Hamlet.”

My mother was even happier than I was. To her, the mark validated years of effort, unappreciated by my father, to save my intelligence by making me seek refuge in the library. “I’m beyond proud,” she said, overruling my objections to taping the paper to the refrigerator. I couldn’t blame her for her enthusiasm, given that I gave her few other occasions to shep nachas. This paper, sadly enough, represented the first semblance of achievement we’d ever known, all the while assuring her that normalizing to Zion Hills—returning, in some way, to her life before my father—was still possible.

* * *

SUKKOT FELL ON SHABBAT. I spent Saturday sitting in the sukkah, agonizing over my biology textbook while admiring my mother’s many decorations: dangling apples, clusters of flashing grapes, colorful paper chains, weathered Hebrew posters from preschool. Unlike Sukkot up north, where we sat cozily in pre-winter air, Sukkot in Florida bordered on torturous. Down here, as it turned out, confining yourself to prehistoric huts, with sunlight soaking through a bamboo rooftop, inspired little more than heavy perspiration, mutant-sized mosquito bites and, on balance, physical misery. Despite my father’s insistence that we do everything in the sukkah (“‘you shall dwell in the sukkah for seven days,’” he’d scold, doused in sweat, flirting with heatstrokes, “dwell, not lounge, and that means eat, study, talk, sleep”), I gave up after a few hours and retreated for air-conditioning. I again tried studying on Saturday night, declining to join Noah and the others for drunk bowling, though ended up asleep before eleven, my twenty-pound textbook rising in harmony with my breathing. On Sunday, I skipped dinner so as to avoid my father, who wanted a definitive answer as to whether I was attending Meir’s upcoming bar mitzvah. By nine, I conceded defeat at the hands of my geometry homework and shuffled across the street.

“Ari!” Noah answered the door with a Corona in hand. I submitted myself for a fraternal half-hug. “Where’ve you been?”

“Trying to work. Failing miserably.”

“Dude, this is vacation. We’re celebrating how our ancestors trekked through deserts! We’re waving phallic symbols! You should be letting loose. You work too much.”

“I don’t work enough, actually.”

“Well,” he said, “now’s a good time for a break. Parents are out and the girls are over.”

Noah led me into the living room, where Rebecca was lying upside down on the enormous couch. “Ari,” she said, grinning. “Greetings.”

I pretended to turn my face upside down. “Hey Rebs.”

She kicked her feet around in the air to right herself. “Excellent timing. We’re looking to make moves.”

“Who else is here?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Ms. Mozart is in the ladies’ room,” Rebecca said, immediately surveying my facial reactions, which probably did not disappoint.

“Want a beer, Drew?” Noah called from the kitchen. I could hear him digging raucously through his snack cabinet, which, once opened, typically vomited some assortment of chocolate, sour candies and half-vinegar-half-jalapeño chips.

A voice down the hallway: sweet, stomach-turning. “Doesn’t beer ever repulse you? Maybe, just once, try a proper cocktail? Ah, Hamlet’s here.” Sophia emerged, her mouth assuming one of its sly contortions. She wore a white tank top tucked into jeans and her hair in a simple braid. Something in my chest somersaulted. “Decide what we’re doing tonight. We’re dying of boredom.”

Noah returned from the kitchen, a bag of miniature pretzels under his arm. “They find my house boring.”

“We can’t always just lie around on your couch, admiring your mom’s cookbooks,” Rebecca said. “Though I could go for some of that banana cake from Yom Tov, if she froze any of it.”

Sophia perched lazily beside me on the couch, bouncing her legs slightly so that her right knee, exposed in ripped jeans, rested gently against my left leg. “This is what becomes of us in adulthood? Supreme boredom? Drifting in and out of rooms, asking what we’ll do tonight, year after year?”

“Hashem Yisbarach, I really hope not,” Rebecca said. “Could you turn down the morbid tonight, Soph?”

Sophia turned to me. “Ari doesn’t find me morbid, do you?”

I shrugged. “No more than the next guy.”

“And for your information, life doesn’t end at graduation.” Rebecca gathered Noah’s head in her lap, though only after flinging away the salty remains of the pretzels. “It just starts over, doesn’t it, Noah?”

Sophia’s knee stopped moving. I could feel it balanced against my calf, though dared not look down to see for myself. “Okay, Ari. Save us, please.”

“Well, uh,” I said, groping for an idea. I realized, pathetically, that I had no grasp whatsoever on what was considered fun. “Yeah, I mean, maybe we can—”

Sophia was smiling fixedly. “Aren’t you supposed to be relatively articulate?”

I turned my attention to one of the room’s glass cabinets, crammed with sky-scraping basketball trophies. How odd it must feel, I found myself thinking, to be so objectively good at something. “Not when I’m so rudely interrupted.”

Noah yawned. “What about Ocean Drive?”

“Boring,” Sophia said.

“Design District?”

“No,” Rebecca snorted. “Please no.”

“Fine,” Noah said. “Should we bite the bullet and get a table at LIV? We can drop Oliver’s name.”

Sophia shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

“Nikki Beach?”

Rebecca pulled on Noah’s collar. “You really think Ari wants to go clubbing?”

I reddened but didn’t argue otherwise.

“Cool,” Noah said. “I give up.”

“How about we get dinner and call it a night,” Rebecca said.

“Not if it’s that repulsive burger place,” Sophia said.

Rebecca frowned. “I kind of like those burgers. So where, then?”

“What’s the name of the Japanese one? Shalom L’Japan? Sushi Olam HaBa? Whatever its latest name is.”

“I’m down,” Noah said. “They have that all-you-can-eat deal.”

“Do you really want mercury poisoning?” Rebecca said. “You’re not having that.”

“Watch me.”

“I’ll tell Rocky on you.”

“Drew, end our misery,” Noah said. “Vote for sushi or burgers.”

“Nameless sushi it is,” I said. “What Sophia said.”

“You do know you don’t need to agree with everything she wants, right?” Rebecca said.

Sophia took my hand, hoisted me from the couch. “Sure he does.” Her hand felt smooth, warm. “Shall we?”

It was a cozy, almost upscale restaurant: white tablecloths, a discolored shade of red on the walls. We sat out back, overlooking a canal, surrounded by yachts.

“Let’s take a boat out this week,” Rebecca said absently, scanning the menu. “We never do that anymore.”

“Remi’s motorboat is fun,” Sophia said. “We can take that.”

We ordered a behemoth sushi platter and Noah, with the help of his fake ID, coaxed the waiter into bringing us Cabernet Sauvignon. Mr. Carraway, however, remained hidden in my wallet.

“So,” Rebecca said, picking at a rainbow roll. “Where are the others tonight? That Three Amigos bar?”

“Probably busy with whatever degenerates do.” Sophia held her chopsticks with impeccable form. I nervously dropped mine, submerging a piece of salmon-avocado in soy sauce. I tried probing for it, but the piece unraveled. “Hamlet, your sushi dexterity is appalling.”

After we paid, the check considerably more expensive than I anticipated, emptying whatever was left in my wallet, Noah and Rebecca excused themselves to wander the docks. They left us with a wink.

Sophia drained the last of her wineglass. “Left alone again.”

“What is this, the third time now?” I said. And then, stupidly: “It’s a chazakah.”

She smirked, leaning her head to the side, looking me over. “Finish your wine,” she decided. “Then we shall walk.”

It was cool and still out, a gentle breeze rippling the water. We sketched long circles around the dock, admiring the yachts, doused in bright, humming lights.

“Last we spoke, before the awfulness with the eggs,” Sophia said, ending our silence, “you remember what I told you?”

“How could I forget?” I surveyed my outfit, wondered whether there was any possibility that it failed to register in Sophia’s mind, which actually would have constituted a not insignificant victory, blending in among what was fashionably inoffensive. “You said I didn’t belong.”

“I’m beginning to rethink that.”

“Really? I hope not.”

“Why’s that?”

I plunged my hands into my pockets. “You’ll like me less.”

Light poured off us, crowning Sophia in Technicolor. “You know I saw you, right? At the recital. You left without saying hello. Nobody told you it’s impolite to leave without praising the pianist?”

I laughed. “My apologies for being uncouth. The pianist was busy being swallowed by rabid fans.”

“I appreciated that you came,” she said quietly. “I did.”

“Well, you were amazing. I’m glad I was there.”

“Ari,” she said earnestly, as if something pressing had only just occurred to her, “I don’t even know what you’re doing next year.”

“That’d put you in good company,” I said.

“You don’t have ideas?”

“I’m not sure.” I grimaced at how serious, how unnatural, my voice sounded. “I mean, college, I suppose.”

“You suppose? Of course you’ll be in college,” she said. “You’ve begun applications, haven’t you?”

I admitted I hadn’t. This made her recoil. “You’ll study literature,” she said, chewing her lower lip. Pink-cheeked. Sharp-nosed. Misty-eyed. “Yes, perfect, it’s decided, your say in the matter is no more. You’ll go to a great liberal arts school, you’ll study English, you’ll write some ridiculous, overly idealistic dissertation on Nabokov’s Hamletic anxiety of influence, dedicated to one S. Winter, and you’ll veer far, far away from biology.”

“That so?” My cheeks flushed. “You won’t want me bothering you with science questions?”

“Good point. Okay, I’ll allow a single biology class. But only the one.”

“And what about you?” I asked. “What’s your master plan?”

“Master plan? I seem like I have such a thing?”

“Yeah, actually,” I said. “You of all people absolutely do.”

She hesitated, though instinctively I knew this was for effect, that she absolutely intended to open herself to me. “I want to go to Juilliard,” she said. “I’ve wanted to go ever since I was a little girl. But my parents want Penn.”

“Why’s that?”

“They met there. Fell in love there. Had their wedding there. It’s where they want me to be a premed and meet my spouse, just like they did.”

We stopped walking, peered silently into the water. Lightly, she ran her fingers through her hair. What I wanted was to confirm for her that this arrangement seemed unfair, particularly given the simple and indisputable fact that she was a singular talent. Instead, too neutrally, I asked: “So what’ll you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” I said, “you’ll just get into both. Then you’ll decide.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“You don’t think you could get into Penn?”

“I do think I can get into Penn.” She said so confidently, though without haughtiness. Only people with absolute knowledge of their self-worth, I found myself deciding, are capable of appearing so effortlessly poised. “It’s Juilliard I’m worried about.”

“I don’t think you need to worry. You’re a prodigy.”

She stiffened, leaning against the railing separating us from the water.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I despise that word.”

“Really? If anyone ever called me a prodigy, I’d probably break out in dance.”

A brief moment of wind tearing over water. Sophia shivered slightly. I wanted, more than anything, to hold her. “What makes you so confident in me?” she said.

“You’re Sophia Winter.” For weeks I’d been shouting her name in my head. In the safety of my interior life, her name conjured intimate worlds. It provided warmth, it induced euphoric helplessness. Her very name was an object of abstraction to which I tethered fever dreams I dared not pursue. Saying it aloud felt like relinquishing some secret.

“I’ll end up in medical school,” she said. “I know it. I’ll end up like everyone else.”

I prayed she couldn’t see me reddening in the dark. “You’re not like anyone else. Not remotely.”

“My parents want me to be. I want to be. But unfortunately you’re right. I’m not.”

We walked onward again without speaking.

“What about your parents?” she asked, realizing I had either too much tact or too little audacity to challenge her previous statement. “What do they do?”

“My mother’s a teacher,” I said. “My father’s an accountant.”

“Really? I assumed he was a rabbi.”

“He wishes.”

She leaned toward me. Our hands, swinging at our sides, inadvertently brushed. “He’s that religious?”

“He’s extremely—serious, let’s call it.”

“But your mother?”

“Yeah, I mean, she is, too, though maybe not as much.” Providing insight into my parents’ spiritual lives would have been grounds for kareth back in Brooklyn. “She was raised differently.”

“How was she raised?” Sophia asked. “The way we were?”

I tried imagining a childhood among my current friends. Would seventeen years of shared experience have altered my place in our hierarchy? Was it Brooklyn that made happiness feel permanently underemphasized, my relationship with my surroundings irreparably tenuous, or would I have felt such things, even worse things, living only in Zion Hills? What would it be like to unlearn loneliness? “You and I weren’t raised the same.”

She smiled knowingly. “Sorry, forgot for a moment.” She clutched at her bare shoulders. “But they like it here, your parents?”

“My mom does,” I said. “Actually, she loves it.”

“I hear from Rebs that she’s become fast friends with Cynthia.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty taken with her,” I said. “The entire lifestyle here, really.”

“What about your father?”

“I don’t know.” Then, rocking on my feet: “No, truthfully.”

“And that’s because—what?” she asked. “Because women wear pants? The school’s coed? There’s less Torah learning?”

“Yeah, partially. But I also think he misses being in a culture where everyone’s constantly preoccupied with one thing.”

“Fashion?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Avodat Hashem. It’s a difference in priority. Or obsession, maybe, I don’t know. As in, do we consciously consecrate every element of our waking lives to growing closer to God, or do we live within a structure that allocates some time for worship, other time for existing in the greater world and then time for synthesizing the two.”

She thought this over, though I sensed she was only pretending, that she had formulated a response immediately and was delaying for my sake. “Do you agree more with your mother or father?”

“I mean, coming here was a substantial culture shock.”

“Certainly looked like it. But now?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’m still figuring it out.”

She grabbed my elbow so that we stopped walking. “I want you to tell me something.”

“What?”

“Anything.” Hands clasped together. Her right thumb probing her left wrist. Nervous blinking. “A secret.”

“I don’t have secrets,” I said.

“We all have secrets. I want to hear something you’ve never told anyone.”

I studied the discrete features of her face: her precise eyebrows, the faint lines in her forehead, the freckle below her left ear. I was so close to her that I could no longer really see her, so close to her that she was a blur of music, breathing, light. “My friends,” I said quietly. “From Brooklyn. I don’t like them.”

Her look of utter calm disconcerted me. Should I ever receive the full glare of her attention, I knew then, I’d have no hope of hiding. “So?”

“What do you mean ‘so’?”

She looked at me as if she were only peering into a mirror. “How long have you known them?”

“Only my entire life. They’re supposed to be my best friends.”

“People drift,” she said, unimpressed. “Everyone drifts.”

“But what if I never liked them,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize. “What if sometimes I hated them. When I was with them I felt like I was by myself.”

She looked at me, unblinking. “I know what it means to be alone.”

A pause. “Well,” I said, “your turn.”

The night was beating heavily on us. Her gaze stayed on me, unfazed. “I wish this were a date.”

The floor shifting beneath me, happiness ringing from all four corners of the earth. “I’ve never actually been on a date,” I found myself admitting. I winced, waiting for the insult, but she remained still, observing gently. She was heart-wrenching, she was thoroughly unattainable. My knees, all at once, felt weak, as if I’d been walking for hours.

“I like that idea very much.”

A couple approached from the distance, waving madly. “Thought we lost you,” Noah called. “Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

“I APPRECIATE YOU COMING, PARTICULARLY during the holiday,” Mrs. Ballinger said dryly. We were in her office, my parents on either side of me, everyone doing their best to smile sweetly. I’d been sitting in the dining room the night before, working through an unpalatable stretch of biology, when my mother interrupted to tell me the Academy had called to request a college guidance meeting.

“Must be a good sign,” my mother said, beaming. “They wouldn’t meet with just anyone, would they?”

“Actually they would,” I said, imagining Mrs. Janice’s Southern drawl on the other end of the phone. “In fact, they literally do.”

“So. Ari.” Mrs. Ballinger drummed her ring-laden fingers on her nearly empty desk. “You’ve had ample time to get acclimated since our previous conversation.”

“Yes,” I said after too long of a beat, realizing she expected her statement to elicit some response.

“And how have things been?”

“Better,” I said evasively.

She peeked into a folder containing my grades. “Academically, too, you’d say?”

“For the most part.”

My mother, to my left, shone with pride. “We’re proud of how he’s doing. I just have to say that, Mrs. Ballinger.”

Mrs. Ballinger and I met eyes. “Yes,” she said curtly. “Certainly be proud. Never an easy adjustment, particularly this late in the game. Still, I’d prefer to see some grades raised ever so slightly.”

“Oh?” Now my mother looked distraught, as if she’d been told I was failing. My father, painfully polite, sulked silently. He had refused, at first, to attend the meeting, insisting that I ought to spend two years, at minimum, in a post–high school yeshiva before even considering pursuing a degree. This was what he’d done, he explained at length, and what the great majority of his family had done as well. My mother, however, won out.

“In biology,” Mrs. Ballinger added quickly, recognizing my mother’s distress. “That seems to be his most challenging class. His math has improved.”

“But he did so beautifully on his English paper,” my mother blurted.

Mrs. Ballinger smiled, amused. “So I’ve heard from Mrs. Hartman.”

I perked up. “You did?”

“She told me at lunch the other day. She was highly complimentary, Ari. Unusually complimentary.”

I felt a burst of gratitude for Mrs. Ballinger. My mother’s face lit up once again, diffusing some atmospheric tension. Even my father nodded cautiously.

“Now. To the nitty-gritty.” Mrs. Ballinger again surveyed my folder. “Have you begun considering particular colleges?”

We hesitated, nobody wanting to admit we hadn’t so much as discussed a single school.

“Not extensively,” I finally said.

“Not extensively,” Mrs. Ballinger repeated. “Hm. And that means—”

I provided a meaningless shrug. “We’ve looked at only a few places.”

She leaned forward at her desk. “And what have you in mind?”

“Somewhere with a strong liberal arts program,” I said, echoing Sophia’s words, impressing my mother. “I want to study literature.”

“What’s that?” my father piped up, unable to help himself. My mother countered with her finest death glare.

“Lovely,” Mrs. Ballinger said, glancing curiously toward my father. “A premature decision, of course, but there are a number of wonderful liberal arts schools—”

“Which ones do you like?” my mother asked. “Stanford welcomes writers, don’t they?”

“Stanford?” my father said. “That’s one of those Ivies, yes?” I did a facepalm. My mother assumed a look of abject humiliation.

Mrs. Ballinger threw back her head, emitting a high-pitched, carefully restrained laugh. “That’s really excellent, I’ll need to jot that down for the book on college guidance I’m writing. But, yes, well, to your point, Mrs. Eden, I told Ari we’ll need to stick to schools within the realm of possibility.”

“Ivies are out of the question?” my mother asked, unable to disguise her disappointment. “All of them?” My heart broke, mostly for myself.

Mrs. Ballinger attempted an empathetic smile, only to pivot to an authoritative throat clearing. “Nothing is certain in admissions. It’s all one big crapshoot. That said, I’ve been doing this twenty years. I’ve seen how things work.”

“I see,” my mother said, looking now to the carpeted floor.

“Legacy can help. Where did you two go?”

“Well,” my mother said uncomfortably, “I started at Barnard.”

“Excellent.”

“But I transferred.”

“To where?”

“Stern College.”

“Yes, less helpful for Ari’s cause.”

“But I did earn a degree from Teachers College—so there’s some legacy, isn’t there?”

“Well, probably not much, to be brutally honest.” Mrs. Ballinger shuffled papers. “And you, Mr. Eden?”

My father regarded her with unnecessary defiance, as if she were the person most responsible for tarnishing his son’s mind with toxic secular ambitions. “Yeshiva.”

“Yeshiva University? A great option I’m going to push for.”

“No. I mean I went to yeshiva first.”

“Oh. And afterward?”

“Queens.”

“Okay, got it.” She slid a paper across the desk. “I’ve prepared a list for you to research. I’ve organized schools by categories—reaches, possibilities, safeties.” Yeshiva University. The New School. Brooklyn College. Baruch.

My heart sank. “Thank you.”

“Let me also note I’m well aware of the difficulties in selecting a college as an Orthodox Jew. Finding the right campus with kosher food and prayer services and a social life and weekly Sabbath options—the whole nine yards. Rest assured, I’ve been there, done that many times over and am here to help.”

“Yes, well, thank you again,” I said politely, slightly bewildered. I imagined someone like Oliver laughing at receiving a speech about how to locate a minyan on campus. Then I imagined a world in which I told my parents I’d be attending school in a faraway land without any access to kashrut. I couldn’t envision their reaction. “I appreciate that.”

“Absolutely,” she said cheerfully. “Now, lastly. Your meetings with Adam Bearman? How have they been? Productive?”

“He goes every other Sunday, you know,” my mother said approvingly.

“Yeah, mostly productive,” I lied. Bearman had been anything but helpful: during our most recent session, he had me accompany him to pick up bagels. (“New environments sometimes bolster productivity,” he reasoned. “Plus I’m hungry as shit.”)

“Marvelous. I want you taking that November SAT.”

I stood to leave. “Sure.”

“A fine boy you have, Mr. and Mrs. Eden,” Mrs. Ballinger said unconvincingly, dismissing us for the next family.

* * *

THE LIST BOTHERED ME. Never was I under the impression that I was on the road to major academic achievement. Until now, in fact, I’d never so much as thought twice about college. And yet, I couldn’t shake my lingering disappointment. I knew I couldn’t compete with my friends: Amir was hell-bent on emulating his grandfather and studying at MIT; Noah was beginning to flirt with recruiters at Northwestern, where his father ran track and field; Evan could write his own ticket. And I wasn’t exactly opposed to the schools Mrs. Ballinger had suggested; for the most part, I hadn’t even heard of them. What bothered me was the thought that this was it: a single year of exhilarating, brightly lit dreams, and then an immediate return to my old life—slinking back into my cupboard-sized Brooklyn room, falling back in with Shimon Levy, morphing slowly into my father. I could not bear coming face-to-face with a life I now knew I wanted, only to have to give it up.

I spent the remainder of the break this way: inexplicably crushed by college prospects, obsessing over my night with Sophia, stumbling halfheartedly through schoolwork. We had a couple of miserable basketball practices, and I met once with Bearman, who, after mocking me for observing Sukkot (“you mean to tell me you believe God descended on our forefathers and beseeched them to shake tree branches?”), gave me a full-length practice test on which I didn’t do very well. When I got home I told my mother my projected scores. For the first time in a long while she embraced me, hiding her look of sympathy. She insisted, with her arms around me, that I was the most intelligent person she knew.

* * *

WE WERE IN TANACH ON our first day back when we heard a gentle knock. Rabbi Feldman, mid-sentence, stopped lecturing on why we read about Ezekiel’s valley of dry bones on Pesach. Rabbi Bloom hovered at the doorframe.

“Please pardon me, Rabbi.” He cleared his throat officiously. “I was hoping to briefly borrow three of your students. Mr. Davis, Mr. Samson, Mr. Stark, a word, if you will.”

Through the window I could see Sophia loitering in the hallway. Davis and Amir stumbled out, looking grim. Evan went last, wearing the ghost of a triumphant smile while making a concerted effort to avoid Sophia’s eyes. A strange unease settled over us, even after the candidates disappeared from view.

After a few short minutes the door reopened. Davis, hands probing the pockets of his tweed sport coat, looked dumbfounded. Amir refused to lift his head.

“Where’s Ev?” Oliver piped up.

“Quiet, Bellow!” Rabbi Feldman snapped, more from habit than from anger. He bore his own look of confusion.

Evan returned with the period nearly over, dark-blue eyes aflame. When the bell rang no one stood to leave. Rabbi Feldman dawdled, shuffling lesson notes. Eventually, biting back his own curiosity, he nodded and left us alone.

“Well?” Oliver said, breaking the silence. “Anyone have the decency to tell us what happened?”

Evan slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed for the door. “She won,” he said, leaving the room.

* * *

“YOU DON’T REALLY THINK HE fixed it, Ev?” Noah was saying, looking skeptical. We were on the balcony, beneath a ragged, violet sky. A drizzle had begun to fall.

“Pretty implausible,” Oliver said brightly. “Bloom loves you too damn much.”

“I don’t know why you guys are even remotely surprised.” Amir was doing something where he’d pretend to receive a text, spin his phone over his legs and then repeat the process anew. “Did you think Evan Stark was capable of conceding defeat?”

Calmer now, stretching his legs, Evan shrugged. “My position remains unchanged.”

“But, like, what’s your evidence?” Noah asked.

“I know how Bloom works,” Evan said. “I could read between the lines.”

“Come off it,” Amir said gruffly. “Davis, Sophia and I were standing right there. He didn’t say shit.”

“You were,” Evan said, “until he dismissed you all back to class.”

“So he had you hang back, alone, to hint at some conspiracy?” Amir on the floor, back against the wall, shook his head irritably. “Or maybe you expect us to believe he actually came right out and admitted he fixed the election against you?”

“Well, I wasn’t alone at first,” Evan said. “But yes. More or less.”

“Ah,” Amir said, laughing spitefully. “More or less. He communicated it wordlessly in your shared unspoken language, is that it?”

“What do you mean you weren’t alone?” Noah asked.

“She was there, too,” Evan said.

I kicked at an empty Zephyrhills bottle with my sneaker. “Sophia?”

Evan rummaged in his backpack for a joint. He lit, took a sharp drag, sent a jet of smoke in my direction. “That’s right, Eden.”

Noah glanced my way when he thought I wasn’t looking. “Why would he want you there with Sophia, of all people?”

“Bloom, if you haven’t yet realized, enjoys pushing me,” Evan said.

Oliver laughed. “To try and get you guys to make out? Sorry, that was Freud speaking. I think I meant make up.”

Evan blew more smoke. “Just understand that he wanted me to lose and her to win.”

“But why?” I asked, more frustrated than I ought to have been. “What’s his motivation?”

“To humble me. To challenge me.”

Amir stood. “If this was actually fixed, what makes you think you would’ve won?”

“I mean, let’s be reasonable,” Oliver said. “You saw how the crowd reacted to that speech?”

Amir flashed Oliver the finger.

“Besides,” Oliver continued, “Bloom knows he can’t control Evan.”

“Why Sophia, then?” Noah asked. “Why not Davis or Amir?”

“Because he knew it’d hurt,” Evan said.

“Bloom’s trying to hurt you?” Oliver snorted. “Get the fuck outta here.”

“Maybe she just beat you.” I found myself inexplicably on my feet. I resisted the urge to sit back down. “Maybe people respect her. Maybe they didn’t want you.”

Evan placed his palms in the air. “Maybe, Eden.”

We were silent until the bell rang, concluding lunch. Amir moved for the classroom window. “I just have to say—did I not warn you? Did I not tell you this would happen?”

Evan blinked. “What you told me, actually, was that Davis would win.”

“No,” Amir said, “I told you we’d both lose. I asked you not to do it.”

“And I told you I needed it.”

“But why the fuck do you need it?” Amir shouted. Several sophomores in the outer courtyard of the model temple below glanced up at the commotion, only to duck off upon spotting Evan. “Tell us why.”

Evan said nothing.

Amir clasped a hand around his own shoulder, trying to calm himself. “Tell me.”

My shirt was darker. I realized with alarming indifference that it had started to rain.

“Don’t you realize?” Evan asked. “Don’t you realize what Bloom let my father do? What everyone in this fucking town let him do?”

Amir was quiet at first, as if considering this argument. “That’s the thing about you, Ev,” he said, after the pause, climbing through the window. “Somehow you’ve convinced yourself that you’re the only one who’s unhappy.”

* * *

OPENING NIGHT WAS LATER THAT week. We played Richmond, a charter school with an historical basketball ineptitude.

“Remove their organs!” Rocky commanded in the pregame huddle. We circled him, as per his instructions, while he performed his best attempt at a war dance. He claimed this spiked adrenaline. “Pillage them!”

We were playing in Richmond’s undersized gym, which was a good forty-minute drive from the Academy. My parents drove out to watch, despite my insistence it’d be a waste of time.

I was right. The game was uneventful. Noah started in marvelous fashion, scoring our first seven points and, on one play, blocking a shot deep into the crowd. It was over early, Noah making certain we led by a cool fifteen at halftime. I was the lone person not sent in for garbage time, even as I tried to guilt Rocky by catching his eye.

“Not worth worrying about,” my mother maintained on the drive back. “It’s only your first game. He’s just preparing you.”

I had my head against the window. “I did tell you I wouldn’t play.”

“Aryeh, at the end of the day, you don’t really think this matters?” My father was in the passenger seat, visibly annoyed to have been dragged out in the first place. Basketball, he made abundantly clear, was Bitul Torah, a shameless waste of time. “My own son, surely, doesn’t believe we’re placed on this planet to put a ball through a hoop?”

* * *

AFTER ENGLISH THE NEXT DAY, a lecture about melancholy in As You Like It, I wandered into the library during a free period to study for an impending biology quiz. Seated alone at the back was Evan, hunched over a book, taking copious notes. I took the seat across from him.

He looked up, blinked. “Eden.”

“Writing a paper?”

“Just a treatise,” he said.

“That doesn’t look like Gemara.”

Annoyed, he lifted the cover: On the Genealogy of Morality. “Ever read it?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“And Bloom thought you’re well read.”

“I thought so, too. That’s not for class, is it?”

“You sound disconcertingly like Amir. This is personal research.”

“About?”

He lowered the book, looked at me daringly. “Would you say you’re pretty interested in yearning as an organizing principle of human life?”

I remembered how he quoted from Antony and Cleopatra at Oliver’s party and again found myself suspecting he had somehow read my Academy application essay. I frowned, mentally articulating my accusation, if this even constituted an accusation. It felt wrong to have my privacy invaded, but it felt worse knowing Evan might have gained access to useful information about me. I tried brushing away the thought. The scenario was highly implausible, probably impossible, and the mere mention of longing, especially given Evan’s affinity for cryptic questions, was not itself particularly unique. “How do you know what I wrote—”

He put up his hand, cutting me off. “Whatever you’re winding up about is unimportant, Eden. Just answer this. Do you believe in a supreme value?”

I chewed on the inside of my cheeks. My face felt flushed, as if I’d walked into an examination unprepared. “I believe in God.”

“Okay, great, but whatever’s at the root of God. Whatever God embodies. A single, all-encompassing good. The center of all things.”

I took out my biology textbook, flipped through it. “I could probably be talked into such a thing.”

“Now what if we are that value?” Evan said. “What if we are the ones who dictate meaning for our own lives?”

I looked back up at him. “Who’s we? You and I? Humanity?”

“Self-interest.” He spun his ballpoint pen through his fingers. “The will of a single human being.”

“I don’t think that’s it.”

“No? What, then?”

Protists are eukaryotic organisms. Protists are not classified as animals or plants or even fungi. “I don’t know. Anything else. Charity. Love. Self-sacrifice. Raising children.”

He shook his head. “Living without limits. Having the courage to say yes to yourself. Recognizing that human will, unleashed appropriately, defines value.”

I smiled pleasantly. “I guess, to me, that’s just not, I don’t know, super convincing.”

Evan stretched, arching his back. “Nietzsche rejects one of the basic human premises we hold most dear.”

I glanced about the library, envious of all those engaged contentedly in trivial tasks, like actually completing homework or formulating sufficiently flirtatious text messages. “Which is?”

“The atomistic soul.”

“You’ve lost me,” I said.

“The classical idea of the soul—that it exists, that it animates our body. That it’s something indestructible and indivisible. You believe in all that, Eden?”

“Sure.” Protists are typically unicellular. They exhibit structural and functional diversity. “I think so.”

“Nietzsche doesn’t. Nietzsche thinks that whole idea should be forgotten.”

“And you agree.”

He dabbed his fingers with his pen, inking his fingertips with small, black circles. “For a while I did. But not anymore. Now I believe the opposite, actually.”

“What’s the opposite?” I asked. “The good old-fashioned immortality of the neshama?”

“Sure,” he said. “To put it crudely.”

“Do you also believe in Olam HaBa, then? Or whatever other version of eternity?”

Evan’s phone, stationed facedown on the table, buzzed several times, but he ignored it. “It’d be comforting to believe in that, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “But if you believe in everlasting souls, don’t you kind of necessarily have to believe in the afterlife?”

“Yeah, in some capacity,” he said. “Maybe just not the one they teach in Brooklyn. Clouds of glory. A stadium filled with tzadikim. Shabbos multiplied sixty times over.”

“I see. So what do you believe in?”

“I don’t believe in a literal afterlife,” he said, fingering his book. “Or, at least, a postponed afterlife. I think the whole business of eternity is available in the here and now. I mean, isn’t it kind of strange, almost ugly, to imagine ascending into infinity—to do nothing? To sit quietly, obediently? Why can’t immortality, divinity, spiritual fulfillment, whatever the hell you want to call it, why can’t it be something we accomplish here on earth? We claim to want independence, but we’re too damn frightened to seize it when it’s staring us in the face. Why don’t we just take it?”

I pressed my temple. “I—you’re asking why we don’t just take what we desire? Maybe because there are morals. Just because we have a soul and therefore the potential for godliness doesn’t mean we can go around doing whatever we want.”

Evan smiled impatiently, as if this was simply an exercise in leading me toward something I could digest in uncomplicated terms. “So instead?”

“Instead, hopefully, we do what’s right.”

“That’s the thing.” He rotated his head, making sure we didn’t have eavesdroppers. “If we are, in fact, the source of our own values, then we are what’s right. Those desires we’re too scared to pull off? Well, by definition, they are profoundly moral.”

“Yeah, that’s just . . . that’s ridiculous.”

“Why’s it ridiculous?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How about because we have good and we have evil?”

“Good and evil, virtue and sin, mitzvah and aveira. Those are tired terms, Eden. Objectivity just reinforces the old way of thinking, the way that makes us defer and deflect. But the real heights? Those are what we find in between.”

“Like what?” I asked. “What are the real heights?”

“How about being able to move toward your self for once, not away from it.”

“Yeah, well, sounds to me like embracing that inner self thing might be kind of dangerous.”

“Something can be true in the highest degree and still be dangerous, can’t it?”

I was beginning to feel nauseous. I wished I’d never joined him.

“Take the sun, Eden.”

“The sun?”

“The more you see,” he said, matter-of-factly, “the more your vision is destroyed.”

“Sounds like a pretty dumb analogy.”

“Apply it to God, then. Complete truth obliterates. Think Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

I stared blankly.

“Right, I forgot, you’re an empty vessel, you’ve never seen a movie. Okay, in terms you’d grasp? Think Lot’s wife turning to look. Orpheus turning to look. The men of Bet Shemesh gazing into the Ark. Uzzah touching the Ark. The list goes on, but always it’s the same: you see God and you’re destroyed.”

“Not everyone,” I said. “Not Moshe.”

“Precisely.” Evan slapped the desk hard enough to receive a scowl from the librarian. He nodded his apologies. “Not the exceptional. They aren’t harmed.” He lowered his voice to a careful whisper. “Our ability to survive intense truth—and this is the trick, Eden, follow me here—our ability depends on the strength of our souls. And the strength of our souls is proportionate to how much truth we can withstand. So, how do we know? How do we know how much we can take?” His eyes were blue, eerie. “It’s a fucking question, Eden,” he said, after our uneasy pause.

“I don’t know, Evan.”

“We test ourselves. We see whether we’re destined for that kind of freedom.”

“And how do we test ourselves?”

“I’m still perfecting some details.”

“Yeah,” I said, “why do I feel like that’s . . . well, kind of a worrisome thought?”

“It’s not worrisome at all,” he said, speaking to himself through me. “All we have to do to test ourselves, really, is to suffer. And relax, Eden, don’t give me that look. I’m not suggesting self-flagellation here. I’m mostly referring to, I don’t know—shedding, let’s call it.”

“Shedding?”

“Yeah, making a sacrifice. Getting rid of what we love. We’re all stuck to something, imprisoned to someone, but if we get rid of it?” Evan shrugged. “We’d unleash ourselves.”

“Great, I think I’ve heard enough.” I began gathering my biology notes to go elsewhere, anywhere. “But I am super happy to hear you’re now, I don’t know, a full-fledged ascetic.”

“Believe me,” he said. “Most people find it hard, getting rid of everything. Not everyone, though. Not me. And not you.”

The library lighting was making my eyes sting. I crammed my textbook into my backpack, desperate to get away from him. “Do me a favor, Evan? Leave me out of your weird fantasies.”

“Just answer this, Eden. Answer it honestly, no pretending. Did you find it hard to leave home? To say goodbye to everything you knew?”

“That has nothing to—”

“Of course it does. You and I, we’re accustomed to solitude. That’s an asset, because it brings us closer to what I’m trying to do. But it’s the few who do matter that make shedding nearly impossible.”

I stood, turned to leave. “I don’t know if this is all theoretical daydreaming or if you’re actually . . . planning something,” I said unsurely, “but if it’s the latter, maybe just—don’t.”

Evan smiled coldly. “What choice do we have? Otherwise we’ll spend our whole lives yearning.”

* * *

READING IN BED LATER, STARING out through my window at the limpid night, I thought more about what Evan had said. He was right: I was habituated to solitude. Or, at least, I had been for much of my life. But he was wrong to insist I craved loneliness when, in fact, I hated the disease. I liked having friends, real friends, and I was growing to appreciate the person I was around them, even when it meant accepting that I was dangling in a world in which I’d never fully belong. I liked community. I liked the comfort of confiding in people. I liked feeling, for the first time, rooted in kinship, anchored to something concrete and familiar, no longer constantly adrift. Whatever plagued Evan, whatever crisis cornered him into isolation, had nothing to do with me.

To affirm this thought, I rolled over on my side, reached for my phone and, inhaling deeply, called Sophia.

She answered on the first ring. “‘How does my good Lord Hamlet?’”

“Hey,” I said, taken aback she’d answered so quickly. “I’m not calling too late, am I?”

“You think it’s appropriate to call at this hour?”

“I, uh—” I checked my bedside digital clock. “Shoot. I’m sorry, Madam President.”

Her mirthless laugh. “It’s nine-thirty, Ari. I was joking.” I imagined her lying in bed, ankles together, textbooks piled high, moonlight trickling over her. “What can I do for you?”

“Yeah, I—just a quick question. For school, I mean.”

“Oh, for school? How surprising.”

“What—you don’t think I like talking to you?”

“I think you love talking to me,” she said. “You love it so much you make up excuses to do just that.”

“Excuses?” I was thankful she couldn’t see the color of my face over the phone. “Wow. What an accusation.”

“Poor kid. You’re probably madly conjuring homework questions this very second, sitting there in your pajamas—”

“Pajamas? Whoa, who says I wear pajamas?”

“My apologies,” she said, laughing slightly. “Hate to be presumptuous.”

“I happen, for your information, to be wearing a highly trendy outfit.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Basketball team sweatpants. Nike. Sponsored by the Bellows, no less.”

“You’re right, undeniably sexy. And your shirt? Don’t leave me hanging without a complete image.”

I glanced down at my chest. “No shirt.”

“You Casanova. Trying to seduce me?”

I put my phone on speaker. “It’s not working, is it?”

“Why the sudden loss of confidence?”

“Did you like it?”

“I like when you’re yourself.” This somehow ordered neurotransmitters to dispatch throughout my body a sensation of tingling that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, just the tingling of someone coming to life. “Anyway. Probably enough phone sex for tonight, right? Let’s calm you down. We don’t want you too riled before bed.”

I grasped my hair with my fingers. “Right, of course.”

“So what was that urgent question?”

Far-off chirping. Iguanas, I figured, the sort that tended to congregate in Noah’s backyard, slipping through the golf course fence, scaling his roof, migrating across the street when they felt like slumming. “Uh,” I said, quickly opening my notebook, searching for something adequate, “yeah, so on the practice quiz, number forty-seven, the one about organizing the vessels from highest to lowest carbon dioxide concentrations—”

“—pulmonary arteries and right ventricle, left atrium and, yes, pulmonary veins.”

“Oh. Wow. Cool, thanks.” I paused to pretend to scribble notes. “You didn’t need to look that up?”

“Nope.”

“You have a pretty impressive memory,” I said.

“I’ve been told. Any other pressing questions?”

“No, that’s perfect. Really helpful, actually.”

“I can tell. Well, then, I’m returning to the piano. Sleep well, Hamlet.” She hung up. I fell back on my pillow, the sound of her voice, in that moment, enough to overcome anything Evan could say to me.

* * *

TWO DAYS LATER, WE WERE greeted at the school’s main entrance by the following poster:

עַד מָתַי מֵאַנְתָּ לֵעָנֹת מִפָּנָי שַׁלַּח עַמִּי וְיַעַבְדֻנִי

It wasn’t harrowing until I recognized that silvery ink. It was a harmless phrase, though somewhat esoteric divorced from context, a line that might appear on a Tanach test. Yet that Evan had selected it gave it a strangely sinister quality. Until when will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Send my people, and they will worship me.

The sign stayed up longer than expected. Gio assumed it was an inspirational Torah quote the school was promoting—“I can’t read this fucking language, what you want from me?”—while the Judaic faculty figured one of the rabbis had posted it for a class.

“Isn’t it a bit obscure?” I asked Evan during davening. It was one of the rare times he’d bothered to show up at Minyan X. When Noah and I arrived, Evan was wandering the room, huddling people together, drawing worried looks from Rabbi Schwartz.

“And kind of creepy, bro,” Noah added. “What’s with all the creepy shit lately?”

“It’s for Bloom. Don’t worry about that,” Evan said. “He’ll get it.”

“Okay,” I said, curious whether Noah found this as odd as I did or if my library conversation with Evan had rendered me slightly paranoid, “but what’s it for?”

“I have something planned for third period,” Evan said. “Something big. Spread the word. I expect compliance.”

Noah laughed. “You expect compliance. What the hell does compliance mean?”

Evan turned away. “It means you follow me when I leave.”

* * *

WE WERE SITTING IN TANACH, listening to Rabbi Feldman drone on about a little-known instance in Joshua in which God split the sea, when Evan stood. Rabbi Feldman paused to give him an amused look. “Rear-end cramp, Evan?”

Evan didn’t answer. He was staring level-eyed at the front of the room.

Rabbi Feldman frowned. “Everything all right, Ev?”

Evan stepped forward slowly.

“Evan?”

He turned to face us, nodded and then, without explanation, walked out of the classroom. On cue, the majority of the class followed.

“What in the world?” Rabbi Feldman growled, veins in his temple throbbing.

I turned to Noah. He stared in confusion, only to shrug and join the walkout. Unsure what else to do, I closed my notebook and trailed along. Amir, begrudgingly, came, too. Davis remained alone in the classroom.

“Halt!” Rabbi Feldman threw open the classroom door and yelled into the hallway, where we marched steadily and in menacing silence after Evan. “Get back immediately!”

Hallway doors opened abruptly, students pouring out to join us. There was Oliver, leading a battalion from the classroom to our right, and Gabriel, a room full of juniors in tow, emerging from the classroom to our left. Out of the staircase appeared Remi, herding seniors—Rebecca laughing in bewilderment, Nicole recording the event on Snapchat—until the first floor overflowed, bodies merging in line behind Evan, himself wraithlike and refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. In my peripheral vision I saw Sophia lingering in the stairwell, watching gravely.

We followed Evan through the long hallway, past the front office, past Rabbi Bloom’s glass windows—behind which he stood, arms folded over his chest, blood draining from his face—until we were outside. Evan continued marching through the basketball courts, where teachers pleaded for us to stop. Evan kept moving, undeterred, even as Rabbi Schwartz was barreled over, until he reached a large bush just off the soccer field. I looked about in disbelief. There were at least a hundred and fifty of us standing obediently, eyes dilated with adrenalized reverence.

Evan took in our silence before raising a fist. “Two choices,” he called out, his face dark. “Rise above a broken system or be crushed by it. Submit to yourself or fail to discover whether you’ll ever be exceptional.” This was met, absurdly, with thunderous applause. He dug into his pocket, pulled out his lighter, flicking it on and off. “To the rebellion,” he cried, holding the lighter to the bush, allowing it to catch fire. “My friends, your burning bush,” he said, orange sparks at his elbows. “Let this be your divine voice.”

Wild cheering. Sacrilegious flames. I remember the white circles in Evan’s eyes, the smell of burning shrubbery, wisps of smoke rising heavenward, Rabbi Bloom and Sophia and the others, hundreds of yards away, watching us bow before Evan Stark.

* * *

DURING MY FREE PERIOD THAT next day, I tucked Rabbi Bloom’s Yeats under my arm and, making certain no one saw me, knocked on his door.

“Mr. Eden.” Rabbi Bloom looked up from a pile of papers and motioned for me to join him at the conference table. Looking worn and bleary, he eyed the book. “Tell me about your time with the schizophrenic seer.”

“I loved him,” I said. “I came to return it and to thank you.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Eden. Some people are fatally disenchanted by Yeats’ revolutionary intensities, not to mention all the cyclical talk.”

“The gyres?”

“The gyres,” he said, “and those tricky phases of the moon.”

“Yeah, they were—odd,” I said. “And pretty hard to get through, actually.”

“I advise you refrain from subjecting yourself to reading A Vision. Pure mystic torture.” He leaned toward me. “But you made it out the other end of the wormhole. What was your favorite poem?”

“‘Adam’s Curse.’”

“A noble choice as any. Why so?”

“I liked the interplay of narrative voices,” I said, trying to remember key phrases I sketched mentally while walking to his office.

“And which voices would those be?”

“Two stand out to me. One is the fearless poet and then the other I guess is what I’d call the weary lover.”

“Congratulations,” he said, “you’ve discovered Yeats’ much beloved anti-self.” He reached across the table for his book and flipped distractedly through it. “I presume you recognize that term?”

“Yeah, it was all over the place,” I said. “Other selves, antithetical selves, Daemons.”

“‘When I come to put in rhyme what I have found, it will be hard toil, but for a moment I believe I have found myself and not my anti-self,’” Rabbi Bloom recited from the book. He looked up at me, smiling cautiously. “What do you think Yeats meant by all that?”

“When he puts it that way,” I said, leaning on the table for momentum, “I guess the anti-self is something almost, I don’t know, aspirational. You’re dissatisfied with the current image of yourself, which feels maybe inadequate or too nebulous, and so as a remedy you picture another self, a superior life, one attached to excellence or virtue or, in this case, to art.” Abruptly I trailed off, wondering if I’d overdone it.

Rabbi Bloom, however, nodded earnestly. “I like that, Mr. Eden. I daresay you have a knack for this sort of work.”

“Well, I wouldn’t mind if that’s true,” I said. “I’ve got to be good at something.”

“Being a tad behind, coming from your old school, is no crime. Certainly it shouldn’t diminish the confidence you should have in your capabilities. Have more assurance in yourself. You’re a fine thinker with a lot of potential, as I believe I’ve pointed out.”

I felt unreasonably pleased with myself. “Thank you.”

“Now, of course, the follow-up. Why the fascination with the anti-self?”

I rubbed a hand on my knee. “Right, so I think Yeats was essentially suffocated by consciousness and by, I suppose, the burden of being his own—”

“Yes, yes, quite so, Mr. Eden. Certainly Yeats suffered from internal fracturing, often to the point of unintelligibility. But what I mean to ask is why you are so taken with the anti-self?”

“Oh.” I blinked. Now, I could tell, he was, in fact, studying me, waiting for a specific answer. “Well, maybe in a way that’s not entirely dissimilar from Yeats,” I said carefully, “I find it comforting to reimagine myself.”

Unself-consciously, refusing to allow myself the internal humiliation of actually processing what I was doing, I envisioned myself, suddenly, as Evan. In this reverie I was slightly taller, slightly tanner, slightly more muscular. I had a sharper nose, I had a more interesting cut of lips, I had hair that no longer curled into thick confusion but instead framed my face to be angular and striking. All symptoms of my depersonalization were gone. People could look at me now and I could hold their gaze. People could meet me now and remember what I looked like. I could glance into the mirror now and mentally reconstruct what I saw hours, days, weeks later. I was not some reflection of a reflection. I was Evan.

“Precisely. It’s what we all need, and we need it desperately, this ability to remodel our world, to be recast poetically, to constantly make and unmake ourselves. It’s part of having an identity, part of coping with being human. Most people, most serious thinkers, at the very least, cannot lay claim to a single vision of the self, don’t you think? There are gains to be made when what we are in the flesh comes into conflict with what we think is our true being. In this way, our chronically unfulfilled daily self can sometimes grasp parts of that ideal reality toward which we aspire.”

A moment of polite pause while I pretended I didn’t have an immediate question. “But do you think too much self-division can be—well, dangerous?”

A look of concern passed over his face. “In what way?”

“I guess theoretically you could lose sight of your true self amid many other artificial selves.”

“Not if there is no true self. Not if we’re always in flux, always evolving.” He folded his arms. “So, the task is to find balance. To let both selves, all selves, live together, clashing in harmony.”

“So how do you do that?”

“One way, perhaps, is to find your anti-self externally.”

“In another person, you mean?”

“In dreams, illusions, experiences that drag you outside the confines of your self. But yes, at an extreme, in another human, someone to whom you’re linked, even as that person resembles quite your opposite.” He made a show of shutting the book and sliding it toward the other end of the table. “If you can find an anti-self, you can achieve a sort of harmonious self-expansion, a oneness within the power of your mind.”

“So you’d become divine, in a way.”

“Perhaps. But anyway, that’s enough mystical metaphysics for now.” He walked to his bookcase. “So would you enjoy another assignment? I won’t be offended, just saddened, if you tell me our conversation served only to bore you.”

My head spun in uneven circles. “Yeah, definitely, if you don’t mind.”

He grabbed a book, slid it toward me. The Sickness unto Death. “In keeping with current themes but exposing you to existentialism. It’s a bit more affirming, I hope you’ll find. Plus, Kierkegaard, at the very least, wasn’t a fascist.”

Gratefully, I placed the book in my backpack.

“May I ask, by the way, how you’re finding Minyan X these days?”

“It’s, well . . . chaotic, as per usual.”

“Maybe,” Rabbi Bloom said, stroking his chin, “it’s high time to break you out. Clearly you’ve no business being there.”

“I’d very much not object.”

“So here’s an idea. I propose we make today’s meeting something of a regular occurrence, just for a little while. If you promise to daven on your own before school—”

“—of course.”

“Wonderful. Then why don’t you come see me when Minyan X meets? We can use the time to discuss your readings. How does that sound?”

“Perfect,” I said, standing, making my way toward the door. “Thank you, Rabbi.”

Rabbi Bloom leaned a hand on his the table. “For the slightest moment, you know, I thought you came in to discuss another self-appointed seer.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m referring, of course, to yesterday’s excitement.”

I blinked, immediately wondering whether it’d all been a guise, whether I’d erred showing up. “Oh. No, I—”

“I’ve never seen something like that, Mr. Eden. Something so—disturbed.” He paused. “‘And what rough beast, its hour come round at last / Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?’”

I only nodded, unwilling to offer anything self-incriminating or, worse, incriminating of Evan. Surprisingly, Evan had received only a one-day suspension, for the minor sin of committing arson on school grounds.

“Mr. Eden?”

I hovered at the door, waiting to be released. “Yes, Rabbi?”

“Do be careful who you follow into the dark.”

* * *

“MEIR’S BAR MITZVAH IS NEXT Shabbat,” my father reminded us at dinner. “You’ll be able to go home with us, won’t you, Ari?”

I had been avoiding answering this question for weeks, offering a wide array of halfhearted excuses: homework, essays, group projects. In truth, I couldn’t bear the thought of standing in our old shul, attempting to make Shimon, Mordechai and Reuven understand the incommunicable—the sight of Remi White nude, for instance, or hearing Sophia play the piano. How could I explain what it was to curl tefillin around my fingers, to curl my fingers around Nicole’s body, to curl tefillin around my fingers once more? How could I explain what it was to change but remain unchanged, to enjoy the perverse thrill of experience but still bentch after meals and undulate during Shemoneh Esrei and pull tzitzit over my shoulders each morning? To return to Brooklyn, even for forty-eight hours, would be to force myself to reckon with a tension I did not want resolved. “I don’t think so, Abba.”

He set down his utensils. “You don’t think so?”

“It’s just that I’ve got important tests coming up,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “Plus my second game is Saturday night.”

“Your game?” He frowned, rubbing his chin. “You realize Meir is your cousin. Your first cousin.”

“I can’t just miss it,” I said after too long of a pause.

“He made a commitment, joining the team,” my mother said. She spoke in an oddly unanimated voice. “Besides, traveling will interfere with studying.”

I bobbed my head too animatedly at this suggestion.

We three drank in a moment of awkward silence.

“I’m sure Norman will understand, Yaakov,” my mother finally said, playing with the rim of her glass.

My father nodded distantly. “So I’ll cancel your ticket.”

“I’m sorry, Abba,” I said.

“You’ll be all right alone?” my mother asked, shifting gears with a tone of finality. “Should I ask Cynthia if you can stay over with Noah?”

“No, I’ll be fine. It’ll give me time to study.”

Dinner concluded without further discussion. Soon enough, my father gathered his plate and disappeared into the kitchen to wash dishes.

“He seems pretty angry,” I said.

My mother dabbed at the tablecloth with a wet napkin. “Just slightly disappointed. Give him time.”

“I am sorry, you know,” I said, uneasily. “I do realize it means a lot to him.”

“Does it mean a lot to you?” She asked this without making direct eye contact.

“Meir’s bar mitzvah? Or going back in general?”

“Either. Both.”

I shook my head. Now we were each avoiding the other’s gaze.

She gathered the rest of the dishes. “It’ll be strange to be back,” she said. “I don’t think I’m looking forward to it.”

* * *

THEY CAME LATE FRIDAY NIGHT. I’d already eaten—my mother, worried I’d starve, left behind an enormous amount of food—and was sprawled on my living room couch, reading drowsily. Just as my eyes were beginning to grow heavy, Kierkegaard a potent sedative, I heard knocks.

I jolted awake, rubbed my temple. I tried ignoring them, but they began ringing the doorbell. I threw open the front door. “It’s freaking Shabbos!” I hissed. “Don’t ring the bell.”

“Sorry, but how long were you going to make us wait?” Oliver stepped inside and brushed past me. “It’s inhumane.”

“I was hoping you might give up,” I said irritably.

“Sorry, Drew,” Noah said, following Oliver. “Thought maybe you passed out.”

“No,” Evan said, “I knew you were just ignoring us.”

“Can we blame him?” Amir asked, the last one in.

I locked the door. I was grateful, at least, that Oliver hadn’t brought anyone else.

“So. This is the humble abode, huh?” Oliver surveyed my living room, holding a bottle of Jameson. “About time you invited us over.”

“I didn’t invite you,” I said.

“Real hospitable, Eden,” Oliver said. “And after all the times we’ve hosted you, no less. After you and Nicole desecrated my poor brother’s room!”

My neck burned. “No one else is coming, right?”

“Just your favorite four schmucks, no need to fret.” Oliver found his way into the kitchen. “Where are your shot glasses?”

“You really ingratiate yourself, Oliver,” Amir said.

I lingered at the kitchen entrance, hands attached to my pockets. “Why would we have shot glasses?”

“Silly me,” Oliver said. “I assumed all parents drank as much as mine.” He made a fuss throwing open cabinets, eventually finding dust-laden wineglasses above the stove. “These’ll do.” He lined them up, poured gratuitously.

“No, I’m not drinking,” I said meekly, as Oliver gestured at the shot designated for me. “I’m still groggy—”

“You’re absolutely drinking.” Evan pushed a glass in front of me. “On three. One, two—”

We threw them back. I closed my eyes, tried not to choke, grabbed a handful of Pringles to mitigate the burning. There were more shots, each precipitated by bawdy toasts. I stopped refusing. The kitchen, soon enough, became slightly slanted.

“I’m starving. Have any grub to share with dear drunken friends?” Oliver found his way into my refrigerator, removing options that caught his eye. Schnitzel. Potato kugel. Mayonnaise.

Noah descended on the refrigerator, too, helping himself to a sizable stack of leftovers. “Hear that sound, Drew?”

Amir and Evan were arguing loudly at the table. Something about re-enfranchising felons, I think, or maybe Second Amendment rights. I wasn’t paying attention. My head wasn’t spinning exactly but had acquired alcoholic warmth.

Noah stuck his head out of the refrigerator. “Drew?”

“Did I hear what?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

“Someone’s at the door,” he said, chin stained with mustard.

Oliver walked over to the table, poured himself another shot.

I grabbed his shoulder. “You said no one else was coming.”

Oliver frowned. “I said that? Doesn’t sound like something I’d say.”

“Oliver.”

The knocks again. Oliver wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and gave a large, drunken grin. “I do apologize.”

Cursing, I hastened from my kitchen, slapping my cheeks to sober myself. I peeked, carefully, through the peephole. At the door, to my disbelief, were Rebecca, Remi and Sophia. I swallowed hard.

“We bear gifts,” Remi announced. She handed over two bottles of Smirnoff and sidestepped around me, following the voices into the kitchen.

Rebecca studied my face, cringed. “You didn’t know we were coming, did you?” she asked. “Oh, God. Don’t kill me, Ari. Noah told us to come.”

Noah emerged from the kitchen, red-cheeked, grinning stupidly. “That’s what Oliver claimed you told him?”

“Look at you. Already drunk?” Rebecca delivered a peck to my cheek and a light slap to Noah’s. “Too much to ask for you to wait?”

Sophia entered last. She allowed Noah and Rebecca to disappear before pulling me aside. Our bodies were inches apart. I tried not to think about this. “He isn’t here, is he?”

“Who?”

She glanced down the hall. “Evan.”

Her pointedness surprised me, but the impact was dulled by the brunt of the shots. I nodded.

“I don’t want to see him,” she said.

My heart soared. I could count her eyelashes. “You don’t?”

“We can leave.” She lowered her voice again. “Clearly this was a hoax, I can steer them out—”

Her whispering appeared to complicate my cognitive abilities. I shook my head. “Don’t worry, I don’t want to see him, either,” I said. “Stay a while with me, it’ll be fine.” She pursed her lips in thought but eventually allowed me to lead her to the kitchen, where Oliver continued pouring, demanding that the girls catch up. Sophia gave Amir a hug. She and Evan nodded.

“To our friend, alcohol,” Oliver announced. We raised our shots. “Cause of, antidote for, all our many problems.”

We moved to the living room and, with the exception of Sophia, who sought refuge on the couch, took turns ripping the bottle. Oliver and Noah proposed toasts—to Sophia’s presidency, to winning on Saturday night, to the ghost of Oliver’s and Remi’s relationship, to burning bushes and sunrise minyanim and what Noah termed “weird-ass rebellions.” My living room began whirling at a frightening speed. I excused myself for the restroom, where I bowed before the toilet, contemplating the relief of vomiting. I came out, drifted into my room and found Remi on the floor, knees against her chest. “Remi?”

She looked up mournfully.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Just fine.” She tried standing, fell back to the floor. “This your room?”

“Sure is.”

“Kind of sparse.”

“Decorated it myself, thanks.”

She held a picture of my parents and me, taken at my elementary school graduation, which she found beside my bed. My parents had their arms around me. I stared blankly into the camera, clutching a blue siddur to my chest. “You’re not smiling.”

“Yeah, I tend to forget to do that.”

“You don’t smile much in general,” she said.

“Listen, I’m working on it.”

“You should do it more.”

“Duly noted, thanks for the tip.” I rocked slightly on the balls of my feet. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Don’t you think you have a reason to smile?”

“Whoa,” I said, “guess we’re getting personal.”

She frowned. “You flirting with me?”

“No, I—well, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“I wouldn’t go for you,” she said, shrugging.

“Yeah, that’s actually perfectly okay with me, Remi.”

“You could probably use some more self-confidence.”

“Couldn’t hurt.”

“I mean, you have nice teeth, if nothing else.” She threw the picture at my bed before I could stop her. I tried intercepting it, but to my relief it landed on my pillows. “So, what do you think Evan’s deal is?”

I kicked at a stack of books on my floor. “Why do people keep bringing him up?”

“Who else?”

“Nobody,” I said. “Never mind that.”

“Well.” She threw her head back, then returned it to an upright position. “I was looking for him.”

“In here?”

“I guess. I don’t know, I’m pretty drunk, to be honest.”

“He’s probably in the living room, where every other person is.” I offered my hand, eager to remove her from my room. “Let me take you.”

She held on to me but didn’t budge from the floor. “Ari.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve spoken before?”

“You and Evan? I’d certainly say so.”

“No. Me and you.”

“Oh,” I said. “Uh, minimally would probably be a generous answer.”

She went on holding my hand. “You don’t want to be friends?”

“Sure I do.”

“Are you extremely shy or extremely stuck-up?”

“You just said I needed more self-confidence.”

“Yeah, socially. But sometimes it feels like you’re shut off. Like, I don’t know, you think you’re smarter than other people. Or you’re above everything else or just not interested.”

“You think I’m like that?”

“I guess what I mean is I don’t know if you’re a little bit cold and emotionless.”

“This is—fairly unexpected criticism.” I was taken aback that Remi had spent enough time contemplating my existence to actually formulate an opinion of me, but even more so that I could be perceived as anything other than introverted, out-of-place, insecure. How strange, I thought, feeling the weight of the alcohol again, for external life to exist in diametrical opposition to the life in your head.

“I give good drunken therapy. So we should speak more, shouldn’t we?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Start now, open up. You like Sophia.”

I was far too dizzy to blush. “I might.”

“Want to know a secret?”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me one.”

“But it’s about Sophia,” Remi said in a high, drunken voice. “I think she thinks you’re cute. Kind of handsome, actually.”

This was enough to throw me, even in my current state. “She said that to you?”

“But you think she’s beautiful.” She laughed, pulled her hand away. “Everyone thinks she is.”

“She is beautiful.”

She looked up at me, dazed eyes sharpening, a finger tracing her retroussé nose. “But do you think there’s something else about her?”

I didn’t answer.

Her breathing slowed. “I do. I think she’s sad. I don’t know why, but she is.” She paused. “It’s why she won’t drink much, I think. Like, for a while she didn’t drink anything at all. So she won’t lose control, maybe.” Remi blinked heavily, licked her lips. “Okay, turns out I don’t feel too well,” she decided, her head falling back to her shoulders. Quickly, I grabbed the wastebasket from under my desk and looked away as she was sick. “Hold my hair,” she commanded, midway through her retching.

I obliged, kneeling beside her. When she felt better she had me lead her back into the living room, though only after making me swear not to tell anyone what I’d seen. Game of Thrones was on mute. A dragon was annihilating several hundred people but nobody was watching. Evan held the Kierkegaard. “Where’d you get this?” He had it opened to the front cover, where a faded L.B. was traced.

Admitting I’d been studying with Rabbi Bloom felt, in my current state, inexplicably self-defeating, akin to surrendering a secret on which I might, one day, desperately rely. “Nowhere.”

“Right. Well, just so you know, I was given this once, too.” He closed the book, returned it to the couch. “Tell him not to forget that loss is a more important step for the self than God.”

It became difficult to focus my eyes. Noah and Rebecca slipped into my backyard. Evan and Remi grabbed one of the bottles and, as I’d later discover, locked themselves in my parents’ bathroom. Oliver and Amir raided my food cabinet, guzzling jellybeans. I stood around, dimly, wondering how it’d come to pass that I occupied a new home in which intoxicated strangers ran wild.

“Hamlet?” Sophia was snapping her fingers in the airspace above my head. “You all right?”

I closed my eyes, steadying my vision. I piled jellybeans into my mouth. Pale blues, bright oranges. “Don’t I look good?”

“You look green.”

I scattered jellybeans to the floor. “I should really stop eating these.”

She looked me over once more. I felt an irrational urge to explain that I’d presented an inaccurate version of myself. This is not, in fact, who I am, I wanted to tell her. I am someone else entirely. I do not know what has happened to me. I do not quite grasp where I’ve gone. “You look almost as bad as you did at Oliver’s house.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Drunk, that is.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

“What do I look like drunk?”

“Sad. Sloppy.”

Nausea boiled in my stomach. “I didn’t want them here,” I said quietly.

“I know.”

I leaned toward her. “I’m happy you’re here.”

“Absolutely, and that’s our cue to get you to bed.”

“No,” I objected incoherently. “Actually, what I want is—”

I was on all fours, heaving a pool of colors. Evan was laughing, Oliver recording a video on his iPhone, my cheeks glued to the wet tile floor. Remi held my hand in solidarity, and then I was in bed, my ceiling spinning into the dark, Sophia’s voice fading in and out.

* * *

IT WAS NEARLY TWO IN the afternoon when I woke, sunlight streaming through my window and hurting my eyes. I was lying over untouched sheets, half dressed, a fierce headache coming on, an awful stench coming from the wastebasket. I washed my face, changed and made my way into the kitchen where, to my astonishment, Sophia sat drinking coffee and reading The Sickness unto Death. “Really dull stuff,” she said without glancing up. “Thanks for leaving me all morning with such shoddy reading material.”

I sat beside her, trying to figure out what she was still doing in my house. My heart pulsed with possibility. Had she slipped in this morning to check on me? Had she never—

“I slept in the living room, for the record,” she said, seeing my mind racing. “With Remi.”

“Remi’s here?”

I peeked into the living room. Sure enough, Remi was splayed out on the couch, blond hair blanketing her face.

“She was even worse than you,” Sophia said. “So it was either letting her hibernate here or bringing her to Noah’s.”

“I was that—rough?”

“You did regurgitate an ungodly number of jellybeans.”

“Yikes.”

“And I was forced to undress you. Had no choice. You know, to get you to sleep.”

I blinked frenziedly, turning outrageous shades of red.

“Relax. I kept you decent the whole time.”

I looked around the kitchen. I had a hazy memory of Oliver sketching his name in ketchup on the table, but now it was spot-free, the bottles and general mess all gone. “Did you clean this all up?”

“What choice did you leave me? It was utterly appalling in here.”

“Thank you,” I said hoarsely.

“You owe me.” She stood, started making coffee. “You should’ve seen this disaster. I found an avocado in the bathroom sink.”

“An avocado?”

“I’d double-check the house before your parents come home, if I were you. Make sure vegetables aren’t floating where they don’t belong.” She handed me coffee. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like an enormous idiot,” I said.

“I believe I’ve emphasized this previously, but you can’t let them overpower you like that.”

I sipped too quickly, scorching my tongue. “My parents are going to kill me.”

“You’ll survive because they won’t find out. I cleaned too well.” She sat beside me. “Where are those jet-setting parents of yours, anyway?”

“They’ve jetted all the way back to Brooklyn.”

“How exotic.”

“It’s my cousin’s bar mitzvah.”

“You didn’t go?”

“Told them I had too much work.” I took another sip, the pounding in my head lessening slightly. “Truth is I didn’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t go back right now.”

“Do you hate it here, too?”

“Not yet.”

“Phone the local media,” announced a cool voice behind us. “I just woke up in Ari Eden’s house.” Remi, whimpering, massaging her forehead, strolled in. “I need strong coffee, Soph. Generously tinged with vodka. Eden, not a word from you about any of this, ever, or I’ll send videos from last night to every rabbi in Brooklyn.” She took a mug from Sophia and, ignoring me, sat down, sipping slowly.

We sat awhile, drinking in silence. I stole glances at the curve of Sophia’s fingers, at the corners of her mouth as she returned to reading. Eventually, Remi felt well enough to leave. I thanked Sophia again, walked them out and then returned to my room, collapsing onto my bed.