Evil and brief hath been my pilgrimage
—Browning, “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Church”
Oliver proposed spending a week in Key West during winter break. I was hesitant, given that I could neither independently finance this trip nor ask my parents for the money, but Oliver decided to book a swanky hotel on his own. “I don’t do accommodations significantly worse than my house,” he insisted, matter-of-factly. “So you don’t need to pay me back.”
I was excited for the trip, desperate as I was to distract myself from the fact that, in all likelihood, I’d soon be sitting in a cramped classroom of a local college, listening to someone drone on about how and why to read, my blood boiling at the thought of Evan loafing around Stanford. First, however, I had to suffer through midterms, none of which, save for English, went remotely well. (I didn’t even complete biology; Dr. Flowers gave me a sympathetic look when she snatched my exam, as if observing a wounded dog.) That sense of purpose Sophia made me feel was gone. Having failed to wriggle my way into Columbia, I’d received my dreaded answer: the gap between everyone else and me could not be bridged, the future toward which I was hurtling could not be made less bleak. I’d begun smoking not infrequently, slipping out late, tiptoeing with sneakers in hand, locking the front door with my breath held. When especially high, I’d sit still and wait patiently for sadness or guilt or regret to come for me. Increasingly, however, I felt no particular emotion, only an absence of thought verging pleasantly on numbness. Ah! When the ghost begins to quicken.
My father, as expected, responded with a blank look when I announced I’d be leaving to Key West for a week. “What’s in Key West?”
“It’s a tourist spot, Abba.”
“So there are shuls?” he asked. “There’s kosher food? A kehillah?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” my mother said, clearly making an effort to convince herself. “Probably not a full-fledged community, but there must be—something.”
“Yeah,” I lied. “Of course.”
My father remained skeptical. “And this is with Noah and the others, you said? The minyan guy and—”
“Yes, Abba. The usual bunch.”
He played with his glass of water. “Even Bellow?”
I feigned defensiveness. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked, only to immediately imagine how I’d feel if I had a child traveling with someone like Oliver.
My father shrugged, put his palms up. “Nothing’s wrong. He’s just—”
“Just what?”
“He’s rowdy, Aryeh. It’s not a . . . well, a quiet chevrah.”
My mother sat silently, lips pursed, eyes to the floor.
“A quiet chevrah?” I repeated, forcing a laugh. I felt an unfamiliar upwelling of rage coming on. “Why would I want that?”
“All I’m saying, as I’ve said from the beginning, it’s not your old friends,” my father said. And then, with gruff self-satisfaction: “Halevai!”
“They’ll be responsible,” my mother said without lifting her gaze from the tablecloth. “They’ll have fun.”
My father scoffed. “Fun?”
“You never wanted that as a teenager, Yaakov? Freedom?”
“‘Never put thyself in the way of temptation,’” my father said, translating the Gemara into English. “Even Dovid HaMelech couldn’t resist.”
My mother stood. “He’s going.” We all froze at this act of open confrontation. Glassy-eyed, my mother returned her stare to the floor; red-cheeked, my father kept his eyes on me in a vaguely accusatory fashion. Nobody said a word. I left for my room.
* * *
I LOVED THE HOTEL FROM the moment I saw the lagoon-style pools and oceanfront rooms. Oliver booked a suite at five hundred a night. “Early birthday gift from the parents,” he said, changing into one of the white satin robes hanging in the bathroom closet. “I only do king-size beds.”
We spent the afternoon in the ocean, drank heavily after dinner. When we were sufficiently drunk—Oliver had already vomited and smoked it off—we made our way toward Duval Street, epicenter of Key West nightlife, according to Noah. We ducked in and out of bars, Oliver buying drinks: shots of pale-blue tequila, Irish car bombs, bile-tasting vodka set aflame. A group of sophomore girls from Florida A&M picked out Evan from the corner of a cowboy bar. They matched me with a raven-haired twenty-year-old who told me she intended to become a horse veterinarian and had the habit of steering me with her hands. A local attempted to sit on Noah’s lap; he sprang to his feet and into the bathroom with the same speed he pushed fast breaks. We passed a small, grime-streaked house, aglow with neon lights. Two women beckoned from the porch.
“Pricing?” Oliver yelled drunkenly, stumbling on his feet.
“Hundred an hour,” one said.
“A bargain,” Oliver said, nearly pitching over into a garbage can. He went for his wallet but Noah and Amir hauled him away.
The A&M group bought a table at the back of a club. Evan’s companion took a vial from her purse and, her friends keeping watch, cut lines with her credit card. I watched with muted horror as she used a rolled-up twenty and passed it around the table. Oliver and Evan each accepted, snorting with violent, euphoric looks. Noah, drunker than I’d ever seen him before, considered the prospect for a moment until he snapped to his senses and relocated to the other side of the table to sit with Amir and me.
The veterinarian draped her arm around my shoulder. “Can I ask you something weird?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What’s with that—thing?” She nodded at the top of my head. “The beanie.”
“Oh.” I grabbed my yarmulke and stuffed it into my pocket. No one else was wearing one. Amir had an MIT hat pulled toward his eyes. I felt exposed, suddenly, as if someone had stolen my clothing, as if I were sitting there with my jeans removed. “That’s nothing.”
“Fashion statement?” she asked, laughing.
I typed a text to Kayla: in KW, haven’t yet been knocked out by Hemingway—how are u? “Yeah. Exactly.”
She had more beer. “Don’t you do this in school?”
“Do what?”
She gestured toward the other end of the table. I considered asking whether she assumed we were in college. “No,” I said instead, checking my phone. No response from Kayla. “I don’t.”
“It’s real good.” She had beery breath. “Try it.”
I excused myself for fresh air. Out front, Evan was leaning over the porch railing, facing the dark street, drink in hand. He didn’t address me, I didn’t address him. It took a moment to realize he was crying.
“Evan?”
He didn’t turn. I approached the railing, seeing tears on one side of his face.
“You all right?”
He thumbed away whatever was left under his eyes—two or three quiet drops. “It’s nothing.” He rubbed at his nostrils. “Just that powder.”
I didn’t say anything as he moved back toward the entrance. The door opened behind me and I felt a surge of relief; I wanted to be alone, even briefly. Yet when I turned around, I saw that Evan had changed his mind and was still standing there. The tears were gone. I wondered if I’d imagined them.
“Know what, Eden?”
I took his spot against the railing. “What, Evan?”
“You’re hiding what you are.”
I could hear shouting inside as some DJ came onstage. “I don’t know what that means,” I said, “and to be perfectly honest, I’m really not in the mood.”
He finished what was left of his drink. “You’re an affectation. A fucking mask. Know why I think that?”
I didn’t. I didn’t know why my heart was pounding, either. I considered never drinking again. “Nope. But, uh, thanks for that, as always.”
He set down his empty beer bottle to the floor. “Actually, I’m not saying that as a challenge.”
“No?”
“What I mean is that”—Evan stopped himself, gently kicked over the bottle, which rolled toward me, coming to a stop at my feet. “Maybe I’m a bit too fucking gone right now, I don’t know. But what I mean is that I wear the same mask you wear. I’m just as isolated from everything and everyone as you are. I’m just”—he coughed briefly, sniffed loudly—“I guess I know how you feel,” he said, nodding. “Because somehow you might be the only person in my life who understands what it’s like.” He said this and headed back inside.
What did I have to show for my life? Eighteen years of minimal evidence proving that I was a real person, someone who wanted things, felt things, recognized emptiness. Sometimes I could hide, restructuring myself into a different person entirely. Other times I could not. I wondered if Evan, too, viewed himself as shapeless, flitting between anonymity and omniscience, capable of shrinking or expanding into nothingness.
Our night ended with a beach bonfire. Evan had slipped off with the girl he met. Oliver, meanwhile, was nowhere to be found when we left the nightclub. “He’s fine,” Amir reasoned, collapsing on the sand. “He’ll show in the morning.” Noah had enough after a while and went up to FaceTime Rebecca and steal Oliver’s bed, leaving me alone with the veterinarian. It was close to three and I was beginning to sober; the idea of returning to the room made me feel unwell. She lit a joint and we walked along the water, barefoot, jeans rolled to our ankles. The water was black and cold. I thought about the last time I’d been to the beach in the dark. I thought about meaningless distances, about seas and heavens. I thought about Sophia’s lips against mine.
“Something’s wrong with you,” she said, burrowing her heel into the sand, “isn’t there?” She was coked, her eyes glossy red.
She sang beyond the genius of the sea. I wasn’t listening. I was elsewhere, body not wholly body. “I think there might be.”
“I think so, too.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Are we going to sleep together?”
I smiled pleasantly, too high, shook my head.
“There’s a girl?”
We kissed, first by the waves, soon on the sand. We rolled into the water. The sky went black, flickering around the edges.
* * *
IT WAS A HAZY, TORPID stretch. We spent the daytime baking in the sun: parasailing, kayaking, deep-sea fishing (this last activity leaving me incredibly seasick, vomiting for hours from the side of the boat, the captain refusing to turn back). Save for Noah, who insisted on greeting sunrise by sprinting five miles along the ocean, we rose at noon, were drunk by one and remained so for the duration of the day, drifting from outdoor bars to buckets of iced beer to restaurants that went heavy on shots, particularly with Oliver tipping. We were in Cleopatra’s Egypt, disposed to mirth, and in our idleness I tried my best not to think about Sophia or Columbia or my parents or any of the other changes under way in my life.
Food was the issue. There was nothing kosher in sight, and so for the first few days I joined Amir in subsisting mostly on canned tuna, peanut butter and pretzels. Growing tired of this diet, feeling a surreal sense of escapism in my surroundings, I decided to break kashrut for the first time in my life, much to Amir’s disapproval.
“You all.” He pointed to Evan, Oliver and Noah after I’d caved and ordered pizza instead of another soggy garden salad at one of our meals. “You’ve done this to him.”
Noah, filleting an expensive branzino, grew silent. Oliver raised his glass.
Evan only smiled. “You’re blaming us?”
I looked at the floor, feeling guilty, the way I did when my parents fought.
“This is our fault?” Evan said. “Because you don’t seem to have any trouble resisting. You’re still keeping kosher. This is Eden’s problem.”
“What I’m doing is not the point,” Amir said testily. I swallowed the piece I was eating and placed down my slice.
Evan leaned forward. “Would you say Eden’s stronger or weaker for doing this?”
“Forget it,” Amir said, digging furiously into his salad. “I’m not doing one of your talks.”
“No, seriously. I know you think we’re corruptive, but it’s just as compelling to argue that Eden’s losing his morals on his own.”
“Dude,” Noah said, putting his hand on Evan’s shoulder, “let’s not upend lunch here.”
“He did stop wearing a yarmulke all of a sudden,” Oliver said, sipping peacefully at his piña colada. “Or are we just not acknowledging that?”
I reddened, gripped my fork. “I’m wearing a hat.”
Oliver shrugged. “What about that girl? And have you been davening every morning?”
My scalp burned underneath my hat. “Fuck off,” I said.
“Hey,” Oliver said, “it’s not any of my business.”
“Point is,” Evan said, “we can mock Eden, but that’d be nearsighted. It’s the kneejerk reaction, the superficial takeaway, when really he deserves to be praised.”
I looked up in surprise. “What?”
“Think about it. Here’s someone who’s been raised a certain way, right? Accustomed to a particular and rigid way of living. And yet, this guy desires things, even when they’re incompatible with his lifestyle. So how does he respond? It takes time, some encouragement, but he seizes them, and this seizing is actually more morally attractive than if he’d simply conformed to custom. What does that Gemara say? Performing an action when you’re obligated to do it yields greater reward than when you’re exempt? Same idea here, really, just inverted a bit. We”—he motioned at Oliver, Noah and Amir—“were born into a sort of moral indolence, at least compared to Eden. We’ve been raised with all sorts of contradictions and hypocrisies. And so Eden actually should get more credit for breaking through because his barrier—the moral activation energy required, so to speak—is substantially higher than ours.”
“There’s definitely something wrong with you,” Amir said. “This theorizing bullshit, it’s . . . it’s fucking peculiar.”
Noah pushed aside his fish. “We were so damn close to a nice lunch.”
“I’m with Noah,” Oliver said. “Let’s not Bloomify this.”
“Last night, when you were passed out, Ev?” Amir said, clasping his hands together. “I couldn’t sleep, so I went looking for some reading material. Know what I found?”
Evan didn’t blink.
“I picked up one of your books, rifled through it a bit. Lot of notes in the margins.”
“Which book?” Evan asked.
“Schopenhauer.”
I bit my lip. “And?” I asked, after Evan didn’t respond.
Amir shrugged. “Complete gibberish. Some shit about how Lucretius erred here or that guy erred there. Whatever, I don’t know, it was basically the ravings of a lunatic.”
“It’s impolite to intrude upon someone’s privacy,” Evan said calmly. “Maybe I’ll sue you.”
Noah motioned to our waiter for the bill. “Cool, so anyone want to Jet Ski later? Think I found a good deal online.”
Evan raised his Red Stripe. “A toast. To Eden, for being brave enough to submit to desire, for making a beast of himself to get rid of the pain of being a man.”
I tried ignoring what Evan said, to no avail. He was right. I was wading farther from whatever I’d previously thought was my life. When my mother called that afternoon for the first time since I’d left, I didn’t pick up, for after hearing what Evan said I couldn’t bear fielding questions about what I was eating or if I was wearing tefillin or whether there was a shul nearby that corralled a minyan. And when later that night I nearly accepted the vial from the veterinarian, Evan’s voice returned once more at the thought of where I was—on a beach at an ungodly hour, the last inch of a jay between my teeth, a half-dressed stranger dabbing at her nostrils. I was not the person I had been, nor was I the person I’d hoped to become when I left Brooklyn. I’d been filled, finally, with experience, and yet along the way I’d been emptied out. Eliot claimed poetic growth demanded “a continual extinction of personality,” and this is what I began to feel during those evenings: an annihilation of something essential within me. My world had changed gradually at first, but now, almost overnight, it had changed seismically. If my ceremony of innocence had not yet drowned, it was shuddering beneath the water.
* * *
WE WERE ON THE BEACH on our final night, sparking a joint near the boardwalk, the drinking and smoking and general sleep deprivation weighing on me so that I ambled around in a fog. The wind blew forcefully over the ocean. I was trying not to shiver.
Oliver waved his phone, showing us a text. “The A&M ladies sent an address.”
I didn’t realize how high I was until I stood and heard an invisible crack, as if someone snapped their fingers in my ear. A sudden Doppler effect: light waves changing in frequency, cold nausea falling over me. I bent over, held my head in my hands, waited for it to pass. It didn’t.
Noah, looking glazed, roused himself by slapping at his face. “You good, bro?”
Evan eyed me impatiently. “Don’t start, Eden. Climb out of your head for a bit and just fucking enjoy it.”
“I—” The moon above, full and fragile. The wind picking up. My teeth chattering. “Was there something wrong with that stuff?”
“Impossible,” Oliver said, kicking sand in my direction as he ordered an Uber. “Evan picked it up himself.”
A car materialized, whisked us to a beach house. I spent the ride with my face out the window, night made formless, dark swirls obscuring my vision, the ringing in my ears making me wince. The house swarmed with bodies: college students, locals, homeless people, an old man with a cane.
Pushing, yelling, dim corridors. My friends disappeared, I closed my eyes: I was alone, kneeling in the backyard, facing the ocean, vomiting into the grass. A woman was sitting cross-legged to my right, counting twenty-dollar bills, waiting patiently for me to finish dry heaving.
Ashen-faced. Flinching eyes. A mouth from Beckett. “How old are you?”
I wiped my mouth. “Eighteen.”
She gave me her left hand—thin, veiny—and ran black nails over my cheek with her right. “Take these.” She put two bullet-shaped pills into my palm. “They’ll help.” Explosions of gold, snakes falling from trees, the Tiger in the monstrous deep. I tried asking: who are you? Instead, I swallowed.
She told me to get up. It didn’t seem to be something I could refuse. This time I asked who she was. She laughed. “Why do you ask my name?”
We went inside. Dizziness ossified into delirium: bare walls, soft carpets, cracks in the ceiling, my reflection in mirrors. She gripped tighter. White noise. Upstairs, a long hallway. I listened for the piano. Nothing. I’d like to turn back now, I told her. She was quiet.
She opened the door to a bedroom, revealing a circle of people on a bed, cutting lines on a hand mirror.
“Oh shit.” Hunched over the mirror, Noah looked up in surprise, nostrils swollen, eyes bulging with guilt. Oliver and Evan were beside him. “Where, uh, where’ve you been, Drew?”
Evan, an arm around his A&M companion, eyed the woman leading me by the hand. “So you two found each other. I had a feeling you had it in you, Eden.”
“I want to leave,” I said again, this time to no one in particular. “I’m trying to leave.”
One of the men on the bed stood, pointing at the girl and then at Evan. I squinted, tilted my head curiously; he was speaking Spanish, something about money, and seemed rather upset. Evan was yelling back. And then: I was on the ground. I’d been punched squarely in the mouth.
Noah was there first, in a singular motion leaping from the bed and toppling the man. I was horizontal, taking in the ceiling, something warm trickling from mouth to chin, thinking about how odd it was to be unable to lift my limbs. Someone threw himself on Noah; Evan punched him in the jaw. Noah and my attacker wrestled to my left. The woman fled. Oliver, from the bed, laughed, threw white powder into someone’s face. I noticed blood on Noah’s knuckles, I was hoisted to my feet, I was dragged out. We bolted down the staircase, found Amir outside—making out drunkenly with a woman who looked at least forty-five—and piled into the back of a loitering cab.
* * *
I NEVER WENT TO CAMP. Instead, my summers were spent cooped up in our small house. My trip to Key West, as such, was the longest I’d been away from my family. When I returned, I discovered a pained charge had descended upon the silence of my home. My parents scarcely spoke with each other, my father retreating into his study with a Gemara, ignoring my offers to join him, my mother alternating between venting to Cynthia and hovering over me in my room. They didn’t reference the trip or the fact that my lip was slightly swollen. They didn’t notice that I walked up my driveway bareheaded, that I nearly forgot to excavate my yarmulke from my suitcase before I went inside my house. I didn’t acknowledge the guilt I felt from having plunged my parents into their state of enmity or from piling nonkosher food into my mouth or from carousing with the veterinarian. Above all, I didn’t draw attention to the unmistakable sense of freedom I’d achieved, even briefly, while being on my own over the last few days. All this silence, at the very least, saved me from having to manufacture a week’s worth of lies.
* * *
“MORAL INTUITIONISM,” RABBI BLOOM EXPLAINED on our first day back, dividing us into factions for an impromptu debate, “is the idea that our natural inclinations are sufficient to guide us ethically.” Amir and Noah, Rabbi Bloom decided, were to argue in favor of deferring to larger collaborative structures, like rabbinical tradition and government, while Evan and I were responsible for arguing that individuals ought to be left alone to adjudicate moral decisions. (Oliver was offered the chance to join either side or to provide a third approach. Respectfully, he abstained from the exercise.)
“So what you’re telling me,” Amir said, matched up against me, pulling irritably on his beard, “is that you’re totally cool with allowing someone like Evan Stark to look inward for moral direction?”
“You’re assuming he has an inside,” Oliver chimed in, legs crossed. “That there’s more than just, you know, endless black void down there.”
“Well,” I said defensively, annoyed by Amir’s aggression, clearly honed through years of organized debate, “I’d argue that that’s kind of a reductive way of framing what I’m—”
Evan put up a hand, cutting me off. “Eden, don’t respond. Amir can’t help that he’s been subjected to moral weakness all his life.”
Rabbi Bloom sighed. “As I remind you all too often,” he said, sipping black coffee while he refereed, “let’s refrain from ad hominem.”
Amir snorted. “Believing certain people should not be left to their own devices—how exactly does that make me weak?”
Rabbi Bloom stroked his clean-shaven chin. “You know what? Let’s return to before Mr. Eden was interrupted, shall we? Ari, how might you respond?”
“Well,” I said, “I guess my position would be that we feel certain emotional impulses when we make decisions, and that these impulses are to be trusted, because they’re just as important as logic or reason or anything else. Essentially, we should be able to go with our gut.”
“So, in your estimation,” Rabbi Bloom said, “it’s as Hume would put it? Morality is whatever gives us ‘the pleasing sentiment of approbation,’ and immorality the contrary?”
“Actually, to a large extent, yes,” I said, inordinately pleased with myself for eliciting Hume’s posthumous approval. “I think that, when it comes down to it, we should be able to feel whether something is right or wrong.”
Evan nodded with an indistinct smile, glancing at Rabbi Bloom before writing something into his notebook. Rabbi Bloom, however, didn’t meet Evan’s eyes.
“Isn’t that kind of slippery, though?” Noah said. “Like, what if something feels right to me but wrong to you?”
Oliver waved at Rabbi Bloom in exaggerated deference. “If I may?”
“Please, Mr. Bellow. Enlighten us.”
“Maybe I’m someone who not everyone always considers all too, I don’t know, what’s the word? Ethical, let’s call it,” Oliver said, “but don’t some things kind of have to be objective? Like, yeah, call me old-fashioned, but cold-blooded murder is cold-blooded murder, right? It’s wrong, however you slice it. I don’t care where you are, I don’t care how many books you’ve read, that’s just plain, old sinful.” I thought briefly, of all things, of Mordechai protesting against letting someone drown.
Rabbi Bloom looked around the table, waiting for someone to bite. After some hesitation, I did.
“No,” I said quietly.
“No what?” Amir asked.
“I disagree.”
Oliver whistled in amusement. “I don’t know which Torah they teach in Brooklyn, Eden, but you’re telling me you don’t think murder is, like, universally wrong?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “I know it’s wrong and I can feel it’s wrong. But I just don’t think you can prove it. Objectively, I mean.”
From the corner of my eye I saw Evan, to my left, nodding in approval. I didn’t know whether to feel proud or ashamed. “Even I’ll admit he’s right,” Evan said. “Because basically, the whole idea of one objective, universal truth is a bunch of bullshit.”
Rabbi Bloom leaned forward on his elbows. “Mr. Stark.”
“Sorry, but come on, think about it,” Evan said. “Take Torah values. Religious law. If God is the epicenter of morality—if God is morality, then all of his dictums have to be moral, don’t they?”
“I mean, no,” Amir said, “that’s not an accepted Halachic position, that’s just you applying contemporary standards to an ancient and much more complicated system.”
“Right,” Noah said. “Plus, like, maybe God creates morality.”
“Well, hold on.” I wondered why I felt this strange urge to defend Evan. “Whether God creates morality doesn’t really make much of a difference for this argument, does it?”
Amir frowned. “What? Sure it does. If God creates morality, then he’s synonymous with morality.”
Noah drummed his hands on the surface of the conference table. “Yeah, as in, God can create morality, put it into place and then chill. He can give us commands that are moral, or that have nothing to do with morality, or—”
“Again, that’s all unimportant,” Evan snapped. “You’re missing Eden’s point. The details are irrelevant. Because whatever the Torah contains must be, at minimum, not immoral. But really, of course, that threshold is way too low. Embarrassingly low. Everything it contains should be moral.”
“Mr. Stark,” Rabbi Bloom said cautiously, “maybe let’s tread carefully.”
“Oh, please,” Evan said, “now this is controversial? You’re going to tell me that every last part of Torah is defensible on normative moral grounds? Slavery, corporeal punishments, Amalek—”
“We can’t pretend to understand everything,” Rabbi Bloom said. “There are things that exceed human comprehension, things that challenge—”
“Yeah, a lovely idea. But that’s not just blind faith, then, Rabbi, that’s lethally nearsighted. Because either certain commands are fundamentally immoral, in which case God is immoral, in which case we have ourselves a bit of an issue, don’t we? Or, on the other hand, maybe such commands are not intended to last forever, are supposed to evolve, but then morality doesn’t age very well. Pick your poison, because either way, doesn’t that give us a collection of artificial, terrifyingly meaningless boundaries?”
“No,” Amir said harshly, massaging his forehead with the intensity of someone attempting to untangle complex mental knots, “because, again, you’re just applying incongruous standards. Like, what if human beings simply weren’t ready at Sinai? God couldn’t just impose crazy laws on moral cavemen all at once, laws we couldn’t understand and that didn’t make sense according to cultural and historical standards. In that case, God’s way of transmitting morals is pretty genius. Gradual, steady, increasingly ethical.”
Evan shook his head. “That’s an appealing option to you? Is it any better to worship a God who can reveal Himself in miracles that shock society’s historical and cultural standards but apparently cannot convince His own people to renounce indentured servitude? In my mind, we’re better off just calling the whole thing like it really is.”
Noah studied Evan’s face. “Which is?”
“I see three options.” Evan closed his notebook, smiling slightly. “Door number one: newsflash, God isn’t moral. Door two: God didn’t write what we think is our Torah. That’s maybe our most palatable option. And then, there’s lucky number three: God doesn’t exist. I’ll let you guys pick the winner. Kind of depressing, right?”
“Right,” Noah said. “It is, if you actually believe that.”
“Well, the good news is you don’t have to believe that,” Evan said. “Because there’s a way out—cast aside this particular model of religion and embrace a completely new paradigm, one that doesn’t reduce to three depressing dead ends.”
“Yeah?” I said. I rubbed my palm against my neck. “So what is this new model?”
Evan hesitated, looking unsure of himself suddenly, as if he’d revealed more than intended and wasn’t yet certain how to proceed. We waited for his answer but it didn’t come. The bell rang; we stood, gathered our things. Amir, still in debate mode, too exasperated to make eye contact, hurried toward the door. Rabbi Bloom, however, stood in his way. “Given the nature of today’s debate, which I think deserves a proper response, I’m going to request you each do some writing on the topic.”
Oliver groaned, throwing back his head. “Haven’t we written enough? Can’t we make this a writing-free zone?”
“Unfortunately not,” Rabbi Bloom said, “because to think well, as Orwell taught, we need to write well. And so to solidify these thoughts, I’d like you each to write a paper on this subject.”
Amir pulled at his backpack straps. “On insane religious gibberish, you mean?”
“On whether you agree with Mr. Stark’s hypothesis. You’ll have free rein to come up with something innovative. Ten pages. Assume you’ll receive feedback, and that the feedback will count. I’d like this to be some of your best work.”
“How long do we have?” Noah asked.
“A week should be more than sufficient,” Rabbi Bloom said, and then we left, merging into the crowded hallway.
* * *
I LOITERED OUTSIDE AFTER SCHOOL ended, waiting for Kayla. Sophia emerged, probably heading home after a student council meeting, and so I wandered into the model temple to avoid her. We’d been operating this way for weeks, observing each other not as strangers but as if we were separated by some formidable physical distance, even when only desks apart. I said hello and not much else in biology, evaded her looks in English, still found myself unwittingly jotting down her answers to Hartman’s questions. Machado wrong: no voluptuousness to misery. Why didn’t Nietzsche know Dionysian only swallows you in madness?
After a few more minutes Kayla finally left the building. She floated toward her car with her head down, earbuds in, books hugged to her chest, yellow backpack bouncing. When she spotted me reading the flash cards in the temple, however, she stopped short, grimacing. “Doing teshuva?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Kayla removed her headphones. “Is that right?”
“I’ve been waiting.”
She continued toward her car. “For someone else, I hope.”
“For you,” I said, hastening to catch her.
Again she stopped, arching on her tiptoes. “What do you need, Ari?”
“To apologize again.”
“Again? Maybe my memory fails me, but I don’t recall a first time.”
“I tried having lunch with you. Remember?”
“I remember you showing up with a sheepish look, expecting me to drop whatever I was doing to leap at the chance to join you, as if nothing happened. That I remember.”
“How come you don’t answer texts?”
“I’m not so into texts heavy on wit and light on remorse.”
“Fine, you’re right. I’m sorry, Kayla. I was a total asshole. I was selfish and unappreciative and too stupid to immediately make things right. I miss being friends. Does any of that suffice?”
She folded her headphones. “Yeah, that’ll do. Even if I am a tad suspicious.”
“Of?”
“Your motives.”
“What does that mean?”
She grasped at the ends of her hair. “Is it a coincidence you’re doing this now?”
“No. I’m doing it now because I miss you.”
“Not because your math grades suck?”
“They’ve slipped, you’d kill me. But no. That’s not why, I swear.”
“In that case, yes, I’ll allow you to accompany me.”
“Home?”
“What? No, don’t be overeager. Today’s Thursday. I volunteer on Thursdays.”
“Of course you do. Remind me where?”
“The homeless shelter. We’re making sandwiches. You’ll love it.”
I spent the afternoon with her at the local chapter, dicing tomatoes, mashing tuna fish, wrapping whole-wheat sandwiches in tin foil.
“You really do this every week?” I asked, after we’d finished. I was busy scrubbing mayonnaise from my shirt.
“I do.” She used her gloved hand to wipe a chunk of tuna from my left cheek.
“You’re a pretty good person, you know that?”
“Yeah, well, it’s the least we can do, right? This kind of thing makes you appreciate your privilege a bit more.”
Removing my hairnet, following her to the parking lot, I tried focusing on things for which I felt actively grateful. I appreciated my mother. I appreciated my friends—Noah, at least, and Amir. I appreciated my ability to read and to write and to think. When this inevitably failed to inspire, I made a list of things I could appreciate more deeply: the intensity of my father’s conviction, without which most people live entire lives; my experience with Sophia, however short, however painful, which expanded my capacity to feel; the fact that we’d left Brooklyn, that we had a moderately stable income, that we had a warm place to sleep, even if it was dwarfed by neighboring mansions. I knew such gratitude was crucial to deepening my general sense of happiness, and still I couldn’t manage to feel anything more than abstractions.
“This was nice, wasn’t it?” she said, unlocking her white Prius. “Kind of a refreshing change.”
“I still smell like fish, not sure how refreshing that is.”
“I meant, actually, that this is happening. That we’re hanging out.”
I climbed into her passenger seat. “We always hang.”
“Outside of school?”
“What, you think I was avoiding you? I’m just busy, that’s all. I’ve got basketball and schoolwork and—”
She reversed out of the lot, laughing. “I tutor, I head three different clubs, I volunteer and I have nearly a 4.0. If I have time, Ari, you have time.”
“Fair, duly noted.”
“It’s just that—I mean, don’t you feel that we have a lot in common?”
A hazy sundown: orange and pink shafts of light filtering through the car’s windows, a flush of a breeze.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’m a better dresser, maybe, but otherwise definitely.”
“I’m serious.”
We fell into some silence. I directed her to make a left onto Milton Drive. “Harris Manor, in the flesh,” she said, whistling at Noah’s house as she turned into my driveway. “Seems like it’s gotten even bigger since the last time I was here.”
“When was that?”
“Third-grade birthday party, probably. Something prehistoric like that.”
I undid my seatbelt but we kept sitting there in her car. My parents weren’t home. I felt acutely aware of the fact that we were alone, in private. Our bodies faced the same direction from separate seats, but we were close together, her right elbow grazing my left arm, unfamiliar desire stringing us together where we touched.
“I’m sorry for saying that before,” she said, eyes fixed on my house. “I just—I guess I hate seeing you become someone else. I hated how you were basically, I don’t know, embarrassed of me, like you were hiding me. Can I say that much?”
I didn’t think about it. I grabbed her, leaned forward. It was pleasant: less heart-stopping than other kisses, though unexpectedly arousing. In ways I couldn’t exactly define, actually, it felt right. She pulled back, laughing, wiping her hand, gently, over her lips. I went inside and set out to write the paper for Rabbi Bloom.
* * *
WALLOWING IN SELF-PITY, I’D ALLOWED the months after Early Decision to slip away. No longer could I afford delaying regular decision applications, I realized, the deadlines approaching rapidly. I submitted my paper (“Against Pure Reason,” in which I made the case that imagination and emotion, not logic alone, lead us to truth), and Rabbi Bloom did a lot of nodding as he read it over, urging me to muster hope and begin the application process anew. So I did. With little left to lose, with nothing in the way of expectations, I locked my door, accessed the fee waiver secured by Rabbi Bloom and poured myself an inch of Jameson, which was leftover from that Friday night party I hosted unintentionally and which now resided in a shoe box in my closet. I started by listing every school I knew. I added schools I found online, random schools in interesting locations with appealing curricula and a focus on liberal arts. For good measure, I included Mrs. Ballinger’s list. It was an eclectic megillah:
Cornell, Harvard, Stanford, Penn, Northwestern, Chicago, Yale, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Dartmouth, Oberlin, Bennington, Queens College, Brooklyn College, Florida State, University of Florida, Emory, NYU, Miami, Bowdoin, Haverford . . .
I sipped whiskey, made cuts. Eventually, I settled on a preliminary fifteen and, light-headed from the whiskey, went to work. Shamelessly, I reproduced my Columbia essay, inserting the name of the school for each application. If a school had too many supplementary questions—discuss a problem you’d like to solve; recount a failure; reflect on a time you altered a fundamental belief—I scrapped it without hesitation. After little more than two hours, I’d submitted a dozen applications, drained another glass and shut my computer.