AFTERSHOCKS

BY RACHEL LYNN SOLOMON

Friday, 5:08 p.m.

Just before sunset

Somehow, Miri had wound up dating the only other Jewish kid in eleventh grade.

She wanted to believe it was an accident. That all the time they spent on Quiz Bowl challenging and teasing each other, blushing when their hands brushed against the buzzer at the same time, his religion hadn’t once crossed her mind.

That would be a lie.

Miri liked that Aaron was Jewish, but it also occurred to her that he was Jewish, like, really Jewish, in a way she’d never been. He missed school during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. She not only attended school those days but ate the occasional BLT for lunch. He’d had a bar mitzvah, while she’d never even attended one. He told her once that his family had two sets of dishes, and while she nodded like she knew exactly what this meant, she in fact did not.

And as she stood on his front porch for the first time while trying to remember if she’d locked her car—she was eighty percent sure, but the twenty percent of doubt made an uneasiness settle into her stomach—his Jewishness felt like a massive, physical thing that separated them rather than connecting them.

She was relieved when he opened the door almost right away, his dark hair damp from a shower, his clean-boy smell intoxicating.

“You’re here,” he said, grinning like the simple fact of her presence had made his entire night, and it wasn’t even six o’clock.

“I’m not sure I locked my car,” she blurted instead of hello.

His brow furrowed. “It’s a pretty safe neighborhood, but—”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah.” What was a conversation, even?

Aaron stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind him. He looked cute and Quiz Bowl–championships professional in khakis and a navy button-up. His eyes were the clearest blue. Miri glanced down at the outfit her fourteen-year-old sister, Hannah, had helped her pick out: a striped dress, black tights, and a long black cardigan, plus the thrift-store necklace with a bird charm she wore most days. She’d pinned her wavy chin-length hair back on one side, and her anxious fingers twitched to fiddle with it.

“You look really nice,” Aaron said to the welcome mat, his cheeks turning red. The mat declared SHALOM in English and, beneath it, in Hebrew.

Miri felt her face get hot. “It’s a pretty attractive mat,” she said, which made Aaron laugh.

Their relationship was only five days old, and they hadn’t kissed yet. For the past month, they’d been “hanging out” on weekends and messaging each other all the things they were too shy to say in person. On Sunday night after a movie hangout—they never used the word “date”—during which their elbows and thighs had touched the entire time, Miri had finally broken down and decided to be bold. I think I like you, she texted once she got home. Three agonizing minutes later, during which Miri had contemplated setting her phone on fire, changing her name, and moving to an isolated cabin in the woods of Vermont, Aaron wrote back. I think I do too.

A wild grin took over her face. Maybe…we could date? Then she quickly added Each other, in case it had been unclear. Maybe…we could date? Each other. This time, Aaron’s response was faster: Okay, he said. Okay, let’s do this.

They ignored each other all week at school, save for a few awkward smiles, which Miri’s best friend, Lexie, had assured her was normal. Then he’d invited her over for Shabbat dinner on Friday. With his family.

All she wanted tonight was some kind of confirmation that he still liked her, that he wouldn’t pull a Let’s just go back to being friends. She was desperate to close the gap between deciding they were together and actually being together. Maybe they could walk into school on Monday holding hands, even sit with each other at lunch.

If this was what being in a relationship was like, it was a good thing Miri was already in therapy.

Aaron’s eyes finally met hers. “Question. What do you call a baby spider?”

“A spiderling, and that’s adorable.” She felt herself relax a little, even though she was still unsure about her car, and maybe car prowlers would target a “pretty safe neighborhood” because no one would be expecting it. “What year did World War One start?”

“Nineteen fourteen,” he said without missing a beat.

This was a hobby of theirs: challenging each other to spontaneous trivia competitions. Because they’d been on Quiz Bowl since freshman year, they’d accumulated a lot of random knowledge. They’d go back and forth until one of them admitted they were stumped. It was very nerdy, and Miri loved it.

After a moment of rummaging through her mental random-knowledge vault, she lobbed back: “What’s the largest freshwater lake in the world?”

“Superior. It’s in the name.” He crossed his arms over his chest, a mock confrontational stance. “Was that supposed to be hard?”

She swatted his shoulder and felt almost light-headed when her hand connected with the fabric of his shirt. It lasted only an instant, but she could tell his skin was warm underneath. She’d had a crush on him for so long. Nearly three whole years of quiet longing, hoping their taunts would turn into something more. It felt absurd and impossible that he was hers now.

“Give me another one,” she said. Are you sure you locked the car? her brain pressed.

They volleyed for a few rounds before he tripped over a question about Henry VIII’s first wife, who was Catherine of Aragon, not Anne Boleyn. But Aaron was a good sport, never a sore loser.

Suddenly Miri’s mind turned on her, as it was so good at doing whenever happiness seemed within reach. They’d played this game as friends. Did that mean nothing had changed between them now that they were (supposedly) dating? She tried to cling instead to the compliment he’d given her a few minutes ago. You look really nice. That compliment was progress. It had to be.

“I’m really glad you came,” he said, smiling wide now, which did little to quell her anxiety. “My parents are excited to meet you.”

The car definitely isn’t locked. If you go inside, someone’s going to break in.

“I’m…excited to meet Mr. and Mrs. Kaufmann.” Was she good with parents? God, she hoped so. She was good with her own parents, stereotypical Seattle liberals who were so invested in their kids that they noticed Miri’s OCD symptoms before she even realized what she was doing was out of the ordinary.

He grazed her sweater sleeve with a few fingers, and she wondered if he had the same reaction to these innocent touches. “Should we go in?”

You need to check the car. You need to do it. Just do it. Do it now.

“Sorry I’m so weird; I’m just gonna make sure my car is locked real quick,” she said.

Aaron knew she had OCD—most people on the team did, thanks to a Quiz Bowl question she’d answered and then explained sophomore year. But he didn’t know the extent of it, that it meant she so often felt like a slave to her own actions, like she did right now.

She hated her OCD. She especially hated it as she knew Aaron was watching, listening as she jogged down his driveway and clicked the lock button on her key fob until her car honked. And then again. And then, just in case her finger had accidentally slipped to the unlock button—you could never be too sure—two more times.

“I’m pretty sure it’s locked,” he said, eyebrows raised as she headed back to his front porch.

Face burning, she followed him inside.

5:22 p.m.

“Miri! Welcome,” Aaron’s mom said in the foyer of the Kaufmann home, pulling her in for a hug that crushed the air out of her lungs. Miri realized she’d now gone farther with Aaron’s mom than with Aaron, which depressed her a little bit. “I’m Naomi, and this is Aaron’s sister, Talia.”

A girl with the same blue eyes as Aaron scowled up at Miri. Aaron had warned her that his eleven-year-old sister was a bit precocious. “Talia can introduce herself, thank you very much,” she said, sticking out her hand for Miri to shake. “A pleasure.”

Miri bit back a laugh as she offered her own hand. “Nice to meet you. Nice to meet both of you.”

Over the top of Talia’s head, Aaron raised his eyebrows at Miri as though to say, See? Told you.

Miri hung her purse on a coatrack but kept her phone in her cardigan pocket. The best word for Aaron’s house was “elegant.” Every shade of white was represented: the cream of the carpet, the eggshell of the walls, the ivory of the curtains. Family photos were spaced evenly, and the furniture looked almost too immaculate to sit on. Miri’s house was a mess of cat hair, mysterious stains, and tchotchkes no one could bear to throw away.

“Miri,” Aaron’s mom said thoughtfully, tapping a lacquered nail against her chin. “Is that short for Miriam?”

“Yeah, but—” Miri broke off. She’d been burdened with a grandma name, and she’d never really loved it. But she felt weird telling Aaron’s mom that. “I’ve just always gone by Miri,” she finished.

“I imagine you know the story of Miriam?”

The story of Miriam…from the Bible? The Torah? Miri did not know the story and definitely didn’t know how to phrase her answer, so, figuring it was safest, she shook her head. Her parents had only ever said that they’d always liked the name. She knew vaguely that the name had some kind of Jewish origin, but she’d been going by Miri for so long that she’d never really researched it.

“She was the sister of Moses and—and Aaron!” his mom said with a laugh. Miri quietly perished from embarrassment. “They led the Children of Israel out of Egypt.”

Miri vaguely recalled having watched an animated movie about this forever ago.

“ ‘For I brought you up out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam,’ ” Talia said, and then added: “I’m studying for my bat mitzvah.”

“She has a photographic memory,” Naomi said, sifting a hand through Talia’s thin dark hair. Naomi’s hair was a light brown, curling softly onto her shoulders. At her throat was a silver Star of David.

“Nearly photographic,” Talia corrected.

“You’d be great on our Quiz Bowl team,” Miri said.

Aaron’s mom checked her watch. “I was just about to light the candles. Why don’t you both wash your hands and meet us in the dining room?”

Miri had only a vague idea of what happened after sundown on Friday nights, most of which she’d formed from research on Wikipedia and JewFAQ.org, which was, apparently, a thing. There weren’t a lot of Jews in her Seattle suburb. Until high school, she’d been the only one in her classes. And now there was Aaron, and they were together, and she was trying to figure out what that meant.

In the dining room, Aaron’s dad was arranging food on the table. Twin ivory candles stood in the center.

“You’re a sport to put up with this one,” Aaron’s dad said after introducing himself as Dan! Dan Kaufmann! and pumping her hand up and down. “I assure you any of his less-than-admirable qualities come from his mom’s side.”

“I heard that,” Naomi said.

“His less-than-admirable qualities,” Talia repeated with a snort, and began ticking items off on her fingers. “Where would we even start? He leaves his dirty socks on the table in the TV room, takes way too long in the shower, and—”

“Talia!” Aaron’s face had gone scarlet.

“What? We all know what you’re doing in there.”

When Miri realized what she meant, she felt herself blush too.

“Talia, that’s enough,” Naomi interjected, but in a lighthearted way. Miri liked how this family was able to tease each other. It made their Jewishness slightly less intimidating.

Aaron’s mom struck a match, touching the tip to one candle and then the other. Then she held her hands over her eyes and began reciting a blessing in Hebrew. Miri had read about this on JewFAQ: you were supposed to cover your eyes because lighting candles would be considered work on Shabbat, which would officially begin after the blessing.

Once they sat down, Miri marveled at the food. “This is beautiful,” she said. “I love challah.” That was true, at least. Nothing was better than the fluffy sweet bread, especially the innermost, fluffiest bits.

She reached for the braided loaf, but the collective intake of breath from Aaron’s family stopped her as her fingertips made contact.

“Not quite done with the blessings yet,” Naomi said gently.

Miri drew her hand back as though a crocodile had just snapped at it. She tried to convince herself it wasn’t a big deal, but it dragged her religious insecurities up once again. Her cheeks burned as Naomi and Dan exchanged a glance she couldn’t interpret. Maybe she hadn’t paid as much attention to JewFAQ as she should have. She’d assumed, if anything, the dinner would be a learning experience. She’d imagined her feet bumping Aaron’s beneath the table, which would sustain her until the next time they touched on purpose.

She could tell everyone that they didn’t have Shabbat dinners at her house, but she wasn’t quite ready to admit the thing she and Aaron had in common was really only his. Before tonight, she’d wondered if sharing a religion indicated they were meant to be together. That if she aced this dinner, it might smooth out the awkwardness in their infant relationship.

Instead, all she could utter was “Sorry” as she stared at her lap.

That was when the table started shaking.

***

5:37 p.m.

Miri had been through the earthquake drills, which started back in kindergarten: Drop. Cover. Hold on. Once, when she was twelve, she’d come downstairs for breakfast, and her mother had asked if she’d felt the quake in the middle of the night. The news said it had only been a 2.2. Miri had slept right through it.

This was completely different. The house felt alive, possessed by some otherworldly force. Photos on the walls bounced in their frames. Their food skidded around on the table. Instinct took over, and Miri blew out the candles in one breath. It was probably wrong to do that on Shabbat, but the alternative could have been much worse.

“Everyone under the table,” Naomi said, a ribbon of panic in her voice, but they were already on their way.

The jingles from the emergency preparedness videos looped in Miri’s head as they all ducked down. She clung to a table leg. Next to her, Aaron did the same.

It felt at once earsplitting and silent as furniture banged around in this beautiful home. In the kitchen, she heard what must have been plates and glasses crashing, smashing on the floor. Talia whimpered, and Naomi made reassuring sounds. The lights cut out.

Over and over, Miri’s heart crashed against her rib cage. It’ll be over soon. It’ll be over soon. She thought about her sister and her cat and her parents, hoped all of them were okay, wondered why she’d thought about her cat before her parents, felt guilty. Her thoughts flew to her car, which was most likely crushed beneath a fallen tree at this very minute. She tried to take deep breaths. Failed.

Aaron was trembling. She wrapped a hand around his. “It’s okay,” she said, though she was scared too and didn’t entirely believe herself. Even in the dark, she could tell his eyes were wide and uncertain.

He swallowed and nodded, gripping her hand back.

It reminded her of one of the reasons she’d started liking Aaron in the first place. So many guys at school were insecure about their masculinity, trapping their true emotions behind layers of testosterone. But Aaron had never felt the urge to prove anything. She’d seen him cry, at school last year when his grandpa passed away, and he wasn’t ashamed of it. He’d let his friends hug him with such fearlessness. She’d wanted to hug him too.

“Is it over?” Talia whispered when the ground stopped shaking, seeming for the first time that night like an actual eleven-year-old.

“Let’s stay here a few minutes,” Dan said. “There might be aftershocks.”

Naomi let out a long breath. “Not quite the dinner you were expecting, Miri?”

Her heart was still somewhere in her throat. “Not exactly.” Her voice shook. Aaron laid a hand on her knee, which she was too rattled to properly enjoy.

When the house had been still for a while longer, they crawled out from beneath the table. Their dinner now lay on the floor around them, green beans mixed with shards of plates and glasses. The challah had been flung all the way across the room. In the kitchen, the entire contents of the cabinets covered the floor. Half a coffee maker stuck out from beneath a cast-iron skillet. Everything swam in a pool of wine. Apparently, Aaron’s parents had had a lot of wine. In the adjoining family room, blinds hung crooked from a window, near where books had toppled from their shelves.

It was horrifying how much damage thirty seconds could do.

“No one’s hurt, are they?” Dan asked. Everyone shook their heads, but he still examined Talia’s face and arms, just to make sure. Fortunately, no windows were broken, and nothing heavy had moved more than a couple of inches.

“Oh no, oh no.” Naomi gestured to a small glass sculpture that Miri had seen on the family room mantelpiece before sitting down at the table. It was now in a hundred pieces on the wood floor. “That was my grandmother’s.”

“Mom, I’m so sorry,” Aaron said.

“I should call my—” Miri started, pulling out her phone, then suddenly felt guilty because she couldn’t recall whether you were allowed to use electronics on Shabbat.

“Of course!” Naomi said. “Go ahead.”

It took her several tries to get through.

“Miri? Are you okay?” Her mom sounded frantic.

“I’m fine, Mom. Just freaked out. Are you guys okay? Hannah? Alfie?” Alfie was their cat, a perpetually grumpy ten-year-old tortie.

“We’re okay!” Miri heard Hannah call from the background. “Alfie actually let me hold him the whole time, can you believe it?”

“Alfie! That doesn’t sound like him at all.”

Miri’s dad came on the phone. “Stay where you are for at least a few hours, okay? The roads are going to be a mess. And I don’t want you driving if there are aftershocks. If everything seems safe by nine o’clock, we’ll come get you.”

That was a relief—Miri didn’t want to drive either.

“Love you,” her mom said, and Miri echoed it back.

She hung up the phone. “My parents want me to stay here for a while,” Miri said. “If—if that’s okay. I don’t want to impose or anything.”

“Absolutely. You can stay here as long as you want.” Naomi pulled her in for another hug of the night. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry.”

The floor rolled beneath them, pinballing Miri from Naomi to Aaron. Aaron grabbed her arms to steady her, but the aftershock lasted only a couple of seconds. Somehow that wasn’t even the scariest part of this whole thing. She was trapped in someone else’s house with a trio of strangers and a boyfriend she still didn’t feel entirely herself around.

“We ought to find a radio,” Naomi said, “in case we lose our phone signals.”

Dan nodded. “There should be one in the office.”

“I’ll grab it. We should conserve tap water, too, in case the lines get turned off. We have a bunch of reusable water bottles—well—on the floor right there.” Naomi pointed. They were scattered among the plates that had shattered. “I’ll work on filling them up. Oh—and we should fill up the bathtubs.”

Everyone in the Northwest, it seemed, had gone through earthquake-preparedness training.

“Miri and I can do that,” Aaron volunteered, maybe a little too quickly. Miri furrowed her brow, and then realized—this would take her and Aaron away from his family, at least for a little bit. And while her emotions were all tangled right now, she felt a burst of excitement sneak in. She tried to make her face look appropriately solemn, or however a face belonging to someone about to fill up a bathtub to conserve water after an earthquake might look.

“Come right back, okay?” Dan asked.

Aaron nodded. “It’s upstairs,” he said to Miri, and together they waded through the debris.

5:51 p.m.

Once they were in the bathroom with the water running, Miri let out what felt like her first breath since before the earthquake.

Aaron was bent over the tub, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Sighing, he moved backward so he could lean against the wall. “I know,” he said quietly. “Not how I pictured this night going. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s your fault, so you should be,” Miri said, tugging on her bird necklace.

“If only I’d learned to control my powers. I’m too strong for my own good.”

The medicine cabinet had spilled lotions and liquids all over the floor and counter, but fortunately, there was no broken glass. She tried not to look at their reflections in the mirror, but every time she caught a glimpse, she couldn’t help wondering if they looked good together. Or what they would look like if they were even closer.

She didn’t know how the first move was supposed to happen, but she figured proximity was a good place to start.

“Hi,” she said in what she hoped was a flirtatious way, inching closer to him.

He gave her a weak smile and raked a hand through his hair. Then he blew out a long breath, as though coming down from the earthquake adrenaline rush too. “Hi. I like your dress. Did I already tell you that?”

“If I recall correctly, you actually complimented the welcome mat.”

“Right. I try to treat all inanimate objects with respect.”

“I like yours, too.” Daring herself to be brave, she laid a hand on his sleeve. “I mean—I like your shirt. It’s very…”

“Shirty?”

“Exactly, what with the buttons and the sleeves and the collar.”

Aaron glanced down at her hand, at her gray-painted nails. “I really don’t take that long in the shower, I swear,” he said. “Like. My showers are a very standard length.”

Miri bit back a smile and, feeling even braver now, said, “I’ve…had my share of long baths.”

When it dawned on Aaron what she meant by this, he turned the deepest shade of red.

Miri pressed on, wanting to pull the conversation back to the topic of Them as a unit, a pair. “So…when did you know you liked me?”

Aaron blushed even more fiercely, and for a moment, she was convinced he wouldn’t respond. Miri knew he was shy. Was it that, or was he regretting the relationship already? Was their trivia swapping more friendship than flirting? She supposed five days wouldn’t be the shortest relationship in history, but she was really hoping to make it at least to ten.

The bathtub continued to fill. They could be doing anything in here, and no one would be able to hear them.

“Last year,” he said finally, and she let out what she hoped was not an audible sigh of relief. “The regionals. You were the only one who knew the answer to the final question. The mod told you it was wrong, but you were insistent, politely but firmly asking him to look it up. You knew you were right. And of course”—he gave a little laugh here—“you were.”

“Kaffeklubben Island,” she said, remembering. “The northernmost point of land on the planet.”

“Right. I…couldn’t stop thinking about you the rest of the weekend. And then I just—kept thinking about you after that too.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, unable to stop the grin from spreading across her face. They were finally talking about this in real life, not ignoring each other, not relying on their phones to keep them safe, distant. Could it really be this easy?

“When…did you know?”

“Hmm.” She probably should have had a response prepared. “It wasn’t really one singular moment, I guess. I liked being on the team with you, and talking to you, and…” With a shrug conveying more discomfort than nonchalance, she trailed off. She wasn’t exactly ready to admit she’d liked him for years, but compared to Aaron’s, her answer sounded so impersonal. Should she have been able to pinpoint one moment she thought, Yes, this is a person whose mouth I would like to touch with my mouth, the way he had? It just hadn’t happened that way for her, and she hoped she hadn’t disappointed him.

After a silence, he changed the subject. Thank God. “I really am sorry. About all of this.”

“On the plus side,” Miri said, “your parents have probably forgotten I tried to grab some challah before they were done with the blessings. So thanks, nature, for saving me from embarrassment.”

Aaron pushed away from the wall. “It wasn’t a big deal,” he said as he turned off the bathtub faucet, but there was a tightness in his voice she wasn’t used to hearing.

“My family isn’t very religious.” She rushed to fill the sudden quiet in the room. “I didn’t have a bat mitzvah.”

“Become a bat mitzvah.”

“What?”

“That’s the right term. Become a bat mitzvah, not have a bat mitzvah. It means ‘daughter of the commandment,’ so it’s something you become, not something you have.”

Miri really didn’t want to see what she looked like in the mirror now, didn’t want it to reflect her clear discomfort. She was half convinced her forehead would appear with the words WORLD’S WORST JEW stamped across it.

“Well. I’m not one, then.”

“Oh,” he said, and she couldn’t quite interpret his tone. “That’s…okay.”

Judgmental. That’s what it sounded like.

“Knock knock.” Aaron’s dad pushed open the bathroom door. “How’s it going in here?”

Miri hoped he hadn’t thought anything had happened between them. She imagined an alternate universe in which she and Aaron had taken this opportunity to steal a passionate kiss, one in which they’d glance at their make-out-mussed hair in the bathroom mirror and laugh. A universe in which he hadn’t informed her what she’d already been terrified was true: that she wasn’t Jewish enough.

“Bathtub’s full,” Aaron said.

His dad nodded. “Good. Your mom found the radio.”

“Good,” Miri echoed, her voice sounding hoarse.

A silence overtook them.

“Since we’re going to be stuck here for a while,” Dan said, “who wants to play Scattergories?”

6:16 p.m.

The game was a good distraction. They ate what they could before sweeping off the table to play where their dinners had been, though Aaron’s parents wanted to wait a few hours before attempting to clean up the rest of the house.

Miri and Aaron sat next to each other, legs crossed but not touching. The bathroom conversation looped in her head. She wasn’t trying to keep her Judaism Lite a secret, not necessarily. She’d just hoped she and Aaron could have discussed it during a slightly less emotionally fraught evening. Now he was barely looking at her. All she wanted was more time alone with him, but her words always seemed to take a detour to Awkwardville somewhere between her brain and her mouth. So maybe his family as a buffer was a good thing.

To make things worse—because with her OCD and anxiety, things could always be worse—she itched for her car keys, to hear the jarring but oddly comforting beep when she hit the lock button. She could see through the window that her car was okay, but she couldn’t be sure it was still locked. When she got a chance, she’d find her purse, find her keys, and make certain. Her therapist always told her she had to be okay with uncertainty, that there was no way to be one hundred percent sure of anything. “Do you know for certain someone hasn’t stolen your car while you’ve been in this office?” Dr. Dunn would ask. “Do you know for certain Alfie’s still alive?” Against all her instincts, Miri would have to tell her no.

She craved certainty, and logically, she knew her quest for it was making her miserable.

“All right, everyone count up their points for this round,” Naomi said.

“I’ve got eight,” Aaron said.

“You got me. I only got six,” his mom said.

Talia pouted. “Five.”

“Nine,” Miri admitted, and she could have sworn she saw the corner of Aaron’s mouth tip upward in—what? Pride, maybe? It was too dark to tell.

“You’re wiping the floor with us!” Dan exclaimed, and Miri offered a weak smile in return.

They tore the sheets off their notepads, and Talia rolled the die for the next round.

“I know this isn’t ideal,” Naomi said. “But we really are glad to have you here, Miri, and I hope we see you for many more Shabbats.”

“Roger that,” Dan said. “It sounds like the team is doing well?”

“Going to regionals next month,” Aaron said, and Miri nodded.

“Yeah. We have a really solid team this year.”

“We’ll be there to cheer you on!” Naomi cupped Miri’s shoulder. “We always hoped Aaron would date someone Jewish.”

Miri’s stomach rolled over. Everything she’d felt during their abbreviated dinner and in the bathroom came rushing back. And I was the only option? she felt like saying, but then a worse thought gripped her. Was this the only reason Aaron had agreed to go out with her? Was she his default Jewish girlfriend?

“Obviously, it’s a challenge in Seattle,” Aaron’s mom continued as Miri’s insides sloshed around. “I grew up in New York. It was completely different there. All my friends were Jewish.”

“Did you have a theme for your bat mitzvah party?” Talia asked. “Mine’s going to be in June, after I turn twelve, so I was thinking of having a beach theme.”

They didn’t even blink when another aftershock rocked the house, scrambling Miri’s thoughts. She wanted out of this conversation. Out of this house. Her breathing turned shallow, and she struggled to catch it.

“I—um,” she started, unable to confess again that she hadn’t had a bat mitzvah. No—that she hadn’t become a bat mitzvah. She sucked in as much air as she could, trying to avoid sounding like she was literally gasping for it. “A—a beach theme sounds great.”

“What was your Torah portion?”

“Talia,” Naomi said. “Don’t badger her.”

Miri offered Aaron’s mom a weak smile, but her feet urged her to move.

“You never told us what temple you go to, Miri,” Dan said. “We haven’t seen you at Kol Ami, have we? Do you go to Beth Am?”

Air. She needed air. “I— Excuse me for a minute,” she managed, springing out of her chair so quickly she almost tripped on it. Slightly dizzy, she turned back to Aaron’s family for a moment. “Bathroom.”

She headed for the staircase, wanting only to get as far away as possible before she gave in to her mounting panic attack. In the past, she’d always been at home for them. She’d curl up in a ball on her bed, shut her eyes, and wait for her breathing to return to normal.

She threw open the first door on the left, collapsing onto the bed before fully surrendering to her anxiety.

7:34 p.m.

“Miri?”

Aaron’s voice. It had been three minutes or three hours. She stared at the ceiling, one hand on her diaphragm as she breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, the way her therapist had taught her. The worst of it was over now.

“Sorry,” she said, turning her head to face him. “I just needed to be alone for a bit.”

“It’s my room.” He gave her an odd look. “You’re, um, on my bed.”

“Oh.” She’d been too panicked to even take in her surroundings, but now, as she glanced around, squinting in the dark, it felt like Aaron—at least the parts that weren’t in disarray. The bookshelf overflowed. The closet was ajar, revealing the plaid shirts he wore most days over T-shirts with sayings on them. There was a poster of Albert Einstein on the wall, and opposite it, a Star Wars poster, Einstein and Kylo Ren locked in a staring contest. It didn’t look like the rest of the house—or what the rest of the house looked like prequake.

Aaron’s bed smelled so very Aaron that she couldn’t believe she’d missed it.

Suddenly the lying-down part made her feel intensely vulnerable, exposed in a way she was not at all ready for. She shot up to a sitting position too quickly, her head throbbing. She smoothed the hem of her dress.

“I brought this. For your head.” He presented a package of frozen peas. “Figured we might as well use some before everything in the freezer melts.”

“Thanks.” In spite of everything, it tugged at her heart.

She held the frozen peas to her head. The bedsprings squealed as he sat down next to her—not too close, though. She appreciated that he respected her space, but she also wanted him closer. It was a night of contradictions.

“Highest-grossing movie of all time—when adjusted for inflation?” he asked softly. He stretched out his legs so they dangled off the bed, then stared down at his hands as though unsure what to do with them, what to do with his entire body now that there were two people on a bed that had only ever held one.

“Gone with the Wind,” she answered, but instead of throwing a question back at him, she said, “You know I have OCD.” He nodded. “I have bad anxiety, too, and I get panic attacks sometimes.” All she wanted in that moment was for him to understand her, as best as he could.

“Oh. That’s okay,” he said softly, then backtracked. “I mean—it’s not okay, it sucks, but, like, you don’t have to be embarrassed about it.”

“Your parents must hate me. I’m, like, this total anxiety monster, and a fake Jew on top of that.”

“I don’t even—what’s a fake Jew? Actually, what’s a real Jew?” He sounded almost amused, genuinely interested in how she’d answer the question.

She crossed her legs, part of her still unable to process that she was sitting on Aaron Kaufmann’s bed in the dark with none other than Aaron Kaufmann. “Someone who goes to temple? Someone who has become a bat mitzvah?” The emphasis she placed on it was crueler than she meant. “Sorry. I just…You shouldn’t have invited me tonight. I’m not Jewish enough for you. Or for your parents.”

To her shock, he laughed. “Miri. What?”

She covered her face with her nonfrozen hand. “I don’t know the prayers. I didn’t even know who Miriam was.”

“Aaron’s sister,” he said with a wry smile, and she swatted his arm.

“I eat bacon.”

“The horror,” he deadpanned. “I’ve seen you eat bacon. You had a BLT when we all went to that overpriced new sandwich place after practice last month.”

“Oh.” She didn’t know why this felt so odd, like he’d observed something about her she hadn’t realized she was advertising. Something else was bothering her, though. “Your parents said they wanted you to date someone Jewish.” Her face burned despite the bag of peas she held to her head. “I’m the only other one in our grade. So I guess it doesn’t matter how little I know about Judaism, just that I’m Jewish?”

He looked stunned. “No! No. I—I liked you before I knew you were Jewish. You don’t have one of those Very Obviously Jewish last names. Lowe could go either way.” He paused for a moment, and then: “I feel like an asshole. I shouldn’t have corrected you about the bat mitzvah thing.”

“You shouldn’t have,” she agreed. The bag of peas was starting to leak water onto her hand.

“I won’t lie—I do like that you’re Jewish,” he said. He opened his mouth again, but then closed it abruptly.

“What?” she pressed.

“It might sound ridiculous. I almost don’t want to say it.”

“Well, now you have to.”

He sighed. “Fine, fine. But—I think I do feel more connected to you because you’re Jewish. Because we’re both this thing that no one else in junior year is.”

Something inside her cracked open, a new understanding. “I think I know what you mean.”

“I swear, though, it’s not the only thing I like about you,” he said quickly.

“My Scattergories skills are pretty impressive.”

“You are a Scattergories master.” He shifted, ever so slightly, closer to her. Was he opening his palm because he wanted to hold her hand? “And…you are really, really cute. I’ve…uh…thought that for a while.”

He was never open like this. Maybe it was the darkness, or the way the natural disaster had upended their evening, or the fact that they were alone in his room.

“You are too,” she said, heart leaping into her throat as she laid her free hand in his. His fingers closed around hers, and she closed her eyes for a moment to savor the feeling, thumb against thumb and pinky against pinky. His hand warmed her cold one almost right away. “Cute.”

In the dark, he was braver. There was a fearlessness with which he rubbed his thumb against hers, back and forth, back and forth. He dipped it into the grooves between her knuckles, releasing wild amounts of oxytocin into her bloodstream. Holding hands was a freaking gateway drug.

“I’m pretty sure I’m the nightmare boyfriend,” he said glumly, as though disappointed in himself. “This is my first relationship, if that wasn’t already obvious, given my inability so far to act even marginally human around you. It hasn’t been a week, and I feel like I’ve already ruined it because I’m so…weird.”

“You haven’t ruined it. If I haven’t managed to ruin it yet, then you haven’t either.”

“Maybe…maybe it’s that I can’t wrap my mind around you wanting to be with me? Finding out a crush is mutual…it’s scary. You’re just together, and what is that supposed to look like? What are you supposed to say?” He snorted. “I was too nervous to even talk to you at school this week.”

“I tried to find you at lunch.”

He made a pained face. “I was eating in the library. I’m so sorry. I…want to be a good boyfriend. Honestly, I think I’m terrified of messing up. That’s why I invited you tonight. I was nervous about being just us somewhere, that I wouldn’t know what to do or say because I haven’t all week. Like somehow it would be less weird with my parents?”

Both of them laughed at this.

“Little did you know, I’m awkward as hell around other people’s parents,” she said. Slowly, without releasing her grip on him, she leaned down so she could drop the bag of peas onto the floor.

“Miri.” He held up their joined hands to gesture to himself. “So am I. I know we like each other, but…what now? That’s kind of what it feels like. A big what now.”

Her heart slammed against her rib cage. “Can we be awkward together?” she asked in a soft rasp, spreading her fingers out across his knee like a starfish.

“Please,” he said, and it sounded like a request for something else.

They were so close now that it was so, so easy to lean in and press her mouth to his. He met her there, his lips warm, gentle.

Their first kiss lasted only a few seconds before they moved apart as though to confirm neither of them was messing this up. Aaron let out this shaky exhale that made her toes curl with delight. She had done that, and it gave her the most incredible thrill.

“Hi,” he said, and it was maybe the perfect thing to say in that moment. This between them: it was a beginning.

“Shalom,” she said back, a joke.

He grinned like he’d just been told their Quiz Bowl team was going to nationals.

They dove for each other again, wilder this time. Aaron tangled his hands in her hair, drawing her closer, and she clasped hers behind his neck. They breathed each other in, exhaled in tandem. Their lips tongues teeth hands fingers arms legs hips were all awkward, but they’d learn. After all, the two of them were nothing if not overachievers.

When the next aftershock shook the floor beneath them, Miri wasn’t sure if it was a natural phenomenon or the shuddering of her own heart.