GOOD SHABBOS*1
BY GOLDY MOLDAVSKY
Kayla and S.T. stood outside of shul, and though the two girls had places to be, neither of them budged. Kayla because S.T. wasn’t moving, and S.T. because she was too busy spying on the group of guys huddled together by the men’s entrance. Or, more specifically, she was spying on one guy in particular.
“He’s not the one with the basketball yarmulke, is he?” Kayla asked.
“Yep,” S.T. said.
“You do realize it’s a basketball yarmulke.”
S.T. ignored the tone in Kayla’s voice. She didn’t mind the choice of yarmulke—it stood out in the sea of black suits, and it meant that the boy who wore it was quirky. And that could only be a good thing. Maybe. Probably.*2
“It’s the color and texture of an actual basketball,” Kayla continued.
“I see what it looks like, thank you.”
Kayla, S.T. thought, was way too preoccupied with the topping to notice what was underneath. Which was Moe’s truly excellent hair.*3 Not that S.T. was superficial or anything. Moe had a great face, too. He had a lot of greats about him. He and S.T. were friendly over two different social media platforms, which was more than one, which meant something. Maybe. Probably. Thanks to his social media, S.T. knew that he davened at this shul, which was the only reason she’d come. And tonight, S.T. had decided, she would talk to Moe in person.
Except shul had been over for ten minutes, and S.T. still hadn’t made a move. Kayla was only there for moral support, and even though there was a basketball yarmulke involved, she’d come too far to walk away now. She took her best friend’s hand and marched over to the group. S.T. was both mortified and relieved. Of the two of them, Kayla had always been the one with beitzim.
“Excuse me,” Kayla said, breaking through the knot of guys until she and S.T. stood before Questionable Yarmulke Choice. “You’re Moe, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You know my friend S.T., right?”
He looked over at S.T., a spreading smile of recognition on his face. “Oh, hey.”
“Hey,” S.T. replied.
And that was it. If Brooklyn had crickets, they’d be chirping right now. Awkwardness settled in like it’d bought tickets to this show. The rest of the guys were already starting to walk away, and S .T. and Moe didn’t seem to have the training to resuscitate the conversation. Kayla did not have the patience for this. The mission was complete. Saw the boy. Said words to the boy. Time to go.
“Great meeting you,” Kayla said, pulling S.T. away. “Good Shabbos.”
“Wait, where are you guys eating your meal?” Moe asked.
“The Wexlers’!” S.T. said, quiz-show fast.*4
“Cool. Hey, there’s gonna be a party later tonight. Maybe you guys want to come after your meal?”
“We’ve got pl—” Kayla began, but S.T. cut her off.
“We’ll be there!”
“Awesome—3497 number Two-A East Eighteenth,” Moe said. “See you later.”
As he walked away, S.T. repeated the series of numbers to herself, etching them into her mind.*5
“What about the Shabbaton?”*6 Kayla said.
“Doesn’t the party sound more fun?”
“So you’re just going to go to meet up with a random schmuck?”
Kayla was thinking this, but to her surprise it wasn’t her who’d uttered the words. They came from a different random schmuck about their age standing behind them. S.T. looked at him sideways. Now she was the one to grab Kayla’s hand and pull. “That’s none of your business.”
“You’re right. But I know that guy, and I don’t think you’d like his kind of parties.”
While Kayla may have totally been on his side—and even thankful for his advice—the chutzpah of him to butt in like this. “Excuse me, but do we know you?”
“No,” he said.
“Then stop acting like it.”
“Sorry I said anything,” he said, but his chortle betrayed him.
The two girls crossed the street, only for the guy to do the same. He was taller than either of them, blond, and kept his head down like he was bracing against the cold, even though it was June.
“And quit following us,” S.T. said over her shoulder.
“I’m not following you,” he said. But minutes passed, and he remained a few paces behind them.
“Yes you are!” Kayla said. The girls sped up.
“You’re going in the same direction I am!”
“Weirdo,” S.T. whispered.
“It is decidedly so,” Kayla said.
The girls reached the Wexler house and walked up the lawn to the front door. The boy saw them, stopped a moment, and then walked to the front door too.
“Okay, this is getting ridiculous,” Kayla said. “We’ll call the police.”*7
Mrs. Wexler answered the door. “Hi, girls. And Sruly.” She seemed surprised to see him, but not in a get-off-my-front-porch sort of way. “Girls, this is Sruly. He’ll be joining us for the meal.”
S.T. caught control of her bottom lip just as it threatened to fall. She watched as Sruly’s mouth turned up into a smirk, directly proportional to Kayla’s snarl.
“Good Shabbos,” he said to them.
The girls mustered a “Good Shabbos” back, and there was nary a less enthusiastic “Good Shabbos” uttered in all of Flatbush.
The class Shabbaton would officially get under way the next day, but there would be a small get-together tonight for a kumzits.*8 Until then, everyone in class was split into pairs and put up in the homes of host families.
Mr. and Mrs. Wexler sat at opposite ends of the dinner table, their twin six-year-olds, a boy and a girl, sat on one side, and next to them sat Sruly,*9 the weirdo guy who had followed them home.*10 His presence at the meal was still a mystery, since he was clearly too old to be Mr. and Mrs. Wexler’s son. And what kind of teenager was friends with adults?*11 The couple had been too busy serving food—and telling their children to stop playing with it—to explain anything about Sruly, leaving the girls to wonder about him more than they liked.
“So how was shul?” Mr. Wexler asked.
“Really good,” Kayla said.
“Inspiring,” S.T. said.
“What was Rabbi Sherman’s speech about?” Mrs. Wexler asked.
In all their time spying on Moe, the girls hadn’t even noticed that the rabbi had given a speech, let alone what it was about. Even so, they did not hesitate to answer the question/make something up.
“Doing good?” “Learning stuff?” they said simultaneously.
Mr. Wexler considered the girls’ words and nodded thoughtfully. “Sounds like a classic Rabbi Sherman speech.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Sruly said. The tone in his voice was all innocence, but the look he directed at Kayla and S.T. was pure accusation. “Wasn’t it about how on Shabbos we should disconnect from the material world and open ourselves up to the possibility of more spiritual connections?”
He hadn’t contributed a single thing to the dinner conversation thus far, and now he decided to articulate the entire meaning of Shabbos? Kayla and S.T. shot him a look across the table, but he didn’t even blink, watching them right back as he took a bite of kugel.
“Sounds like Rabbi Sherman covered a lot of subjects tonight,” Mrs. Wexler said.
Thankfully, there were no more questions that resulted in lies Sruly could catch the girls at. But he continued to spend the rest of the dinner in his shifty/sullen mood. Kayla made up a nickname for him: Surly Sruly. She’d have to tell S.T. when he was out of earshot.*12
The meal wound down with Mr. Wexler trying to wax philosophical about spirituality but ending up on tangents about how kids don’t play with real toys anymore and that car insurance was so much cheaper in New Jersey.*13 As Mrs. Wexler stood up to clear dishes, S.T. popped up too, her own dish in hand. “Well, we’ve gotta get going if we want to make it to our kumzits.”
At this, Kayla bounced out of her chair. Maybe S.T. had changed her mind. Maybe she hadn’t spent the entire meal thinking about Basketball Yarmulke. But as soon as the girls stepped outside, all hope of that was gone. “Ready to party?” S.T. asked, her eyebrows dancing suggestively on her forehead.
“So we’re definitely not going to the kumzits, then?”
“Tell you what: we’ll go to the party first, stay a bit, and then if you really don’t like it, I promise we’ll go to the kumzits. Deal?”
Kayla didn’t want to agree, but in the end it wasn’t like she had a choice. She’d asked to be paired off with S.T. this weekend because they were best friends. And best friends stuck together. Plus, even if they were ditching the kumzits, they were still ditching it together, so really, she couldn’t complain. “Fine. Which way do we go?”
S.T. paused to think and looked down one side of the block and then the other, as though somehow that would signal the correct direction. “Okay, I’m pretty sure there was a three in the address.”
“You forgot it?”
“It’s not my fault. That was more of a zip code than an address, I mean, right?”
“Sigh,” Kayla said. She actually said the word out loud, having trouble with the line between sarcasm and sincerity. “If only you could ask him on Facebook.”*14
“I know of an oneg happening close by,” Sruly said. As was apparently his MO, he’d sneaked up behind them. “Might be the one your guy was talking about.”
“He’s not my guy,” S.T. said low, the blush creeping up her cheeks much louder.
“Is eavesdropping a hobby for you or…?” Kayla snapped.
“I was just trying to help,” Sruly said. He was already bounding down the porch steps. “But if you don’t want any—”
“Wait,” S.T. said. “Where is this party?”
“Come on, I’ll walk you.”
“You know, we don’t need an escort,” Kayla said as the three of them walked. “We can take care of ourselves.”
“It’s Brooklyn and dark out,” Sruly said. “You could get mugged.”
“Don’t talk ill of Brooklyn like that,” Kayla said.
“Yeah,” S.T. said. “And it’s not like they’d have anything to rob.*15 Plus, what would you do if we did get robbed? Fight off our assailant?”
Sruly shrugged. “Yeah.”
S.T. and Kayla both snorted. They’d heard boys talk about the fights that broke out in yeshiva alleyways, but neither of them had ever seen any frum boys fight, didn’t even know of any that would.*16
“Well, we don’t need a man to save us,” S.T. said. “Because…feminism.”
“Okay,” Sruly said. He stopped walking, and the girls nearly bumped into him. “We’re here.” They stood in front of a building on Ocean Avenue, one of the taller ones. “Apartment Eight-B. Have fun.”
“Wait, where are you going?” Kayla said.
“Chavrusa’s waiting for me at shul. It was nice meeting you. Kind of.”
Sruly walked off, and Kayla and S.T. were left standing in front of the building.
The girls were on the sixth floor of the stairwell, and although they were only two floors away now, it might as well have been thirty. “Who makes a party”—Kayla paused for breath—“on the eighth floor?” Another breath. “On Shabbos?”*17
“Monsters,” S.T. wheezed.
“The worst kinds of humans,” Kayla agreed.
The two wordlessly decided to stop and take a break, but once their breath was caught, they kept climbing the stairs. “That was weird with Sruly, right?” Kayla asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Avoiding a party to go study? I didn’t take him as the studying type.”
Neither did S.T. Nothing about his casual Shabbos clothes,*18 messy hair,*19 or confidence in talking to girls struck her as attributes of a learned mensch. And yet.
“Aside from the fact that he butts into other people’s business and that he’s clearly a stalker, he wasn’t technically not cute.”
S.T. knew better than to try to untangle the compliment buried under Kayla’s insults and double negatives, so she wasn’t even going to try. “You like him?”
“No way. Boys are garbage.*20 But at least he doesn’t go around wearing a basketball yarmulke.”*21
“Will you get over the yarmulke already?” S.T. said, finally landing on the eighth floor. The door to 8B was left slightly open. S.T. lifted her knuckles to knock, but Kayla got to it first, swinging it wide open. It was definitely a party, all right. Too many people, too many loud voices. “But also keep your eye out for that yarmulke,” S.T. said.
In lieu of music,*22 sounds of chatter filled the tight apartment space. Laughter and schmoozing and political arguments, which were enough to repel the girls whenever they caught whiffs of those. But there was something in the air. Something that made this unlike any party the girls had been to before. It became instantly clear just what kind of party this was.
“Kayla, is this what I think it is?”
Kayla nodded, recognizing the signs all around her. There was the age of the partygoers (college and above) and the manner by which people were approaching one another (shy, flirty). The aggressive conversation starters and bold style choices. The crumbly snack foods and overflowing wineglasses. Kayla had an older sister who spent plenty of nights meticulously applying her makeup for parties like this, all while whining about how much she hated going to them. “This is a singles party.”*23
S.T. and Kayla didn’t need to consult each other before turning for the nearest exit, but a girl stepped up to them, drink in hand and eyebrow cocked. “You guys look really young.”
“We’re not,” Kayla said, and apropos of nothing added, “We’ve been friends for twenty-seven years.”
S.T. elbowed Kayla in the side. “No we haven’t. She’s kidding.” But the girl who asked the question seemed to already regret it and walked away. “Twenty-seven years?” S.T. hissed. “People are going to think we’re ancient.”
“So?”
“I don’t want people thinking I’m old at a singles party. And when did you get that drink?”
Kayla stared down at her cup, then back at S.T. for a prolonged moment. “Before.”
“What?” S.T. said. She was really good at the whisper-hiss. “You can’t drink.”
“But there is so much booze here,” Kayla marveled. “And you said we were going to have an adventure tonight.” Somehow, while saying all of this, Kayla had managed to walk over to the drinks table and refill her cup. She took another sip. “You’ve got Basketball Yarmulke—let me have my fun.”
“Okay, we’re going,” S.T. said. She took her friend’s hand. “Moe clearly isn’t here.”
“But wait. Over there. A sports yarmulke!”
S.T. followed Kayla’s gaze, and there, indeed, was a yarmulke designed like a ball. Only not a basketball this time. White with red stitching. A baseball.
“I know who that is,” S.T. said.
S.T. didn’t need Kayla to find her courage this time. There was a new determination in her. The situation was a little bit more desperate, and if she was ever going to find Moe, she was going to have to make some moves. She marched right up to Baseball Yarmulke and interrupted his conversation with his friends. “You’re Moe’s brother.”
He looked at her and Kayla a little strangely. “Yeah?” he said slowly.
“We’re looking for him.”
“She’s looking for him,” Kayla corrected, though nobody heard her, as her mouth was obscured by her cup.
“He’s probably at Aaron Dwelig’s house,” Moe’s brother said. “He goes there every Friday night.”
“We need the address,” S.T. said.
One of the guys listening laughed and made a comment about Moe having more game than his older brother, and Kayla did not have enough drinks in her to put up with sports analogies.
“Uh,” Moe’s brother said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to—”
“Don’t try to tell us what we can and can’t do,” Kayla said. For the second time that night, she’d surprised herself by being combative with a guy who was clearly on her side of things. But, feminism. So. “We’re capable of making our own choices.”
“Fine,” he said. “It’s 3497 number Two-A East Eighteenth.”
Outside, S.T. was still repeating the address to herself, increasingly wondering if she got the numbers in the correct order. She wished she could reach for a pen. Though what Kayla said made her stop muttering altogether.
“I don’t want to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like ten blocks away. And the kumzits is actually five blocks away.” She hiccupped. “It’s faaar.”
“You really want to go to the kumzits?” S.T. took a step closer to her friend, the urgency with which she moved matching her tone. “It’s going to be a bunch of girls we already see in school. Sitting on the floor. Singing.”
“Well, maybe I want to do that,” Kayla said. “You know, I was excited about this Shabbaton. I thought it’d be like a fun sleepover where our parents wouldn’t be around to bug us, but all you want to do is go chase some boy all night.”
This gave S.T. pause. She knew Kayla was right. All they’d talked about tonight was Moe, and all they’d done was try to find him. A boy who wore a basketball yarmulke. And it was all S.T.’s fault. “Okay. Let’s go to the kumzits.”
“Really?” Kayla said.
“Yeah. I already forgot the address, anyway.”
Kayla let out a tiny, excited squeal.
The kumzits was held at the home of S.T. and Kayla’s earth science teacher, Mrs. Bingheimer. It was kind of embarrassing going to a teacher’s house on a Friday night. Made even more embarrassing by the fact that when she saw S.T. and Kayla at the door, she quipped, “Girls! Come, sits.”*24 Based on the decor in the living room, it seemed that when Mrs. Bingheimer wasn’t busy grading tests, she was majorly obsessing over cats.
Cat photos in frames, cats embroidered on couch cushions, even a few actual cats meandering between girls’ feet, some settling comfortably on laps. An evening of cats and singing. S.T. sat and began planning her escape, though a quick glance at the cat clock on the wall told her they’d only been there three minutes.
Kayla plopped down next to S.T. like a life raft. She’d been in the dining room and kitchen, helping herself to a selection of snacks Mrs. Bingheimer had laid out for the evening. In one hand, Kayla clutched a handful of Viennese crunch and ladyfingers. In the other, a cup. You only had to be standing an inch away from Kayla to know immediately what was in the cup.
“Where the hell did you find booze?” S.T. whispered. “Again.”
“It is literally all over the house,” Kayla said. “In the back of her spice cabinet. And Mrs. Bingheimer told us to make ourselves at home.”
“Is this what you do at home?”
“You know it’s strictly Manischewitz at my house. But if I can handle that, I think I can handle this.”
“I can’t believe you’re drinking in a teacher’s house. You’re a lush.”
“And I think you’re very luxurious too, thank you.”
“Girls,” Mrs. Bingheimer said. She spoke over the harmonizing vocal stylings of the rest of the girls in the class, directly at S.T. and Kayla. “Less talking, more singing, please.”
And so Kayla sang. She sang loudly. Good singers sing with their diaphragm. Bad ones with their head. Kayla sang with the contents of her cup, the booze making her words and musical notes swirl together until she was standing in the center of the room, her voice loud enough to drown out everyone else’s. In time, all the girls stopped singing, leaving only Kayla to perform, which meant there was no melody in the room at all, just loud, shrieking words that may have been Hebrew or a language none of them knew.
“Kayla!” Mrs. Bingheimer said. “You’re disrupting the kumzits.”
Kayla stopped, genuinely confused. “I am?”
“If you can’t participate n—”
“Hey!” S.T. said. She came to stand beside Kayla. “Kayla wanted to come here so bad tonight. She wanted a spiritual experience. She wanted inclusivity. And she wanted to sing. If you’re just going to kick her out, then we don’t want to be here anyway.”
“I wasn’t going to kick her out,” Mrs. Bingheimer said. “I was going to suggest she wait until she knows the song before she joins in. I don’t think anyone here is familiar with what she’s singing.”*25
“Oh,” S.T. said. The word started off indignant but ended up sounding defeated. Now the whole room was staring at her and Kayla. It was time to get out of there. “Yeah, we’re still gonna go.”
“I’m sorry,” Kayla said. She and S.T. walked with their arms linked. “I ruined everything.”
“I didn’t even want to go to the kumzits, remember?”
“Yeah, but I made you stop looking for Moo.”
“Moe.”
“Whatever.”
S.T. let it go. At least Kayla wasn’t calling him Basketball Yarmulke anymore. “No, you were right. This Shabbaton was supposed to be about us, and I made it all about a boy. And anyway, even if I did want to go find Moe, we can’t. I forgot the address again.”
“I didn’t.”
S.T. stopped walking, and since she and Kayla were attached, Kayla stopped short too. “Photographic memory for useless information,” she explained. “All these other parties were a bust. We might as well stop by Moe’s.”
This time S.T. was the one to let out a tiny, excited squeal.
When Aaron Dwelig opened the door to his house, it was as though he had never seen girls before in his life. Kayla and S.T. were only midway through with the explanation for their presence there, but Aaron cut them off, inviting them in and immediately ushering them through the house. It was quiet, with the lights all on but nobody there.
“So where’s this party?” S.T. asked.
Aaron stopped at a door beside the kitchen and opened it. “In the basement,” he said.
“This isn’t sketchy at all,” Kayla muttered so only S.T. would hear, though she was pretty sure Aaron was listening to every word. “We should get out of here. We should go now.”
S.T. poked Kayla discreetly in the side, which was when she noticed the bottle in Kayla’s hand. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“It was right there in the fridge,” Kayla said.
S.T. rolled her eyes and turned to Aaron. “Lead the way.”
The finished basement was a teenage boy’s dream, or at least a place a teenage boy would come to hibernate without the meddling interference of parents or cleaning ladies or Febreze.
“Please, let’s go,” Kayla whispered.
The place indeed had a faint whiff of canned boy mixed with feet. Flickering lamplight illuminated the wall decor, which was little more than haphazardly hung street signs. YIELD, STOP, and DO NOT ENTER. Kayla took these signs literally. “Now. We should go now.”
There were way too many couches lining the walls, all with sports-themed wool blankets strewn over them that you couldn’t pay any girl to touch. Blue-and-orange Nerf bullets littered the floor like the world’s most juvenile war had just broken out. In the distance, a toilet flushed, and then a boy walked out of the bathroom, holding his abdomen. “Well, I just lost about two pounds,” he announced proudly.
“Immediately. We need to get the hell out of here.” Kayla wasn’t even whispering anymore.
In the center of the room were five guys, all sitting around a table, cards in hand. “Hey!” Moe said when he saw S.T. “You made it.”
S.T. lit up. “Hi.”
“Are you guys playing poker?” Kayla asked.
“No, Magic: The Gathering.”
“What?” S.T. and Kayla said.
“Magic: The Gathering,” Moe repeated.
“Sorry, I don’t think I heard you right,” S.T. said.
“Yeah, it sounded like you said you were playing Magic: The Gathering,” Kayla said.
“We are,” Moe said.*26
An extraordinary silence fell over the room.*27 The boys, their cards frozen in their hands, watched the girls carefully. S.T. and Kayla exchanged loaded glances in which so much was said and so much was decided. It was the kind of glance that only girls who had been friends for a mythical twenty-seven years could have.
“We need to go,” S.T. said.
“I am so sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Kayla said.
They were outside again, holding each other close like they’d just escaped hell.*28 Running, stumbling as far from 23982397276456323 #2A East Eighteenth Street as they could get.
They got as far as the mailbox on the corner, because Kayla bumped into it.*29 “S.T.?” she said. “I think I’m drunk.”
“No kidding.” S.T. wasn’t going to be able to guide her back to the Wexlers’ all by herself. She looked around, and that was when her eyes fell on the shul across the street.
Sruly carried Kayla.*30
“Thank you for doing this,” S.T. said. “But this doesn’t change anything. We didn’t need an escort or a man to protect us or anything like that. I would carry Kayla myself, but she’s…like…way heavier drunk.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Sruly said, though the mirthful twinkle in his eye made that questionable.
“I am not drunk,” Kayla said.
“You’re slurring your words,” Sruly said.
Kayla laughed. “I’m slurry, Surly Sruly?” The fact that she was able to keep all that straight proved that she was at least sobering up. She swung between the two extremes. Right now her pendulum seemed to swing toward “out of it.” She may have even been dozing off.
“She got this drunk at the oneg?” Sruly asked.
“And a few other places,” S.T. said. “We ended up at the right party after all. But they were playing Magic: The Gathering.”
Sruly visibly shuddered. “I tried to warn you.”
“Don’t worry—we left immediately. How did you know it wouldn’t be our scene?”
“Those guys invited me to play cards once before,” Sruly said. “I thought it would be poker, and then the cards had, like, ogres on them. I left and never looked back.”
“Maybe I like ogres.”
Sruly cocked a skeptical eyebrow, and a laugh bubbled up in S.T. that she couldn’t tamp down. Both of them laughed, actually, and it was sort of nice. In the back of S.T.’s mind, if she really thought about it, it was even kind of flirty. Which made her suddenly self-conscious, and a moment languished awkwardly between them, where the only sound was that of the cars whizzing by.
“So, you eat by the Wexlers a lot?” S.T. asked.
“Pretty much every Shabbos.”
“That’s a lot.”
“My parents aren’t religious,” Sruly said. “They don’t really do the whole Shabbos thing. But I love it, so…the Wexlers have been really good to me.”
Another moment. Though not as heavy. This time Sruly picked up the slack. “So was your Shabbaton everything you thought it was going to be?”
“Not exactly. Still not bad, though. We met some interesting people.”
“Yeah, I once heard something about Shabbos and surprising connections.”
S.T. smiled, but her unmatched ability for letting conversations die slow, painful deaths came back with a vengeance. She didn’t know why it was suddenly awkward, and thinking about it made her cheeks burn. A sneaky look at Sruly revealed that his cheeks were looking kind of ruddy too. Though that could’ve easily been explained by the exertion of carrying Kayla around.*31 Thankfully, there wasn’t any pressure for more convo, because they were back at the house. They spied Mrs. Wexler in the window.
“We can’t let her see Kayla like this,” S.T. said.
Sruly put Kayla down. She stayed on her feet but leaned on S.T. for support. “I’ll distract her,” Sruly said.
“Really?” S.T. said.
“Sure. Just promise that next time, she takes it easy on the drinks. Or at least invite me to join.”
S.T. nodded, her blush coming back as her mind lingered on that “next time.” She would have to figure out a way to finagle an invite back to the Wexlers’ in the near future.
Sruly took off toward the front door and knocked. S.T. and Kayla stood off to the side of the house and waited. Mrs. Wexler let Sruly in, and through the window S.T. could see that he led her to the kitchen. She helped Kayla up the porch steps and then straight to the guest bedroom in the basement.
Kayla was all tucked in, and though there were two twin beds, S.T. climbed in beside her friend. She thought Kayla was asleep, but then she spoke.
“Thanks for bringing me back here.”
“Sruly’s the one who carried you.”
“Surly Sruly’s strong. He probably could beat up muggers.”
S.T. agreed, and her mind wandered to a scenario where he did just that. She was thankful that it was dark and that Kayla couldn’t see her face.
“He’s not a garbage person.”
“No, he’s not,” S.T. said. “I’m sorry everything turned out awful.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Kayla said. “We got to spend Shabbos together. That’s a win in my book.”
S.T. thought of the whole night—of running around town with her best friend, of discovering the other side to a surly boy, even of the disappointing “party” in the basement. It all lived inside a sort of bubble she didn’t want to pop. “The biggest win,” she agreed.
They curled up like best friends do, and went to sleep.