Do the gods light this fire in our hearts
Or does each man’s mad desire become his god?
—Virgil, Aeneid
The SAT came back on a Saturday, which meant I had to endure an entire Shabbat of anxious waiting. I passed time reading and, later, walking the streets, hoping to chance upon Sophia. I considered stopping by her house, so close was I to jumping out of my skin, though came quickly to my senses and decided instead to try Noah.
“Sup, bud?” Noah said, clapping my back as he answered the front door. “Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
“I feel like I’m waiting to see a ghost,” I said, following him down the hall.
“Then you might not like what’s going on in the living room,” Noah said.
“What do you mean?”
We stopped in his kitchen so that Noah could grab me a Heineken, and then he steered me into the living room, toward the others. “We’re checking scores.”
“Look who it is,” Oliver said, iPhone in hand. Evan, beside him, snorted to himself when he saw me. “We were just revealing Noah’s score to the kehillah.”
I sat on the couch, put the Heineken on the floor. Amir examined my face, as if probing for evidence of guilt. “You haven’t looked, right?” he asked me.
I blinked awkwardly. I was still unaccustomed to having people around me violate Shabbat with such impunity. Watching Amir await my answer, I thought of how, in the fifth grade, Mordechai admitted he had turned his Walkman on and off one Friday night. It was electrifying, he insisted, urging me to try it. “Even if you don’t like it, even if you never want to do it again,” he reasoned, “you’ll always know you rebelled once.” I requested a week of deliberation, but when Friday night arrived I refrained, suddenly picturing Mordechai as the snake presenting fruit to Eve. Why he’d entrusted me with his secret was evident in my reaction: I’d been shocked but not horrified. Unlike Shimon and the others, I was capable of entertaining sin. For weeks afterward, I imagined myself as Rabbi Amnon of Mainz, flirting too closely with betraying God. “It’s Shabbat,” I said.
“I assume that’s a no, to be clear,” Amir said.
“It’s a no.”
“Well, if it makes any difference to a Beis Din,” Noah said, throwing himself down beside me, “it wasn’t technically my sin. Oliver went online for me.”
I sipped tensely from my beer. “Yeah, not sure it works like that.”
Noah laughed with some degree of guilt. “You don’t think our sins are transferable? Like currency?”
“By the way, in my defense,” Oliver said, opening a Budweiser, “I didn’t check my own score. So, I’m pretty sure that means the sin remains Noah’s. Eden, need me to check yours? I won’t charge for the service.”
“Nah, I’ll pass, thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
Amir inched forward on the couch. “Oliver, you seriously didn’t check your score?”
Oliver raised his drink. “Heard that right.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Does it matter what it says?”
“Uh, yeah. It matters a ton.”
“For you,” Oliver said, taking a swig. “Not for me, thankfully.”
“What a privilege,” Amir muttered.
Oliver shrugged. “To be so rich? Yeah, can’t complain.”
“No. To be so simpleminded.” Amir turned back to Noah. “So did you get the score you needed for recruitment?”
“Yes, sir,” Noah said. “The coach will be happy.”
“Awesome. Congrats. What about you, Evan?”
Evan, silent until now, was lying on the other side of the couch, the Wall Street Journal over his face. “What was that, Amir?”
“How do you feel?”
“What you’re asking is if you beat me,” he said lazily from behind the paper. “And I’m not in the mood to play that game.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” Amir grabbed for an old copy of Sports Illustrated in an effort to appear nonchalant. “I’m just being, you know, polite.”
“Wait,” I said, unable to stop myself, “Amir, you checked?” Until now, I’d been grateful to rely on Amir holding out against our friends’ routine trespassing of Halacha—failures to daven, violations of Shabbat, a pervasive indifference to keeping kosher. When aligned with Amir, I defended ancient customs with pride. Hearing he had checked made me feel suddenly alone.
Oliver laughed. “Judgmental much, Eden?”
Amir, shamefaced, began tearing through a LeBron James interview.
“But yeah, I checked for him, too,” Oliver said, looking pleased. “Trust me, I tried stopping him, but the man simply couldn’t wait. Such tyvah! I’m sure God understands. We get a few hall passes in our youth, don’t we?”
“Leave the dude alone,” Noah said. “Everyone has a right to make a personal decision. Anyway, Amir did pretty damn well. Big surprise.”
“Yeah,” I said, angry at myself for having such a difficult time suppressing my disappointment in Amir. “I bet.”
Oliver leaped from the couch and headed to the kitchen. “I’d guess Evan still did better, though.”
“Couldn’t have done too much better,” Noah said.
We exchanged looks, waiting for Amir to snap. “Screw it,” Amir said when he finally did, tossing aside the magazine. “Let’s hear it.”
Evan didn’t lower his paper. “We don’t need to compare, Amir.”
“Bullshit. You already know mine. Oliver probably told you.”
“Nope. He didn’t.”
“Yeah, my bad,” Oliver called from the kitchen. I heard him rifling through drawers, looking for a bottle opener. “He got a 1560.”
Amir reddened. “Shut the hell up, Oliver!”
“That’s very impressive.” Evan dropped the paper to the floor, stood, stretched lazily. “Noah, please tell me Cynthia has leftovers for us.”
“Come on, Ev,” Noah said, “you’re leaving the poor dude in suspense. Just look at him.”
Evan walked toward the kitchen, pausing at the doorway. “You really need to know?”
Amir didn’t answer.
“I beat you.”
Now it was Amir visibly failing to stifle his reaction. He tried, rather unnaturally, jutting his jaw. This made things worse. “By how much?”
“Relax,” Evan said. “It’s enough.”
“I want to know by how much.”
“What does it matter?”
“Was it by ten?” Amir scratched at his scalp. He looked prepared to rip hair from his head. “By twenty?”
Evan still said nothing.
“Thirty?”
“Amir,” Evan said, “none of this matters, I promise.”
Amir gave an exacting, fake laugh. “You’re going to tell me you got a perf—”
Evan left the room.
* * *
I CHECKED THE MOMENT MY father finished havdalah. Math was as expected—fine, perfectly unremarkable—though I did rather well on verbal, even better than anticipated. I told Sophia my scores the next afternoon. It was my first time visiting her house; she’d invited me to keep her company as she tended to her brother, since her parents were in St. Augustine, visiting Castillo de San Marcos. Her room was precisely how I imagined: whitewashed, dozens of recital plaques, her desk organized with schoolwork and a large calendar into which she inputted all elements of her day, her childhood upright piano against the wall. When I admitted my scores, after some pressing on her part, she kissed me gently, that faint thrill returning to my chest, only to pull away for her computer. “Forget Ballinger’s list,” she decided, typing furiously, overcome with the prospect of revising my fortune. “Where do you actually want to go?”
I put my fingers to my lips. I could still feel the taste of her lips. “But my math sucks.”
“It doesn’t suck, per se.”
“Yeah? You’d be happy with that score?”
She twirled a finger through her hair. “No, I’d be inconsolable. But I’m a different story. For you it might not matter. We’re selling you on English, right? On being delightfully right-brained.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been called anything but half-brained.”
She rolled over on her bed, putting her head against my ribs. “Provide names. Now.”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“You don’t have a single thought on where you want to spend the next four years of your life?”
Light-pink pillowcases. An endless row of perfumes. An old picture of Sophia at a piano bench. She was only nine and already had a haunting superiority radiating from somewhere behind her eyes. “Columbia,” I blurted.
“Columbia?”
Iron gates. Low plaza. Alma Mater’s outstretched arms, an owl beneath her robes. Hushed memories from my mother. The purported epicenter of the world. “Yeah.”
“Interesting.”
“Interesting?” I said. “As in, yikes, Ari, you’re clinically insane?”
“As in, wow, I’m admittedly somewhat floored by this secret ambition, but what a lovely idea.”
I had a fistful of her sheets. “You don’t actually think that.”
“No, I do.”
“Well, I mentioned it to Bearman.”
“And?”
“He laughed in my face. Literally. A belly-deep laugh.”
She rolled her eyes, continued to comb through admission statistics. “What does that moron know?”
“A lot, I’d imagine.”
“You’re above their average verbal score,” she said officiously. “Which makes you viable.” Triumphantly, she shut her laptop and placed her head on my lap. “But Ari?”
“Yeah?”
“You wanted out of New York?”
“I wanted out of Brooklyn. Columbia had as much to do with the New York I knew as London did. Columbia would be an alternate universe for me.”
“You’ve visited?”
“Once. When I was really little and learning to read, my mom took me to look at the library. She did a lot of things like that. She went there, you know, for a bit. To Barnard.”
“Why a bit?”
“Well, she became frum.”
“You can be frum there.”
“Highly frum, I mean. Brooklyn frum. My father frum.”
She fingered one of her pillows, peeked up from my lap. “So you’re telling me then that this has absolutely nothing to do with me.”
My right hand was in her hair. “What does that mean?”
“In case I go to Juilliard.”
I shrugged.
She sat up, held her socked feet in her hands. “I really don’t think you should be doing this for the wrong reason. It’s a big life decision.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said curtly. My hands moved away from her.
She nodded. “Columbia it is.”
* * *
WITH SOPHIA’S ASSISTANCE I BEGAN the Early Decision application. She pushed me through a headache-inducing Proust Questionnaire—Describe your favorite heroes in fiction; share your take on happiness—and offered advice about the personal essay, on which she herself had been hard at work for several months.
“I can’t believe you started in August,” I said. “That’s crazy.”
“I didn’t start in August.”
“Oh. Okay, you’re slightly more human, then.”
“This is Kol Neshama, Ari. I started last year.”
“Jeez.”
“Don’t look so shocked. Everyone did.”
“Well, what’re you writing about? I’ll take notes.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be the writer?”
I moved closer to her, put my lips to her neck. She lifted her chin, almost reflexively. Seeing her body move in response to mine made me feel a weird sort of strength, one that was exciting but far-off, unrelated to who I actually was. “I want to know the story Sophia Winter told.”
“Sorry, kid. It’s a secret.”
“I thought we liked sharing secrets.”
She squeezed my hand, moved away slightly. “It’s a little too personal,” she said, and I didn’t press further.
* * *
“ARI EDEN,” MRS. BALLINGER SAID, surprised to find me unannounced at her doorway. “Been a while, hasn’t it? How might I help you?”
I approached, handed her bulky forms. “Any chance you have a second to sign some application stuff?”
She flipped through the documents, eventually removing her glasses and rubbing down her eyes. “Have a seat.”
I sat.
“So.” She leaned backward in her chair. “This is a joke to you?”
I raised my brows. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“Mr. Eden, the way this works—the way I’ve built this to work—is no joke.”
“Respectfully, Mrs. Ballinger,” I said, attempting to maintain leveled deference, “I just figured I’d apply.”
“You figured? Despite the fact that I made your stratosphere crystal clear?”
“You did. But then I took the SAT.”
She fell silent, excavating my folder from her records. “Well, this is the very first time I’m seeing this,” she admitted, surveying my scores, clicking her tongue. “And I can’t say I’m totally unimpressed.”
“Thank you.”
“Actually, I can’t deny I’m pretty shocked.”
“Yeah, I was, too. Imagine what Bearman will say.”
She sighed. “Still. I’m afraid my reservations remain.”
“Look, I know my math is comparatively weak, but it’s still pretty good and—”
She pushed my forms across the desk. “I won’t sign these, Ari.”
I felt my intestines tightening unpleasantly. “You won’t?”
“I don’t feel right about it.”
“Okay, but I do,” I said, frowning. “And I have nothing to lose trying.”
“Nothing to lose?” She gave an aggrieved laugh. “It’s not simply a matter of a math score, Ari. There are reputations at stake. There are students already in the running. There are networks I’ve built—painstakingly, over years and years, before I even arrived at this school. My students don’t apply on personal whims with nothing to lose.”
“Well, why not?”
“Why not? Because . . . because there’s a system!” She balled her right hand into a fist, then quickly relaxed it. “A system much larger and more significant than one student. And not to mention the grim truth that not everyone belongs at an Ivy, Mr. Eden. It’s painful, I know it, but that’s just the way the world works.”
I inhaled, exhaled, calming myself. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“Consult Rabbi Bloom if you feel that way,” she said, playing with her wedding ring instead of making eye contact. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to discuss this with you.”
“What does Rabbi Bloom have to do with this?”
“I certainly won’t be the one submitting an administrative letter of recommendation on your behalf.”
I snatched the forms and, to her surprise, rose from my chair. “I’ll be back, then.”
* * *
“YOU’RE KIDDING?” KAYLA SAID. We had taken our lunch out to the soccer field. I’d done well on my last quiz—I received an A, my highest grade to date from Dr. Porter—and Kayla had insisted that I reward myself by taking a break from tutoring. (“Rest assured,” she said, “I still think hanging with you should count toward community service hours.”)
I was on the grass, observing the noonday sky, cloudless, a sharp shade of blue. “Nope. Totally serious.”
“Ari Eden, a Columbia Lion?” She clapped. “The prodigal son returns to New York!”
“How come everyone’s reaction to this is utter disbelief?”
“Who’s everyone? I thought it was a secret.”
“Ballinger, for one.”
“What? You expected her to dance you down the Columbia aisle?” She unwrapped her lunch, busied herself with drowning her salad in dressing, offered me a bite. I declined. “And what’s with Bloom?”
“I had to go see him and get him involved, after Ballinger shut me down. And he came through for me. He overruled her.”
“Whoa, he actually went against Ballinger? That’s a pretty big deal, Ari,” she said. “Clearly the man’s impressed by you.”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he’s just being nice. Or taking pity.”
“Come on. Obviously you’ve very much piqued his interest.” She picked at her salad. “You seem to have that effect on people.”
“Really? I’d say I tend to have the opposite effect.”
“Always with the immediate self-effacement. Is that like a defensive mechanism or something? Does it get kind of old?”
“Nope.”
“Whatever. All I’m saying is that usually Bloom’s a difficult man to intrigue.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I’m in the top of the class, and how often do you see me scurrying to his office for ever-so-pressing conversations, ancient books in hand?”
“Ah. I get it. You’re jealous.”
She threw a fistful of grass my way. “Hardly. Go ahead and enjoy your meetings, I don’t care. Just be aware, is all.”
“Aware of what?”
“Bloom’s acted like this with only one other person since I started here.”
“Oh, God. Don’t.”
“Who is Brother Stark, for five hundred dollars?”
“He likes Evan, too, so what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just a bit—curious.”
“Not really. He thinks we have similar interests is all.”
“You two have similar interests? Similar anything? I don’t see it.”
“With some topics, I guess. I don’t know.”
She plundered some of the pretzels I was eating. I watched her hand dig around in my Ziploc bag. Her nails were unpainted. Sophia’s, nowadays, were white. “Okay, we won’t go there. Anyway, what’s Noah been saying about Columbia?”
“Haven’t told him. Or my father, for that matter.”
“Wow, both your paternal figures don’t know.”
“Shut up.”
“Can I just say I really like the idea of you at Yeshiva University? I still think you should look at it.”
“Right, fair. I know.”
“Wait, what about your mother? She knows?”
“Yeah, she’s ecstatic, actually. Convinced I’m getting in and making up for her mistake.”
“Mistake?”
“Leaving Barnard.”
She stretched beside me, twisting to her side. Her hair had been straightened into neat, red lines. She wore sunglasses and an asymmetrical smile. “So you’ve told your mother, Ballinger and Bloom. And somehow you’ve also elected to tell me. To what do I owe the honor?”
“Tutor-student confidentiality.”
“Right. Well, it’s an interesting group. You sure no one else knows?”
A plane passed overhead. I watched it evaporate into faraway blue. “No.”
“No what?”
“No one else knows.”
“Not Sophia, you’re telling me?”
I stiffened, rubbed my eyes. “Uh, actually, she’s been helping a bit.” I knew, right away, what Kayla was thinking, and I didn’t disagree. Sophia’s excitement at my decision to apply to Columbia wasn’t selfless. Turning me into a Platonic, Ivy League version of myself would obviously render me an infinitely superior romantic partner. Still, I didn’t care if Sophia had ulterior motives. I’d spent so long convinced that I’d been ruined by Torah Temimah, barred from the sort of life accessible to my friends, that I was eager for an opportunity to reshape myself. As it was, my every performance—on dates, in class, with friends, alone at night—was designed, rightly or not, to impress Sophia, to prove that I was, in fact, worthy. That I was someone who made her smile. That I was the kind of person with whom she could trade literary repartee. That I could offer dependability and sufficiently ambitious aspirations. I wanted her to see that I was the one she should choose.
Our gazes were now both directed heavenward.
“Why’d you lie about Sophia helping you?”
“I . . . I didn’t mean it maliciously. I just didn’t really think it was important.”
She sat up, moving farther from me. “It’s really none of my business. Whatever’s happening between you two—”
“—nothing,” I protested, my voice whiny, horrible. I fought off the urge to just admit what Kayla already knew. “Really, we’re just friends.”
She sat cross-legged, swaying slightly. “I just hope you’re sure about what you’re doing.”
“Why don’t you like her?”
Kayla glanced away. “I don’t actively dislike her. I mean, I’ve known her since kindergarten, but I hardly actually know her.”
“So then what’s the issue?”
“Maybe she once did something that I don’t, you know, happen to love.”
I pulled up dewy grass. “What was it?”
She looked back toward me. “Nothing, it’s extremely stupid, not even worth getting into.”
“No,” I said, feeling strangely defensive. “I—actually, I’d really like to know.”
“In seventh grade,” Kayla said, “my parents forced me to have this big bat mitzvah party, which of course was basically the last thing on earth I wanted to subject myself to. And yet, they pushed for it, they insisted it was an important part of growing up, something cute but misguided like that. Anyway, over time I come to accept it, I’m actually excited about it, believe it or not, there’s pizza, there are drinks, there’s the lamest DJ you ever did see stationed in the corner of the room. And, agonizingly enough, hardly anyone shows.”
I cringed, opening my mouth to interject with something comforting, but Kayla waved me off. “It’s fine,” she said, “I expected that to happen anyway. But my poor parents made some calls to figure out how it was that they steered their daughter into such, you know, abject public humiliation, and what they uncover is that Sophia had some local, astonishingly unimportant piano recital that same evening and actually campaigned—no joke, campaigned!—for most of our grade to attend. As in, she literally messaged people making certain they wouldn’t be caught dead, God forbid, at my bat mitzvah and that they’d instead come see her Royal Highness perform, because already at that young age her ego required devoted fans.”
“That’s—horrible,” I said, blushing on behalf of both Kayla and Sophia. “I’m sorry that happened to you, really. But, I mean, it was so long ago and—”
“It was a long time ago, Ari, and it’s highly probable that she’s changed extensively and even feels remorse for having done that to me. I, for one, have certainly moved on from that stupidity. But if you’re asking me if a character flaw signifies anything? Well, then I can at least tell you privately, friend to friend, that perhaps I just don’t buy it.”
“Buy what?”
She snorted. “I don’t like that you’re repugnantly spellbound. I don’t like that you think she’s some mythological sketch of human excellence. Number one in the class. Spectacularly popular. Musical prodigy—”
“She doesn’t like that word,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Prodigy. She doesn’t prefer it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sophia glances your way, you think it’s real, suddenly you overlook all else.”
“Overlook what? What am I overlooking?”
“It’s not for me to say, Ari.”
“No, really, tell me.”
“Ever wonder why she’s descended on you like this? Ever wonder whether she just needs someone there for her at the moment? Why she’s pushing you toward a certain school? Why—”
Hearing someone else vocalize all this made me nauseous. “You say it with such, I don’t know, disdain,” I said quietly. “As if I’m some embarrassment.”
“You’re no embarrassment, Ari Eden. That’s the point. You just have the emotional intelligence of, I don’t know, a walnut.”
“Right. So in essence you think she’s using me to get back at—”
“At what?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Forget it.”
“Don’t you find it agonizing to be with someone you know wants someone else?”
I didn’t answer. She laughed softly, picked herself up from the grass. “Just be careful, Hamlet,” she said, slinging her backpack over her shoulders. She dusted her skirt and headed back into school.
* * *
WEEKS PASSED TORTUROUSLY. AMIR WAS a wreck, sullen, irritable, prone to snapping at any mention of applications. Evan decided on Stanford but boasted that he cared little about what admission officers thought of him and that he was applying mostly because it was as far away as he could flee. (Not once did he mention, as Amir pointed out to me, that he wanted to attend Stanford because his mother had done so.) Noah was characteristically even-tempered; we took his lack of nerves as a sign he had received some form of confirmation from the coach at Northwestern, though he never admitted this.
I felt guilty keeping Columbia a secret. I didn’t know how to tell Noah without sounding pathetic or directly addressing Sophia’s involvement. (“Columbia?” I imagined him responding, face wracked with sympathetic disbelief, “the fuck?”) Still, I thought incessantly about my swarm of dreams / Of inaccessible Utopia—Gothic bells, long shadows cast from austere buildings, pillars and pillars of musty books. I longed for this in class, in prayer, in bed, visualizing a fictive life of world-class professors and Italian suits and secret parties and Anglican roommates.
The close of the semester, meanwhile, crept upon us, midterms looming ominously, teachers piling on work with regained enthusiasm. It was a difficult stretch: I avoided going out much, did poorly on a string of math tests, wrote an unremarkable paper questioning Don Quixote’s religious extremism. (“Well crafted,” Mrs. Hartman wrote in her luxurious green ink, “but lifeless. Come see me.”) Even the discussions in Rabbi Bloom’s class had soured somewhat, partly due to the unspoken feeling of application competition, partly because Evan appeared to be in a progressively worse mood, speaking up less, keeping his head in his notebook.
Sophia and I saw little of each other outside of school. Occasionally we went for quick dinners or walks in the park, but mostly we fell into a stretch of awkward texting. One Saturday night, after we saw a particularly horrid movie about a wayward youth’s escape from California, I decided to address our stagnancy.
“Soph,” I said, parking in her driveway.
“Yes?”
I turned off my car. “Is something wrong? You can be honest.”
A soft stare. She had on a diaphanous, beige blouse and a clover necklace. She looked thin and pale. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know.” A car drove by with its high beams on, blinding us with light. “You seem distant.”
“I feel distant,” she said. “But I think it’s just the season. The uncertainty of things.”
“What do you mean? The uncertainty of college?”
“Yeah, among other things, I guess.”
“I see.” She pressed herself against me. I put my arm around her shoulder without quite knowing why. “Want to talk about it?”
“Actually, do you mind if I cry?” She did so before I could respond, but it was brief: quiet, restrained. She stopped to wipe her eyes, and it was as if she hadn’t cried at all.
“Are you—you’re sure you’re okay?” I asked.
Sophia bit her lip, moved a strand of hair behind her ears. “I’ve been kind of afraid to play lately.”
“Play piano?”
She nodded.
For a moment, the silence between words took on a sort of pulsating quality, filling the interior of my car with imaginary vibrations. “Why would you be afraid?” I asked her.
“It’s just—my music right now is wrong.”
“Wrong?” I watched the way she breathed. “What, so like writer’s block?”
“Not really, no.”
“Maybe you’re just overdoing it,” I said. “You probably need a break for a bit. You know, to recalibrate.”
“No, it’s not that.” She looked directly into my eyes, blurring all components of my field of vision external to her face. “I’m not like exhausted or tapped out. It’s more that everything’s . . . darker. I can’t get back my, I don’t know, my weightlessness, if that makes sense.”
I thought about what she had asked me that night on the beach, behind Elation. What’s wrong with me? “What does darker look like?”
“It’s hard to explain,” she said.
“What about what you played at Oliver’s? The, uh, the Passion.”
Against her will, she broke into a smile. “The Appassionata, Hamlet.”
“Right, sorry, that,” I said. “Was that dark? Because that definitely worked for you, didn’t it? And what about the school recital? It was—I don’t want to say dark, per se, mostly because I know I’m clearly out of my element here and don’t understand exactly what I’m talking about, but it was regal. Breathtaking, actually, Soph, that’s the word. It was breathtaking.”
She withdrew from me, leaning back into her own seat. “That’s kind of the problem.”
“Sounds like a good problem to have.”
“My music’s changing,” she said. “And I think the darker sound is superior.”
I removed my key, unnerved by how much Sophia sounded like someone else I knew. “My parents are away,” she said, stepping out of the car. “Come inside and I’ll show you.”
* * *
SHE PLAYED THE APPASSIONATA FOR me in her room, the lights off, a single candle lit. I watched from her bed, heart in my throat. In the shadows cast by the candle she resembled a Caravaggio painting: a body swallowed by darkness but invaded by violent bursts of light that illuminated fragments of her face. When she finished, she gave a slight shiver but remained at the piano, facing the wall, head against the frame. “You see?” she asked, finally, in a small voice.
“Honestly? It’s a bit intense but I think it’s incredible. I really wouldn’t—”
A sudden movement in the dark: her fist against the fallboard. A framed picture—Sophia as a seven-year-old, at her first recital—crashed to the floor. The glass fractured. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.” Her voice was hoarse. I wanted to reach out, grab her, but I was rooted to her bed. She retrieved the picture, inserting the shards back in place, her face fissured into hemispheres. “I need something else for my Juilliard interview. Something original.”
“And this isn’t?”
“I want it to be traditional,” she said. “The way I used to play. Something untainted, something that doesn’t frighten.”
Pools of spiky shadows. Thin rain against the windowpanes. She had her back to me. “When did it start changing?” I asked.
“Before you met me.”
“What happened?”
She moved to the bed, sitting beside me, clasping her ankles with her hands. Sitting on her bed, our bodies touching, I felt feverish longing. I wanted to be possessed by her. I wanted her to relieve me of thought and memory and complexity. I wanted her to wound me. “Tell me what that piece made you think of.”
“Actually,” I said, “I thought of something kind of random.”
“Good. Be completely honest.”
“It was a line from The Wild Duck.”
“Lovely. My art reminds you of schoolwork.”
“Remember that moment toward the end, when Werle’s eyesight is going and Hjalmar and Gina are talking about Fate? How it can be pretty ugly?”
“Mostly. What about it?”
“Hjalmar says something there”—I paused to get it right. “‘It is profitable, now and then, to plunge deep into the night side of existence.’ That’s what I thought of—how sometimes we have to walk through the slope of darkness to get back into the light.”
She folded her arms, put her blanket to her face, breathed steadily. “When you say stuff like that, you sound like another person.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Nobody in particular.”
I took her left hand. Her bracelet slipped down her arm, and my fingers brushed against a delicate line of scar tissue just below her wrist. She jerked away.
“Well, what do you think of when you play?”
“Being completely alienated from the world. Keeping secrets. Hurting people you love and who love you.” Her head was still covered by that hot-pink blanket. “Feeling so cold no fire will ever warm me, feeling as if my head’s been taken right off, feeling as if none of it really matters anymore—tests, colleges, rankings, parties, childhood, normalcy.”
“And what about when you finish playing? What matters to you then?”
She removed the blanket from over her head, the top of her hair standing from static, and moved her face closer to mine. I inspected the rings around her irises. “Do you know what they want out of me? Harmless perfection. Normal extraordinariness. That’s what they want.”
“You’re the least ordinary person I’ve met in the entirety of my painfully ordinary life.”
Blood pounded in my ears. She took my hands. I traced her veins. I wanted every part of her.
“What do you think it’s like?” Her lips were very close to mine. “At the very end.” Her hands on the back of my neck, her breath on my face, a stirring in my body. “Passing into nothingness. You think it hurts?”
“Maybe it’s just a light going out.” Grief closed in on us. She laid me on my back, hovered above me. I breathed heavily. “Like slipping right into the dark.”
She blew out the candle, lowering herself on me, and we moved into the dark.
* * *
EVAN HEARD FIRST. WE WERE sitting on the balcony when his phone sounded. He frowned, curiously checked his email. After about a minute, still expressionless, he put down his phone, clenching his jaw.
“Well?” Oliver went for an unnecessarily large bite of his sandwich. “You’re going to make us sit like schmucks?”
“That was the decision letter.” Evan gave a half-smile, despite himself. “I got in.”
There was a sudden rush of excitement. We stood, we congratulated him, even Amir hugged him. We talked about Palo Alto and brilliantly dyed Californian skies and how it’d feel to be separated from home by a country’s worth of distance. When the bell rang and we stood to leave, I asked him, unthinkingly, whether he felt happy. I wasn’t certain why I felt any need to voice this. It was an odd thing to question; I cringed as the words slipped from my mouth. While the others gave me hard looks, however, Evan didn’t blink. “No,” he said, putting one leg through the open window. Sadness settled softly in his eyes so that, for the slightest moment, I could no longer quite remember what it was about Evan that was particularly superior to anyone else. “Actually, I feel very alone.”
* * *
THE REST OF THE EARLY Decisions came in rapid fire. Amir and Davis found out later that day, joining Evan as the talk of the school with respective acceptances into MIT and Harvard. Amir, we believed strongly, wept upon receiving the news—ducking into the first-floor bathroom to do so in private—while Davis paraded around with his grandfather’s class ring, belting Crimson fight songs. School was in a frenzy, phones ringing in the middle of tests, cheers breaking out in classrooms, three different people tearing out from math to sob after receiving rejection emails, students hugging, teachers hugging, Mrs. Ballinger and Mrs. Janice dancing the Macarena in the hallway after lining people up for acceptance photographs. Noah, unsurprisingly, made Northwestern; Rebecca the University of Illinois at Chicago; Remi NYU. (“Her father sits on the board,” Oliver complained with uncharacteristic indignation. “Can we even call that a moral victory?”) I monitored my phone every few minutes to no avail, a sharp pain in my stomach, feeling the grim fear of being left behind.
Sophia hadn’t heard back either by last period, and sat staring vacantly as Dr. Flowers lectured about the value of state schools. (“You think for one minute that my Disney-obsessed, cheapskate parents would in a million years let me flee Florida?”)
“Is it true?” Sophia asked me abruptly, as soon as we were dismissed.
“Is what true?”
“About Stanford?”
I swung my backpack over my shoulder, looking at her with surprise. My faced hardened. “Yeah. He got in.”
She nodded faintly, which made me feel sorry for myself. We said nothing further.
* * *
SOPHIA BROUGHT ME HOME AFTER school. She didn’t feel like being alone, she said, so we sat anxiously in her room, attempting small talk, discussing the day’s various acceptances. When the conversation trailed off I moved to kiss her. For a while we were on her bed, sheets untouched, Sophia on her back, breathing softly in my ears, legs wrapped around my stomach. Afterward we were quiet. I felt strange, disassociated from her, our world of intimacy disintegrating with each passing silence. I told her I ought to leave.
“To go where?” She asked this partly with disdain, partly with relief, lips pressed tightly.
“Home.”
I loitered aimlessly around my house. I read some of Stevens’ poetry, Rabbi Bloom’s latest assignment, and tried my hand at some homework. After a half hour I gave up, unable to concentrate, and, brooding, joined my parents for dinner.
“Something wrong?” my father finally asked, mid-chew.
“Nope,” I said.
“A lot of silent eating for nothing to be wrong.”
“‘All my life I grew up around sages,’” I grumbled, “‘and I’ve found nothing better for a person than silence.’”
“He’s tired.” My mother widened her eyes probingly. “You know how hard he’s working now, at the end of term.” I responded with a subtle shrug, which made her frown into her glass.
My father, to his credit, remained unconvinced. A small part of me was flattered he’d noticed at all. “It’s just, you haven’t said a word all night.”
For a moment, I considered admitting what my mother and I were waiting to learn. “We hardly ever speak,” I said instead. “How can you tell if something is wrong?”
* * *
I DIDN’T FIND OUT UNTIL eight o’clock. I sat on my bed refreshing my email, my mother checking in every five minutes. The letter was heartbreaking: the admission committee met, grueling deliberation ensued; regrettably, they couldn’t offer me a spot in the incoming class. I read it several times—blinking stupidly, eyes moving mechanically from top to bottom—and then closed my computer and laid on my back. My mother tried comforting me, told me it didn’t matter, even as she failed to hold back her own tears, pecking my forehead good night and retreating hurriedly to her bathroom. Staring at the ceiling, I thought about the lonely, dust-laden hours I’d spent in the Borough Park Library, Shimon Levy’s collection of stained shirts, the look Mrs. Ballinger would give me until, under the weight of exhaustion, I collapsed into a dreamless sleep.
It was nearly midnight when I woke. I turned, rubbed my temple, feeling groggy and generally sorry for myself. I shaved, washed, studied my reflection, then returned to bed and shut the lights. When I couldn’t sleep, I fumbled for my phone and dialed Sophia.
Her tone was sharp, startled. “Hamlet?”
“Hi Soph.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, I—sorry I didn’t call sooner. Just wanted to know if you heard.”
“You’re sweet.” She said so in a hollow voice.
“Well?”
“Yeah, I—I got into Penn.”
I smiled on the other end of the phone. “Wow. That’s so great. Really great news.”
“Thank you, Ari.” A voice called her; with her hand over the phone, she said she’d be only a minute.
“I’m very proud,” I said.
She thanked me. We fell back into silence.
“I should go,” she said, tonelessly. “I—my family’s still celebrating.”
“Yeah, of course. Go enjoy.”
“But Ari.”
“Yes?”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
I sat still on my bed. “No, I—it didn’t work out.”
“Shit. I’m so sorry.” Her voice had a baritone quality. “I am, really.”
“Thanks, but it’s okay.”
“There are plenty of other schools. We can think it through together.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
“Have a good night, Ari.”
“Good night,” I said and hung up.
* * *
WE DIDN’T TALK THE NEXT day. I hardly saw her, in fact: we didn’t have biology, she was surrounded by Remi and Rebecca and others bearing balloons and cakes adorned in blue and red and she darted from classrooms after the bell. Not that I had anything particular to say. But I felt an obligation to do something: congratulate her, seek her help, blame her.
The day was a blur. I was in a fog, avoiding Noah and the others, eating on my own, sitting mindlessly through class, staring at the clock. I didn’t run into Mrs. Ballinger, at least, and for that I was grateful. During davening I sat to the side, unmoved to pray. Kayla found me during a free period, brooding in an empty classroom, pretending to do homework so as not to be disturbed.
“You stood me up,” she said calmly.
“Sorry, I just really didn’t feel like being tutored today.”
“No, I get it. I’m useful, but a chore. Discard after use.”
“Oh, come on. You know that’s not what I meant.”
“So you didn’t get in.” I couldn’t tell if this was a question or a statement, so I didn’t answer. For a slight moment she took my hand. Her fingers were surprisingly warm, softer than I imagined. “Their loss.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not convinced.”
“How’d your mother take it?”
“Poorly,” I said.
“Are you going to tell your father?”
“I don’t really see the point.”
She lingered, waiting for me to talk more. “Would you like me to leave you alone?” she asked finally.
I felt a surge of irrational frustration. “Yeah, actually, I think I would like that,” I said, immediately feeling ashamed.
She turned to leave, then paused, twirling her hair lightly. “It’s funny. You didn’t even ask.”
“Ask what?”
She snorted, shaking her head. “I got into the Honors program at Stern College,” she said. “I got the full ride.”
* * *
TOWARD THE END OF THE day I peered into Rabbi Bloom’s office. He was reading calmly. I knocked. “Thought you might be in,” he said. “Take a seat.”
I sat at the conference table. I waited for him to offer water or coffee or tea, but he didn’t. “I’m sorry about our friends in New York.”
“I shouldn’t have applied. Deluding myself was a mistake.”
“Self-delusion is almost never a mistake.”
“Have you heard from Mrs. Ballinger?”
“A single snide comment this morning. I told her not to take such a narrow view of things. At any rate, I wouldn’t waste your time worrying about that.”
“Yeah, well, what else should I be worrying about?”
“Perhaps a plan B.”
“I don’t have one,” I said. “My plan B is Brooklyn.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll be allowing that anytime soon. Brooklyn’s not the place for you.”
“Where is?” I asked. “I don’t have a place.”
On the first day of fourth grade, Rabbi Herenstein taught us about hashgochoh protis, divine providence. Such is the extent of God’s involvement in our lives, he insisted, quoting Gemara Chullin, that we do not even bruise a finger without the Heavenly Court ordaining it. At the time, I imagined a crowded courtroom, bustling with angels and biblical celebrities who cheered as we silly mortals stumbled about earth, stubbing our toes and learning to swim and falling in love and burying our dead. At the time, I found it comforting to think that we are never alone, that something higher steers our every move. Suddenly, though, I was bothered by this idea. Surely, in the sphere of metaphysical calculations, allowing me to experience profound happiness and relief couldn’t be drastically more taxing than, say, having me jam my finger while playing basketball with Mordechai. What, really, was a Columbia acceptance to the Almighty?
“That’s the whole fun, isn’t it?” Rabbi Bloom said. “Finding out where we belong?”
* * *
I WENT WITH FLOWERS. UGLY flowers, the only ones they had late afternoon: fake pinks, yellowed purples, the whole thing giving off a bright discoloration. I wrote a card, a rather nice one, I thought. Her housekeeper Norma answered, looking me over with a confused look, opening her mouth to say something before stopping herself. She told me, sternly, not to come in. I waited—feeling stupid, holding the bouquet and the card, shifting my weight from foot to foot—until Sophia came down, still in school clothing, taken aback to find me at her doorstep.
I handed her my gifts. “I didn’t get to congratulate you.”
“Hamlet.” She studied the flowers, quiet grief coming over her. “They’re lovely.”
“Actually they’re kind of hideous. But they’re something.”
She closed the front door, stepped closer to me. “You’re remarkably good to me.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve been good to me, too. And I’m really happy for you.”
“My family’s eating dinner,” she said, glancing uneasily behind her, “otherwise I’d invite you in.”
“Nah, that’s okay.”
“Ari.” Her voice was throaty, low. “I’m sorry, you know that?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I know.”
She hugged me, kissed my cheek softly, slipped back through the door. As I drove off, I noticed a familiar black Aston Martin parked on the street, two houses away.
* * *
WE PLAYED BROWNSON THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, a Catholic powerhouse that regularly shipped players to the likes of Notre Dame and Florida State and Indiana and which, without fail, annually made mincemeat of us. By now my interest in our team had waned. We were 6–1, enjoying the greatest stretch in Kol Neshama history, but I’d yet to see the court for more than five minutes at a time and had grown accustomed to my familiar spot at the far corner of the bench, where I’d snack steadily on the cache of chocolate that Rocky reserved for hypoglycemia.
“Their best player committed to USC,” Oliver told me during warm-ups. “Massive dude.”
Rocky, already drenched in sweat, pumping out push-ups next to the scorer’s table, rolled to his side. “Shut your ugly mouth, Bellow! You think we need cowardice right now?”
We traded baskets for most of the first half, Noah putting on a masterful performance to keep pace, though fell into a sizable hole by the close of the third. Their USC recruit—listed at six-seven, closer to six-ten—went wild at this point, wreaking havoc in the paint, dunking thunderously over Donny to close the quarter. We were the home team, but the crowd, our biggest of the season, still erupted seeing Donny splayed on the floor, blinking off a concussion. My eyes, however, went to Sophia, sitting with Rebecca in the top of the bleachers. I looked away before we made eye contact.
Oliver noticed what I was doing. “Forget her already, will you? Both of you should.” Still wearing his warm-ups, he was helping me inhale chocolate. “All she does is crush people.”
“What does that mean?”
“Whatever.” He unwrapped a Kit Kat. “Forget I said anything.”
“Seriously,” I said. Someone on Brownson dunked on Amir, tipping the crowd into mayhem, but I missed it. “Has he—does Evan ever say anything about her?” I reached nervously for a miniature Twix. “Or me?”
“I’m not getting involved with this.”
“Just tell me what you meant by that.”
“Jesus, Eden. Don’t sound so desperate. You and Evan both—you’re moping, he’s fucking weird about things lately. You see me broken up over Remi?”
Noah cut the deficit to two with a minute remaining, eliciting cheers of disbelief from the crowd and swearing from Rocky, who appeared to be on the verge of some quasi-religious awakening at the prospect of defeating Brownson. “This is it,” Rocky told us in the huddle, his shirt somehow missing three buttons. “Win and be legends. You’ll get girlfriends, statues, investment banking jobs. Just give Noah the ball and get the fuck out the way.”
Donny inbounded to Noah with twenty on the clock, everyone in the gym, save for Oliver and me, on their feet. Noah stood at midcourt, watching time dissolve, the USC behemoth guarding him. With five seconds remaining Noah jabbed left, dribbled behind his back and then spun right, catching his defender off guard. He charged forward, right into the USC player’s chest, crossed back and, feet planted firmly behind the three-point line, fired at the buzzer.
Chaos. Noah sprinted for the stands, Rocky ripped off his shirt entirely. Students rushed the court, tackling in celebration. Eddie Harris, waving one of Noah’s old jerseys, planted an enormous kiss on Amir’s mother’s cheek, which for once lost its scowl. I approached the mosh pit, hovering at the edge, unwilling to get sucked inside. Noah was lifted into the air. I stood back and admired his glory.
Afterward, I followed my mother to the parking lot. As we pulled out, I saw Sophia exit a car on the unlit side of the lot, distraught, blinking tears.
My mother put us in park. “Isn’t that your friend?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“Think she’s all right?”
I unbuckled my seatbelt, threw open the door and hurried back toward the gym in pursuit of Sophia. From the corner of my eye, I saw the car she had just left jolt into motion. Before I could process what was happening, I instinctively jumped aside, just as the car barreled dangerously close to where I’d been standing. It was Evan, eyes raw, head down. I watched the Aston Martin disappear into the night, and then I went back to my car and slammed the door. “Never mind that,” I said, fixing my seatbelt, leaning back. “Let’s go home.”
* * *
SOPHIA WASN’T IN SCHOOL THAT next day. I moved about in a haze, conjuring awful images: Evan just behind her front door, laughing as I stood pathetically with flowers; Sophia, in tears, flinging herself from Evan’s car. Several times I drafted text messages, only to delete them. are you coming in late? feeling ok? need anything? I couldn’t bear seeing Evan, couldn’t stomach the thought of questioning the implied meaning of his every word, and so skipped lunch upstairs. I attempted instead to join Kayla, who was stationed at her tutorial post and picking irascibly at a salad, a book opened at her desk.
“Hi.” I took several cautious steps into the classroom. “Mind if I join?”
She looked up, glowered, returned to her reading. “Very much so.”
“What’re you reading?”
“Nothing you’ve read.”
“Clearly you’re still mad at me.”
“Nope.”
“Sure seems like it.”
“I just don’t have anything to say to you.”
I nodded politely and left.
After lunch, we congregated in Rabbi Bloom’s office, where we debated reasons for wearing tzitzit.
“They slap us in the face before we sin,” Oliver said. “Like the dude, in the Gemara, climbing the ladder to visit the prostitute. Pretty useful, really.”
“They equate with fulfilling all six hundred and thirteen mitzvoth,” Amir said. “The gematria is six hundred, and the threads and knots sum to thirteen.”
“They give us an extension of our body,” Noah said.
“They teach us that the Torah, like the ratio of white to blue strings, is seventy-five percent comprehensible and twenty-five percent shrouded in mystery,” Rabbi Bloom said. “And that there’s a perfect chemistry to achieve in balancing these two ideals, so that we lean largely on the rational, dipping into the mystical only as a supplementary force of faith.”
“It reminds us,” Evan said gloomily, “that we have nothing lasting in this world, no cars or houses or careers or parents or children, only tattered strings.”
“See?” Oliver said, leaning over to whisper in my ear.
When my turn came, I offered the first platitude that came to mind, neglecting to mention that it’d been several weeks since I last wore my tzitzit.
In English I was similarly silent, staring out the first-floor window at the model temple, failing to answer Mrs. Hartman’s challenge to liken Joyce’s vision of Parnell to Moses. “Are you sure you’re feeling well, Mr. Eden?” Mrs. Hartman asked. Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David? “You’re uncharacteristically incoherent today.” Davis sniggered from the other side of the room. Evan glanced suspiciously in my direction.
I had a free last period, but instead of loitering around to ride home with Noah, as I usually did on Wednesdays, I left early and walked, despite the fact that it’d begun to rain. I was in no rush to be home and decided to detour, drifting about, walking along the lake. Before long the rain worsened. No one else was out. I was perfectly solitary, wandering the gray.
When I walked up to my house I found Sophia at my doorstep, head in hands. She sat unmoving, unaware of the rain. “I knocked.” She said so without looking up. Her hair was soaked, draped over her shoulders in long strands. Raindrops fell softly from her nose. “No one was home.”
The rain picked up, covering us in thick sheets. “What’re you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
The first time we were alone, at Oliver’s party, I was delivered infinitely far from reality. That sensation only deepened each time I’d been alone with her since. Looking at her now, I was frightened I’d never again have her transport me away from the confines of my internal life. “Why?”
“So I can talk to you,” she said.
“You should leave.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“Please,” I said. She didn’t move. “Please leave.”
Sometimes she had such cold eyes, I thought. Sometimes beauty dissembles exquisite sadness. “You really want that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Hamlet.”
“Where were you today?” I asked.
“I didn’t feel like coming in.”
“Are you okay?”
She motioned for me to sit on the step beside her, but I was frozen where I stood. Her drenched black shirt, clinging tightly to her pale skin, made her glow a luminous white within the rain.
I glanced down the street: no sign of either of my parents, though I knew they’d be home soon. “I need to ask you a question.”
“I know you do.” She spoke now with such unnatural calm, as if nothing that ever happened—to her, to us, to anyone—actually mattered.
“Are you together again?”
She didn’t blink. “Absolutely not.”
“He was at your house. He was there when it was supposed to be me. And then, in the car the other night, after the game, I—I saw you two.” Voicing this reinforced several fundamental truths. I was foolish for living in negative capability. I was foolish for retreating into the blurred world she built for me, for ignoring that some force bound her to Evan. Keats describes two rooms in the “large Mansion” of human life: the antechamber, where we suppress consciousness, and the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, where we become intoxicated by beauty, only to discover heartbreak. I was now, at last, experiencing whatever darkness follows fleeting light.
Sophia looked up at me with iron eyes. “I don’t love him, Ari. We’re not together. We’ve—I’ve had to see him about something, that’s true, but whatever . . . sinister thing you’re imagining is wrong.”
I loved her in a way I didn’t think I was capable of loving another person, and still I wasn’t what she desired, she who had given me everything, she who had given me nothing. “What do you need to see him about?”
“That’s not a simple question,” she said.
I wanted to hold her, kiss her, warm her. I wanted to kick down the door, carry her into my room, submit myself to her. Instead, I remained where I was, a safe distance away.
“When I tried warning you,” she said, “from the very start, it was because I knew things were going to become complicated.”
“Warn me about what? That you’d use me? That I’d serve as a project or as some easy distraction until you two found each other again?”
She stood, stepped toward me. It appeared I was shivering from the rain. “You need to understand—”
“Are you still going to see him?”
She closed her eyes, let loose quiet tears.
“I’ll never be able to do that to you,” I said, “will I?”
“Do what?”
“Make you cry.”
For the first time in my life, I wondered whether happiness might somehow be beside the point. “You wish you could, don’t you?” she asked.
I was so cold from the rain that I was beginning to feel light-headed. The enormity of what I wanted, of what I always wanted, frightened me. “I do.”
She kissed me, taking everything from me so abruptly and violently that I nearly buckled. “I’m sorry, Hamlet.” The last of light sinking into night: I could feel the ground shifting beneath my feet. Her lips broke away. She gave a faint smile, tore at my heart. She removed her hand from mine and wandered from my driveway, dematerializing into fog.
* * *
WE WERE IN NOAH’S BACKYARD, drinking, sending golf balls into the dark. It had been a solitary Shabbat, a solitary week. The weather had turned unseasonably cold: rain for hours on end, granite-colored skies, splinters of lightning, wet and treacherous roads. It’d been several days now since I’d found Sophia at my doorstep and we hadn’t spoken since. I ignored her in class, even in biology, and she missed two more days of school, allegedly suffering from the flu. Evan, too, was absent one of those days, deepening my paranoia. I tried reminding myself of Sophia’s initial warnings, so as to forgive her, and then tried convincing myself I’d been mistreated. Neither approach worked. The discoloration of Brooklyn, for the first time since I’d arrived in Florida, was seeping back into my life.
“What’s with the silence?” Noah asked, whacking a ball into the black distance. “Everyone seems so pissed lately.”
I sliced my ball, moving it four yards to my left, narrowly avoiding contact with Amir’s temple. Amir wisely removed himself from my circumference. “Midterms?” he asked. “The weather?”
“Nah,” Oliver said. “I vote girl trouble.”
“Drew?”
I finished my beer, shrugged.
“Check out that attitude,” Oliver said. “I think Eden’s had too much to drink.”
“What about you, Ev?” Noah asked.
Evan didn’t look up. “What about me?”
“I don’t know,” Noah said. “You’ve been MIA every night this week. You skipped school on Tuesday. You don’t answer texts. You’ve been as weird as Drew.”
Oliver shrugged. “Like I said. Girl problems.” Nausea surged briefly through my upper body.
Evan tossed aside his club. “Don’t compare us.”
“Who?”
“Me and Eden.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, mostly to my own surprise.
“Look at you,” Evan said. “So alarmed to hear we’re different?”
I kicked dirt in his direction. “On the contrary. I hope nobody compares me to you.”
“All righty, then,” Noah said, trying to defuse things. “Let’s say we do something else now, huh?”
Amir leaned on his club. “Like?”
“I have an idea,” Evan said. “Let’s get Eden to smoke.”
“Funny,” Noah said. “Clearly you are pissed off.”
I put down my club, walked over to Evan, a dull ache starting in my temple. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
I blinked in pain. “Let’s do it.”
Evan smiled, studied my face. “You kind of look like you want to fight me, you know that? You can punch me if you want to. I won’t mind.”
Amir cracked his knuckles. “I’ve been there, Ari,” he muttered. “Might be worth it.”
I considered the prospect. The notion of striking him, of making him bleed, was, for a moment, disturbingly appealing. I massaged my forehead. “We doing it or not?”
“I like the boldness,” Evan said, “but we know you’re full of shit, Eden.”
I found myself inside, seated on the couch. Noah got the fan going and opened the patio door for a cross-breeze. Oliver disappeared into his car and returned with an obtrusive, yellowed sock from which he removed a plastic bag. He did his grinding and gave Evan the joint. Evan applied his lighter, took a long breath, cocked his head, blew out. Smoke billowed, fogging the windows.
Evan waved the joint in my direction. “Your move, Eden.”
Things crashed over me: alcohol, Columbia’s rejection, the way my chest seared at the sight of Evan, the thought that Sophia could be texting him at that very moment. I snatched the joint. Curious silence, everyone watching. I held it to my face.
I had no desire to smoke. The act itself bore no appeal, nor did the way Evan and Oliver typically functioned in the aftermath. I didn’t know why accepting a joint from his hand would do anything to shift the balance of power between us. I knew only, in my semi-drunken state, that I refused to suffer another loss to Evan.
“Whoa, hold up a second,” Noah cautioned, realizing that I wasn’t joking. “Don’t do something you’ll regret.”
“He won’t,” Evan said. “Like I said, he’s too much of a coward.”
“Ari,” Amir said, looking as if he wanted to grab me and shake sense into me, “don’t be a huge idiot. Do not take the bait.”
Drunkenly, I inhaled.
“Holy hell,” Oliver said. “Ev, you gave birth to a monster.”
“That’s it, hold a few seconds,” Evan instructed. This reminded me of the way Evan first taught me how to drink, which just so happened to be the night he gave me that Xanax. I wanted to point this out, but my lungs were filled with smoke.
I held until my breath broke. I coughed violently, throat burning. I paced the room, trying to steady my breathing.
Oliver crossed himself. “Never thought I’d see the day. I’m a believer.”
Noah grinned, shook his head. “Nobody tell Rocky.” He took the joint from me and put it to his lips. “Because, for the record, this is definitely a mistake.” I was still preoccupied coughing up a lung.
We looked at Amir now. Finally, cursing us, he accepted the joint from Noah. “I hate you people,” he said, scrunching his face. The joint underwent several more revolutions until it burned close to our fingertips and Oliver flicked it to the coffee table, though Noah made him retrieve it and dispose of it properly. Oliver leaned against the couch and put his hands behind his head, eyes circular and bleary. “Now, we wait, boys,” he announced dreamily. “Now we wait.”
We sat quietly, sipping warm Yuengling. My throat was on fire, the smoke had worsened my headache, my vision was now strained, slipping out of focus, occasionally darkening around the periphery. A floating sensation snaked through my intestines. I thought I heard something, muttered incoherently to myself, drawing laughs. Amir—watery eyes, lopsided grin—was playing with a pillow, hurling it at the ceiling. Noah had the TV going. The Magnificent Seven was on. We watched without blinking.
Until: a small, whirling noise.
“Hear that?” I stiffened. “You guys hear anything?”
Noah’s eyes fluttered. “Hear what?”
The actors in the movie uncoiled grotesque mouths. Were they inspecting me? A cold sweat came on. I forced away my eyes.
“You okay, Ari?” Amir snapped in my direction, whistled at me. “You’re pale.”
“Yeah, you kind of look like shit, dude,” Oliver piped up. Noah was asleep beside him, his head on Oliver’s left shoulder.
Evan glanced at me and then refocused his attention on the film. “He’s going to boot.”
I was standing, it seemed. “The bathroom.”
Nobody answered.
“Where’s the bathroom?” I repeated, nausea washing over me. The muted, faraway voice from my childhood migraines was back.
“Dude. You know where the bathroom is.” Amir waved in no particular direction, shoveling popcorn into his mouth. “You’ve been here a million times.”
After a terror-filled minute, I found the bathroom and, head spinning, vomited without closing the door. After some dry heaving I rinsed my mouth, washed my face. In the mirror I had the eyes of some other boy.
When I came back out Oliver suggested we go for drinks. Three Amigos, that hole in the wall they were always talking about. There I flashed my fake ID, clenched my beer, braving distorted colors and pulsating lights. Our waitress hovered over Oliver. I was desperate to sleep, my vision swimming, lights rearranging around me. Oliver left, waitress in hand, and I was home now, it was past three now, I was climbing into bed now, attempting to will away nausea, liquid words dancing around me. The eyes are not here / There are no eyes here. Images of Brooklyn: the three creaky steps leading into my house, the sound my bike made when I’d skid. The arch of Sophia’s back, one leg beneath cold sheets, the taste of her neck. Kayla, storming from every room I was in. Noah in his pool, the water rising. Evan wandering through fields. An Aston Martin suspended in air. Draperies of grief. My parents fighting, silently, through their eyes. My rejection letter: the steps of Low Library, dwindling into whiteness. I am alone, I am alone, I am alone.