I have a horrible fear that my heart is broken, but that heartbreak is not like what I thought it must be.
—Shaw, Heartbreak House
I was clearing plates after dinner one night when my father broke his silence.
“Aryeh,” he called, playing with his shirt collar. I stopped, lowering the piles of dishes I was carrying. “I have to ask you something, if you don’t mind.”
I sat. My mother was in the kitchen with the faucet running.
He looked me over, chewing his nails. “Do you enjoy being here?”
My phone lit up with five texts from Kayla. I made a point of reading them before answering. “What does that mean?”
“I’m asking if you—if we—are better off in this place.”
“Better off than in Brooklyn?” I placed my phone back down. “Well, yeah, of course we are.”
“You can say that so easily? Don’t you think you’ve—changed here?”
“Sure I’ve changed. But, I mean, in good ways, I think,” I said, trying to contort my voice so that it sounded slightly more convincing.
“When Hashem tells Avraham lech lecha, what do you think He intended for Avraham to become?”
“I guess a filicide, right?”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, sorry.”
My father’s face dimmed. I thought then of Jacob finding Joseph’s bloodied tunic. Believing his son devoured by some beast, Jacob tears his clothing, dons sackcloth, refuses to be comforted by his other children. Rashi attributes Jacob’s inconsolability to a metaphysical phenomenon: a person cannot find solace over someone still alive, for it is heavenly decreed that only the dead, not the living, are to be erased gently from the human heart. Seated across from him at our modest table, I told myself that this is what my father must have felt: an inability to accept what supposedly remained of his son, agony at being trapped in a liminal state in which I was still there with him, still his boy, and yet slipping quietly into another realm from which he could not save me. “He knew Avraham would change, of course,” my father said, “because it’s only natural to change when you leave your birthplace and discover new worlds. But He hoped—He expected—that any change would be elevating. An ascent in kedusha, after having overcome the obstacles of a foreign country. A going away from home toward yourself, not a going away from yourself.”
I didn’t respond right away, mostly because I couldn’t properly muster the energy to rebut his subtle criticism, partially because I knew he wasn’t wrong. “Whatever’s happened here,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “was probably bubbling beneath the surface the whole time.”
This made him visibly distressed. “You can look me in the face and claim my son hasn’t been replaced?”
“Abba—replaced by what, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Someone I don’t recognize.”
“Maybe,” I said, spinning one of the dishes before me, unsure why I felt the need to say this, “you just don’t quite know your son.”
“You could be right. Whatever’s wrong is my own fault. It was my decision to leave. It was my decision to go with this job and take the security of it and not have emunah that something else would work out. It’s just—I didn’t imagine,” he said, pausing ruefully, “what things could look like here.”
“For me? Or for Imma?”
This brought silence.
“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?” I said.
“Do I have a real choice? This is no place for us.”
“Imma wants to leave?”
He refocused his attention away from the table. “People take measures to fix what’s broken. People make sacrifices for what’s best.”
“What about your job?”
He shrugged, gray-faced. He looked as if he’d aged substantially overnight, as if months of worrying over the fate of his family, longing for Brooklyn, distressing over money, shouldering the fragments of faith that had chipped away from the other inhabitants of his household had, at last, taken a toll on him. “I’ll find another.”
“I’m pretty sure you said there were no others.”
“Then I’ll be a janitor if it gets me out of Gehenem.”
“Right. And me? Do I matter?”
“You matter most, Aryeh,” he said. “You’ll finish your schooling, but then you’ll be an adult. The rest will have to be up to you.”
I stood to leave. He remained at the table, staring at the walls.
“Remember,” he said as I turned into the hallway. “U’vimakom shi’ane anashim, hishtadel li’hiyot eesh.” Strive to be human where there are none.
* * *
REMI THREW A PARTY SATURDAY NIGHT. She lived in a palatial Miami estate: two wings, four floors, land overlooking the intracoastal. The party was well attended—free-flowing drinks, earsplitting music—but I arrived irritated from bickering with Kayla. She’d refused to accompany me, had sworn, in fact, never to step foot at another of these events. Passive-aggressive discussions, hasty apologies, exaggerated sighs: I’d hung up on her and climbed into Noah’s car. Within an hour, however, mostly everyone had paired off: Noah and Rebecca disappeared, Amir rekindled with Lily, Oliver slunk off with Gemma. So it was that I found myself alone with Evan in Remi’s backyard, slumped beneath a massive palm tree, passing back and forth a bottle of Glenlivet nicked from Mr. White’s study.
“Eden,” Evan said, finishing a long sip, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “remember when we met?”
“How can I forget?” I took the bottle. “Actually, being drugged tends to have that effect.”
“Apologies.”
“You’re not forgiven.”
“Holding a grudge is beneath you,” he said quietly. “Anyway, it was a mistake. I was—jealous. Defensive.”
“What the hell were you jealous of?”
“Think about it from my perspective.” He stole back the Glenlivet, twirled it in his hands. “I’d returned from abroad to discover everyone talking about how some stranger had been quoting Shakespeare to her at pool parties. And then, believe it or not, that very same stranger was sitting with her at the piano.”
My neck burning, I dug a hole in the dirt with a fallen tree branch. Never before had we discussed Sophia so openly. At last, Evan had violated the unwritten rules of the game we’d been playing these long months. “Well,” I said, trying to match his candor, “turns out you had nothing to worry about.”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Drunken shouts poolside. Silhouettes launched from diving boards. Evan grasped at his neck, looking uncharacteristically ill at ease. “Anyway, to some extent it was my own fault.”
“What was?”
“I should’ve figured you two would find each other.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Nothing, I’m drunk. Forget it.”
“Seriously. What’d you mean by that?”
“Just that if you and I had certain similarities, and if you were going to come to Zion Hills—”
I snapped the branch in half. “Enough with that, we’re not fucking similar. And unless you’re somehow responsible for my dad losing his job in Brooklyn, you have nothing to do with my family being here.”
He stared off into the bay. “Can’t argue with that.”
“So what’d you mean?”
“Drop it, Eden.”
I drank again. “You don’t say anything without a purpose and we both know it.”
Calmly, he rolled up the sleeves of his button-down shirt. “How is she?”
I snorted. “You’re not seriously asking me that, are you? I mean, shouldn’t I be asking you about her?”
“I was referring to your new situation. With the one who tutors you.”
“Pretty sure you know her name. You’ve been in school together for . . . only twelve years?”
“Sorry,” Evan said. “Kayla.”
“Things are fine.”
“Why didn’t you bring her tonight?”
“She didn’t want to come,” I said. “Not after Purim.”
His turn for the whiskey. “That’s fine,” he said, matter-of-factly. “You don’t love her.”
“Pardon?”
“You didn’t stay with her tonight.”
“Know what, Ev? Mind your own fucking business for once.” The whiskey was taking its toll, but I didn’t mind. “You don’t know anything about us.”
“I don’t claim to, Eden. I just know you.”
I forced a heavy laugh and, with effort, got to my feet, leaning against the tree for support. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know things about you because I recognize them in myself.” He requested my hand. I pulled him up. “Bloom sees it. And I think she does, too, even if she won’t admit it.”
“Good for them,” I said, despising myself for feeling waves of pride at this comparison, “but they’re very wrong.”
“We think similarly,” Evan said, indifferent to my reaction. “We feel discontent similarly. We idolize our mothers, we have issues with our fathers, we’re incapable of normal expressions of emotions, of loving easily, we’ve both been crushed by the same person. Why do you think Bloom’s been trying so damn hard to force us together? Pairing us in our little sessions, giving us the same readings, keeping you out of trouble just to piss me off—don’t you see that we’re his, like, little fucking experiments? That he’s been waiting to get his hands on two of us? That he likes to push us against each other?”
Strained silence. We stood staring at each other under the corona of moonlight.
“Evan,” I decided to say, “are you okay?”
He rolled his eyes. “Think I’m unhinged?” He snatched the bottle from my hands. “Noah does. Amir has for a while now. Shit, even Oliver probably does, not that it’d bother him.”
“Can you blame us? You’ve been acting—”
“Unstable?” he said.
“I was going to say deranged.”
Evan took another substantial pull. “Definitely took long enough, but I appreciate you, Eden.”
The shouts near the house died down. People returned inside. We were alone in the backyard. “Not what I asked, but glad to hear.”
“Know why I like you?”
“I’m not sure I want to.”
“That innocence everyone thought you had when you first arrived?” He smiled to himself. “That wasn’t innocence or shyness. That was, I don’t know, that was fucking wildness lying dormant.”
“Wildness? What are you—”
“Wildness as in . . . alienation, let’s call it. Having something deep inside you that’s incompatible with the world you’re in. Being in agony because you’re dissatisfied with the basic rewards of order and pleasantries and the fucking—the convenience of unquestioned conformity to gray and lifeless things. Honestly, you’re”—he paused, smiled again—“I guess what I’d say is that you’re just as spiritually ruined as I am.”
“Well,” I said, after a few beats, “you really do know how to flatter a guy.”
Evan put the bottle to the floor and pointed to a motorboat docked by the water’s edge. “Forget about it. Let’s just—I don’t know, let’s take the boat out. I’ve driven it with Remi.”
“Sure you should be driving?” I asked uneasily, eager as I was for an escape from this conversation. The boat was sleek, fifteen feet long, big enough for three or four passengers. The name NESTOR was engraved on its hull.
Evan walked out to the water and undocked the boat. He climbed into the driver’s seat, revving the motor. “I’ve driven in worse states.”
Hesitating briefly, feeling stabs of drunken wretchedness, I threw myself into the passenger seat. In my haze I knew Evan was right: I was miserable, probably always had been, and I alone was to blame, not my parents, not Brooklyn, not my rabbis, not Sophia, not Kayla, not Zion Hills, not Evan. An immense, pulverizing cloud of loneliness descended upon me so suddenly that I began shaking. I told him to drive.
We shot into vaporous darkness. It was well past midnight. I put my feet up, folded my arms across my chest, feeling as if we were gliding through space. Wind ripped through us. I could feel my hair blown out, standing atop my head, the collar of my shirt against my neck. It was difficult to see ahead, but Evan maneuvered confidently. I finished the last drops of the bottle and deposited it in the water.
“I’ll miss this place,” Evan said thinly. He inhaled again, his face—angular, haunted—illuminated briefly by the flare of the joint.
“Florida, you mean?”
“I mean everything.”
“I thought you couldn’t wait to get out?”
“That’s how you felt, right? In Brooklyn?”
“I did. It was a mistake.”
“You aren’t happier here?”
Again I took the joint. “I thought I’d be given a new life here,” I said, coughing. “But I know now Brooklyn was never the problem.”
Smoke spiraled from Evan’s lips. “New life is a terrible thing to waste.”
“Listen,” I said, leaning forward. “I want to ask you something.”
“Now’s a good time.”
“I want to know what happened between you and Sophia,” I said. Something in my chest hurt. Devastating exhaustion came over me as soon as I said her name, an exhaustion I felt not in my body but somewhere beneath my skin. “I—I want to understand.”
He looked away, one hand on the wheel. He went on sucking the joint until there was nearly nothing left, then flicked the remains into the bay. “Something bad.”
I was on my feet. “Something bad? That’s all you have?”
“Some things are better off unshared,” he said calmly.
“I deserve to know.” All we could hear: my voice, the engine. All else, for miles in each direction, perfect silence.
“If there’s a single thing in this world I believe in,” Evan said softly, “it’s that we have no fucking idea what we deserve.”
“God, not that bullshit.” The moon, infinite and weak, folded in the distance. I returned to my seat beside him. “She wouldn’t tell me, you know. Purim night, about whatever was happening in your house.”
Evan increased the boat’s speed. “I was . . . helping her prepare.”
“For what?”
“Her Juilliard interview is in a few days.”
I felt dizzy, forced my eyes shut. Instead of blackness, I saw strange green phosphenes. “I don’t believe you.”
“Don’t envy me, Eden,” Evan said. “You should never envy me.”
“I still love her,” I blurted, words tumbling out against my will, my voice hollow and far off.
His teeth were of a pure white in the dark. He took out his lighter, switching the flame on and off. “So do I.”
I looked up to make out the jetties looming ahead: large, black, cavernous. “Let’s just go back.”
“We can’t.”
“I’m serious,” I said. Evan was pushing sixty. Wind cut my hair. My limbs were freezing. The stinging in my face was turning to numbness. “Turn around.”
“Can I ask you a question now, Eden?” Again he pushed the throttle, lurching us forward. My head snapped back and then forward against the dashboard.
“Ow, fuck!”
“What are your thoughts on Nadav and Avihu?”
“What?” I could feel my forehead swelling, a dim buzzing in my ears. I pressed my fingers to my head, checking for blood. “Jesus, Evan. Slow down.”
“Humor me.”
“What is this—another experiment?”
“Since the Sidgwick class, I’ve been wondering about them,” he said, raising his voice above the surging wind. “About what it means to communicate with God on your own. About what it means to be worthy.”
“Enough, Ev. For real. Let’s just—let’s go back.”
“Just hear me out,” Evan said. “You’re supposed to be the other thinker.”
“Know what? You were absolutely right before. I do think there’s something very wrong with you.”
We were skidding. The jetties weren’t far off. “Listen to me,” Evan said, “or I won’t stop the boat.”
“I’m fucking listening!”
“So Nadav and Avihu were allowed up Sinai, allowed to see God with clarity, and then?” He pushed forward, harder this time, nearly knocking us off our seats. “Then they were cut off.”
Fifty yards away now. “Evan,” I said, calming down, reminding myself he was trying to frighten me, “why are we talking about this?”
“Because I want to know your opinion, Eden. Why do you think they were cut off?”
“Why? Because they weren’t supposed to offer the sacrifice.” I clutched a hand to my forehead, which continued to bulge beneath my fingertips. I thought back to learning about Parshat Sh’mini in elementary school, about how Aharon, after being informed that his two priestly sons had been slain by heavenly fire for bringing an unsanctioned Temple offering, responds with silence. “It was an aish zara. A strange fire.”
Evan threw back his head. “A strange fire,” he said, laughing, “a strange fire.”
Thirty yards. “I’ll jump,” I told him. “I swear.”
“In Kabbalah, there’s a belief in two warring forces in the soul,” Evan said, eyes fixed on the jetties. “There’s ratzo, our desire to free ourselves from earthly concerns so that we can cleave to God, and then there’s shov, our desire to return to human life. Our whole lives, we go back and forth between these forces. So in my opinion? Nadav and Avihu weren’t cut off. Just the opposite. They nearly won. They allowed their ratzo to overpower them, they overstepped physical boundaries, they stretched toward transcendence, they made a sacrifice. But guess what, Eden? In the end, they just weren’t worthy. In the end, not everyone is strong enough or destined to see God.”
I was inches from his face. “This isn’t funny anymore. This is sick.”
“Don’t you want to see if we’re like they are?” Evan asked. “Don’t you want to see which of us is worthy?”
Ten yards.
“If you’re the worthy one you survive,” he said. “If you’re—”
I lunged for the steering wheel. An endless-seeming moment: night pitching sideways, the curious sensation of being lifted from my feet. I didn’t know whether I was vertical or upside down, the atoms in my brain felt as if they were being reshuffled, all I could make out were bands of electric lights. When the brightness dissolved I found myself beneath the water. Kicking, I broke through the surface, gasping for breath. Ringing in my ears, the chemical stench of gasoline and burning rubber, salt in my nostrils. I paddled several yards ahead, washing up headfirst in sand. Hot liquid poured from my ears to my back.
“Evan.” A pathetic whisper. My throat cracked. “Evan.”
Around me things were black, still, save for a small, crackling flame. Fighting to stay awake, the world spiraling on around me, I forced myself to think. I could see the boat, capsized, sinking into the water. I’d been ejected when we overturned, I told myself, launched into the water near the shore. And Evan? A body, only a few feet from where I landed, floating facedown in the water. Dark edges; my vision flickering. I could do nothing, and for a hideous stretch of time I intended to do nothing, my chin buried in sand, his body drifting peacefully. Man: I halt/ At the bottom of the pit . . . And shout a secret to the stone. Echo: Lie down and die. If I succumbed, if I tumbled headfirst, longingly, into unconsciousness, leaving Evan Stark behind—who would know? Justice, the voice told me, justice if he drowns. Man: That were to shirk the great work and then stand in judgment. Echo: Sink at last into the night. Heavy shadows falling, my eyelids falling. I was close now, sliding gently into opulent twilight. And then I rose, stumbling back through the shallow, dragging him ashore, sinking to my knees, striking his chest, knuckles raw. Man: What do we know but that we face one another in this place? Breathe, breathe, breathe, until he arrived, a suited man on a shiva chair, the man with my unremarkable eyes. Hands together in prayer, he recited these lines, over and over:
Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat
That we must change for Heav’n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light?
* * *
WHEN I WOKE I FOUND myself in a hospital bed, an IV plunged into my arm. I blinked at the bright lights, realizing where I was. Sudden panic washed over me when I remembered. I tried throwing myself from bed.
“Aryeh!” My mother to my left, holding me down, soothing my forehead. “You can hear me?”
“Yes.” My voice low, hoarse.
“My poor, poor baby. Don’t stir.” She grabbed my left hand, a look of tremendous relief coming over her. “How’re you feeling?”
Strange discoveries: a machine blinked beside me. My right arm was in a large cast. My left arm was dotted in pinpricks. “Am I—all right?”
She nodded, still fighting tears, holding my head in her hands.
“I’m paralyzed, aren’t I?”
“Paralyzed? God forbid. You’re okay, Aryeh. You’re going to be perfectly okay.”
Briefly I wept—relief, exhaustion, misery. Then I stopped. “Imma.”
“Yes, Aryeh?”
“Where is he?”
“Abba just stepped out for more coffee. He’ll be right back. He’s going to be so relieved, Baruch Hashem. I mean, we knew—”
“Evan.”
She looked at my vitals. “He’s in the ICU.”
“He’s okay?”
My mother shrugged, gently releasing my face. “As far as I know.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice cracked. “Imma.”
Now she cried. She did so gently, hardly making a sound, into her hands so I couldn’t see her face. I knew I ought to comfort her, but I didn’t, the prospect of moving, of finding words, too exhausting. “Your father nearly didn’t come.” With some effort, I passed her a tissue. She dotted her eyes. “He’s scared to see you. Scared to talk to you.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”
“I think he’s right, Ari,” she said, nodding vigorously, blowing her nose. “Maybe he was all along.”
“About what?”
“Leaving home. Coming here. What’s best for you.”
I closed my eyes, embraced the pain radiating from my arm to my shoulders, my shoulders to my neck, my neck to my skull. How could I not see that my father was correct? And what right did I ever have to consider myself inherently miserable? And how many parents or spouses or children or friends or coworkers or grandparents or rabbis or ministers or neighbors or acquaintances had occupied the seat on my which mother sat? How many sleepless hours had passed through these four walls? How many prayers had been unanswered? How many people, faced with illness, oblivion, had formulated lackluster end-of-life theories from this fucking bed? I opened my eyes again, I said nothing.
“What’s happened to us?” she asked. I looked out my window, the curtains thrown open: early morning, hot and dry, a view of a towering, sleek-windowed corporate office across the street. “Are you unhappy?”
“Unhappy?” I tried stretching my legs. “Yeah,” I said, my voice breaking suddenly, “yeah, I think I am.”
Tears again, the feeling that some natural barrier between mother and child was being peeled away. “But you were always such a happy person.”
I took her hand in mine. “No, Imma.” I smiled sadly, I rubbed her arm. “Maybe I never was.”
* * *
SOMEONE WALKING A DOG ALONG the water saw our wreck and called 911. My parents received the police call at one-thirty in the morning. The doctors found substances in our systems. Evan, as driver, was expected to face charges.
The hospital kept me for four and a half days. I was beat up fairly well, covered in bruises, in need of three dozen stitches on my forehead, chest and back. My right arm was fractured but wouldn’t require surgery, assuming it healed properly. Dr. Friedman, a kind-eyed man with a bushy, gray mustache, stressed how lucky I was to even be alive, let alone walk away largely unscathed. A minor miracle, he called it. Plus, he stressed, I was in considerably better shape than Evan, who had an orbital fracture, his right leg snapped in three places and would have to stay a week and a half longer, at the very least. “But none of that would’ve mattered, of course,” Dr. Friedman told me, “if he hadn’t made it out of the water.”
“Yes,” I croaked, sensing the Vicodin kicking in, “I suppose.”
“They say you dragged him out?”
Light as air, floating sluggishly toward the ceiling, lungs filled with helium. I tried nodding.
“Well,” he said, patting my shoulder, leaving me to my oncoming narcotic stupor, “that young man owes you his life.”
They told me I couldn’t see him until I was discharged. I had little interest in doing so anyway. I couldn’t imagine what I’d say to him. I had questions to work out, questions I pondered during welcome stretches of clarity between painkillers. He had nearly killed me; that was indisputable. His recklessness was deliberate, of that I was certain. To the police, there was little mystery here—two wild teenagers, drunk and high, making a grave mistake—but I was less assured. I couldn’t rule out an accident; it was quite possible that his only intention was to scare me by skirting the jetties. And even if he hadn’t intended to swerve, even if he’d been set on plowing into the rocks and breaking us into human fragments, perhaps it was the result not of malevolence but of combining substances with months of loss, anger, pain? The final option: he had, with a clear mind, intended to kill us, or at least to kill me, using me as some sacrifice while he jumped at the last moment. Lost amid those fluorescent ceiling lights, I struggled through these options, replaying the moments of the crash.
Noah, Rebecca and Amir visited daily. Noah brought cheer, Rebecca sweets—usually baked by Cynthia—and Amir updates on what I’d missed in class. Kayla came most days, too, hovering guiltily over me, making small talk with my mother, watching a movie with me or sitting silently while I dozed. I saw Oliver only once, though he claimed he’d tried coming when I’d been asleep. He was surprisingly quiet at my bedside, and presented me with a wrapped bottle of Glenfiddich. “Pretty nice beverage, if I may say so myself,” he said. “Tried ordering a stripper, swear to God, but the insurance fiasco for a hospital visit? Real letdown.”
Not many others came. Remi hadn’t shown, I was told through Rebecca, on her family’s lawyer’s behest. Eddie and Cynthia sent fruit platters, Mrs. Hartman a collection of Blake’s poetry, Davis an inscribed copy of Abba Eban’s My People: The Story of the Jews. Donny popped in once, though I pretended to be asleep when he arrived, and left a basketball, signed by the team. At one point—hospital time an intolerable creep, one day blurring into the next—Rabbi Bloom knocked softly at my door and introduced himself to my parents, my mother regarding him with quiet reverence, my father with disdain. After a bit of small talk, during which he won over my father by adeptly fielding Shulchan Aruch questions, my parents left for coffee, leaving me alone with Rabbi Bloom.
He looked more worn than ever. His glasses, normally cleaned compulsively, displayed a collection of fingerprints. In his eyes I saw regret tinged with fear. “How’re you feeling, Mr. Eden?”
“My arm’s killing,” I said. “But otherwise a bit better.”
He picked up the basketball from my nightstand. “This is touching. Rocky must be beside himself losing two players so close to districts.”
I shook my head good-humoredly. “About Evan, sure. But I’d be surprised if Rocky even realizes I’m absent.”
He returned the basketball to its stand. “I’m told Mr. Stark’s a bit worse off.”
“Haven’t seen him.”
“No?”
“Not allowed.” I frowned. “Have you?”
“I’m stopping in his room next.”
“Bikur Cholim rounds.”
“I’m also told you saved his life.”
“That’s getting out, then?”
“It’s nothing to scoff over. Whoever saves a life saves the entire world.” I didn’t answer this, and in the meantime he took the seat beside my bed. “Your poor parents,” he said, crossing his legs. “They must have been worried sick.”
“They’ve been fairly distraught.”
“You realize how lucky you are, Ari?”
“The doctor reminds me every time he examines me.”
“You shouldn’t forget it. Zichroo niflosav asher ahsah, mosav u’mishpitai feev.” Remember His wonders, which He performed, His miracles and the judgments of His mouth.
“I know. I won’t.”
He attempted a cheerful smile, though ended up with a contortion that more closely resembled a mournful grimace. “Can I ask, Mr. Eden,” he said, dropping his voice, glancing behind us to make certain no one was coming, “exactly what happened?”
The picture of the mind revives again: shrill laughter, jetties looming, an anonymous body suspended in the dark. I didn’t answer.
“You can trust me.”
“I can’t decide,” I said, my gaze resting past him, on the cream-colored wall.
“Whether you trust me?”
“Whether I understand what Evan was doing.”
“What was he saying before the crash?”
“Deep things, crazy things. You know how he gets. Stuff about sacrifices. Nadav and Avihu. The ways he and I are alike.” And then, after a careful pause: “Theories about you.”
I felt another round of exhaustion coming on, struggled to resist. When he realized my eyelids were fluttering, he snapped to attention from his internal fog, straightened his jacket and stood. “I’ll let you rest,” he said. “We need to get you out of here in short order.”
“I’d offer my hand,” I said sleepily, erupting into a giggle, raising my cast, the head rush moments away, “but it’s out of commission.”
“Feel good, Mr. Eden.” A doleful smile. He paused at the door. “I’ll go save him.”
A buzzing in my ears. “What’s that?”
“—I’ll go see him.”
“Oh,” I said, either to him or to myself, and then my vision descended into a haze of white.
* * *
SOPHIA CAME THE DAY BEFORE I was discharged. I’d already given up by then, having spent my first several days with my heart quivering at the sound of every visitor, rousing myself into consciousness with the hope that, if I’d only crack open an eye, Sophia would materialize in a burst of phantasmagorical light. When she finally did come, Kayla was reading beside my bed while I watched TV. My mother had left to eat; I’d told Kayla she could leave, too, but she’d refused.
Sophia knocked shyly, waited for an invitation inside. (“Not wildly unlike a vampire,” Kayla would later put it.) When I saw her I smiled, unable to help myself. Her lips twisted, her hair in a tight bun, a soft, embarrassed look on her face. Kayla glanced up, frowned.
“Am I interrupting?” Sophia asked, eyeing Kayla.
I looked to Kayla. She shrugged indifferently.
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry.”
“Know what,” Kayla announced too loudly, leaping to her feet, “I think I’ll step out for coffee.”
“No,” I said sheepishly, “no need.”
“Suddenly I’m desperately craving caffeine.”
“Well, it’s good to see you,” Sophia said politely.
“You as well,” Kayla said, squeezing past her in the doorframe.
Sophia waited until Kayla’s footsteps retreated down the hall. She remained at the door, chewing her lip the way she did when she was strategizing. “So, Hamlet.”
“Madam President.”
“I’ve been sent by Dr. Flowers to retrieve her star student.”
“Tell her I miss her dreadfully.”
She moved into the room, pausing before my bed. “You gave me a real scare, Ari, you know that? How are you feeling?”
“Been better. I’m sorry if that was—awkward.”
“Only slightly.” She took Kayla’s seat. “You’re something of a hero now, I hear.”
“I sure don’t feel it,” I said, gritting my teeth at the throbbing in my arm.
“Everyone’s talking about it. The myth of Aryeh Eden, pulling ashore his drowning shipmate. The very stuff of legends.”
“I was wondering if you’d come.” I wasn’t sure what made me say this. The painkillers, probably.
“I should’ve been here sooner. It’s just, I was out of town, and hospitals—they frighten me.”
“Why’s that?”
“They just do.”
“So much for premed.” I squinted, trying my best to ignore the ache spreading through my right arm. “Wait. Your audition.”
She maintained her look of expressionlessness. “How’d you know?”
“Evan,” I said, watching the color drain from her face.
“I see.”
“So how’d it go?”
“Well, I think. I mean, I hope. I literally got back last night. I would’ve told you it’s just—we weren’t exactly speaking.”
I blushed slightly. “What’d you play?”
“Something new.”
“I haven’t heard it, have I?”
“No. A recent breakthrough.”
“Must’ve been stunning,” I said. “I have no doubt.”
“Thanks, dear Hamlet.”
“When will you hear back?”
She shrugged. “Could be anytime.”
“And if you get in?”
“Then I guess we celebrate.”
“What do you do about Penn, I mean? Don’t you have to go because of Early Decision?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll deal with that if it actually happens.”
“It’ll happen.”
“As always, I appreciate your unwarranted confidence in me.” She paused, allowed herself a long breath. “Listen, Ari. I’m sorry. For everything. I’m sick over it. I keep thinking about you being out there with him and—” I loved her pale skin and her sharp little nose and the way she blinked in confusion. I loved the padded feel of her fingertips, the sound of her breathing, the feel of tucking her hair behind her ears. I loved when she failed to suppress bursts of laughter from ripping out of her throat, when she leaned her face gently into mine, when she tilted her head to the side in photographs, when she bit the bottom of my lips while kissing me. “You must despise me.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I don’t want to imagine what he said to you.”
“Yes, well.”
“Promise you’re not angry with me.”
“I promise,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“I wish I’d met you earlier.”
She waited for me to say something but I didn’t. She stood, said she’d leave me to rest, then lowered herself over my chest to deliver a cool, hesitant kiss. I thanked her for coming and turned my eyes to the floor.
* * *
MY PARENTS URGED ME NOT to see him. He was a drunk, they said, a degenerate, a real-life Ben Sorer U’Morer. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t listen. I was curious, I suppose, to see what shape he was in, and anyway knew I’d have to face him eventually. More than anything, I needed to actually see him before I could determine what he’d done.
I knocked at his door. The lights were off. After a few moments a weary face peered out. Bloodshot eyes examined me before the door opened fully, revealing a handsome, exhausted man in a gray Valentino suit.
“Oh.” Julian’s face twitched in disappointment. “Thought you might be someone else.”
“Mr. Stark,” I said, frowning. “My name’s Aryeh Eden.”
He took my left hand, closed the door behind me. “You look better than when I last saw you.”
“You’ve seen me?”
“Briefly, when you first got here. Had to assess the damage. Your parents made me leave. Can’t blame them, I guess.”
We stood at the foot of Evan’s bed. Evan was not a pretty sight. Wires and tubes snaked around him. His leg was in an enormous cast, suspended above him. A long cut stretched along the left side of his face, and he had burn marks on his neck, his right bicep, his chest.
“That’ll scar,” Julian said, gesturing at his son’s cheek. I thought I made out vodka on his breath.
“How is he?”
“In a good deal of pain. He couldn’t take it anymore so they, you know, morphined him.”
“When do they think he’s getting out?”
“Another week, earliest. I wish it were sooner. Well, of course I do. I just mean I need to get the fuck out of here.”
I must have given him a funny stare. He rubbed his eyes, lowered his voice. “Not because I’m a prick, though I’m sure my son would be the first to disagree. My wife, is what I meant,” he said. “My wife died here.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice ringing oddly, “certainly was an ordeal.” We stood in silence. “Coffee?” He motioned toward a pot near the sink. “Tastes like aluminum, but it works.”
“No, thanks.”
He eyed my cast. “He did a number on you, didn’t he?”
I looked at Evan, lying in bed. “He did worse to himself.”
“He wasn’t always this way.”
“What way?”
“I used to—” He paused, rubbed his eyes. “I guess I used to think he was an unusually happy kid. Bit of a smartass, but full of life, loved learning. There was none of this—this fucking coldness. Not until his mother passed.” His eyes were fixed on Evan’s chest rising and falling. “Something in him died with her.”
* * *
THINGS AT HOME MORE OR less reverted to the way they were before the accident. At first my father walked on eggshells, his rage muted to quiet sympathy. We ate together. He shared interesting tidbits acquired through his chavrusah. I told them about the work I was catching up on, the hurried paper I wrote for Mrs. Hartman (“The Repressed Romanticism of Matthew Arnold”), the comically abbreviated version of my paternal family history presented to Mr. Harold. (I omitted, tactically, that I was thoroughly defeated in biology, now that I missed a week of classes.) Neither of my parents broached the subject of what would happen next year, saying only that I was free to choose whatever I wanted: college, a yeshiva program in Israel, a formal Beis Medresh in Brooklyn. Only a few nights later, however, after I told them I was stepping out—I was meeting Oliver, Noah and Amir to smoke for the first time since the accident—my father stewed angrily, muttering about how I ought to look no further than my arm if I needed reminders to maintain distance from my friends. Still, I went.
“You haven’t spoken to Evan yet?” Oliver asked. We were too high to drive and so sat instead at the edge of the lake, pants rolled to our knees, legs in the water, staring dizzily at the nighttime sky.
“Nope.”
“Maybe you should,” Noah suggested, after some hesitation.
I dipped my non-casted hand into the water, made waves. I thought about how, somewhere below, God’s secret name inhabited the depths. “I have nothing to say to him.”
“Come on, Drew,” Noah said. “Scream at him. Tell him he’s a maniac. Clear the air. Then we can all go back to normal.”
Amir leaned forward, eyes grave. “You don’t think he did it, you know, on purpose, do you?”
Silence.
“Jesus, Amir,” Oliver said, after it’d become clear no one else was speaking. “Why would you put that in his head?”
Amir shrugged. “It is Evan.”
“Dude. Crashing a boat?” Noah asked. “You think that’s like one of his weird experiments?” We each grew quiet at this thought. “I mean, can’t be, right? It’s—he could’ve died.”
“I’m not pretending to understand him,” Amir said. “I’m just putting it out there. Would it really surprise you?”
“Yeah, actually,” Noah said, trying his best to muster an air of decisiveness. “Of course it would.”
“Yeah, shut up, Amir,” Oliver said. “This is crazy talk.”
“Right,” Amir said, frowning, “because setting school grounds on fire or conjuring the dead or throwing a Picasso into a bonfire—none of that is crazy, is it? It’s all perfectly normal behavior, boys being boys?”
“Okay. It was kind of fucked,” Noah admitted. “But a different sort of crazy. There’s harmless crazy and then there’s—I don’t know, murderous crazy.”
“Like when he drugged me?” I said suddenly.
“Exactly,” Oliver said. “Harmless crazy.”
“He can be—wild,” Noah said delicately. “Distasteful, for sure—”
Amir kicked his bare feet in the water. “Vile.”
“Fine. Vile,” Noah said. “But this is Ev. We’ve known him our whole lives. He was always a pretty happy kid, right? We know he wasn’t this way at all, not until Caroline—not until that happened. We know what he’s been through, we know the good, the not so good, and when you add all that up—the person you’d always rely on, the kid who threatened the fifth grader who used to pick on Oliver—I just don’t think we can call him, well, a murderer.”
Amir laid his head in the grass. “At what point do we acknowledge what’s in front of us?”
“Which is?” Noah asked.
“That he’s kind of nuts,” Amir said. “That he really does have some sort of disturbing system or plan.”
Oliver turned my way. “Let Eden decide. He was there.”
I didn’t answer.
* * *
THE CLOSE OF MARCH BROUGHT REJECTIONS. Northwestern said no. Cornell and Penn followed suit, as did Haverford and Bowdoin. (Bowdoin? I didn’t even remember applying there.) I deleted the emails when they came. I didn’t tell my mother.
“So. What’s your plan?” Kayla would press, after an attempt to comfort me. “What’re your safety schools?”
“Don’t have any.”
“Sensible,” she said, hands in her lap, spinning one of her funky pencils through her fingers. “So then what? You’re just—waiting it out?”
I shrugged, raising my hands to emphasize defeat. A searing pain shot through my casted right arm, suspended limply in a sling. “Guess so.”
“But what if—”
“I know, Kayla,” I snapped. “I’ll deal with that when it happens.”
She folded her arms. “I don’t want to bother you, Ari, and I know you detest advice, but maybe you should see Ballinger. You could discuss taking a gap year and reapplying?”
“Yeah, maybe,” I cut in, knowing I’d do no such thing.
* * *
EVAN WAS RELEASED ON A FRIDAY, some two weeks after I was discharged. It rained that day. Noah told me he was going with Amir and Oliver to visit on Saturday, but said he’d understand if I didn’t feel up to joining. “These things take time, I’m sure,” he said, struggling for the words. “No pressure.”
I didn’t go. I ate with my parents, slept a good portion of the day. When I got bored I read the Miami Herald by my pool. It was a long Shabbat and I was restless, but I decided that if Evan wanted to talk, he ought to come to me.
* * *
HE DID ON SUNDAY NIGHT. I was in bed, nearly asleep, when there was a cautious knock at my door.
“You have a—guest,” my mother said tonelessly, poking her head inside.
“Who?”
“Believe it or not,” she said, dropping her voice, “Evan Stark.”
I straightened.
“I’m telling him to leave,” she said hurriedly. “Honestly, I was so taken aback to find him that I slammed the door without actually saying anything. He’s still standing there, but I absolutely do not want that boy in this house.”
“Nah, it’s all right.” I stood. “Let him in.”
He looked like hell. His right leg was in an enormous boot and he walked with a bad limp, leaning heavily on a cane. His hair was wild and he hadn’t shaved in weeks, making that dark look in his eyes more pronounced. A red scar ran down his left cheek, just as his father had predicted. “Well,” he finally said from the doorway to my room, after we’d stared at each other for a good while, “aren’t you going to offer me a seat? I’m crippled now.”
I led him to my desk chair before returning to the safety of the edge of my bed.
“You didn’t come yesterday,” he said, resting his cane across his legs.
“I was busy.”
He looked over the books stacked on my floor. “I seem to be intruding. Or at least your mother gave me that impression.” Chin up, he surveyed the contents of my room: my open closet, with my few shirts strewn around; my whiskey from Oliver; my unmade bed; the sea of loose-leaf papers and school notes engulfing my desk. “How’s the claw treating you?”
“It’s pretty mangled,” I said, eyes on the floor.
“Want me to sign it?”
“Not particularly. Is that cane necessary?”
“The physical therapist seems to think so. I don’t know, makes me look like I crawled out of a James Bond movie, don’t you think?”
“No. What’s with your leg?”
“I’m walking,” he said. “At first they were a little worried about that. But here I am, up and moving.”
A trembling, buried rage awoke somewhere in my chest. I tried blinking it off. “We’re both just inordinately lucky, aren’t we?”
“So they insist.” He massaged his leg. “Well,” he said, leaning toward me. “You’re obviously hostile.”
Fuck you, I wanted to say. I don’t trust you, I wanted to say. “For good reason, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” Evan said, “but how come you’re not actually hostile enough to, you know, fight me or throw me out?”
“I swear,” I mumbled, quickly returning my gaze to the floor, “do not start.”
He raised his hands above his head. “You’re pissed, Eden, I know, I get that. But you’re too smart to really believe it was anything other than a mistake. A colossal one, no doubt, but I was only screwing around. Clearly I didn’t think you’d grab the wheel—”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I yelled suddenly, unable to stop myself. Immediately, I glanced worriedly at my door, half-expecting my mother to rush in, brandishing a kitchen knife. “You came here to blame me?”
He seemed slightly taken aback that I’d raised my voice, though quickly tried recovering his usual expression of calm indifference. The effect, however, was unconvincing. Maybe it was the scar, maybe it was the sleeplessness in his eyes, but he looked, in that moment, genuinely disquieted. “Of course not,” he said hesitantly. “I appreciate you even let me inside. I’m just saying it was, you know, a pretty hazy night, we got into some deep stuff, we were smoking, we polished off that bottle—”
I clenched my fists. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Fine.” He gritted his teeth, nodded to himself, as if consciously moving to another strategy. Paranoid, I allowed myself to wonder whether any of this was real or if it was all just performative. “Look,” he said. “I came to say sorry.”
“This is you apologizing?”
He played with the cane, passing it back and forth in his hands. “Yeah, as a matter of fact.”
“You’re sorry for what, exactly?”
“Jesus, Eden,” he said, frowning, “you’re not the most gracious recipient of an apology.”
“We were about to fucking crash. Are you too demented nowadays to realize that?”
He shook his head patiently, as if mollifying a child. “I knew what I was doing, Eden. At least I thought I did. I was going to veer. I mean, I’ve done it before.”
“Bullshit.” And then, less sure of myself suddenly: “There was no time to veer.”
“Yeah, well, maybe not. As I’m admitting, my judgment wasn’t exactly unimpaired.”
“You nearly killed us.”
“Now that’s quite the claim.”
“I’m serious.”
He smiled darkly, unable to help himself, and in that smile I glimpsed the Evan I knew. “I just see a few bruises.”
“I keep trying to figure it out,” I said, after a long beat. “What you were trying to do.”
All emotion left his face again. “You know what Bloom likes to tell me sometimes? A little too often, actually?”
“What?”
“That you’re the one in the group with great moral instincts. And I think he’s right.” Evan stretched his leg, tried not to grimace. “So just listen to what your gut is telling you.”
I paused. “I don’t want to say aloud what my gut is telling me.”
“Cut it out, Eden.” He shook his head. “If you really believed that, if you really thought that’s what happened, then we both know I wouldn’t be allowed to be sitting here with you.”
His head bobbing in the bay, water spurting violently from his mouth as I struck his stomach. “I almost did leave you,” I said, eyes on my sneakers, shocked I was actually verbalizing this. “I almost didn’t pull you out.”
“Yes, but you did pull me out, Eden. In your heart of hearts, when you had to decide? You let me live. That was your answer.” He chewed his lower lip, the way Sophia did. “And now I really need a favor.”
I allowed myself a forced, spiteful laugh. “You’re kidding. What do you possibly want?”
“I’m facing some legal headaches.”
“DUI?”
He stretched again, eyes temporarily unfocused in pain. “I’m told it may become slightly messier than that.”
“How messy?”
“They can make my life unpleasant,” he said. “Rehab. Prison. Both. I have a court date scheduled for the fifth.”
“Better get a good lawyer.”
He exhaled, rubbed his kneecap. “I—well, believe it or not, I really need your help. I need you to testify.”
“Testify? It’s a DUI.”
“Having you there, I’m told, will make things considerably easier.”
“As what? A witness?”
“As the only other person present, Eden. As the person who saw what happened, who had just as much to drink and smoke, who grabbed the wheel—”
“You want me to take the hit for you? What if I tell them I was, I don’t know, forced to save us as you tried smashing us into a jetty? What if I tell them you took me out against my will?”
Evan sat there fidgeting, attempting to hold my gaze. “Or you could tell them the truth. You could tell them this was a terrible accident, an anomalous mistake. That I wasn’t visibly drunk. That I’ve expressed to you how sorry I am, that I want to make amends with your parents and Remi’s dad and anyone else who cares. You could even tell them I was reckless and going too fast and playing a stupid game of chicken and that, in your estimation, it’ll never happen again. And,” he added, biting his lip, making an effort to remain calm, “hopefully you could tell them that you’ve accepted my apology and thereby save me a rather great deal of trouble.”
I considered his request. I felt a strong conviction forming in me, an instinctual sense of friendship and loyalty. I thought, for a second, that I’d forgiven him. Then I had a sudden vision of Evan gripping Sophia, their bodies collapsing on each other, their voices crying out. I willed myself into numbness and returned my attention to Evan. “I can’t do that for you.”
He looked me over, saying nothing, only smiling. Slowly, with effort, he rose to his feet, limped out and closed the door.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING DAY I LEFT math to find Sophia leaning against my locker. I paused briefly before approaching. Unwelcome clarity came over me at the realization that seeing her there still made me exuberant, despite the way she’d treated me, despite surviving the crash, despite the problem of deciding what to do about Evan. I found this thought depressing: I’d faced an objectively life-altering moment, and still what felt most monumental were ordinary manifestations of love and hope and suffering. “Hi,” I said.
“Who knew you were one to stay late after a math class?”
“Had to talk to Porter about my progress, or lack thereof.” The hallway was empty. The next period had already begun. “You’ve been waiting?”
She nodded.
“Guess that means I should be worried.”
“Don’t look so alarmed. It’s insulting.”
“Sorry, I’m just scarred. Last time I found you waiting for me wasn’t much fun.” Balancing my math textbook against my chest, I tried, clumsily, opening my locker with my functional hand.
She touched my shoulder, gently moved me aside. A chill descended through my vertebral column. “Your combination?”
“You want my code?”
“Don’t trust me?”
“Of course I do, but I’m okay, I can do it myself—”
“You’ve got one working arm, your dexterity sucks.”
“Thanks, but—”
“You’re being kind of weird about this.”
“Fine,” I said, instantly red-cheeked. “Zero-seven-two-four.”
She looked me over, stifled a smile. “Isn’t that just the strangest coincidence?”
“You don’t say.”
“Believe it or not, July twenty-fourth happens to be my birthday.”
“Sorry, I never got around to changing—”
She spun the lock, jiggled it open. “I mean, what’re the odds? Well, I guess I’m not really asking a numbers expert, am I?”
“Low blow.” I placed my books inside.
She peered into my locker. “Ari,” she said, dropping her voice, “I need to ask you something confidentially.”
Inexplicably, my heart soared. “Of course.”
“Swear you won’t be mad.”
“How could I be mad?”
“Seriously. Promise.”
“I promise I won’t be mad.”
She glanced around, making sure we were alone. “I know what Evan asked you.”
I tried maintaining a stoic expression. I utilized my old strategy, focusing my attention on only one feature of her face, this time her chin, smooth and sharp and lovely. After a moment or two I failed, and when I took in the entirety of Sophia Winter’s face I saw only a mask. “You do?”
“And, yeah, I don’t blame you for refusing. Truly, I mean that. Actually you’re probably right for saying no. It’s—well, even I see that.”
I studied my textbooks, the ridiculous poster of Avril Lavigne that Oliver had taped recently to the back of my locker. “Why would he possibly tell you?”
“You still speak to me, don’t you?”
I fell silent, ungracefully gathering folders and binders into my backpack.
“You don’t think I know I’m a fool? It’s just—he’s in so much trouble, Ari. His entire life will be ruined, everything he has left, and if it’s my fault—”
“This has nothing to do with you, Soph. You weren’t there, you didn’t see what he was like. You haven’t seen all the things he’s done this year.”
“I’ve seen enough to know I don’t want to be responsible for breaking him.”
I moved away, unable to make eye contact. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I”—she stopped, bit her lip—“I know.”
“Something happened.”
“Yes,” she said, “something did happen. And that feeling, Ari, of undoing someone, even after the world’s already had its way? Of contributing to such . . . willful self-destruction?” She played with her wrists. “I couldn’t bear it, Ari.”
“So therefore you want me to testify for him.”
“For my sake. For me.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing then, after Yeats had shown me only in the abstract, what it was to feel pale from imagined love, “then I will.”
She didn’t dare move, she didn’t dare touch me. Instead she looked at me with the knowledge that I was someone over whom her power was absolute. “You’re much better than we are, Ari.”
“I don’t like when you say that.”
“It’s the truth. ‘One man picked out of ten thousand.’”
I dug into my pockets. The beginning of sunset cast a glassy, yellow light over us through the hallway windows. “I’m not very good at all.”
* * *
I WAS LYING IN BED the night before we were due in court, distracting myself by flipping absentmindedly through last-minute revisions for a Hartman paper, when my mother knocked. “Something came for you,” she said tersely. She handed over a thick, cream-colored envelope. “Could be a college?”
I bolted upward. “Where’s it from?”
“The . . . Rousseau Institute?”
My face fell. “Junk mail.”
She took my good hand. “Everything okay? You seem on edge.”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“How’s your arm feeling?”
“Better.”
“Seriously, Aryeh, why do you look so nervous?”
“Just this Coleridge paper,” I lied. “It’s due tomorrow.”
“Sounds fun. And stressful, I guess. I’ll leave you to it. But if you need something, you’ll call?”
“I’ll call.”
She nodded, left me alone. I skimmed through the letter:
Dear Mr. Eden,
Thank you for participating in our annual contest. We are pleased to inform you that your submission has been awarded the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize. Please note we receive several hundred submissions each year, and that winning essays are selected by independent judges, all of whom are—
I read on. I was to receive a gold medal and monetary compensation—one thousand dollars, thanks to the generosity of the Bennett family—and my paper was to be published in an upcoming special edition journal sponsored by the Institute. What paper? I knew it was a farce, probably designed to extract Social Security numbers, though a harried Google search returned, at least at first glance, a semi-reputable website. I scanned the page: no clear mention of the cost of accepting the award, though I didn’t bother with the fine print. Bewildered, anxious about what would happen in the morning, I crumpled the letter, tossed it at my desk, returned haphazardly to my paper and, soon enough, nodded off to sleep.