Sixteen
Tovah
ZACK SITS ACROSS FROM ME in a cozy restaurant that serves individual potpies. After I say a bracha, he regards me with a small smile.
“You always do that,” he says. “It’s interesting.”
“For as long as I can remember,” I say with a shrug. “Before eating, after eating, in the morning, in the evening . . .”
“I caught a few words, but not all of them.”
“I could teach you.”
“I’d like that,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to learn more Hebrew.”
“Well, you know ‘tov’ already, which means ‘good.’ ”
“Yes. You’re very tov.”
I flush. I run through a few other common Hebrew phrases with him before changing the subject. “Tell me more about art school?”
“Art school.” Zack leans back in his seat, flexing his arms above his head. “I’ll go to whichever one will have me.”
“And your moms, they’re cool with it?”
“I had to convince Tess, but Mikaela is a free spirit. She thinks it should be illegal to throw away something you can compost.” He half grins like he’s about to tell me a secret and continues: “She even smokes pot.”
I nearly choke on my water—I wasn’t expecting to hear that. It’s like learning your parents love a TV show you thought you discovered. “Do you smoke?”
“I did it with Mikaela once. She wanted me to do it in a ‘safe environment.’ ” He air quotes this. “It was about as fun as you can imagine getting high with your mom would be. I got really hungry and we ordered way too many pizzas for the two of us to eat. Anyway, Mikaela’s a sculptor. She’s had a few pieces commissioned by the city, so she knows it’s possible to make money as an artist. . . . It’s just really fucking hard.”
“Do you know what you want to do with your art? Mixed-media murals, or gallery shows, or what?”
He shrugs. “I’m not sure yet. I can’t imagine not making art, so I have to see wherever it takes me.”
As we eat, I try to ignore to seed of guilt in my stomach. There it is again: my inability to enjoy myself without thinking about my sister. Since Canada, there’s been a strange, tentative peace between us. I don’t want to lose that, but I also want to push past peace into something resembling friendship. I’m just not yet sure how.
Zack reaches across the table and touches my evil-eye bracelet, his index finger spinning one of the beads. Jewelry’s always itched and scratched me, but this is a link to a family member I know so little about, so when Ima gave it to me for Chanukah, I vowed to wear it as much as possible.
“That’s new,” he says. A statement, not a question. This close, I can smell his ocean-salt cologne.
“So is your cologne.”
His cheeks flush. “You got me there.”
“This was my Israeli grandmother’s, on my mother’s side.”
“Can’t say the same about my cologne.” He continues to map a path around the beads on my wrist with a fingertip. “Have you ever been to Israel?”
I shake my head. “I want to go, though. Someday. What about you?”
“Someday,” he echoes, moving his hand away from mine. “When do you hear back from John Hopkins?”
“Johns Hopkins,” I correct, because its founder’s first name was Johns, not John. “Middle of December. A couple more weeks.”
“Johns Hopkins,” Zack says, emphasizing “Johns” with a teasing smile. “And then you’re gonna be a doctor?”
“A surgeon.”
He grins. “I like that you’re ambitious. Couldn’t get enough of Operation when you were a kid?”
“Please, like that game’s realistic. I like knowing how and why the human body works, and how to fix it if something’s wrong. Like, okay, do you know why we . . .” I grope for a way to finish the sentence. “Why we . . . blush?” I wrap my fingers around the cold water glass, then subtly bring them to my cheek. I’ve been doing it our entire dinner; I might as well acknowledge it.
“Is it like yawning? Once you start talking or thinking about it, you can’t help it? Like you’re blushing right now.”
“It’s involuntary, actually. It comes from our fight-or-flight response. When we’re embarrassed, our bodies release adrenaline, which makes our hearts beat faster and our breathing quicken, and it also makes our blood vessels dilate. That makes more blood flow to them, causing our cheeks to turn red.”
“Your blood vessels are so dilated right now.”
I hide my face with my hand. “Sorry.” I peek through a few fingers. “That probably sounded boring.”
“No,” he says. “That was interesting.”
“Really?”
He reaches across the table to pull my hand from my face, and his mouth lifts into a smile as our eyes meet. I want to make him smile like that again and again. “Yes.” Then the smile flattens, as though something’s just occurred to him. “Has Troy seemed . . . weird to you lately?”
“Weird how?”
“I barely see him alone anymore. He and Lindsay are always together.”
“I know!” It’s strange to have someone vocalize an insecurity I’m still in denial about. “They’re in love, I get it, but do they have to make the rest of us feel invisible?”
Zack blinks at me, and I realize how out of character the admission was for me.
“I mean, I love Lindsay,” I backtrack. “But I feel . . . abandoned sometimes.” Even during her pregnancy scare, she was allowed to have a crisis, but I wasn’t.
“Same. Last weekend Troy bailed on me at the last minute.”
“That must have been the same time Lindsay bailed on me last minute. And sometimes,” I continue, really getting going now that I finally have someone to talk to about this, “I think it’s going to be just us, and then Troy shows up. Or y—” I break off, realize I’m about to insult him.
“Or me?” he fills in.
“Not that I mind,” I say quickly. “Things change, I guess.”
“Well, then,” he says, his smile sad but hopeful, “it’s a good thing we started hanging out.”
Outside the restaurant, Zack grabs my elbow. “We need to make one more stop,” he says, steering me in the opposite direction of the theater.
He leads me into a convenience store, which is empty except for a few kids pumping fake cheese onto nachos. I assume he’ll buy some candy for the movie, but instead he grabs a box of plastic spoons.
“You’ll see,” he says when I quirk an eyebrow at him.
We hurry down the block toward the cinema, marquee lettering spelling out CULT HIT “THE ROOM”—ONE NIGHT ONLY!
“Haven’t heard of it,” I say.
“The thing I need to tell you about it,” Zack says, looking sheepish, “actually, the thing I probably should have told you before is that it’s regarded as one of the worst films of all time.”
“Then the thing I need to tell you is that I love shitty movies,” I say, and he laughs.
“Seeing The Room for the first time is a special experience. You’re gonna love it, I swear.”
And I do. The dialogue is forced and awkward. Plot points completely disappear. The acting is on par with my third-grade class’s production of Cats. Then there are the spoons.
“Do you see all the framed pictures of spoons in the apartment?” Zack says into my ear. “They’re those pictures that come in the frame when you buy it. The ones you’re supposed to take out.”
Whenever one of the framed spoon pictures comes into view, we hurl plastic spoons at the screen along with the rest of the audience. It’s the most fun I’ve had in weeks. Months.
“Oh—sorry,” I whisper when I reach into the box to grab a spoon at the same time Zack does. Our fingers tangle, but I don’t pull back. Neither does he.
My heart jumps into my throat. His thumb rubs against mine, back and forth and back and forth until the movie blurs because this tiny movement is dizzying. Tentatively, I run my index finger along the knobs of his knuckles, dipping into the valleys in between. Learning his skin. When I peer up at his face, he’s smiling in the dark.
We don’t stop holding hands until the credits roll.
“Was that not the best cinematic experience of your life?” Zack asks as we file out into the night with the rest of the audience.
It was, for a number of reasons.
“It was incredible. The acting! The writing! The cinematography!” The feel of your hand in mine. I want to grab his hand now, but before I can become brave enough, he kneels and plucks a damp scrap of white paper from the sidewalk.
“Something for your mundane mixed-media project?”
He nods and shows me the faded supermarket receipt.
Ginger ale
Cold care tea
Cough drops
Beer
“Sometimes you get gems like these.” He tucks it into his pocket. “I love this guy. He was sick as hell, but he still wanted to get drunk.”
“I can’t wait to see what you do with it.” I zip up my hoodie as Zack loops a scarf around his neck. “Do you want a ride home?”
Zack doesn’t drive; he confessed earlier when I saw him get off the bus that he’s failed his test three times, and his moms won’t let him take it again until he logs fifteen more practice hours.
“I don’t mind taking the bus.”
“I want to drive you.”
He grins. “Excellent. I kind of want you to drive me,” he says, and we spend the drive quoting the movie and brainstorming sequels.
“Why haven’t we done this before?” he asks when I put the car in park in his driveway. His house has an herb garden in the front yard and a chicken coop in the back.
“Hung out? We have.”
“Not alone. We obviously get along, but I think you avoid me.”
“I don’t avoid you,” I insist.
“You do,” he says, but he doesn’t sound offended. “When you texted me a few weeks ago, I don’t know if it was because you were drunk with Lindsay or what, but I’m glad you did.”
“I—I am too,” I manage, my tongue feeling three sizes too large for my mouth.
“Your blood vessels are dilating again.” He grins, showing off that space between his front teeth. “Laila tov, Tov,” he says, wishing me good night in Hebrew before getting out of the car and tapping the hood a couple times. I’m beginning to love my name.
I let out a deep breath, collecting myself before putting the car in reverse. Zack’s presence is big and overwhelming, and I can’t get enough of it. But I have only a few moments before guilt sours my joy.
Every good thing that happens to me from now until the end of my life will be tainted by Adina. It’s a selfish thought, but that doesn’t make it any less true. For years I thought I’d never get to experience any of what I felt tonight, but the reality is that I have so many chances to date. So many possibilities.
Maybe that’s what I should be feeling guilty about.