Twenty
Tovah
I’M TOO OLD FOR BALLOON animals, but that doesn’t stop me from asking the clown at our school carnival to make me a DNA double helix.
“A what?” he asks.
“A double helix. It looks like . . .” I slice my hand through the air to mimic the spiral shape, and the clown lifts his red-painted eyebrows in confusion. “Never mind, here.” I show him an image on my phone, and after several minutes of stretching and twisting and tying, he presents me with my slightly misshapen balloon double helix.
Joke’s on me, though, because now I have to carry it around the rest of the night.
The January carnival is a welcome distraction from Ima’s deteriorating health. She was released from the hospital when we went back to school earlier this week, and while her head wound will heal, she’s not returning to work.
I wait for Lindsay, who’s at the ring toss booth next to me. We had to rip tickets for a while until a couple freshmen took over our shifts. In exchange, we got handfuls of free tokens. Being on student council means half my time spent at any event is not devoted to enjoying it. I’ve gone to Homecoming and Tolo all four years of high school not to dance, but to serve refreshments and check coats.
“Tovah? Tovah Siegel?” A guy in the ring toss line is calling my name. He smiles, revealing clear braces.
“Hi?”
“I’m Connor,” he says. “You’re, uh, you’re Adina’s sister, right?”
“Her twin, yeah. We’re fraternal,” I feel compelled to add, and he nods like of course this makes sense now.
“I’m in orchestra with her,” he says. “I play the double bass.”
“Okay . . .”
His cheeks turn beet. “What’s her deal? Like, is she seeing anyone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Cool. Thanks,” he says before he moves up in the line.
There are probably a dozen lust-sick Connors roaming the school at any given time. Adina knows exactly how guys like Connor, guys like that waiter in Canada, look at her, and she loves it. She hasn’t mentioned any specific guys to me since we were preparing for our b’not mitzvah and we both had crushes on David Rosenberg, the first boy our age to grow facial hair. If she returns the affections of any of the multiple guys who ogle her, she keeps it a secret.
Lindsay wags a stuffed tiger prize in my face. “Rawr,” she says. “What next? I wouldn’t mind throwing a pie at Mr. Bianchi.” She eyes the Pie the Teacher booth, which has been tonight’s most popular game.
“Food?” I say, my mind still on Connor and my sister and how that pairing, I’m sure, will never happen. He’s too uncertain of himself.
She makes the tiger nod. “Sure.”
I follow her to the concessions, dragging my double helix behind me.
“Are you doing okay?” Lindsay asks as we get in line for cotton candy. “With . . . everything?”
I can sense her discomfort with the question. She’s not quite making eye contact, and her mouth is bent in a pity smile. A for effort.
“Honestly, it’s been rough lately,” I admit. “My mom had a bad fall over winter break, and she’s going to have to retire from her job earlier that we thought she would.”
“That’s awful.”
“And my sister’s . . .” I trail off, unsure how to explain what’s happening with Adina. We’ve barely talked since my deferral. Before I’ve begun to formulate a response, Lindsay waves her tiger at someone behind me. Troy descends on us, carrying a stack of three cakes.
“I’m really good at the cake walk,” he explains.
Lindsay nudges his shoulder, and he clambers to keep the cake on top from falling. “You can’t be good at the cake walk.”
“ ’Course you can. It’s all a matter of statistics.” Troy lifts the plastic off the top cake, and Lindsay dips her index finger into the chocolate frosting.
“I take it back,” she says, licking it off. “You are great at the cake walk.”
“Hey, Tovah,” Troy says, as though just realizing I’m here too. “Zack’s working on something in the art room, but he said he’d stop by later.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s great. I mean, he can do what he wants.”
I expect them to tease me about my poorly hidden feelings for Zack, but they’re no longer listening. Lindsay flicks the brim of Troy’s Mariners baseball cap. “You don’t have to wear this all the time. No one cares that you’re prematurely balding.”
“I care,” he says as she steals the hat and puts it on her head. “Thief!” He places the cakes on the floor, but before he can snatch his hat back, Lindsay darts out of the way, running a circle around me. Turning me into an inanimate object.
Troy catches Lindsay. Starts tickling her. She howls with laughter that grates against my eardrums.
“Do you guys even care that I’m here?”
It bursts out of me. The adoring couple freezes and turns around.
“What are you talking about?” Lindsay says, brows slashed with concern. “Of course I care.”
I shake my head quickly. “Whatever. It’s fine.”
“It’s obviously not fine. What’s going on? What are you talking about?
“I guess what I’m starting to realize is you’re not really here for me when things are hard. Even though I was there for you when you—” I break off because Lindsay’s eyes are the size of petri dishes and it’s clear her pregnancy scare is something Troy still doesn’t know about. It’s not my secret to tell.
“You’ve honestly given me no indication anything is weird between us. You hardly ever talk about Adina or about Huntington’s. How am I supposed to know it’s bothering you?”
“You could ask.”
“Did I not ask you how things are going three minutes ago?”
I twist my shoe into the gym floor. “No, you did. Forget I said anything.” Then I mutter: “Really, pat yourself on the back for awkwardly asking me how things are going one fucking time in the past several months.”
“What?” Lindsay steps closer to me, though with her height, she’s hardly intimidating. “I cannot believe you’re calling me out like this. In public.”
Troy coughs. “Should I, uh, go?”
“No,” Lindsay says, and she and I remain still, gazes locked, until a fourth voice breaks through.
“Everything okay?” It’s Zack, standing a couple feet away.
I step out of line, and Lindsay gestures for Troy to stay in line with her. That’s one thing she’s good at: leaving me alone.
“How much of that did you hear?” I ask Zack, embarrassed by my outburst. I don’t have outbursts. I’m the calm, collected twin.
He glances at Lindsay and Troy as though making sure they’re out of earshot. “Enough to know you said what’s on my mind a lot of the time.”
I pump my fist half-heartedly. “Bonus friend revolt.”
Zack cups my shoulder with one hand and gently steers me away from concessions. “What is that thing?”
“Oh.” I hold out my balloon “animal.” “I asked the clown to make me a DNA double helix.”
“Amazing,” he says, but he’s looking at me, not the balloon. “Have you made the rounds?”
“A few times. You can only toss so many rings onto bowling pins.”
He holds up a key ring, dangles it from one finger. “Then you won’t mind if we go somewhere else? I’ve got special after-hours art room privileges, and I want to show you what I’m working on.”
I can’t follow him out of the gym fast enough.
The art room has low ceilings and long gray tables and a kiln toward the back. Paintings and sketches and engravings hang from every wall space. I’ve haven’t been in here since Introduction to Drawing freshman year.
“This is my happy place,” Zack says, and tonight it’s mine, too. When he’s in a room with me, he completely fills the space, giving it a new kind of energy. His hair is spilling into his eyes, and I find myself wondering what it would feel like to touch. If it would be soft or coarse. If he’d like it if I ran my hands through it.
“I like it.”
A canvas board and paint palette wait at the table where Zack must have been working. Since all the chairs are stacked in the back of the room, I hop onto the table, my legs dangling off it.
Next to me, Zack leans a hip against the table. “We don’t have to talk about Lindsay and Troy.”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“You doing okay about Johns Hopkins?”
“From one sore subject to another.”
He turns his mouth into a guilty scrunch. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s okay. Thanks for asking. I’m managing. I applied to other schools over break and barely made the deadlines. Obviously I’m still hoping I get in. But I guess I could really end up . . . anywhere.” It’s impossible, though, to imagine myself anywhere except Baltimore. I release the tension in my jaw. “Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about this.” I gesture to the canvas, which is half-covered with price tags and candy wrappers and even a math test marked with a fat red C-plus—all objects I’m sure Zack has found.
“Before you ask,” he says, “it actually does mean something.”
“Yeah?”
He plants one palm on the table, right next to my thigh. His thumb brushes against my jeans. Then his eyes trap mine and he says in a serious voice, “It’s about passing AP Studio Art.”
“Ha, ha.” I examine it. “It’s looking a little . . . sparse.”
“You wanna add anything?”
“Wouldn’t that be cheating?”
Zack sweeps his thumb back and forth across my outer thigh. If this single finger scorches my entire body, I can only imagine both his hands would explode me. “I won’t tell.”
I consider the colors, then dip the paintbrush into cobalt and streak it onto the canvas, forming the Hebrew letters chet and yud.
“I’m not very good at this.”
“I like it, Tov,” he says.
He moves closer so that his entire right hip is pressed against my leg. I swallow hard. Forget exploding: I might be made of sparks. There’s something in me that some days is stronger than the guilt, and it’s this: the flippy feeling I get whenever I’m around Zack. I could get addicted to that flippy feeling. Overdose on it.
“Of course you’d paint something in Hebrew.”
“Do you know what it means? I mean, I know you’re not as Jewish as I am, but . . .”
He squints at it. “Ah, fuck. They’re gonna un–bar mitzvah me.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”
“Why, is it dirty?”
“No!” I swipe the brush across his cheek—to punish him? Flirt with him? Both?—and pull back, covering my mouth with my other hand to hide my laughter. “I am,” I say through my giggles, “so sorry.”
He’s grinning too. “You are not. But it’s fine, because”—he dips his middle finger into violet, then dabs it onto my cheek—“I’m going to get you back.”
“You’ve started a war, you know that?” I ask, smearing canary yellow on his chin.
Soon there’s emerald on the tip of my nose. Persimmon along his eyebrow. He drags garnet red along my collarbone, and the combination of his touch and the coldness of the paint makes me inhale deeply, closing my eyes.
When I open them, he’s staring at me, daring me to make the next move. This time I paint him with my mouth, and he cups my face with rainbow fingers and kisses me back.
My body’s electrified: neurotransmitters shooting off in every direction, oxytocin—the hormone associated with social bonding—levels rising. That’s all science I can understand, but what’s new to me is the labored sound of his breathing, the sounds he makes deep in his throat. I’m doing that to him. I’m making that happen.
When we break apart, I’m breathing hard too, like now that I can suck back in oxygen, it isn’t enough. Isn’t as good as whatever Zack was giving me.
“Hi,” I say, which feels like it fits. I’m saying hi to a new version of him and who he is to me now.
“Hi.” The way he’s looking at me, his eyes unblinking, lips slightly parted—it’s not the way he was looking at me before. I’m someone new too.
“That was . . .” It was so many things, but I don’t have the right vocabulary to describe any of them. “Good. So good.”
“This between us is going to be good.” His thumbs skate along my cheekbones. “Your blood vessels are so dilated. Beneath all the paint, I mean.”
I press my lips back to his, suddenly starving for him. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer, until his body is up against mine. We kiss harder now, until all of a sudden he laughs against my mouth.
“What is it?” I ask, worried I’ve done something wrong, like used too much tongue or not enough, and how are you supposed to know what the proper amount of tongue is? My pulse is positively manic, and already I miss his closeness.
“Your face,” he says. “I’m so sorry. You looked so beautiful tonight, and I ruined it.”
My heart thrills at the word “beautiful.” “We’re even. I ruined yours, too.”
“You never did tell me what this means.” He gestures to the canvas.
“Chai. It means ‘life.’ ”
“Chai. Right. I like it.” He exhales, a happy, satisfied little sound. “Can you imagine going back to the gym after this?”
“We’re not going back to the gym. We’re living in here from now on. We’ll use the kiln for warmth, and we’ll eat chalk and we’ll sleep wrapped in butcher paper.”
He wraps his arms around me and kisses my hair. “Mm. Sounds perfect.”
If this is what I’ve been waiting for four years to do, maybe it was worth it. Everything else in my life has veered off course: Lindsay, college, my family. Right now my mind has one solitary thought, and it is Zack, Zack, Zack, humming from my fingerprints to the tips of my toes. My body can, in fact, do some incredible things. This is me not planning, not stressing, not obsessing about getting everything right. This is me doing something entirely because I want it. Because it feels fucking fantastic.
It brings me more relief than I’ve felt in months.