Thirty-one
Adina
I DON’T WANT TO BE alone tonight, so I am going to drink until I can’t remember how monumental a mistake Arjun was, and maybe I’ll keep going after that. The scene from earlier today in his apartment repeats over and over and over in my head with no coda. Perhaps the coda is the successful execution of my plan.
Most of the faces in the living room are familiar, but no one says hi to me. I don’t say hi back. This is nothing like the New Year’s Eve party. The windows are fogged up and it’s hot and it’s loud and I don’t recognize the music and no one is dressed up. You should have to get dressed up to go to a party. When I used to imagine my future, I conjured more parties like the one on New Year’s Eve. Then I replay what Arjun and I did in the coatroom at that party. I was trying to control him with my body, hoping that would make him love me. Stupid, stupid, stupid, thinking he might actually love me back.
Tovah’s friend Lindsay waves at me, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s glued to her boyfriend, Troy. Thank God she doesn’t ask me if I want to hang out with them again. I am done being pitied.
Maybe I should have joined student council, or tried track, or taken “at least one AP,” like Aba always said, and then Tovah and I would still be close as we were when we were kids. Or at least I would have had someone to talk to at this party, someone who cared that my heart broke this week, someone who could help me put it back together, if such a thing is possible. Someone who will hold back my hair later if I drink too much.
After I get another drink, I stagger into the next room, where a few people are playing pool and others are watching a superhero movie on a giant TV. I watch a girl from my English class make out with a guy from my physics class.
Did I really think Arjun and I would become a real couple? That I could introduce him to my parents, not as my teacher but as my boyfriend? He is twenty-five—what kind of future could we have had? He was right—at some point he would have had nothing left to teach me. I will become a better musician. I know it. He is stagnant, stuck in that shitty apartment with no aspirations. He wanted me for only one reason—the same reason the other guys wanted me.
But I fucked up too. I threatened the one man I’ve ever loved. The tornado of emotions in my mind flashes with a guilty bolt of lightning. Childish. That is how I acted.
“Hey, Adina.”
I pull my gaze up from the carpet. Connor Mattingly. Double bass guy. Nice enough guy, completely age-appropriate guy.
“Hello.” I toss back my head and laugh. At absolutely nothing at all.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a party.”
“I haven’t seen you either.” I laugh again. Sweet, inoffensive Connor is the kind of guy I should have dated. The kind of guy who could have loved me. “Come here,” I whisper, crooking a finger at him, even though he’s standing right next to me. “I want to talk to you.”
He gives me a quizzical look, like why would I want to talk to him when I’ve gone out of my way to avoid him in the past. Still, I take his shoulder and steer him into the hallway. Down, down, down the hall we go, until I find an unoccupied room.
I close the door, set my drink down on a table, and push my hair out of my face. “You got your braces off.”
“Yeah.” Alcohol’s reddened his cheeks. “Months ago.”
Then I lean in and smash my lips to his. He returns the kiss at first, his hands coming around my neck, and I’m thinking, I was wrong; he’s not a good guy. His fingers fumble around in my hair, and his mouth is sloppy, as though he is trying to retrieve something he lost inside mine. His body is soft—well, most parts of it—probably because he’s so young. He hasn’t grown into it yet.
We stumble backward, and I push him onto whoever’s bed this is.
“Adina—”
I reach for the belt of his jeans. I hope he has a condom. Because I don’t. I crave the feeling of hands gripping my hips, fingers pulling my hair, weight on top of me.
But then he groans and breaks away.
“Whoa.” He holds his hands in front of him, a barrier between us. “Um. This is . . .”
“What? You don’t like it? You seemed to be enjoying it just fine.”
“I’m sort of . . . seeing someone. We went out once last week and I really like her, and I don’t want to screw it up, okay?”
“Who?” I drag the back of my hand over my mouth, smearing my lipstick, erasing him.
“Gina. You know Gina? She plays violin.”
“Right. Gina.” I do not know Gina.
“Plus, I’m a little drunk, and I think you’re a lot drunk, and—”
“I get it, okay? You don’t need to give me a whole dictionary of excuses.”
The room tilts and flips over. I’m on the ceiling now. I fold my hand over the bedpost, trying to keep from crashing to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Connor says. There’s red all over his mouth. He doesn’t seem to notice, and I decide not to tell him.
“It’s whatever. I thought you liked me. My sister said . . .”
He flushes deeper. “I—I do. Or I did, but . . . we barely know each other. And you’ve always seemed sort of . . . distant. Gina’s, well, I think she likes me too.” He fixes his hair back into place, redoes his belt buckle. “Look, do you want to talk instead? You seem like you could use a friend right now.”
No. I can’t use a fucking friend. That wasn’t what I wanted.
I leave.
Guys used to want me just for sex, and now they don’t even want that.
A pretty girl like you should have a boyfriend. Fuck that. For years I have been stared at and told over and over that I am such a pretty girl. Like nothing else about me matters. I used to love it, even the looks from guys who were too old to have been looking at me. Now I am nauseated. That is not all I am.
A body. A face. A pair of legs. Hips. Breasts. Lips. Someone to stare at. Fantasize about. No one cares about the music, only that the girl with the viola under her chin is beautiful. That is all I was to Eitan; I know that now. Even Boris Bialik, who is probably triple my age, said it after my showcase performance.
The reality, I fear, is that it is all I am.
“What the fuck did you do?”
I hear her before I see her. Tovah comes at me from out of nowhere, eyes blazing. I’m in the backyard, leaning against the porch railing. She grabs my shoulders and shoves me so hard the railing digs into my back and the liquid in my cup sloshes over the side and spills down my coat. A few people are smoking pot, and everyone’s old assignments are burning in a fire pit a few yards away.
For a split second I’m convinced she’s talking about the failed hookup with Connor Mattingly, but then she throws red confetti in my face.
She found my grand finale. For now at least. Surely I’ll find other ways of destroying her. I’m deep in it now, no way to crawl out. It happened earlier today, after Arjun but before this party, when she was out with her precious Zack. Stealing Baltimore wasn’t enough. I thought Johns Hopkins was most dear to her, but then I realized there was something else.
“I figured you weren’t coming,” is all I say as the paper scraps flutter to the ground. It doesn’t answer her question. I rub my back. If there is a bruise tomorrow, I’ll only be able to see it in a mirror.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Her teeth are clenched and her fists are clenched and she looks like she might hit me. She is feral. The people by the fire pit are so loud that she has to practically scream for me to hear her. “You know how much that ticket meant to me.”
The watery beer I’ve bring drinking all night loosens my lips, slurs my words. “I don’t have as much time as everyone else does. I figured . . . why not do exactly what I want to do now? When I don’t have any consequences? Nothing’s stopping me.”
“Nothing except basic human decency,” she spits. “That’s what all this has been about? All the shitty things you’ve been doing to me? Living life to the fullest?”
I say nothing.
She pinches the space between her brows. “Okay, so let me make sure I get this right. I want to examine all the ways you’re living your life to the absolute fullest, since that seems to be really important to you right now. You’re making my life hell, that’s one. You’re on the verge of not graduating. You’re sleeping with some guy you won’t tell me about. Oh, and I can’t remember the last time you went to synagogue because I guess you’re always ‘too tired.’ Really, well done. That’s a life well lived. I’m sure you’ll be in history books someday.”
Someone throws an entire textbook into the fire, and the flames lick the words from the pages. A couple people have taken notice of us. They have started pointing. Look at the Siegel twins. Aren’t they sad?
Yes, yes, we are. I stay silent, unsure how to respond when there is no way she could possibly understand.
“God, at least fucking talk to me!” Tovah says.
It’s an electric shock to my spine, to my vocal cords. I straighten to my full height, an inch taller than Tovah, and step closer so we are eye-to-eyebrow.
“You want me to talk? Or do you just want to know who I’m sleeping with? Since you’re clearly not going to shut up until you know, I’m sleeping with Arjun. Arjun Bhakta. Or at least I was.”
“Your viola teacher?”
I take another sip of my drink. “Well. Not anymore. We broke up.”
“You broke up with . . . ? You were dating him?” People are watching, and a couple guys catcall, “Oooooh.” Tovah turns to them. “This is private,” she growls, and there’s enough venom in her voice to shut them up.
The people by the fire pit are singing an old song about school being out for the summer, though it’s not summer and there is still snow on the ground.
Tovah must feel the same because she yells at them, “School isn’t even out yet!” But they either don’t hear her or don’t care, and they keep on sing-shouting.
God, it’s so cold. Our breath makes clouds in the cold night air, white against midnight black. I inch off the deck, closer to the fire. I crave its warmth.
“How old is he?” Tovah asks. “Your teacher. Are you at least on birth control?” Practical, smart Tovah. She’ll be such a good doctor one day.
“It doesn’t matter how old he is. I’m eighteen. And yes, I’ve been on it since I was fourteen, so I don’t think we need to have a safe-sex talk. Ima took me to get it because my period cramps were so bad.”
Tovah sets her jaw. “Mine were bad too. I never said anything about it.” She grips the deck railing, starts saying “oh my God” over and over and over. Finally, she drags her eyes back up to mine. “You said he wasn’t the first.”
The alcohol makes the words tumble out easier, destroys my filter. Eitan, I mouth.
“Mizrahi? He’s engaged!”
“Not recently. Like, four years ago.” Lifetimes ago. Who was I then?
The oh-my-God symphony starts again. “You were fourteen?” Her face is solemn. Scared, even.
I nod.
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
She runs one hand through her hair and pulls at some of the short strands. “I’ve never understood it. The attention has never been enough for you. Not when it comes to your music, or to guys. Is that why you sabotaged me, because you couldn’t stand to see me get any of the attention? You realize, don’t you, that that could be why I didn’t get into Johns Hopkins?”
“Maybe you didn’t get in because they didn’t fucking want you.”
One of the fire pit kids is filming a video of us. Cool. Glad to know we are entertaining someone.
Relishing the control I have over the conversation, I get louder. “You were ready to leave us behind, go off on some grand adventure. Hooray for you! You were the only person who could understand what I was going through, and you wanted to leave. I had to do what I did.”
“Why did you even need me when you and Ima are so close?” Envy drips from her voice. “You guys have your little club with your old movies and helping out in her classroom.”
“It’s not the same,” I say, though it has been a long time since Ima and I have watched a movie together, and she no longer has a classroom. “There’s always been someone better for you. Your friends and your homework and now Zack. You have so much that I’ve never had, and you don’t even realize it.”
“Is that really what you think?”
“It’s not what I think. It’s our history.”
Tovah clenches her jaw. Scrape, scrape, scrape is the sound her teeth make. I don’t care if she can’t help it. I fucking hate that sound.
“Here’s the deal with my supposedly amazing friends, because I really only have three of them,” she says. “There’s Lindsay, who’s been ignoring me most of the year. There’s her boyfriend, Troy, who really doesn’t care about me one way or the other. And then there’s Zack, and”—she gestures wildly at the empty space surrounding her—“do you see him here with me tonight?”
I tilt my cup to my lips, but Tovah snatches it away and turns it upside down over the lawn.
“What the hell?” This action of her pisses me off so much that I push a hand into her shoulder. Hard.
She stumbles back, shoe skidding on the icy deck, but she grips the railing before she falls. “Haven’t you had enough?”
I hate you, I think, though I’m not sure it’s true.
“Part of the reason I wanted to leave,” she starts back up when I don’t say anything, “is that I wanted to be on my own for once. I didn’t want to be half of the Siegel twins. I wanted to see who I could be without your shadow constantly threatening to overtake me.”
“So you were jealous.”
She grunts like she cannot actually admit it.
“You don’t have to act like you’re above it,” I continue. “I’m jealous too. Okay? I don’t have the perfect relationship like you and Zack.”
“My boyfriend doesn’t even want to have sex with me.” Tovah lifts her shoulders in a dramatic shrug. “So there you go, another thing you’re better at.”
“Getting guys to sleep with me?”
“Sure. If that’s what you want to call it.”
I shake my head. She doesn’t get it. “You think you’re so much better than me. You’re going to save the world. All I’m going to do is play silly music, right?”
“Maybe you don’t have friends because you only think about yourself and your music,” she says. “You think you’re so grown-up, but you’re immature. Reckless. You can’t keep acting this way forever.”
Inside the house, something shatters. Someone yells. But we remain near the fire, the flames casting shadows onto Tovah’s face.
This is me, Adina, a girl on her way to becoming a ghost.
I stare at her. It’s still the plan, still the only choice I can make for myself. “I won’t. I’m not planning to be here long enough to find out how Ima’s disease is going to destroy my life too.”