Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust (20 page)

Mom looks up from shuffling her papers. “I'm sure it will be.” She picks up her notebook. “I'm going to bed. Don't stay up too late.”

I nod and think about everything Mom has said, about making a party for Zach. It's true Zach needs to be celebrated, just in a special way. I tap my fingers on the counter and think about the lantern planes Zach has been making, about how to make them part of the celebration for Zach, who dreams of flying.

F
ourteen

O
n Saturday, Jesse asks me to go running in Pacific Spirit Park, a forest with trails near the university. As I pull on my running tights, I smile and think, This is so normal—me going for a run with my boyfriend.

Jesse honks in front of the house, and I slide into the front seat of his mom's van. It's another gray day, the overcast sky threatening rain. Jesse squeezes my knee when I get in and then focuses on the road. He seems quieter than usual, less excited to see me, and I clench my hands into fists at my sides.

We drive in silence, and I wish I could think of something cheerful to say. Finally, Jesse asks, “So, Zach still on his hunger strike?”

“No, he finished Thursday night.”

“What was that about?”

“Oh, he didn't want to have a bar mitzvah.”

“So is it cancelled?”

“Nah, just smaller—and sooner.” I start to relax, letting my fists unfurl.

Jesse nods. “I remember your bat mitzvah.”

“You do?”

“Sure. My whole family was invited.”

“What did you think of it all?”

“I remember thinking that your parents must really love you to shower all that attention on you.”

I glance at Jesse, feeling myself redden. “I always felt it was more about showing off. ‘Look what my kid can do.'”

“I didn't think that. Your parents looked so proud of you. Mine were too busy fighting to even notice me.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, well, unless I got into trouble. Then I got a lot of attention…” He sighs.

I raise my eyebrows.

Jesse says, “It's nothing. Just bad memories.” But he is still somber.

I'm not sure what to say, so we drive the rest of the way in silence. When we get to the park, we get out of the car and stretch our legs at the edge of the forest. Even with mitts and toques on, we're chilled in our light jackets, so when Jesse raises his eyebrows to ask if I'm ready, I nod. We start down the dirt path, my legs stiff and reluctant to move. I force myself forward, knowing I'll loosen up in a few minutes. The ground is hard from the cold but easier on the joints than running on pavement is, like I usually do. We don't talk; there's just our breath puffing out warm clouds into the damp November air. The moss hanging from the tree branches makes the forest feel like an underwater cave, like we're pushing through curtains of seaweed.

The path opens up to a wider gravel road, and the air around us seems to lighten without the gloom of the trees. Jesse and I pick up the pace. My limbs are loose and warm now, and a light sweat breaks out along my back. I start to relax. We pass a few dog walkers and some parents with kids in strollers.

In the end, we run farther than planned because the route Jesse mapped out finishes on the other side of the park. I groan when we realize his mistake.

“What, can't take it, Yanofsky?” Jesse says, and he sprints down the path.

“Hey, wait up!” I dart through the trees, trying to keep him in view. He slows down so I can catch up. We're too tired for wind sprints, so we jog for a while and then walk back to the car.

I grab Jesse's hand and smile at him. “That was a good run.”

Jesse nods. “We're going to be so fast on the court.”

“Either that or ready for track season.”

“You do track?”

“I didn't last year, but I might this year. You know”—I think about Chloe and Em's youth-group schedule—“keep busy.”

Jesse nods. I can tell he's brooding about something, and I feel my stomach twist. Finally he stops on the trail and turns to me. “You know how I had to go to boarding school because I failed a bunch of classes?”

“Yeah.” I clasp my hands behind my back.

“I wasn't only in trouble for that. That was just the last thing.”

“Oh.” Jesse seems to be waiting for me to say something else, so I ask, “What else did you do?”

Jesse grins nervously. “I stole some stuff, just stupid things, to see if I could get away with it.”

“What did you steal?”

“Eyedrops from the nurse's office, a school microscope and Mr. Yip's cell phone.”

I can't help smiling. Mr. Yip was the guidance counselor when we were in grade nine. “Why did you do that?”

“I don't know. Bored, mostly. Curious, you know, to see what would happen.”

I nod and start walking, but Jesse grabs my hand. “Don't you want to know why I'm telling you this?” His cheeks are red from the cold air; he's not smiling.

I flex my legs nervously. “I don't know. I thought you were just telling me stuff.”

Jesse drops my hand and starts walking away. Then he turns back. “I want to ask you something, and I think I already know the answer. And I don't want you to be mad, so I thought maybe I should tell you something about me—something kinda crappy.”

I tense my shoulders. “You think you know something crappy about me?”

“I think I do.”

I stay silent for an incredibly long time. The wind rustles the trees and I shiver, my sweat turning cold on my back. Could someone please tell me the right answer? No, this is a lose-lose situation. Confess, and I'm a traitor. Say nothing, and things only get worse. Finally I say, “I burned my hand setting fire to one of my father's books.”

Jesse's face softens. “That's so not what I thought you were going to say. You burned a book?”

I nod.

“Wow, why did you do that?”

I take a deep breath. “I didn't like what was inside it. Holocaust crap. And I thought if I burned the book, maybe I'd stop thinking about it.”

“Did it work?”

“No.”

Jesse digs his running shoe into the gravel. “Lauren, that isn't what I was going to ask you.”

I'm so nervous, I can't say a word. I squeeze my hands so tightly that I accidentally crack one of my knuckles.

Jesse takes a deep breath. “You turned in the armband, didn't you?”

I freeze, looking up at him.

“Look, I don't know if it was you, and maybe it's a shitty thing to ask, but I can't think of anyone else who would have done it.”

I look up at the towering trees, tilting my head back until I feel dizzy. If I was a stronger person, I'd say,
Yeah,
I did
and look back at him defiantly. But I'm not like that, and tears well in my eyes. I'm standing on the path, crying into my mittens, and I'm sure Jesse is thinking, Jeez, can't we even talk about this? Or, Why do girls always start to cry?

I gulp, trying to swallow back my tears, searching for the right words. Eventually Jesse says, “C'mon. I'm starting to freeze.”

We jog back to the road, my face still wet from crying, and get in the car without stretching our legs. I feel my muscles bunch and tighten as I sit shivering.

Jesse turns the car on, but I put my hand over his. “Wait.”

“You don't have to say anything,” he mumbles.

“Yes, I do.”

Jesse turns off the motor, and I sigh and wipe my cheeks with my mittens. “When I was twelve,” I start quietly, “my dad took me to this Holocaust memorial with my grandmother.” I tell him about Grandma Rose crying on the stone, about how obsessed I became, how I read everything about the Holocaust, how anxious it made me. I leave out the part about the panic attacks. Jesse faces forward, listening but not looking at me. Outside, rain starts to fall. “I didn't know what to say about the game, that first time in the park. I didn't think you were really being Nazis, but it was still too much. And yeah, you apologized, but it seemed so halfhearted. That's why I told Brooke I wasn't interested in you. How could I be with a guy who thought pretending to be a Nazi wasn't a big deal?”

“Is that why Brooke was coming on to me? She thought you didn't like me anymore?”

“Well, yeah. But then we went for that run down at the beach before the party. I was so confused when you left the party with Brooke.”

“And that's when you decided to turn in the armband?”

I nod. “I felt so…disposable.”

“Disposable?”

“Like so many girls were in love with you, you could kiss me and then hook up with someone else and not care.”

Jesse presses his lips together. “Had you ever seen me do that?”

“No.”

“But you thought I was like that anyway?” His lip curls up.

I pull my knees up to my chin and drop my head down. “I guess so.”

Jesse sighs, then slouches in his seat. “Is that it?”

“Yes, that's it.” I hesitate. “Are we done talking about this?”

“Yep, we're done.” There's a grimness around Jesse's mouth, and I'm not sure how to read it. Does it mean we're done talking about this, or that we're done for good?

Jesse starts the car and pulls into the traffic. He keeps his eyes on the road the whole way home, and I focus on trying not to cry. When we get to my house, I get out of the car without even looking at him. Then I slink up the stairs, lock myself in the bathroom and get in the shower. As soon as the hot water starts to pound down, I let myself cry, sobbing as if the world is ending.

I spend the rest of the weekend crying in my room, alternating between hoping Jesse will text or call and trying to convince myself that he never will. He doesn't. I call Alexis and tell her everything. When she says I did the right thing, I hang up on her in a burst of fresh tears. When I'm not crying, I stress about sitting next to Jesse in biology and whether he'll tell the other guys I turned in the armband. I check Facebook over and over, but no one has any new comments about the armbands.

On Sunday evening Zach comes into my room, carrying the wooden frame of a star lantern. “I made your lantern for you,” he says. “I thought we could do the tissue part together.” I look up from my damp pillow. Zach's made the frame of a star lantern, but it's a six-sided Jewish star, not the five-sided star I'd imagined.

I start to cry again. “It's not supposed to be a Jewish star, it's supposed to be a regular star, five-sided,” I whimper.

“Oh.” Zach lifts up the lantern and peers into it. “I couldn't find your design. No wonder all the measurements were funny.” He hesitates. “I could fix it maybe or make another one.”

“Don't bother,” I grumble.

Zach's face falls. “I just wanted to cheer you up, so you'd stop crying,” he says.

“I'm not crying,” I mutter into my pillow.

“Yes you are.”

“Zach, go away.”

He leaves quietly, and I feel even worse for being mean to him.

By Monday morning I'm exhausted from crying. My eyes ache, and my face feels as stiff as a mask. I get ready for school, going through the motions of eating and dressing. At school I go straight to the biology lab and sit on my stool with my coat on. Jesse comes and sits down next to me but doesn't glance my way. I feel like crying again, but I'm too tired. Instead I focus on breathing calmly, until Mr. Saunders announces we'll start the fetal pig dissection tomorrow. Then I let my head fall to the lab table. I can't work with Jesse, but I also can't dissect a disgusting dead pig myself. I'm feeling desperate enough to ask Brooke and Chantal if I can work with them, but they're not here today.

At lunchtime I don't bother going back to my locker. I just walk out of English class and head home. I eat my lunch in front of the
TV
, staring blankly at a talk show.

Two weeks pass in the same suspended state: school, lunch at home, running and homework after school. My hand heals enough for me to start playing basketball, and I shoot hoops alone in my driveway for hours. Chloe and Em press for details about why Jesse and I aren't talking; I tell them we had a fight. Jesse and I do the dissection together without making eye contact. Actually, Jesse does the dissection and I watch, a hand over my mouth. When an involuntary “Ew” escapes me at the first incision, he stops to glare at me. He hates me, I think, and I can't blame him. He cuts up the rest of the pig according to the handout and points things out in a monotone, without looking at me. After a while he becomes so engrossed, I think he forgets I'm there. He even asks Mr. Saunders if he can take his pig home to get help from his dad, who is a doctor. Mr. Saunders says, “No, dissections can't leave the school or even the room. Remember grade eight? Remember the cow's eyeballs in the cafeteria?”

Jesse blushes and says, “Gotcha.”

The only good news is that Brooke has hooked up with this guy Ray, so everyone's talking about them and not the Nazi armbands. Ray's new at our school, and according to rumors, he's nineteen and does hard drugs. Brooke skips the entire week of biology and pig dissection. Chloe says she's heard Brooke's living with her dad, which is crazy because she hates him. It's as if Brooke's a different person now, one I don't know anymore.

At home, everyone focuses on Zach's bar mitzvah preparations. Zach works every afternoon with his tutor on his Torah portion and the prayers, although he refuses to meet Rabbi Birenbaum. Eventually Zach compromises (with my help) and chants his Torah portion for the rabbi over Skype. Mom and Dad have their fingers crossed that Zach will shake hands with Rabbi Birenbaum, but I think it's unlikely. The guest list swells to twenty-four, but Zach doesn't seem to mind. The only people he wants to invite are his teachers from school.

Mom plans an airplane-themed party with vintage-aircraft napkins and a giant biplane cake. She even finds a biplane tie Zach likes. Dad books a jazz trio to play in the front hall for the party, and I work on the decorations with Mom, which is a good distraction. Mom loves my suggestion of hanging Zach's plane lanterns in the backyard. It's too cold to have the party outside, but the lanterns will glow through the glass at the back of the house and look really cool. I also suggest we line the front walk with paper-bag lanterns, like at the lantern festival. We sit up late one night eating popcorn and using a hole punch to cut Stars of David and airplanes into the bags. I cut a few bags with the five-pointed stars I originally designed for a lantern. Mom tries to ask me about Jesse, but I hold up my hand. “I don't want to talk about it.” She doesn't press any further.