Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124320 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Somehow, my grandmother, at only four feet eleven inches, casts a long shadow over me even from New York. I can’t deny that little lady anything, and she knows it. A few months ago she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, so when she begged me to have a Bar Mitzvah celebration, even though it basically requires me to be at synagogue all the time, cramming what the other kids have spent the last few years preparing for into less than two, I’ll do it.
Grandma guilt.
Most of the kids at synagogue are cool, and I've made some new friends, but a few of them love finding ways to make me feel like I don’t belong. Some laugh at me when they think I don’t hear them, or maybe they don’t care. When they have parties or go out together, I’m usually not invited. Mom says I imagine it because she doesn’t want to believe anyone at the synagogue would treat me that way. My father says I’m definitely not imagining it, but to ignore it and keep my head down. Dad thinks it’s all stupid anyway and asks at least once a week why I’m doing it. I tell him, and I guess I tell myself, it’s for Bubbe. But there is a part of me that simply wants to understand as much as I possibly can about this part of myself—my Jewish heritage. Neither of my parents really know what it’s like to live here as me. To look around and see no one who looks like you. To live with the stares and questions about “what I am.” To feel like a puzzle, pieces hidden and scattered, and always trying to find and fit all my parts together. To see myself not as half this or bi-that, but whole.
The synagogue is only a couple of blocks from my house, and I’m almost home. Kimba and I don’t go to the playground as much as we used to now that we’re in middle school. She joined the band. Clarinet. She’s good, but between my Hebrew classes and chess and her band practice, we don’t see each other as much outside of school, which sucks. If I’m home before dark, we can get in a bike ride before dinner.
My house is just ahead when someone jerks my arm.
“What the…” When I look up, three boys from Hebrew school stand there, arms crossed, one smirking, one glaring and one frowning.
“We called you like six times,” one of them, the glare-er, says. Robert. His name is Robert and he always sits slumped in the corner and struggles with the basics of the Torah though he’s been studying for years.
“The music,” I say, pointing to my headphones, which I slide down to rest at the back of my neck. “Sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”
I look between the three of them pointedly, lifting my eyebrows to ask what they want.
“We came to have a little talk,” Paul, the smirker, says.
I fold my arms to match theirs. “So talk.”
“Stay away from Hannah,” Michael, the frowner, says.
“Who?” I turn the volume down on the portable CD player clipped to my belt.
“My sister Hannah,” Robert says, still glaring.
Who even is she?
“I don’t know who…”
Pale skin. A mass of freckles. Dark brown, tightly coiled ringlets. Looks away quickly every time I catch her looking at me.
“I barely know your sister,” I say with a shrug. “But okay.”
“Let’s keep it that way, Fraction.” Paul laughs.
Fraction. A new one, more inventive than Zebra or Oreo, but just as insulting. Lava percolates in my belly while Big Boi is reduced to a defiant murmur in my ears.
“Yeah, let’s keep it that way.” Robert thumps my forehead and snatches my yarmulke. “You don’t need this messing up your ’fro, do you, Stern?”
“Stop playing.” I reach for the cap, but Robert tosses it to Paul.
Paul’s smirk spreads into a full-blown grin when he catches my yarmulke and twirls it on his finger. “Look, it’s spinning like a basketball. You like basketball, right, Stern?”
All three of them are taller than I am, but I’m the one who would play basketball? I’ve never played in my life. I roll my eyes, but stretch for the yarmulke. Paul holds it over his head out of my reach and tosses it to Michael.
“Give it to me,” I say, my words rattling against the cage of my gritted teeth.
“Take it from me,” Michael counters, his frown lifted, but meanness still shadowing his eyes.
“That’s the problem, right?” I ask, settling back onto my heels, no longer reaching for the yarmulke. “You think I’m going to take something from you?”
“What?” Michael’s spiteful smile slips.
“Yeah,” I say, stepping closer to him until only an inch separates our noses. “You hate that I speak Hebrew better than you do after months when you’ve been learning for years. And you hate that your sister likes me. Well, you can sleep at night because I don’t like her back.”