The Last Words We Said Read online

  We filed out of the classroom more confused than when we came in. There were a few crude jokes among the guys, but the rest of us kept to ourselves.

  Some instinct told me to avoid Danny for a while—at least until I could figure out what I thought about the topic. The two of us had been floating in this weird flirty friends-without-benefits neverland for months, and I wasn’t ready to discuss physical intimacy with him yet. What if he was on the verge of asking me out and I ruined it by being too religious?

  But then, what if he did ask me out—all the while assuming that I wanted a physical relationship? Deep down, I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. I liked the idea of waiting, of discovering my soul mate through words alone. Maybe I did really want to try the shomer way. Would it be fair to drop a bomb like that on Danny?

  I wrestled with the problem all through math, growing more and more anxious as the minutes ticked by and no answer presented itself. I was damned if I talked about it and damned if I didn’t. And the tension between us weighed more and more heavily as I stubbornly avoided noticing the weird faces he was making at me from behind his calculator.

  I finally looked up at him as the bell rang. I really didn’t have much choice as he planted himself at the edge of my desk and leaned over me as I tried to rise. “Hey, you mad at me or something?” he asked.

  “No. Why would I be mad?”

  “I don’t know.” He grinned, relieved. “I started to get worried when my drunk otter impression wasn’t getting anything from you.” I stifled a smile as he twisted his lips into a lopsided grimace.

  “We should get going, Danny. We’ll be late to history.”

  “Uh-uh,” he grunted, still scrunching up his face. “Drunk otter is too drunk to go to class. You’ll have to show him the way.” He reached his hand out for mine, pawing the air between us until he caught my fingers.

  I wavered for a moment; I let my hand rest in his for a second longer than I should have. I didn’t want to pull back. But he’d put me in a corner—on purpose. Did I have to break it to him now? It wasn’t fair to put me on the spot like this, I thought resentfully. He was forcing me to make a statement while he clowned around. I wanted him to be serious, to look me in the eye and ask me what I thought, instead of playing games.

  I gently disengaged our fingers. “I can’t hold your hand, Danny,” I told him quietly. “I thought you knew that.”

  The drunk otter vanished, and the boy I liked reappeared. He was sad; I could see a flash of hurt in his eyes before he dropped his head. “I wasn’t sure,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.”

  Chapter 13

  “You’re doing what?”

  Rae had heard me the first time, but I knew that this was her way of protesting my idea without actually saying it. Even if you don’t agree with it, it’s not very nice to object to a therapist’s advice. That’s how I present it anyway. I’m doing a project for my psychologist.

  “I’m gathering material,” I tell her. “It will be stories based on real events. Nina suggested it.”

  “You’re writing a biography?” she asks, crossing her arms. “About Danny.”

  I nod and climb onto the kitchen stool across from her. “Some will be stories about us. But I’m also interviewing his friends and family. There’s so much that I don’t know about him, even though I’m his girlfriend.”

  “And you’re starting with me?”

  “Yes.” I’m not sure why I picked Rae to be the first. Maybe I just want her approval. She’s so prickly about anything to do with Danny, and even more protective of him than I am. I remember Rae’s burst of joy when she thought she’d caught a glimpse of him, her shattered eyes when she realized it was just a mirage. If I could get her to believe in my project, her faith in it would push me to finish it.

  She paces the kitchen and noisily tosses spoons and bowls onto the counter. “Dairy, dairy, where’s the dairy grater?” she mutters.

  “We don’t have one,” I say. “My mom just buys shredded cheese.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Yeah, I know. We’re savages. Why are you changing the subject, Rae?”

  “Do you want decent focaccia for dinner or not?” she snaps, but she’s obviously not expecting an answer. Not about focaccia anyway.

  “At least tell me what you think about my idea,” I persist. “If you don’t have any stories or you’d rather not talk about Danny, I understand—”

  “What makes you think I don’t want to talk about Danny?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact that you glare bloody murder every time I bring him up—”

  She pounds the sifter so hard, a cloud of flour explodes around her. “Damn.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “Forget I asked. We can talk about something else.”

  She doesn’t answer me at first. There’s a flurry of mixing and pounding and emotional kneading. I sit patiently and wait as the dough rises and Rae calms down.

  “I have a story for you,” she says finally. “But you have to promise to take it as it is. There’s one part of it that I can’t tell you. You have to be okay with that.”

  “Of course.” I’m dying of curiosity, but I don’t say a word as she chops the onions with frustrating care. Do they really need to be perfect little cubes? Rae seems to think so.

  I’m not sure if it’s the memory of the story she’s about to tell me or the effect of the onions, but her eyes have a bright shine to them when she finally looks up at me.

  “I met Danny before you did,” she says softly.

  I start and lean forward. “Really? When?”

  “About a year before your flight from hell. He must have been here visiting his dad.”

  “What happened?”

  “I didn’t see him at first. I was busy doing something—” She hesitates, and her knife wavers over a sliver of pepper. Then it comes down with a vicious bang. “Something pretty destructive.”

  I’m scared to ask, so I remain silent and wait for her to continue.

  “I was twelve,” she says with an apologetic shrug. “And I was really angry. I’d just discovered something that had torn apart everything I’d believed in. Everything I’d been taught. So I was acting out. I thought the world deserved to know the truth.”

  The truth about what?

  But I say nothing.

  Her lips curl, and she shakes her head. “I was painting my feelings in giant letters on the trunk of a car. It was going to rock the community. My sloppy print on the back of a minivan was going to start a revolution. Danny walked by just as I was finishing the first letter.”

  I can’t help smiling at the picture: Rae spattering paint in furious strokes and Danny bouncing past, humming to himself. He probably had no idea what he was in for.

  “He tried to stop you, didn’t he?” I guess. “And you covered him in paint.”

  She laughs and flicks an onion skin at me. “Nope. He offered to help.”

  My mouth falls open.

  “ ‘I’ve got a can of red spray paint in my garage,’ he said when I turned around to find him staring at me. ‘I bet it will show up a lot better than that.’ ” Rae grins at my confused expression. “The car was white,” she explains. “And all I had were a few bottles of Wite-Out. The fumes were already making me dizzy.”

  I nod, eager for the rest. “So? Did you take him up on it?”

  “Yeah. I headed back with him to pick up the spray paint. But I thought it was only fair to let him know what we were fighting for. Convert him to the cause. We were going to spray-paint our way to freedom.” As passionate as Rae is, she’s not above laughing at herself. It’s one of the things I love about her.

  “So what happened?”

  “He took FOREVER finding the stupid spray paint. We had to move piles of books to find it. And then the can turned out to be empty.” She laughs shortly. “I think he took me on that wild-goose chase on purpose. He was just waiting until I cooled down.” She looks at the counter and
draws a thin line in the flour dust.

  “So you didn’t spray-paint the van in the end?”

  She shakes her head. “I guess I realized that the gesture wasn’t worth the fallout. It was only going to hurt a lot of people. And it wasn’t going to help anyone.”

  I open my notebook and scribble down Rae’s last statement. “Danny made you realize that?”

  She shrugs and slides the pan of focaccia into the oven. “I suppose. He really didn’t say much. He didn’t even tell me his name that day, come to think of it.” Her eyes go soft as she speaks about him. “He was this little, scrawny kid, you know? Just as ridiculous and immature as the rest of us. But he also had this quality, too, right?”

  I nod, my pencil poised over the page.

  “When we met a year later in your basement, I know that he recognized me,” she continues. “But he never gave me away. Never mentioned the spray-paint thing again. Even when we were alone.”

  She spaces out for a moment, and her expression darkens as she brings back another memory.

  “This other time—I guess it was just about a year ago—I told him something—I told him about this—this crush I had. That I’ve had for a long time.” Her voice is so soft that it hints at feelings far deeper than a crush. She shakes her head at the question in my eyes. “It’s not important who it was.”

  Not important? Rae has never talked about anyone like that. And her statement seemed to imply that she’s still holding on to those feelings. I’m distracted from her story; the vandalized neighbor’s car was one thing; I don’t care about that person’s identity. But was Rae actually in love with someone? And no one knew except for Danny?

  She senses that she’s lost me and frowns her frustration. “Ellie! I said it’s not important. It will never happen. I knew that then, and nothing has changed since. I’m trying to tell you about Danny, not about me.”

  But I want to know your story too, I want to say. And yet, I’d promised her I would let her keep her secrets. I can’t press her for details; I can’t even look curious or she’ll take it as a challenge.

  “What did Danny say when you told him?” I ask.

  She relaxes a little and sits back. “He didn’t say anything at all. He just held my hand. That’s it. I was crying, and he just sat there holding me with one hand.” Her lips twitch. “And eating cookies with the other. He plowed through the entire plate like he was on a mission.”

  I smother a grin. “That sounds like him.”

  She returns my smile, and her eyes brighten again. “When I stopped crying, he picked up the last cookie and put it on my lap. I told him I wasn’t hungry. And he said, ‘That’s okay. I just want you to know that you can always have my last cookie.’ ”

  LEGENDS OF A SPITTY ONE-EYED DUCK AND THE NAUGHTY SHIRT

  Anniversaries are an important part of any relationship, and Danny and I enjoyed twice as many as most couples. The problem was that Danny and I couldn’t agree on the actual date which marked the beginning of our relationship. So, we celebrated twice—two days apart. The confusion stemmed from the whole shomer thing. We didn’t kiss (not at first, anyway), so the moment we became official was a bit blurry.

  I date our relationship from the day I received Quackers. I’d gotten weird presents from Danny before. (So far I’d accumulated a skull key chain, a book titled What’s Your Poo Telling You?, and a Minions sweatshirt, which he let me keep after I stole it from him.) But Quackers had all kinds of symbolism behind him.

  It wasn’t a romantic story, exactly. But Danny’s idea about the moment that sparked our relationship was even less romantic—so I prefer to tell mine first.

  I was hanging out with him alone after one of our Bruster’s dates. Normally we joined Deenie and Rae after we ate, but that afternoon we swung by his house because he’d “forgotten something.” I waited for him on the sofa while he rummaged around his room. After a few minutes he appeared in the doorway, holding a battered stuffed duck in his hand.

  “This is Quackers,” he told me, holding him out. “I got him when I was five.”

  It was a pretty poor intro, especially for a master storyteller like Danny.

  “Quackers?”

  “He’s pretty beat up,” he said apologetically, turning him over in his hand. One button eye was missing, and the beak looked like someone had chewed on it. “I should have taken better care of him.”

  “He’s cute—”

  “My mother got him for me at a fair. At one of those shooting ranges, you know?” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “She hit every single target, so the guy said I could pick the biggest bear they had. But for some reason I only wanted this duck. I don’t remember why.”

  I had no idea what to say. “Well, you were really little,” I suggested.

  He nodded. “My parents were still together then.” He was staring at the toy, avoiding my puzzled look. “I could hear them arguing after I went to bed, but I didn’t want them to know that I could hear. Some days I used to shove the duck’s head into my mouth like a pacifier. The night my dad moved out, I bit down so hard that I swallowed the button eye.”

  I was speechless for a moment. It was the saddest story he’d ever told me. “God. I’m so sorry, Danny—”

  “I want you to have it.” He walked over and placed the duck on my lap. “I’ve wanted you to have it for a while.”

  “Really?”

  He sat down next to me and looked into my eyes. “It’s important to me.”

  He was obviously trying to tell me something deep and personal, but the crumpled stuffed animal on my knees was so comically pathetic that I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. I scooped it up and hid my smile in its fuzzy collar. It smelled like corn chips and curdled milk.

  “I love it. Thank you,” I said, and planted a sloppy kiss on the sad duck’s musty neck.

  He made a grossed-out face. “Yuck, Ellie. Maybe wash him first? He’s covered in kiddie spit.”

  I didn’t say anything, just buried my face deeper and inhaled the rancid odor of its fur. Somehow, it didn’t seem gross to me.

  Maybe Danny didn’t get what I was trying to say then. Like I said, there’s nothing romantic about kissing a spitty duck with a missing eye.

  But in my mind, that was the moment I became Danny’s girlfriend.

  In his mind, our relationship began two days later—and on a slightly naughtier note.

  This is the story of THE SHIRT.

  It was a modest shirt, purchased by my mother at Macy’s—on sale, half off retail price. Light green, ballet neck, full-length sleeves.

  Perfect for my complexion. Totally modest. Covered everything my mother wanted covered.

  But. It was only modest while I was standing upright.

  THE SHIRT’s dirty little secret? That neckline was very VERY floppy.

  And my dirty little secret?

  I knew it.

  I was wearing THE SHIRT when Danny came over to do our English project. He was looking unusually adorable that day. He’d recently showered, and the ends of his sandy hair were still plastered to his cheeks. The longer he sat next to me, smelling like manly shower gel, the more I wanted to distract him from Julius Caesar. So, a few pages in, I leaned over the textbook to emphasize a point. In the process, I emphasized something else altogether. I meant no disrespect to the subject matter. I suspect Shakespeare would have approved. Danny certainly did.

  He reached out and shut the textbook abruptly. “Okay. I have to ask you something,” he said, and swallowed loudly. His face was blazing red. THE SHIRT had done its work. I sat up straight and pretended to be puzzled.

  He took a deep breath. “I just need to know. Please. Am I your boyfriend?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but he rushed ahead before I could speak.

  “And if I’m not your boyfriend—then, I was wondering—could I be? Because I think we’d be great together. And I really want to know if I can kiss you.” He paused and ducked his head. “I mean, I wan
t to kiss you in theory. Just in theory. I know you’d like to do the shomer thing, and I promise to respect that. But I want to know if I can kiss you in my mind. And if you’ll kiss me back. Only in your mind. Please.”

  The way I saw it, we’d already been dating for two days, on account of the duck and its symbolism. But it seemed like a strange thing to say at that moment. So instead I gave him a little wink. “Well, if it’s just in our minds, let me tell you,” I whispered. “We’re way past kissing.”

  He startled so violently, he knocked my book off the table. I considered leaning forward to pick it up, but I was worried it would be too much for him. I’d never seen anyone so brilliantly red before. The table shook as he leaned over toward me.

  “Really?” he asked. His voice was hoarse with excitement. “Really, Ellie?” His eyes drifted south for a moment and then focused hungrily on my lips. “So—hold on. HOLD ON. What exactly have we done?”

  Chapter 14

  “What was Rae’s story?” Deenie asks when I tell her she’s my second subject.

  I close my notebook. “I’m sorry, but I can’t share that. I don’t want it to bias you. Each story needs to stand on its own.”

  She leans back in her chair and gives me a suspicious look. “And why are you interviewing me?”

  I stare at her for a moment before answering. “Are you serious? You’re one of Danny’s best friends. You must have a story about him.”

  She reaches across the desk and flips open her father’s giant ledger. “You asked to see me in my dad’s office, Ellie. I figured you were here to consult him. This isn’t the place for this.”

  I glance around the small room and shake my head. “What are you talking about? The rabbi isn’t here yet. And you aren’t doing anything else right now. It will just take a minute.”

  “I don’t have a minute.” Her jaw is so tense, I have a hard time making out what she’s saying. “And I don’t have a story anyway. We hung out as a group, remember? You were part of every story.”

  She’s glaring at the ledger in front of her as if she’s just discovered a catastrophic scheduling error that could destroy the entire synagogue. I’ve never seen her this agitated, and I can’t understand how my simple request could have disturbed her so much.