The Last Words We Said Page 6

  I should have kept out of it. Rae usually tries to hold back when talking to Deenie about religion. But when I get involved, those gloves come right off.

  “Are you making fun of me and Danny?” I shoot back.

  Deenie looks frightened and immediately tries to change the subject to hair. “I’m glad I cut it myself,” she says, running her fingers through the short curls around her neck. “This style suits me.”

  But I’m not going to be distracted. “So now you’re the sex expert, Rae?” I demand. “Even though you’ve never told us anything about your supposedly hot dates?”

  “Really, I don’t think that it’s any of our business,” Deenie says quickly. “We love you, Rae, and we respect you—”

  “—even when you decide to date a total douchebag,” I finish for her. “And that douchebag tries to destroy us.”

  Rae deflates a little, but her eyes are still snapping fire. “Greg wasn’t a douchebag,” she says, her voice shaking. “He made a stupid mistake. And I broke up with him as soon as I found out what he did.”

  “But it was too late, wasn’t it?” I demand. “He’d already wrecked my relationship with Danny.”

  “He didn’t wreck anything. That’s all on you, Ellie—”

  “On me?”

  “You’re the one who broke up with Danny!” she points out. “You’re the one who wouldn’t give him a chance to explain—”

  “Since when do you ever give anyone a chance to explain?” I shoot back. She stands up suddenly, and I realize I’ve hit her in a sore spot. She looks stricken—and scared.

  “And now you’re lecturing Deenie about sex,” I continue, picking up steam. I push myself off my beanbag and step toward her. “So I want to know—where exactly is this coming from?” I hadn’t intended to slide off the rails into this territory. I should have just said something spiritual about the bond between two soul mates and then gone back to talking about hair. But suddenly it isn’t about defending Deenie’s choices, or my own. There’s been a poison boiling under the surface, souring every word between me and Rae since the day of the big fight. I’d been trying to ignore it, but old resentments bubbled up anyway, every time we talked. I’m tired of our passive-aggressive sniping. So I’ve just blown the lid right off the simmering pot. “You never told us. Was Greg really that great?”

  Rae shrinks in front of me. “W-we didn’t sleep together—” she stammers. “Because I didn’t want to.”

  I’m not ready to let this go yet. “But you’re such an expert, Rae!” I shout. “So who was it, then? You never told us. Who was the magic guy? Was it Matt? Or Jeremy? Or that dude who ran off to yeshiva—what was his name?”

  “Yonah.” Deenie moves between us, like a desperate referee. “Stop it, Ellie. She doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not?” I persist. “We’re supposed to be best friends, aren’t we? Then why is it a one-way street? Why are there things that I can’t ask?”

  “You can ask me anything,” Rae replies coolly, but there’s fear behind the wall of defiance. “But the truth would be too hot for you to handle. I don’t want to hurt your virgin ears.”

  Her entire body is tense, prepared; she’s gripping the edge of the Ping-Pong table to steady herself, as if bracing for an attack. What is she afraid of? I wonder. “Rae, there’s nothing you can say that would shock me,” I insist. But the words come out sounding like a challenge instead of a reassurance. “Friends shouldn’t have secrets from each other,” I try again, in a softer tone. “But ever since New Year’s I feel like we’ve all been tiptoeing around a minefield.” Next to me, I sense Deenie flinch, and I turn to her, in appeal. “You agree with me, right? I’m not imagining it?”

  I have no idea why I’m saying these things. It’s not like I’m ever going to tell them what I did on New Year’s. And yet, somehow I’m convinced that if they’re honest with me, if they let down their shields, this awful tension will magically disappear.

  “We all miss him, Ellie,” Deenie says. “We’re all just—dealing with it differently. We’re not hiding anything.”

  It’s not an answer—and as I watch her, I realize, it isn’t even the truth. Rae has always been both combative and defensive, but Deenie’s openness is the one thing I could always rely on. And yet, for some reason, she won’t meet my eyes now.

  I have no idea what to say; we are glowering at each other, like rivals at a standoff. I need to offer something, a small guilt, as a sacrifice, to break this silence. “Look,” I begin, slowly, “I know you both blame me for the fight I had with Danny. And I blame myself, too.”

  Deenie shakes her head, but she still won’t look at me. Her eyes are fixed tearfully on Rae, who is standing with crossed arms and a stony face. “We don’t blame you, Ellie. Nobody blames you.”

  But you should, I think. You have no idea.

  There’s a soft noise from the landing, and I look over Rae’s shoulder to see Danny padding down the basement stairs. He isn’t supposed to be here; it’s well after eight o’clock, and visiting hours are over. Still, I’m not going to tell him to leave. Just the sight of him relaxes, me and I feel my heart rate slow. It’s good to know that Danny is on my side, when I truly need him, rules or not.

  “You have a tell, you know that?” Deenie says suddenly.

  I’ve heard those words before. Danny used to say that about my easy blush whenever I was hiding something. I put my hands over my cheeks. “Yeah, I know.” She can see that I am lying, I think. They can all see. My face must be giving me away. “What are my freckles doing now?” I say, straining for a joking tone.

  She shakes her head. “I always know when Danny’s here,” she tells me. “Even though I can’t see him.”

  That was not what I was expecting. “What do you mean?”

  “Your eyes go soft,” Deenie says. “Every time.”

  I lower my hands and watch them warily. Where is their judgment? I know it’s coming; it always does. I’m waiting for Deenie’s pity and Rae’s frustration.

  But instead Deenie turns away from me. “Nobody blames you,” she repeats, softly, as if speaking to herself.

  Rae moves to take her hand, but Deenie shakes her off and quietly leaves the room.

  MY FRECKLES BETRAY ME

  While Danny’s revelation that he’d recently lost his mom was not an earth-shattering shock to me, it did make me a little uneasy at first. Several of my friends and classmates lived in single-parent homes, but so far, I didn’t know anyone who’d sat shiva for a parent. Though Danny was already past the seven-day grieving period when we met him, I was surprised to learn that he was still in the middle of shloshim, which meant that his mother had died less than a month before he moved to Atlanta. I remembered my father’s shloshim for his dad; he’d barely left the house, ate only when reminded, and slept most of the day, so it was hard to reconcile the image of Danny yelling “penis” in the street with that of a kid in mourning. I didn’t know what grief was supposed to look like; maybe it was mostly hidden and would only surface suddenly and dramatically if I said the wrong thing. So for the rest of winter break I tiptoed around him, avoiding any topic that I thought might trigger a painful memory.

  I probably took the sensitivity thing too far. Some instinct told me that even the sight of a mother might send Danny into a spiral, so I found clever ways to make sure he was out of our house when my parents returned in the evening. They both worked at Emory and carpooled (Mom was a dermatologist, Dad an ENT), so they generally walked in together, like clockwork, at six p.m. It was easy enough to avoid a meeting during break, but it got more complicated when we all went back to school. Danny had decided to enroll at our local yeshiva high school. It was more religious than he was, but I suspect he chose it because Deenie and I went there, and starting over in a class where he knew no one was terrifying. Plus, he said it made his dad happy.

  Rae enrolled in our school too, much to our surprise. For her family it was a compromise: Her parents preferred t
he more religious girls’ seminary, or some institution that concentrated on “at-risk” teens. Rae wanted to attend public school. “I’m just starved for some diversity!” she complained. We couldn’t really argue with that. For a community in the middle of a very diverse city, our school (and our suburb) were pretty homogeneous. And for anyone looking for a Jewish education, the only choice in our area was the girls’ seminary or our coed yeshiva, neither of which boasted very much diversity.

  After school the four of us usually congregated in my basement. That only left an hour until I had to get our new friend out of the house. Danny caught on pretty quick.

  “Do I embarrass you?” he said abruptly one afternoon, after I’d trotted out another fake excuse about a doctor’s appointment. “Or are you just some kind of after-school hypochondriac?”

  I looked over at Deenie and Rae for help, but they were pretending to be engrossed in their math homework. Rae had told me flat out that I was being stupid. (He just wants us to treat him like normal, Ellie!) But Deenie had backed me up, so I’d hoped for a little more support from her. All I got was the top of her head.

  “What do you mean?” I asked innocently. “I really do have an appointment with the allergist.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You have a tell, you know that?”

  “A what?”

  “When you lie, your freckles glow.”

  I clapped my hands to my cheeks; behind me Rae snorted with laughter, and Deenie smacked her knee. “Oh my God, they totally do!”

  I’d always been sensitive about my skin. I was as pale as a ghost even in summer, with freckles covering every inch of me. I could never hide what I was feeling; my face was like a mood ring, changing color with every emotion.

  “Whoa.” Danny backed up a step. “And apparently they disappear when you’re upset. Where’d they all go? Come back, little freckles!”

  “I was just trying to do the right thing!” I could feel my cheeks burning. “And you’re making fun of me!”

  “Hey, I’m only trying to figure out what’s going on. Are your parents so religious that they don’t want you to associate with boys? Is that why you don’t want me to meet them?” He winked at me and lowered his voice to a seductive whisper. “Am I your naughty little secret, Ellie?”

  Rae and Deenie had dropped all pretense of studying and were watching us with unconcealed delight. Rae had I told you so written all over her face.

  “I was protecting your feelings, okay?” I blurted out. “My parents are perfectly nice. And I’m sure you’d all get along. But I didn’t think that you would want all that happy family energy around you—” Even as I said it, I realized how ridiculous it sounded.

  “You thought I’d prefer to hang out with a bunch of angry assholes?”

  “No! I just thought because you’d recently lost your mom—”

  His smile faded as understanding hit. “Wait. You thought because I didn’t have a mother, I didn’t want anyone else to have one either? You know that’s not how feelings work, right?”

  “I know,” I admitted, hanging my head. There was no way to explain the stupid away. “I was just thinking—”

  It was Rae who saved me from further embarrassing myself. “Hey, it’s not like we’ve met your dad either,” she interrupted. “Every time we bring him up, you change the subject. So why don’t we make a deal? You can stay for dinner tonight and meet Ellie’s parents if you introduce us to your mysterious father.”

  Danny smiled broadly and rubbed his hands together. “Awesome. But you’re baking, right?”

  Rae answered his unspoken question with a grin. “I’ll make the lava cakes you like. Extra white chocolate.”

  My parents were used to my friends showing up for dinner; in fact, they welcomed the platters of treats that Rae brought with her. And as I predicted, that evening went perfectly. Danny got along great with my family, and with Deenie’s and Rae’s as well, over the next few weeks. And yet, whenever we mentioned a possible visit to Danny’s home, he always found an excuse to delay it.

  As much as my parents loved Danny, though, his presence in my life brought a new “concern” to their lives. I was aware of whispered conversations behind closed doors for a few days until one morning I found myself staring at my dad over a giant mug of steaming hot chocolate.

  “What’s up?” I asked, taking a tentative sip of the slop he’d made me. I get my cooking skills from my father. There were lumps of undissolved cocoa floating around a lonely marshmallow.

  “Your mother and I are concerned about your new friendship,” he began, placing his hands flat on the table, as if trying to steady it.

  “Oh, no,” I said, and placed my hands beside his in mock gravity. “Not concerned. Anything but concerned!”

  “This is a serious matter, Eliana,” he replied, ignoring my tone. “There are a lot of issues to consider before entering into a new relationship—especially with a member of the opposite sex.”

  I sighed. “You know there’s nothing between Danny and me, right? He’s just a friend.” I wasn’t lying, either. He was, officially, just a friend. “And you can tell Mom that.”

  “I understand that,” he replied. “But we wanted to remind you that our policy on dating has not changed. Not until you are sixteen.”

  “That’s FINE.”

  “And then, only a religious boy.”

  “Danny is religious.”

  “Who shares our values.”

  I stifled a groan. I didn’t want to hear my father talk about “intimacy,” as he called it: how he and my mother had been completely shomer while they were dating, and how happy they were that they had. I’d heard it all before. It was their favorite topic, after the excruciating details about their battle with infertility and my miraculous conception on their final round of IVF.

  I would have argued with him, but I knew that the best chance for continuing my friendship with Danny was to convince my parents that he was absolutely no threat to their precious only daughter.

  So my practical side shut up the rest of me. And I rolled my eyes as if Dad had just reminded me that eating pork was forbidden. “Well, obviously!” I said. “I’d only want to date someone who was shomer. Don’t you trust me at all?”

  At which point Dad insisted (loudly) that he did, and Mom materialized from nowhere and assured me that she was very proud of me, and when we were finished hugging and smiling, my friendship with Danny was safe. I’d been fully parented—and duly warned.

  My parents just had THE TALK with me, I texted Danny later that evening.

  The sex talk? he replied. Aren’t you a bit old for that?

  No. The DANNY talk.

  …never had one of those. What’s that?

  Come on. Do I have to spell it out?

  Yep

  They just wanted to make sure that you and I are not…

  Yes?

  We’re not allowed to… you know…

  What? Allowed to what???

  I suddenly realized that my first attempt at flirting over text had wildly misfired. There was no way to continue this convo.

  Never mind. Forget it.

  No. I need to know. What can’t we do?

  Seriously, forget it

  TELL ME

  bye

  That was it from me, I decided. It was getting too embarrassing. But I didn’t turn off my phone. I couldn’t go that far.

  We can’t play Cards Against Humanity anymore? he asked after a few minutes. Because it’s too sexy, right?

  Exactly. No more sexy card games.

  OMG Ellie, what are we going to do???

  ….

  Ellie!!!

  You are so weird

  (Long pause)

  We can still play in secret, right?

  Chapter 7

  I rarely take Rae seriously when she rants against religion. So I can’t help dismissing her concerns about Deenie’s deepening devotion. Like many kids at my school, I’ve become more relaxed since I began high
school. I still keep the basics, like kosher and Shabbat, but other areas have become a bit hazier. But I admire the few friends that have stuck to their convictions, despite pressures to conform.

  Deenie has done more than just stick to her convictions, though. She’s by far the most religious student at our high school. The local girls’ seminary would have been a much better fit for her. The girls at that school share her views more than any of us do. But she seems happy enough by my side; she doesn’t seem bothered by the puzzled looks she gets when she shows up to gym wearing multiple layers beneath her jersey.

  In my opinion, there isn’t any reason to be alarmed, despite Rae’s doomsday predictions. For some kids frumming out is a developmental milestone, something they try for a while to see how much of it actually sticks. Deenie’s dad was one of the wisest men I knew; so if he wasn’t concerned, there was no reason I should be. Deenie told her parents everything, and they trusted her completely.

  So when Deenie bursts into my house in tears, begging me to reason with her parents, I’m totally speechless.

  “They’re acting like it’s the end of the world!” she sobs. “And it isn’t. There’s an understudy for my part. She’ll be happy to fill in for me.”

  I’m a little lost. I know that Deenie has been rehearsing with the Atlanta women’s theater group for months. They’re performing Les Misérables at the end of the fall. But why would she need to call in an understudy?

  She answers my question before I ask. “I just can’t take the risk,” she explains gravely. “Something awful happened today.”

  I’m still completely lost.

  She takes a deep breath before she breaks the news. “A tech guy wandered in during rehearsal this afternoon,” she says in a low voice. “And I didn’t see him until the end. But by then it was too late. He heard me.”

  “He heard you sing.”

  She nods, and fresh tears well up in her eyes. “I can’t take that back. I can never take that back.”

  I understand why she’s upset, but I know Deenie’s distress would be a complete mystery to most people. Deenie had accidentally violated a modesty rule that prohibits women from singing in front of men (excepting close relatives). The scripture compares the voice of a girl to nakedness, so in Deenie’s eyes, it’s as if the tech guy stumbled in on her while she was in the shower. Among the very religious, solo singing in front of men is discouraged because it’s considered provocative behavior. Still, no one I know takes that prohibition so much to heart, and I’ve certainly never seen anyone in tears over a simple mistake. Despite the wording in the Talmud, a melody from a musical is not the same thing as a nip slip. I want to be sympathetic, but Deenie’s freak-out seems a bit melodramatic to me.