“You think?” I say. If I keep talking, I won’t think about the sharp pain in my stomach and weakness in my legs that are begging me to eat. “G-d exists but forgot about everyone?”
He shrugs. “Probably intentional. That’s what I’d do. Just go the fuck away, wash my hands of it.”
“You’re not G-d, though.”
“I’m just saying, if I made a diorama and it came to life, and then a bajillion years later, I decided to fill it with little dudes who, in the span of five minutes, managed to totally wreck each other and burn down the whole diorama and fuck over everything else I’d put in it, I’d just throw my hands up and leave them to deal with it. That’s exhausting.”
“That seems . . .” I glance up at the sky. “Lonely.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I twist my hands in my pockets. “Like if someone intentionally put us here, for a reason, and then left? That feels . . . so abandoned.”
“Never said G-d made people for a reason. What if G-d was just bullshitting, you know? And we all went wrong?”
“That’s bleak.”
“It’s not bleak; it’s reality. Look at us. Look at everyone. Look at what we did, what we do. If there’s a purpose, I bet we fucked it up.”
“Mmm,” I say. “No. No, I don’t—I don’t think so.”
“Well,” he says, shoving his hands down in his pockets. His mouth curls up like he’s comfortable, but I can see his jaw clench and lock, can see him shivering, even with the coat. The bright sky has shifted just a little gray while we’ve walked, and I can feel the temperature drop. Just exactly what we needed. He glances up at it, then back forward, to the non-path we’re creating in the snow. “Enlighten me.”
I say, through my chattering teeth, “I just don’t think there’s like, no point to any of it. I don’t think G-d made people and we went haywire.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Ice caps are melting, everyone’s shooting each other and bombing each other, everyone’s killing each other and caging each other because they were born on the wrong side of a border. You don’t call that haywire?”
I shrug, or try. It might be that my shoulders are so stiff, that my blood is so thick and cold, that my arms don’t actually move and I just project a shrug. “It’s bad. It’s messed up, I guess. I know. But I just . . . I guess I think that when it comes down to it, it’s not my job to figure out if the whole world’s fucked; it’s my job to try to make it better.”
He nudges my arm. “Think you can save the world, huh?”
“No.” I shake my head because that’s not what I mean, and suddenly this conversation seems like the most important thing in the world. Maybe because it’s so quiet around us, so empty. Like we’re living in a vacuum, like we’re having a conversation in space. Any words get swallowed up the second either of us says them and all that matters is listening until they do. I press my hand into his arm over his coat, curl my fingers, and he stops. I say, “I don’t want to save the world. I just—I want to make it the tiniest bit better. And that’s enough.”
It’s tikkun olam, repairing the world, and it’s not like I’ve talked about this with my friends. No one wants to sit down and discuss religion, really, and we don’t go to temple much anymore. Mom and Dad stopped having time when I was a kid, when we moved to Massachusetts. But I picked up this much.
And voicing it makes it feel a little like it’s mine.
I catch Jonah blinking down at me, not looking above it all, not looking sarcastic for once. His eyes are bright and open and focused.
Just . . . a little lit up.
The tiniest spark of fire.
It doesn’t matter if I blush; I know my nose and cheeks and chin are so red already.
He says, “Is that why you want to be a firefighter?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“I’m into the idea of public service.”
“Of course you are,” he says. “Goody two-shoes.”
I roll my eyes. “But I’m not a teacher, I’m definitely not a politician.”
“Not a cop?” he says.
“Oh Jesus, no,” I say.
“You sure?”
“All cops are bastards, Jonah.”
He actually cackles. It doesn’t mute like I think it should. The endless space doesn’t swallow it whole. It echoes.
Then it’s nothing but quiet and snowfall.
I say, “I like the idea of pulling people from burning buildings. I like the physicality. I like the challenge.”
“Mmm.”
“And I have a plan.”
“Well, hit me with it.”
I say, “I’ve already taken most of my first year of classes. Just another semester and I can be an EMT. Then I can get paramedic certification. If I apply when I’m eighteen, it shouldn’t take too long to get on with the city. I mean, sometimes it does. Everyone wants to be a firefighter from the time they’re six.”
“Did you?” he says.
“When I was six? I wanted to be a unicorn.”
That laugh again—that warms me up every time I hear it, every time I’m the one to make it happen, even though I’m sure he’s laughed like that for a lot of girls.
I’m sure it doesn’t make me special; it just makes me the girl he’s trapped on a mountain with.
Still, I’ll take whatever warmth I can get.
“Anyway,” I say, spine straight now that I’m talking about this, this area I’m in control of, that I’m comfortable with. That I’ve laid out in careful block print since I was fourteen years old. “So anyway, it could take a while, especially in Boston. But if I jump in with my paramedic cert already, that should help. I’ll wait it out in an ambulance until then, gain experience until I can do what I really want.”
“You’re going back to Boston?”
“Yeah,” I say, and bitterness I didn’t intend to express creeps into my voice. “Of course. That’s the plan. That’s always been the plan.”
“You really get off on plans, don’t you, Jacob?”
I furrow my brow. “I don’t think I’d phrase it that way.”
“Oh, too crass for your delicate ears?”
“Shut up.”
“You really take pleasure in plans, don’t you?”
“Jesus, dude, that’s worse.”
He laughs.
“I’m not that obsessed with plans.”
“HA. Okay.”
“Well, what about you, Mr. Devil May Care? I bet you have college mapped out. I bet you get off on it.”
His eyes brighten again and I can feel it down to my toes this time. “No, nerd. I don’t get off on college, but yeah, I’d sure as hell better have a map. I’m a sophomore.”
“Right,” I say. I don’t know why I’d forgotten that. He’s two years older than I am. He both seems totally experienced like that and totally like he’s still in high school. Like he’s my age. I don’t know, it’s hard to parse out and harder to explain.