I don’t know!
I don’t know anything anymore!
I blink hard, enough that my eyes start to sting. I mean to say, Fine. Like always. But what I say is, “I’m a goddamn spectacle, Mom.”
My mom says, “Language.”
My dad sets his knife down with purpose and says, “Hallie Jacob.”
I blink.
I pick up the fork.
I eat my broccoli and carrots I could not choose between, and I am absolutely suffocated by the fact that I seem to have changed utterly while my parents simply have not.
Nothing else has.
Nothing but me.
The only one who notices, or notices and cares enough to bring it up, is Zayde.
He and I have never been close; we never really had the opportunity to be. But I love him and he loves me and he’s known me all my life.
It’s my night to hang out with him, and we’ve been playing pinochle in the quiet. He doesn’t have much to say nowadays; I think it just takes a lot of energy.
But he lays down a jack, wrinkled hands trembling, and says, “Buttercup. You’ve looked better.”
I wrinkle my nose. My pajamas are mismatched, and I guess I could have taken more time on my hair but—
“Sad,” he continues. “You look sad.”
“Oh,” is all I can manage.
He doesn’t push me. He just takes a card from the pile and pushes his glasses up on his nose. And he waits.
I finally say, “I don’t know why I’m being like this. I should be happy. I survived.”
“Not enough,” he says, glancing up at me and resting his elbows on the table, “just to survive.”
I blink back at my grandfather, and for a second, I feel sorry for taking up the most precious of all his time—the time that comes near the very end—with neediness. With sadness. With my own drama.
But then he gives me the smallest smile and goes back to his hand, and I think he’ll make a run.
And I don’t feel sorry at all.
Jolie and Jaxon invite me over for Shabbat dinner.
I say to my parents, “I’m heading over to Uncle Reuben’s.”
My mom waves me off and my dad says, “Let me drive you.”
I don’t know why that’s so irritating, but lately, everything is irritating? Which is stupid because I survived! I survived a week on a mountain in the cold with a boy I didn’t even know! I should have a new lease on life! I should be clicking my heels together and diving into paintings to play with all the animated woodland creatures and sing songs about joy.
It’s fine.
I’m just completely empty, is all.
Because no one gets it.
No one but Jonah Ramirez, and he hasn’t texted me and I haven’t texted him, and I think neither of us knows what the hell to even say.
The car ride is weirdly quiet.
It’s not enough, I hear. Just to survive.
I shut my eyes.
We get to my cousins’ house, and Dad comes to the door with me and says hello to his brother; they were so cool for a while—everyone was. Like this almost-tragedy really brought the family together.
It seemed, through family dinner after family dinner, that maybe the change was going to be permanent.
I don’t know, maybe it will be.
I slip in the front door and Jaxon whacks me on the back of the head affectionately. Jolie beams at me and says, “Lila Rahal asked me to Winterfest. Like as her date. Oh my god, LILA RAHAL. Do you even understand how beautiful she is? I think she’s going to wear a suit. Kill me now so my heart doesn’t literally stop when the most gorgeous freaking girl in the school shows up at my DOOR in a SUIT; you and I are going dress shopping. Oh shit, I need to figure out what color hijab she’s going to wear so I can like, coordinate.”
“Lila Rahal, Jesus—well done.”
Jolie is not lying; Lila can absolutely get it.
“I thought—weren’t you into Yvette?”
“No,” she says. “Hallie, pay attention. That was weeks ago; Yvette’s with Angel.”
“Oh,” I say. Pay attention. Pay. Attention.
My cousin wrinkles her nose, smiles, practically starts doing pirouettes.
See now, this. This is what I should be doing. I should be experiencing this kind of glee at every flower and shooting star I see.
I smile at Jolie.
I hope it looks real.
Here’s the shitty thing: I’m happy for her. It’s not like I’ve been through this life-changing thing and now her date with the prettiest girl in school is just so trivial that I don’t care about it.
It’s that I don’t care about . . . anything.
Because I don’t know how to care here.
I don’t know how to care when the world has stayed the same and I’m just totally different and probably traumatized, and what I really do not know is how to navigate all of this without a plan.
Anyway, I smile wide and bright.
Jolie accepts it.
I wait to hear the front door close and for Uncle Reuben to come back in and for Aunt Adah to light the Shabbat candles.
But what I hear, what we all hear, is Reuben hissing, “You have got to be kidding me,” and my dad saying, “Jesus, Reuben, why does everything I say have to be insulting to you?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“Are we seriously doing this again?”
“You’re the one coming into my house shitting all over it, man.”
I don’t know why hearing things like Man coming from adults is strange, but there’s something to be said for the weirdness of parents reverting to their teenagehood when they’re yelling at each other.
The whisper-yelling lowers and then it’s quiet because my cousins and me are shamelessly eavesdropping.
“Thought they were done with this shit,” said Jolie.
“Please,” says Jaxon, “they’re never done with this shit.”
I’m quiet for a minute. Then I say, “No one’s done with this shit because nothing’s changed. Nothing changes.”
Neither of them knows what to say about this.
So it’s quiet and now it’s awkward with them. They know I’m talking about the time on the mountain and we’ve all been pretending it’s the same for everyone. That it bonds all of us. I want it to! In some way, it does. None of us will ever untangle what we did for each other on that mountain.
But it’s not the same.
They were stuck for two days.
I thought I was going to die.
And I spilled my most intimate secrets to a boy I didn’t know and we haven’t spoken since and it feels like an absolute chasm, jumping from me to anyone else here.
Dad and Reuben are still fighting, and the silence between me and my cousins is suddenly palpable, and all of this is so trivial and shitty and stupid.
Dad says, “HAL,” and I say, “Fine,” before I even know what he’s going to say.
He’s done this before—no surprise he’d do it again.
When I’m eighteen, I’ll do what I want.
But at seventeen, I still have to listen when Dad yanks me out of my cousins’ house because he and his brother can’t seem to stop hating each other.
I fling my overnight bag across my shoulder and stomp out of the house, and I don’t even say goodbye to my cousins because I’m a bitch.