“When people learn I’m Jewish, I swear sometimes they nod, like, ‘Yep, makes sense.’ I’ve… been told I look very Jewish.”
“I had a friend in elementary school who stopped coming over to my house,” he says, his voice low. “This kid Jake. When I asked him about it, he told me his parents wouldn’t let him. I came home crying to my mom about it because I didn’t understand, and she called his dad. When she got off the phone… I’d never seen her look like that. And some part of me just knew, before she even said it, why he wasn’t allowed over anymore.”
He just keeps breaking my heart.
“That is fucking terrible.” I scan our surroundings before uttering the next part. “Earlier, when I overheard Savannah at the safe zone. She said I obviously didn’t need the Howl money. And then—and then she tapped her nose.” At this, I do the same with mine, realizing I’m drawing attention to it and wondering if Neil thinks it’s too bumpy or too big for my face, the way I used to. He stops abruptly, his eyebrows slashed.
“Are you serious?” A loud exhale. “The fuck, Rowan. That’s messed up. That’s so messed up. I’m sorry.”
His reaction helps me relax a little. Like I could be justified in how I felt about it because I wasn’t alone in thinking it was shitty, but… my reaction was enough, wasn’t it? If I felt like crap about it, that was enough.
Neil steps forward and grazes my forearm with a couple fingertips, a small gesture to match his expression of empathy. The way he touches me, it’s soft and tentative. It’s the way I touched him back in his room, on his bed. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, his eyes not leaving mine, and there’s something so foreign about those words combined with his fingertips on my skin that I have to look away, which makes him drop his hand.
“People think it’s harmless. They think it’s funny. That’s why they do it,” I say, trying to ignore the strange shiver where he touched my arm. Must be static electricity. “And sure. I guess it’s harmless until something bad happens. It’s harmless, and then there are security guards at your synagogue because someone called in a bomb threat. It’s harmless, and you’re terrified to get out of bed Saturday morning and go to services.”
“Did that—” he asks in a quiet voice.
“Right before my bat mitzvah.”
The police found the guy who did it. It had been a prank, apparently. I’m not sure what happened to him, if he went to jail or if a cop simply patted his shoulder and asked him not to do it again, the way they do when white men do something atrocious. But I was so scared, I wailed and begged my parents not to make me go to synagogue for weeks afterward. And eventually we stopped going altogether, except on holidays.
That fear took something I loved away from me.
Obviously not harmless.
Neil and I are both a little breathless. His cheeks are flushed, like this conversation has been a physical effort as much as an emotional one. We fall in step again.
“But it’s weird sometimes, with my last name, and then with the hair and the freckles, the assumption is that I’m fully Irish. I pass as non-Jewish until someone learns I’m Jewish, and then they refer to it all the time. People here go out of their way to try to make you feel comfortable, and by doing that, they sometimes alienate you even more. Some of them mean well, but others…”
Yes. Exactly that. “When you learn about the Holocaust, you assume anti-Semitism is something historical. But… it’s really not.”
“When did you learn about it?” he asks. I have to think for a moment. “My mom told me after what happened with Jake.”
“As a class, we learned about it in fourth grade. But I already knew about it at that point. The thing is…” I trail off, searching my memory, but only one devastating answer comes to mind. “I can’t remember ever learning about it. I’m sure my parents told me at some point, but I can’t recall ever not knowing.”
I wish I could remember. I want to know if I cried. I want to know what questions I asked, what questions they couldn’t possibly answer.
“We’re going to fucking destroy Savannah, okay?” Neil says.
His casual use of profanity is a mix of amusing and something else I can’t quite name. He’s serious. He’s enraged on my behalf, out for revenge. Like we really are allies in more than the game.
This conversation makes me regret, just a little, that we weren’t friends. Kylie Lerner, Cameron Pereira, and Belle Greenberg ran in different circles, but I wanted Jewish friends so badly. I was convinced they’d understand me on this deep level that no one else could. I’m not blameless—I never made an effort to know him on a level beyond competitor. I messed up, treating him as a rival when he could have been so much more than that. What would we be now, if I hadn’t sought revenge after that essay contest, if he hadn’t retaliated?
That alternate timeline sounds so, so lovely.
“I almost—” I start, and then I catch myself.
He stops walking. “What?”
“I—I don’t know. I almost wish we could have talked about this kind of thing earlier,” I say quickly, all in one breath, before I can regret it. Fuck it, we’ve already shared plenty tonight. “I’ve never had anyone to talk to about it.”
The few moments he waits before responding are torture.
“Me too,” he says quietly.
* * *
We take our photo of the troll—with the troll, Neil insists, handing his phone to a tourist. I’m positive I’m scowling, but when we peek at the picture afterward, I’m surprised to find us both smiling. A little awkwardly, sure, but it’s a step above the Most Likely to Succeed photo.
“We don’t have time to go to Gas Works before your thing,” Neil says as we head back to my car. “We should do the zoo first.”
I nod. “Okay. Fine. Wait, why are you stopping?”
He twists his mouth far to one side, as though considering whether he wants to say what he’s about to. “This might sound ridiculous, but… I’ve heard that exhibit while high is a really wild experience.” With raised eyebrows, he points at the shop to our left. HASH TAG says the sign in the window, with a marijuana leaf drawn below.
Neil McNair, Westview valedictorian, just suggested we go to the zoo while high.
“Excuse me,” I say, fighting the urge to laugh, “I think you just suggested we buy some weed?”
“I have layers, Artoo.”
“We have”—I check my phone—“thirty-five minutes before I have to leave for my, um, thing. Not to mention, neither of us is twenty-one.”
“We have plenty of time for your thing and the zoo,” he says. “We’re right here. And Adrian’s brother works here. He’s always saying we should come by and pick something out.”
“Employee of the month right there.” But I have to admit, I’m curious. I’m not opposed to weed, and it’s been readily available at parties. I worried I wouldn’t know what to do with it, though, which stopped me from asking to try it.
“Wasn’t there anything you wanted to do in high school but never got a chance?”