“Like he thought we were all here to watch my brother havesex,” Hannah laughed. Some of her friends gasped that she used the ‘s’ word and she stood taller, proud of herself.
They were doing a good job of making fun of me without any participation my part, but I kept trying to defend myself because I was dumb. “Becoming a man means different things to different people.” My way to interpret it was definitely one way. “That’s probably a common mistake.”
They all laughed. “It’s really not,” Hannah informed me.
Ugh, it just took me off guard. All cultures and faiths have their traditions that seem weird to outsiders. My family was Roman Catholic. We ate Jesus. But not in a zombie way. Ugh. I’d heard of bar mitzvahs but that wasn’t what they said. We’d just been caught and I heard ‘becoming a man’ and it was confusing!
“Hey, what’s that thing on your head called?” I asked Hannah. Distraction: a classic Ryan technique.
She looked at me strangely. “It’s called a headband.” Oh.
That did not help ease the laughter.
Okay, you know what? No more talking for Luke. I sunk down in my seat a little but had nowhere to hide.
An adult woman walked over to us, looking skeptically at the line of chairs in front of me and Ryan. She glanced pointedly to the girls, who all laughed nervously and pretended like they didn’t know how those chairs got there. I glared at them because they totally did know, they put them there.
Party jail wasn’t a real thing. We were just off in an unused corner, and then because they thought they were so funny, the girls put the chairs in front of us like a barrier.
Then the lady swung her gaze away from them and towards me, watching me suspiciously. I tried to smile politely because it wasn’t my fault all the girls were over here bugging me.
“How long are you going to keep us here?” Ryan asked the woman. “We have rights, there’s amendments, we get a phone call.”
“Rabbi Lieberman wanted to speak to you boys,” she wisely talked over him. “He’s busy. I brought you some dessert.” She started passing the plates to us but stopped. “Does dessert violate any of your rights?” she asked with a raised eyebrow to my boyfriend.
“I’ll allow it,” he muttered while I took the desserts, thanking her and handing one to him.
“Mazel tov,” she said and walked away while there was even more laughing from the girls.
Ryan went quiet again.
Okay, when this all blew up in our faces? I was a vital part of that. I was right there, making it worse. Right next to Ryan, who was also right there, also making it worse.
Classic Ryan overcorrection. He’s incapable of shutting up when he should. When someone asked,how do you know Evan,we didn’t have a ready answer. It was followed up with up with,who invited you? Ryan floundered and we were still processing that the hip and happening party we interrupted was for a child.
Sorry, he was a man now. I respect that. Still, crashing a wedding or an anniversary party or even a birthday party for the big 4-0 or something? Not a huge deal to crash some adult’s party. Evan was amannow but not anadult. Kinda weird to crash a party for a 13-year-old.
Ryan’s brain came back online first and predictably started up on its nonsense. He spewed a bunch of words related to the Jewish community, including dreidel, yarmulke, mazel tov, Hanukkah. He could talk pretty fast, so there were a ton of words involved.
He’s really smart, so he should know from extensive trial and error, mostly error, that just vomiting random semi-related words won’t work. Itneverworks. And yet it was endearing, that his brain was always like,nope, you’ll see, it’s going to work this time.
It didn’t.
But like I said, I made things worse too. They announced the guest of honor and how he was becoming a man and I freaked out because that sounded like a sex thing. And now we were in party jail, which they had made just for us, and almost or barely teenage girls were mocking me while my boyfriend was being quiet.
The song playing ended and another one started that the girls liked. They squealed and some of them abandoned us and some stayed but motioned for Hannah the ringleader to follow but she didn’t yet.
“I can help you make a break for it,” Hannah said while twirling her hair at me. “Dance with me.”
“Uh, I just got dessert.” I held it up a little so they could see. Here’s my excuse right in front of you, see, it’s real.
They all giggled like that was hilarious.
“You’re really funny.” She batted her eyes and smiled at me.
“Thought I was dumb,” I reminded them because I hadn’t forgotten being laughed at by tween girls for what felt like three hours.
“You can be two things, Luke,” Ryan reproached me. Seriously?
