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A group of five girls skate by with arms locked around one another. “Don’t break the chain!” one of them shouts, and the others giggle.
“Oh, to be nine,” Troy says in a mock-wistful tone. “Those halcyon days when we didn’t know what integrals or derivatives were . . .”
“Don’t remind me,” Lindsay says. “I have at least three hours of AP Calc waiting for me at home. And about a trillion college essays.”
This is what AP kids do when we’re not in school: talk about school.
“I bet Tovah’s already finished her college apps,” Zack says.
Even in AP land, I’m a shameless overachiever. I have no problem embracing it. I love when everyone begs to peek at my meticulous study guides or when I’m the first person in class to turn in a test.
“The one that matters, yes. I sent it in last week.” Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has been my goal since seventh grade, when I went to a summer program there for girls interested in science and medicine. My favorite professor was a surgeon who let us watch an open-heart surgery, and while some of the kids shut their eyes, I was riveted. I’d always loved science class the most, but this—I was watching her physically fix someone. It felt powerful. Important.
Since then I’ve shadowed as many local doctors as I can, and I volunteer at a Seattle hospital. Because I applied early decision, I’ll hear back in December. Biology program at Johns Hopkins, and then, if all goes well, med school there too. The next five to ten years of my life perfectly planned out.
“I bow down to you.” Zack attempts to do so and almost topples over again.
The sight of this nearly six-foot-tall guy stumbling on skates tugs at my heart. Makes it race faster that its usual sixty bpm. My mind, in all its infinite logic, reminds me this crush can’t become anything more than that. My future is too much of a question mark to drag someone else into my life.
Textbooks and exams don’t have emotions. They’re much safer.
The music stops midsong, and the DJ booms over the speakers: “Helloooooo, and thanks for coming out to Great Skate tonight! Everyone having a grrrrrreat time?”
All the kids yell back that yes, they are.
“I can’t hear you,” the DJ taunts in that way all announcers love to do, and we all bellow back, though Zack rolls his eyes at me. “We have a few birthdays here tonight. Can Sienna, Nathan, and . . . Tovah come up here?”
He hesitates before saying my name, the way most people do when faced with an unfamiliar word. It’s not hard to pronounce, but I don’t like how he utters it: like he’s questioning it.
I glare at Lindsay. “You didn’t.”
She tries to make her pale-green eyes innocent. Fails. “Get over there, birthday girl,” she says, laughing as she gives me a push.
“I despise you,” I tell her before skating to the middle of the rink along with the two kids, who blink up at me like I’m, well, an adult at a skating rink full of children. I grind my teeth—my worst habit—and cross my arms, wishing I could shrink to the size of a third grader. My sister, who prefers the company of string instruments to people, would hate it even more.
“How old is everyone turning?” the DJ asks.
Lindsay’s filming a video on her phone. A playful smile bends Zack’s lips, which I’ve imagined kissing only when I feel like torturing myself.
“I’m ten!” yells Nathan, and Sienna one-ups him with, “Eleven!”
“I’m, uh, eighteen,” I mutter, which gets a few laughs and gasps from the kids.
Eighteen. It’s supposed to be a lucky number. Hebrew letters have numerical value, and the word “chai,” meaning “life,” is spelled with two letters that add up to eighteen. It’s a word we toast with—“l’chaim!”—and carry around on necklaces. Since my mother’s diagnosis, eighteen has meant something different. It doesn’t mean luck or life. It means the opposite. The worst thing that could possibly happen, multiplied by eighteen, raised to the eighteenth power.
I don’t know the Hebrew word for that.
The DJ leads everyone in “Happy Birthday,” and I suffer through thirty more seconds of humiliation. As I skate back to my friends, the DJ says, “Now it’s time for you to find that special someone for our couples skate.”
The lights turn red. Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose” starts playing, though none of us are old enough to remember when it was actually popular. If it ever was. My taste is more nineties grunge, thanks to my father’s lifelong Nirvana obsession. No one else in our family can stand Kurt Cobain’s growl or distorted guitar.
Tonight the couples skate fills me with more dread than it did when I was twelve. Lindsay and Troy are already slowly circling the rink. The kids pair off, their nervous laughter mixing with Seal’s velvety vocals. I envy their naive confidence.
Zack’s gaze meets mine. His eyebrows lift. My heart plummets.
“I’m going to take a break,” I say quickly. He can’t ask me to skate with him—because I can’t say yes. Before he can reply, I clomp off the rink.
Before entering my house, I kiss my fingertips and touch them to the mezuzah on the doorpost.
