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“People probably tell you this all the time, but—”
“We don’t look like sisters, let alone twins. I know,” I say, because he’s right. I’ve heard it a hundred times.
He shakes his head, messy hair dipping down below his eyebrows. He probably needs a haircut. I hope he doesn’t get one until I’ve had a chance to run my hands through it a dozen more times. “I was actually gonna say that I can see the resemblance. A little bit. And your voices sound exactly the same.”
“Really?” Adina and I say at the same time. Then Adina says, “Tovah hasn’t said that much about you, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything. She hasn’t dated before, so she’s probably not used to it. She’s always been the innocent one.”
I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek.
“I’m pretty innocent too,” Zack says.
Adina touches his shoulder. Playful. A possessiveness I didn’t know I was capable of flares through me. “I’m sure you could be corrupted.”
“No one is corrupting anyone,” I say as I turn my locker combination, missing the third number three times in a row.
Zack laughs. Like he thinks she’s making a joke. “I don’t know. I’ve had all the lectures about peer pressure.”
“They only lecture us because they don’t want us to have any fun.” Then Adina faces me, her tone sugary sweet and mock soothing. “Tovah, it’s okay. I’m sure you could figure out what to do with Zack in one of your biology textbooks. Maybe you can find a step-by-step guide.”
At this I finally get my combination, yanking the door open so hard it smacks the metal locker next to it. My face is on fire. I can’t speak. The inside of my locker—and the spine of a fucking biology textbook, of course—is the only safe place to look. Is Zack imagining the two of us together? I like to think I’d be able to figure out what to do. That we’d be able to figure it out together.
“I should, uh, actually go before I miss my bus,” Zack says. “Tov, I’ll text you later?” and without glancing at him, I mumble, “Okay.”
“And I have viola.” She peers inside my locker. Taps the metal door a couple times. “Study up, okay?”
Somehow, her boots sound featherlight as she strides down the hall with Zack, leaving me alone and feeling about as small as an atom.
Nirvana’s blasting from Aba’s downstairs office when I get home. I pocket my keys and knock on his door. He keeps an old record player in his office because he insists music sounds better on vinyl, and we used to listen in here together all the time. A live version of “On a Plain,” his favorite song, pulls at something deep inside me. The lyrics ache, and Kurt Cobain’s voice is so resigned, so matter-of-fact.
“Aba?” I knock again. “Aba? Are you okay?” I twist the knob and, realizing the door isn’t locked, push it open. He’s in an armchair, a handkerchief pressed against his eyes.
The sight of him pins me in the doorway. Pushes thoughts of Adina and Zack far, far away.
“Tov.” My name. Good. Both. He blots at his face and gets up, running a hand over the beard that’s grown in over the past week. “Is the music bothering you?”
“Nirvana could never bother me,” I say in Hebrew. He isn’t making eye contact with me. Probably embarrassed I caught him. “Could I listen with you for a little while?”
“Of course.” He gestures for me to sit down in his chair. I shake my head and instead lean against the windowsill. Sometimes I wonder if his newfound commitment to Hebrew study is because he thinks it’ll help him stay closer to Ima, or if he just needs a distraction. But I’d never have the courage to ask him that, and I don’t want to know the answer.
“Don’t tell your mother about this,” he says, and then switches to English. “I don’t know how to say any of this in Hebrew. I’m trying to be strong. I am. But it’s hard sometimes. You and I, we have to take care of them. Your mom and Adina. You know that, right?”
“I know.” My voice is tiny. I want to melt into the windowsill. Become a constellation in the night sky. Escape.
Ima recently started a new antipsychotic to help suppress the jerking and twitching and writhing she can’t control, and she sees both a speech pathologist and an occupational therapist. In her spare time, which she now has too much of,
she knits scarves to fill all our closets.
“It’s a lot to deal with sometimes. I’m fine. I really am. I don’t want your mom getting worried.” He’s speaking quickly. “I don’t want you getting worried, or Adina . . .”
“I know,” I repeat. “Don’t worry. I won’t say anything.”
We’ve always had secrets. One time we took a day trip to Aberdeen, where Kurt Cobain had lived, and bought a Nirvana demo tape for more than a hundred dollars. Don’t tell your mother, Aba said. Adina and Ima could have their old movies and stale classical music. We had grunge.
“Can you tell me again about the show you went to?” I ask as the song switches to “Something in the Way.”
“How many times have I told you that story?”
“Several dozen.” But I don’t care. I want him to think about something happy.
