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“I did help you,” I muttered. “That's what Kendra and I were talking about before all this…”

I don't even know if he heard me. By that point, he was looking down the hallway to where she had left.

“She was supposed to listen to my song! What am I going to do now?”

You could help me get up, I thought, but that seemed unlikely. Then he started clomping after her.

“Archie, come back,” I said weakly.

I watched him walk out the door. When I noticed that he had left his computer and book bag behind, I almost called after him. But then I got curious. I crawled across the floor, pulled the headphones down, and put them on. Then I felt around for the keyboard. I touched the space bar, and the headphones filled with the sound of an orchestra.

I recognized it immediately; it was a section from Anne Murray's Christmas record! But Archie had played with it somehow, stretched it out and repeated it and added in a drumbeat, turning it from “Good King Wenceslas” into something entirely new.

And then there was Archie's voice. Singing. Well, I wouldn't call it singing, exactly, but it had notes and rhythms. And more importantly, it had words. I had never heard Archie sound so gentle or so…sincere.

This is what he sang:

The music stopped. I leaned back against the table with my eyes closed. I couldn't quite believe it: Archie had created something beautiful and honest. He had told Kendra how he felt and exposed everything in his soul, and he had done it in the only way he knew how.

And I knew, sitting there on the lunchroom floor, that she would probably never hear it.

“There you are! Oh, my god!”

I opened my eyes. My mother was rushing toward me.

“Are you all right? What did that monster do to you?”

“I'm okay,” I said, though I doubt I was very convincing.

Next thing I knew, I felt Mom put her arms around me and help me up. I collapsed into her arms then
onto the lunchroom bench.

Then I felt someone else gently take my hand. I looked up and saw Patrice sitting next to me. There we were, me, Mom, and Patrice. I managed a weak smile, and Mom and Patrice helped me to my feet and led me out of the school.

“THAT'S IT,
I'm canceling the whole thing!”

My mother was ranting in the car on the way back from the emergency room. I was fine, by the way, nothing broken, just a lot of bruises and a major black eye.

“I don't know what I was thinking, coming out here! Of course you got beat up! You're smart, you're handsome, and they're just a bunch of animals!”

Patrice was immensely relieved when we dropped her off at her house. By then Mom was completely losing it.

“Anti-Semites! You come out here to the middle of the country, and you're surrounded by Jew-haters!”

I think she wanted to avoid offending Pam, so she cooled off a little by the time we got to the house. We ate dinner pretty much in silence, but as Pam got out a carton of ice cream for dessert, Mom couldn't hold back anymore.

“You know,” she said, “it's the football thing. They're all taught to be violent! To be aggressive!”

Pam and I exchanged a glance.

“Ruth,” Pam said gently, “we're all sorry about what happened, but Evan's perfectly safe here.”

Mom shook her head. “With these mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging apes?”

“Mom,” I said. “Easy.”

But she was on a roll. “And I was going to let you have your bar mitzvah here? They'll bomb the ceremony! They're terrorists! Illiterate anti-Semitic terrorists!”

It was time to stop the insanity. “Come on, Mom,” I said. “This wasn't about being Jewish. Brett would have done this no matter what religion I was. He just got caught up in a stupid rumor and he hit me. That's all.”

“That's all?” Mom shrieked. “We're canceling the whole thing. You can go back to New York and have the bar mitzvah with your father while I figure out where we can go to be safe.”

I almost choked on my spoon. A few weeks back I
would've killed to hear something like that. But things had changed. I felt suddenly exhausted.

“No,” I said.

Mom blinked. “No?”

“Listen,” I said, “I don't want to spend any more time feeling like everything's up in the air. I didn't want to leave New York to be in this crazy place, but we did. And now that we did, I want to see it through. No one's going to beat me up. To tell the truth, no one even cares that I'm alive anymore. So let's just have the bar mitzvah. You, me, Pam, Patrice, and Rabbi Weiner. If no one else comes, that's fine. I need to do this already, okay? Get it over with and move on. We all need to move on.”

Pam nodded. “He's right, Ruth. It'll be fine.”

A tear rolled down Mom's cheek. I felt bad about everything she had been through, but I still couldn't help smiling at how strange life could be. Had I really just talked my mother into letting me get bar mitzvahed in Appleton, Indiana?

 

I suppose I should catch you up on the rest of the week. For starters, I didn't go to school on Tuesday or Wednesday. Mom was busy having conferences with the principal and the guidance counselors, and I was busy convalescing. I didn't feel that bad physically, but I looked like hell. By the end of the day Wednesday,
Mom figured out that nobody was going to punish Brett, the Football Hero, and she asked me if I really felt comfortable going back to school.

“If anyone tries to take a swing at me, I'll just recite my haftorah at them.”

She laughed a little and closed the door.

I went back to Dan Quayle Thursday morning, and it was just as I expected: completely uneventful. Nobody threatened me, nobody mocked me. In fact, nobody talked to me or really even acknowledged that I was alive. I was wallpaper. Sure, a few teachers asked how I was and acted concerned, but that was it. To be honest, I was grateful not to get the attention. After school, Patrice waited for me and we walked home together so I didn't have to take the bus.

She told me what I had already assumed: Kendra never really figured out what Lucy had done and they were still best friends. Meanwhile, Brett and the Goons had begun paying attention to two other girls on the cheerleading squad, and everyone figured Brett would be going out with Kelly Migliaccio soon. Word was that Kelly had done more than just the tongue with a kid in high school.

Patrice also said she was standing by her locker once near Kendra when Brett walked by. Apparently the two of them glared at each other the entire time they were in proximity, but neither one said a word.

As for Archie, nobody had seen him all week. I saw the lights go on and off in his bedroom across the street, but he wasn't looking out his window or waiting for the bus. For all intents and purposes, he had vanished. So Thursday afternoon, Patrice and I both stopped at his house and rang the bell. His mother answered.

“Hi, kids,” she said, the phone resting on her shoulder. “This really isn't a good time.”

“We just wanted to say hi to Archie,” I said. “Is he here?”

Archie's mom put the phone to her ear. “One second, Dr. Mars,” she said, and then she turned back to us. “I'll tell him you came by, okay?”

“Okay,” Patrice said, “but…”

“This is really not a good time, sweetie,” she repeated, and closed the door as she went back to her call. Patrice and I stood on the front step, not sure what to think or feel.

That night I had one last lesson with Rabbi Weiner. He asked me if I had my speech ready. “I will by Saturday,” I said, though I didn't really believe it.

 

The morning of the big day I woke early and wandered over to the mirror. The swelling was down a bit, but I still had a black eye that hurt a little when I touched it.

As I was heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I saw a suit hanging on the back of my door. It was gray with pinstripes, just like Aaron Siegel's. I have to admit it, I was pretty touched. Pam must've stayed up half the night altering it. I figured it cost my mom a fortune.

So I put on the suit, and I tied the red tie Pam had ordered for me. Then I put on one of the two hundred personalized yarmulkes Mom had ordered back when she assumed there was going to be a crowd. Then we all went down to the Methodist church.

In the short car ride over it really hit me.

My bar mitzvah.

Finally
.

I had spent so long thinking about it, strategizing about it, and worrying about it, that it was hard to believe it was finally here. Sure, the church basement would be emptier than a pool party at Rachel Zisser's, but given that I looked like I'd been run over by a bus, that was just fine by me. Four people, or forty, I'd still become a man.

 

I recognized Rabbi Weiner's old Volkswagen in the parking lot, and I saw Patrice's dad's Volvo, but some of the other spots in the lot were filled with cars that I had never seen. And in the handicapped spot right near the door there was a Ford Focus with Florida
license plates that seemed weirdly familiar.

We got out of the car, and Mom turned to look at me.

“Okay, kiddo,” she said. She straightened my tie and pushed my hair out of my eyes. “You're gonna be great. I'm so proud of you.”

I noticed she was trying not to cry, so I got completely embarrassed and shook her off. Let's not get sentimental about it, I thought. I'm gonna speak some Hebrew, I'm gonna kiss a Torah, we're gonna drink a cup of red wine, and then we're all done. I pushed open the door to the church and headed down the stairs to the basement.

But just as I was about to push open the basement door, I stopped. Coming from inside were voices—a lot of them, too—talking and laughing. Instantly I thought of the strange cars in the lot. Great—someone else booked the room this morning and didn't tell us.

But then I heard a sound that made no sense in Appleton. A man telling a joke in Yiddish. Not just a man. My grandfather!

I pushed open the door and stopped short, staggered by what I saw. The basement was full of my family.

“There he is!”

That was Dad's dad, Grandpa Joel.

“The bar mitzvah boy!”

Grandma Anna.

Mom's parents were there too, along with my father's sister and her husband with my cousin Ari. And then standing in the center of the room talking to Rabbi Weiner was my dad. We met eyes. In a flash we were hugging, tight.

“You came!” I said.

“Of course I did.” We pulled apart, and he was beaming ear to ear. He must've seen me glance around the room. “Don't worry,” he said. “She's back in New York.”

I smiled. “Great to see you, Dad.”

“You, too, champ.”

Everyone clapped, and just like that I was besieged by moist-lipped kisses and hearty handshakes. “Look how big you are!” they all said. “Quite a suit you've got!” they said. “What's with the shiner?” they asked, followed by “I bet the other kid looks even worse!” and then they laughed.

I heard a scream and turned to see my mom standing in the doorway, in complete shock and disbelief.

“Ruth!” everyone yelled, and her mother and father gave her a giant hug.

Pam was right behind, and through all the commotion I noticed her shoot my dad a quick wink. He winked back. That's when I realized that she had helped him set all this up. She'd broken my mom's no-
family rule and hadn't told her.

Finally Patrice came in, followed by her dad, a tall, thin guy in a dark suit. As for Patrice, well, she was wearing a very pretty blue and white dress, and she had obviously spent a lot of time on her hair. She didn't look entirely comfortable, but she looked great. And I thought, Well, if my dad thinks that's my girlfriend, then he's gonna think I'm doing okay.

That was when the rabbi came over and put an arm around me. “Come on, Evan,” he said, smiling. “It's time.”

Mom and Pam had done their best to make the basement of the church look appropriate for a bar mitzvah. Four circular tables with chairs and place cards were set up in the audience. Hanging from the ceiling was a giant cutout of a Star of David. There was a makeshift bimah set up at one end of the room with four chairs and a rostrum with a microphone.

As Rabbi Weiner and I walked up, my dad went over to my mom and took her hand. She tried to resist, but everyone pushed her up to the stage with him. We must have looked awfully confused, me, Mom and Dad, sitting there in our chairs, pretending to be a family.

Or maybe not pretending.

Everyone quieted down and took their seats, and I finally had a chance to check out the rest of the
decorations. There were flowers in the center of every table, and red tablecloths that matched the yarmulkes, and real china plates and silverware. I don't know where it came from or who paid for it, but it looked much better than I had ever imagined the church basement could look. On an easel in the corner was a blown-up picture of me as a baby, lying in a bathtub and laughing. And against the back wall was a table overflowing with food: deli trays, pickles, brisket, chopped liver, kasha. I looked at all that Jewish food and suddenly was struck with how much I had missed eating it.

Rabbi Weiner stood up, opened his siddur, and began chanting. He seemed more alive than I had ever seen him. Finally he was among his own people.

After a couple of prayers in Hebrew, he told everyone that they were all there to celebrate Evan David Goldman becoming a bar mitzvah, and he talked about how important it was that my family was there on this wonderful day. Up until today, he said, my parents had been responsible for me, and it had been up to them to make sure I followed Jewish laws and traditions. But now, today, I was a man, fully responsible for who I was and what I did.

“As you might have noticed from his right eye,” the rabbi joked, “he's taking that responsibility very seriously.”

Everyone laughed. Then the rabbi said it was time for me to read from the Torah. He pulled a large crate from underneath the rostrum, lifted a flap, and removed an object covered in blue velvet with Hebrew letters on it. Rabbi Weiner clumsily removed the velvet covering and lifted the scrolls up for everyone to see. My father and his sister's husband were called to hold the Torah and walk through the room, allowing everyone to touch it and say a prayer. Sitting at a table by themselves, Patrice and her dad weren't quite sure what to do when it was their turn. But then they both touched it, looked at each other, and shrugged.

When the Torah finally made its way back up to the bimah, my dad sat down next to my mom. It was a little bit awkward. I could see him looking at her, hoping for some sort of a connection. Finally she looked at him and smiled. Dad held her gaze for a split second before she looked away. It wasn't much, but since I knew how she felt, it was a pretty big gesture.

Then suddenly it was quiet, and I realized everyone was looking at me, including the rabbi. I got up and walked to the rostrum.

Looking out at the crowd, my eyes lingered on the ten empty spaces at Patrice and her Dad's table. And I never would have dreamed that I'd think this, but what went through my head at that moment was: I
never needed those kids in the first place, and I'm glad they're not here.

I looked down at the Torah, assuming I'd see my portion there. But the Hebrew on the page of the Torah was written by hand and much more ornate. It looked entirely different from what I'd been working from. It didn't matter—I had memorized my part by now.

And so I sang: