The Mystics of Mile End (6 page)

                
11.  Cantaloupes

                
12.  Coconuts

                
13.  Pomegranates

                
14.  Watermelons

Just as I finished adding number fourteen to the list, Alex said, “Psst!”

I looked up to see him waving his book in my face. “What?”

“Listen to this!” he said, and then read aloud: “Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have the equipment available to make unscheduled ham radio contacts with radio amateurs all around the world on a one-to-one basis during their personal time. With a very limited investment in amateur radio equipment, licensed hams,
including students,
can make individual contact with astronauts by learning to follow the published orbital schedule.”

“So?”

“So! This right here is a winning project!”

“What is?”

“We bring in my
ham radio
on the day of the
science fair
and call the International
Space
Station and talk to an
astronaut
!”

“Yeah, right. They're never going to waste their time talking to us. Why would they?”

“Didn't you hear what I just read? They talk to students all the time!”

“Okay, but—” I was about to tell Alex that even if the astronauts were willing to talk, there was no way we'd figure out how to contact them in time, when a movement near the window caught my eye. A tall man with brown hair and a nice smile was walking up to Ms. Davidson. She was so concentrated on what she was reading that he had to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention. But, as soon as he did, her face filled with light and opened up like a giant flower.

All of a sudden I felt happy and sad and lonely, happy because my mysterious sadness had a reason after all, sad because there was nothing I could do to make the reason go away, lonely because I now knew that I didn't really have a nameless sickness, and losing
that sickness meant losing one more thing that had tied me and Sammy together.

The reason why the white flower on Ms. Davidson's bike had made me sad was because what it probably meant was that she already had a boyfriend. Long bike rides through meadows was something people did when they were in love with other people. I was only eleven and a half, and so far I had never been in love with any other person, but it didn't take a genius.

Trying to get my attention, Alex waved his hands around in my face, but I pushed them aside and shushed him. From behind
Fruit of North America and Beyond: Exotic and Common Species,
which was behind
101 Physics Projects for Tomorrow's Rocket Scientists,
which was behind Alex and his fort of books, I spied on Ms. Davidson and the man with the nice smile. They walked to the door of the library. She opened it and held it for him and he laughed. Then, just before he walked through the door, he leaned down and kissed her.

That's when I realized that, even though Ms. Davidson might be a highly intelligent person, she was not the person who would fill the empty spaces in my father's heart.

T
hat Friday, Dad left us a message on the answering machine. He wouldn't be coming home until very late because of another university thing. We decided that this time we would make pizza for dinner, so Sammy started slicing the cheese and I started opening the packages of Nibs and gummy bears. The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of rain hitting the windows. After a while, the phone rang. We let the machine pick up and a familiar voice filled the room.

“Hello, David? It's Ira! Listen, I just wanted to wish you and the family a big
mazel tov
on the upcoming bat mitzvah! I can't believe I didn't know Samara was participating, Jenny just told me now, that's wonderful news! Sammy, if you're listening, we're all so
proud of you, we wish you the very best of luck, and we can't wait to see you on the big day!”

The machine beeped. I looked at Sammy and she looked back at me and I saw that her eyes were filled with sadness. I hit Delete.

Then I went back to dividing candy and Sammy went back to slicing cheese. But after a few seconds, she put the cheese slicer down. She said she'd be back and that I should go ahead with the toppings, so I covered one side of the pizza with Nibs and the other with gummy bears.

When I finished, I went to Sammy's room and saw her standing over the candles in the window just like the other night. The floorboard creaked and she turned around, but this time she didn't get mad. Her cheeks were wet. I went and stood next to her. She lit one of the candles and gave me the match and I lit the other one. She waved her hands over the flames—one, two, three—then we covered our eyes and she whispered the blessing. I didn't know the words but I said
Amen
when she was done because that's what you say. That's what Dad used to say, back when he would hurry home to watch Mom light the candles, which was something he stopped doing a few months before she died. She cried the first time he didn't show up and I worried that her tears would put out the flames and she'd have to light them all over again.

Sammy wiped her cheeks and we went back to the kitchen to finish making the pizza. While it was baking, I had an idea. I went to the pantry, found a bottle of grape juice, and brought it back to her. Before we ate, we said the kiddush over the grape juice. Normally people said the blessing over wine but I knew Dad would be mad if we drank wine, even though he mostly never made rules about what we should do because he said parents should trust kids to learn for themselves instead of imposing their own authority. Afterward, Sammy washed the cup so that Dad wouldn't suspect anything, and I put the bottle in the back of the fridge.

Then we watched the last two shows on the TGIF lineup. We'd missed the first couple of shows but I didn't really care because one, I liked doing Shabbat with Sammy, and two, they were almost always repeats anyway.

That night, before falling asleep, I made another list in my journal.

THINGS THAT MAKE MY SISTER SAD:

                
1.  Memories of our mother

                
2.  Answering machines

                
3.  Her old bicycle

                
4.  Swing sets

                
5.  How her hair gets frizzy when it's hot out

                
6.  Watercolor paintings

                
7.  Musical instruments

                
8.  The smell of perfume

                
9.  Jenny (?)

O
n Monday afternoon, me and Alex spent our recess on the patch of grass behind Normal School. All the other kids were running around, throwing balls and chasing each other. Sammy, who used to always spend recess with Jenny, was wandering alone on the far edges of the lot. A couple of teachers paced around us, looking up at the sky or chatting.

Alex ignored them all and started teaching me about astronomy, which he said was something you should really know about unless you wanted to be a total ignoramus. “Do you want to be a total ignoramus?” he asked. I figured this was one of those cases where silence is worth two coins, so I just stood there while he told me about all the different kinds of stars and showed me pictures in the new astronomy book his mom got him for his birthday.

“Proxima Centauri is the closest red dwarf to our solar system, but it's still 4.2 light years away.”

Somewhere behind and above us, we heard a voice like a low growl. “Nope,” it said. “The closest red dwarf is way closer than that.”

We whipped around. Gabe and Dean loomed over us with crazy smiles on their faces.

For a second, Alex looked too surprised to say anything. Then he pointed at a chart in his book and started to say no, Proxima Centauri was definitely the closest, it said so right
here,
but he didn't get to finish because all of a sudden Dean was grabbing the book and ripping out pages.

Alex froze. Papers fluttered away from his body like birds. I could tell he was fighting hard not to cry because his whole face was turning bright red.

Gabe said, “Well look at that, now there's a red dwarf right here on Earth.”

Dean dumped the shredded book at Alex's feet. Then he and Gabe started to walk away.

But Sammy was walking toward us. Alex looked from her to them and something in his face changed. “Hey!” he shouted at their big, wide backs. “You think you're so great? Just wait until the science fair, you losers, we'll show you!”

Gabe and Dean turned around with a scary slowness. “Oh yeah?” Gabe sneered. “What are you going to do, turn from red to purple? Go from four-eyes to eight-eyes? Grow even shorter than you already are?”

“We're going to talk to an astronaut on the International Space Station!” Alex exploded.

I blushed with embarrassment, knowing this would only make things worse.

Gabe and Dean were already laughing, doubled over and slapping their knees. They pretended to need a second to catch their
breath. Finally Gabe said, “Yeah, great, can't wait for the big day, this won't be humiliating for you
at all,
” and they left.

Sammy was quiet, biting her lip. She gave us a little nod, then wandered off in the opposite direction, toward no one, toward nothing.

I felt so mad, all I wanted to do was kick something. I tried to remind myself that Mr. Glassman said the Talmud said you were supposed to be slow to anger and quick to forgive, but I couldn't help it. I decided then and there that we were going to win first prize in the science fair, even if it meant I had to go over to Alex's house every single day for the rest of the year.

U
p in Alex's room after school, we tiptoed through the maze of silvery radio guts on the floor. He went straight to his computer and sat down. I asked what he was up to and he said he was researching the space station's orbital schedule, what else would he be doing? He had to find out what time the astronauts would be flying over Montreal so that we could establish contact!

I said, “Great, but what am I supposed to do?” so Alex pointed at a poster board and some markers and said, “Why don't you make the backdrop for our presentation?” I sat on the ground and drew a replica of Alex's ham radio, making sure to get the shading just right, which was something Jenny had taught me the year before because she was really good at art. She hadn't been over in a while and I missed her. Another thing me and Sammy had in common.

After a few minutes, I got bored, so I wandered over to the telescope and pressed my eye to the lens. I saw the sky. A bird. A roof.

“Hey! Do you ever use this thing to spy on people?”

“I'm a scientist.”

“Okay.”

“From a long line of scientists.”

“Okay.”

“Scientists don't spy.”

“Okay.”

“They observe.”

“I think it'd be cool to be a spy!”

Alex sighed. “You're not supposed to touch the lens like that,” he said, taking the telescope and showing me how to hold it.

I brought my eye close again but not too close this time. The neighbors' windows sparkled in the afternoon light. “Hey, look! It's Mr. Glassman's house! And look there—that's Mr. Katz, sitting under the tree on his lawn!”

I moved aside to give Alex a turn and saw his blank face and right away realized that never in his whole life had he thought to look down at other people instead of up at the sky. He shifted the telescope to the right, then brought his eye up to the lens and gasped.

“What? What? What do you see?”

Alex kept still and said nothing. His face and the tips of his ears went bright pink. I tried to be patient but inside I was going crazy so I pushed him out of the way to see for myself. But just as I got up to the lens, something hard hit me right above my eye.

“Ouch!” I said, clapping a hand to my forehead. I could feel the skin pushed aside from a small dent where the telescope had hit me.

Alex danced around, flapping his hands like a bird. “Sorry, sorry, sorry! Are you okay?”

I took a deep breath and told him yes. “Is there a mark?”

Alex bit his lip and nodded. But he said the cut wasn't deep, and there was only a little blood on my hand, and I could tell he felt really bad, so I just asked if I could have a Band-Aid. He got me one and while I was putting it on we heard Alex's mom calling from downstairs.

When we got to the kitchen, Alex gave her a hug and then in
troduced us. She said to call her Lesley. She was still wearing her hospital clothes, and three thoughts flew into my head: one, she was a nurse, which meant that two, she must be a highly intelligent person, and three, she was very pretty and young-looking. Her red hair and bright green eyes shone in the light.

Even though her eyes had dark circles under them, she asked if we'd like her to fix us dinner. Alex said, “No, it's—” but before he could finish his sentence I said as fast as I could, “Yes please that would be great I'm starving!” even though I was not. She smiled and said that in that case she would throw something together right away, and how did I feel about spaghetti, meatballs, and roasted-butternut-squash-and-apple soup? Excellent, I said. I felt excellent.

While she cooked, me and Alex set the table and he tried to get me to understand the difference between a pulsar and a quasar. Even though it sounded interesting, I stopped listening, because I was busy watching Lesley and I needed to pray to God. My prayer was
Please please please please please
and I prayed it so many times that it started to feel like my heart was saying it, one
please
with every beat.