The word was transient.
“Temporary,” I said. “Fleeting.”
Mrs. Gold sighed. We were going over my SAT flashcards at her kitchen table for the millionth time. I tried to pay attention as I watched her neighbor tearing down his Christmas decorations through the window.
“You really don’t need me. I’m just stealing your money, kid,” she said.
“Transient,” a voice said. “Also a word for bum.”
“They won’t use it like that on the test,” Mrs. Gold said, turning toward a scruffy, green-eyed man who wore a Harvard Class of 1993 sweatshirt. She introduced me and said he was her son, Benny, who was staying with her for a little while.
“Nice to meet you, Oksana Konnikova,” he said, as he shook my hand.
“Nice work,” I said. “No one ever says it right on the first try.”
“Most people don’t try hard enough.”
We stared at each other until Mrs. Gold said, “Benny just signed on to coach the track team, so you’ll be seeing more of each other.”
“How do I hate winter track,” I said. “Let me count the ways.” This made him laugh. I said, “Did you like Harvard?”
“Of course,” he said, but his voice fell flat. “I studied English like a good son.” He lifted the book he was holding, which was The Stranger.
“I love reading,” I said idiotically. “The Stranger’s one of my favorites,” I added, though I hadn’t exactly read it. He smiled like he knew I was lying. I wanted to ask what he was doing coaching track in Edison, New Jersey, if he graduated from Harvard, but I didn’t want to do it in front of his mom. He peered in the fridge as Mrs. Gold picked up the next flashcard.
Avuncular.
It was such an easy one that I waved it away. So was the next one. And the one after that.
“The milk’s expired,” Benny said.
“Don’t just stare at it. Throw it out,” Mrs. Gold said, but he was already walking away. She poured the milk down the drain as her neighbor dragged a deflated reindeer into his garage.
“Now,” she said, “where were we?”
I felt her son’s hand burning into mine as she held up the next card. She had mentioned her son once or twice, but I didn’t know anything about him. I was sitting in her English class the year before when I found out my dad died, and I was there two weeks later during 9/11 when she wheeled out the TV and we watched the towers burn while the kids whose parents worked in the city were called to the office over the loudspeaker one by one until it was just the two us. When she hugged me that day, I tried to feel something, some kind of fear or horror for our fucked-up world, but I didn’t have any pity left for anyone outside my family. “The world’s full of nasty surprises, kid,” she had said, and then she shrugged and added, “That’s all I’ve got.” I knew I needed her after that. I convinced her to tutor me junior year, though I didn’t really need help.
I was so distracted I said I didn’t know what the word on the card meant. She gave me a puzzled look and told me the definition. I laughed because it was so easy. It was dilemma.
• •
The next day at the school library was slow. Mrs. Grundy was giving a tutorial to an AP Bio class in the back, and people weren’t exactly falling all over the poetry display I spent hours perfecting. A few Korean juniors were memorizing the answers to a calc test from last year; Mr. Ferraro stopped making new tests after his son died in 9/11. They got their tests from the Korean seniors for free; I got mine from them in exchange for Mama’s sleeping pills.
It didn’t take long to find Benny Gold in an old yearbook, though most of the students were white back then, instead of Indian or Asian with a handful of Russian immigrants like me. Benny was practically in every picture, a smooth-faced baby. I stroked his face, wondering at the arbitrariness of time, how he happened to be born fourteen years earlier than I was. There was his pale, muscular body as he crossed the finish line in a race, his jaw clenched and his head back like he was defying gravity. The goofy look on his face as he gave a speech as student council president. The smirk in his photo for Most Likely to Succeed.
But even then, there was an emptiness I recognized in his eyes because I saw it in Mama. I wanted to own it, that sadness, to embrace it until it warmed me up and hugged me back. But I didn’t get it. What did he have to be so sad about?
The bell rang and I jumped. My boyfriend, Koz, approached the front desk. He grabbed my copy of The Stranger and my calc book, though I could have carried them myself.
“You look cute in that sweater,” he said. I was wearing one of my mom’s concoctions.
“Maybe I don’t want to be cute.”
“Too bad, Calf. You can’t help it. Like Lito can’t help hitting the bottle between classes.”
“Shut up,” I said, but I laughed anyway.
In spite of his remedial math classes and frosted tips, Koz won me over by making me laugh on the track bus just after my dad died. I was feeling extra emo right then, reading The Bell Jar for the eightieth time, “High and Dry” on repeat on my Discman. He put on my headphones, and said, “Now that’s some music I could really slit my wrists to.” I cracked up and by the end of the ride he had his arm around me. The only time we spoke before was when he started calling me Calfnikova when he saw my huge calves when the season started. As we got off the bus, he said, “I can tell the guys to stop calling you Calfnikova.” I said, “Don’t. I’m used to it.”
He said, “Did you know we’re getting a new coach? He’s Mrs. Gold’s son.”
“Oh yeah?” I said, not sure why I was lying. He made fun of Lito some more, but I didn’t feel up for it. My brother woke me up with his nightmares twice that night, and I was exhausted.
We stopped outside my calc class as Mr. Ferraro wiped off the board, getting chalk all over his belly. This was the part where Koz and I made out, but I could tell we both wanted to skip it. I squeezed his hand and said, “See you at practice.”
• •
Every season, the new runners lined up by the bleachers, shivering as they waited to get their warm-ups from Mazzo. With his gold chain and forever tan, he looked like a Seaside bouncer as he judged the new crop. He sent the black kids to sprinting, the white and Asian kids to distance, and he scrunched up his face at the Indians, like it took every brain cell he had to say, “Try middistance.” Someone always complained about Mazzo’s antics, but I found it hard to hate someone that simple. It was like how people got worked up about Bush. Why bother?
Koz ran by and squeezed my shoulder. “Ready for a new season, Calfzilla?”
“Born ready.”
Benny—Coach Benny—stood in the center of the track, timing 400 splits. Coach Lito, booze-addled and wobbling like a bowling pin that refused to go down, was showing him the ropes. Benny nodded smugly, like being a coach was a role he was trying out. They didn’t have a uniform for him yet, so he wore the hoodie Lily designed for our team fund-raiser. It read, Burn, Baby, Burn! The Hoover Hawks are on Fire! Below that, she drew a sneaker with red and orange flames exploding out of it, licking their way up to the top like tiny, fiery tongues, consuming everything in their wake. Benny lifted a hand in my direction, and I ran up to him.
“My mom’s favorite student,” he said.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that. Besides, she’s not my teacher anymore.”
“I don’t care about what I’m supposed to say.”
“Good for you,” I said. We stared at the other side of the track, where Koz and Lecky were pretending to stab each other with the javelins. “Why is it so easy for some people?” I said.
“That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a long time, Oksana Konnikova.”
“At Harvard?” I said, trying to recover from the sound of my full name in his mouth, like he was tasting every syllable. “Was that something you asked yourself there?”
“Only every day,” he said, fiddling with his stopwatch.
“I’d love to go to Harvard.”
“Why?”
“It’s the best,” I said, knowing how dumb this was. It had to do with Papa’s idea of America. If he was going to abandon his musical side-career in Kiev to suffer on Wall Street—just four blocks from the Towers—then it would be for the family, so my brother and I could make something of ourselves. If I went to Harvard, it would prove he had done something right. He worked so much that he spent more time driving to and from work than with his family, so if it wasn’t for us, then what was it all for? I said, “My dad . . .”
“So you’re one of those,” Benny said, which really pissed me off.
“I’m not one of anything,” I said.
• •
Koz came over after Mama and my brother fell asleep on the night after our first meet, which we won by a hair. We made out in bed for a while, and then he folded his arms behind his head and stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling, childish idiot stars Papa put up when I was afraid of the dark ages ago.
“I should really take those down,” I said.
“Maybe you should,” he said, and for some reason I was annoyed.
“I kind of like them.”
He laughed. “Suit yourself, Calf. I was just trying to be agreeable.”
“Here’s something you can agree with,” I said.
I reached into his pants and stroked his dick. Though his friends didn’t know it, Koz was a real Catholic who didn’t believe in sex before marriage. He didn’t even believe in blow jobs, though Lily gave me an extensive tutorial using a popsicle just in case. I finished, and we were quiet until I felt a jolting pain in my leg.
“Fuck,” I said, and I extended my toes and stretched forward until it stopped.
“Let me help,” Koz said, but I gently shoved him away. I guess I wasn’t so gentle because he looked hurt. He said, “You all right?”
“Of course.”
I got cramps in my calves a lot, usually at night. Though Papa was barely home during the day, I could always count on him in the middle of the night when I’d wake up crying out and he’d rush to my room and flex my leg until the pain went away. “There you go, my dear girl,” he’d say. “All better.”
Koz got up and buckled his jeans. “It’s pretty musty in here. I would open up the window if I were you.”
“When it gets warmer,” I said, but he was already walking away.
Later that night, my brother cried out, and I ran to his room. The blanket Mama made was soaked with sweat and Grisha the hamster was agitated, banging into his wheel. My brother read more books than any six-year-old and was full of knowledge about presidents and dog breeds, but he didn’t know how to stop wetting himself. I cleaned him up and took him to my bed. He let me take care of him only after his nightmares now, which started after Papa died. Me, I never remembered my dreams. I would have traded with my brother in a heartbeat.
“Papa got stuck on the train tracks and I couldn’t pull him off. You should have seen his face. He looked so sad,” he said.
“His face was like that because you’re sad, Mishka. But he’s not sad. He’s somewhere up there, laughing at us.”
“Up with your glowing stars?” he asked, nuzzling into me, his voice thick with sleep.
“Higher than that, silly,” I told him, tossing a semen-stained tissue in the trash. “He’s up there with the real stars.”
• •
I was late for gym. Lily had me trapped by her locker, rambling about her latest fight with her boyfriend, Vinay. She was saying, “The fuck is his problem? If he wanted to date somebody who gave him head all the time, then he should get with a white girl . . . no offense.” I wasn’t offended. I was mostly counting down the minutes until practice. I did find it funny that a Korean girl was telling me white girls were slutty when she was the one who wasn’t a virgin.
I only realized I said what I was thinking when she said, “What’s the matter with you, Oxycontin? You think you know everything now?”
“All I know is I’m late for gym.”
“Whatever,” she said, nudging me as she slinked off to the Art Wing. Lily never stayed mad for long. I speed-walked down the hall until I heard a voice behind me.
“Oksana Konnikova.”
I moved into the narrow corridor that led to the auditorium stage, until there was just an arm’s distance between me and Benny. He grabbed the ends of my scarf, pulling me closer. My hair flew up from the static. I tried to smooth it down but it only crackled more.
“Cool scarf.”
“My mom made it. She made me, like, five this month alone. The only thing she does anymore is make scarves and sweaters for me and my brother. You’d think we live in Siberia or something, like my grandfather did during the war . . .” He smiled like he knew I was rambling.
“It’s all right,” he said, dropping the ends of my scarf. “I like hearing you talk.”
“I finished The Stranger. I mean, I read it again. It’s pretty dark.”
“Is it?” He scratched the back of his head and gave me a grown-up smile. “You ready?”
“For what?”
“To kick South Brunswick’s ass tomorrow.”
I considered jumping into coach-athlete banter, but I knew it wouldn’t impress him.
“Not really. But it doesn’t matter what happens. I can win or lose, and it won’t make a difference. I just run so I don’t sit at home and go nuts.”
He smiled. “That sounds about right to me.”
The final bell rang but I didn’t move. I said, “Can you write me a pass?”
“I’m not a teacher.”
I walked away, holding the ends of my scarf, feeling the heat on the back of my neck. I studied myself in a display of football trophies in the lobby and barely recognized the girl with the rumpled hair who felt wild in front of her teacher’s son.
The 9/11 memorial was next to the trophies, showing a picture of Ferraro’s son along with two dads of kids I didn’t know. Every month or so, Mr. Ferraro would cover the memorial with Never Forget posters; the administrators usually tore them down. His son stood on a porch wearing a plaid shirt and a dopey smile that seemed inappropriate for the occasion. In the picture his father chose to represent him, taken who knows how long before he jumped out of his building to avoid getting burned alive, the man looked almost lovesick.
• •
I spent lunch helping Mrs. Gold grade sophomore quizzes on The Odyssey. The final question was How many years went by before Odysseus returned? Someone wrote, two thousand light years, and she chuckled as she drew a red line through his answer.
“Benny seems to be doing well,” she said, studying my face.
“He’s great,” I said. “The team loves him.” This wasn’t strictly true, but it was better than everyone thinks he’s stuck up but I might be obsessed with him.
“I’m so glad,” she said, smiling big. She hummed to herself, not even caring when her kids had clearly not done the reading.
When she taught The Odyssey last year, she once stepped away from her desk to stare out a window during a discussion. “Penelope’s one lucky broad,” she had said. “She got her man back.” Then she stared at us, bewildered, as if we could relate. I didn’t know when her husband died, but I loved her even more after that.
“I’m so glad,” she said again. “I was so worried. I just want—I want to make the world safe for him, but there’s only so much I can do and it terrifies me.”
“There’s no need to worry.” She didn’t look convinced, so I changed the subject. I said, “What is a light year, anyway?” I didn’t hear her answer because I saw Benny walking down the hall, looking at his stopwatch like it could tell him something important.
• •
Plainfield was a joke. I placed first in the mile by five seconds. Misty O’Farrell, Plainfield’s blonde elf of a miler and one of the only white girls on the team, normally put up more of a fight. Plainfield was the only school in the county in shittier shape than ours, cracks running through the track like varicose veins.
Koz was doing his comedy act on the ride home. As we passed a water tower, he said, “Why do they put the water up so high? So nobody steals it?” The guys cracked up, but Benny interrupted him before he had a chance to riff.
“The elevation makes it flow into the pipes.”
“Right,” Koz said, offended. “Thanks for the pro-tip, man.”
We passed Bollywood Cinema, formerly Hollywood Cinema. They still had movies for white people, but they served samosas along with popcorn. I liked samosas better than popcorn anyway, but Koz didn’t like going there anymore. I expected him to complain about it, but he just shook his head and let go of my hand. I pulled out my SAT book and refreshed myself on geometry, or as Lily called it, white people math.
The bus passed the front of our school, a two-story slab of cement that looked like a mausoleum. I was glad Papa wasn’t buried, that he was in an urn in our living room, though I didn’t like how it was above the TV Mama got after he died because he hated TV. The inside of the urn looked just like the jar where he threw his cigarette ashes.
“What does the school look like to you?” I asked Koz.
“I don’t know what the right answer is, Calf. It looks like a fucking school.”
“There’s no right answer.”
“Is that right,” he said. “Then why do I feel like I keep getting everything wrong?”
He tried to get me to go to the Rutgers food trucks, but I passed, though he was my ride. I waited outside for Benny to leave his office and asked him to take me home.
“Your boyfriend can’t take you?”
I shrugged. My hair flew up in the wind. My sweat had cooled, making me shiver.
“All right, kid. Get in.”
I climbed into his musty car. “I looked you up in the yearbook,” I said. “You had everything back then. What happened to you?”
He laughed. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
“What happened to you?”
“Why do you care? What, you’re worried you’re going to lose it too?”
“Maybe I already have.”
He drove out of the lot as I told him where I lived. And then, in a monotone voice he could have used to tell me the distance workout for that day, he told me what I wanted to know. At Harvard, he spent all his time reading, didn’t see the point in going to class. In high school, there had been too much noise for him to see that. He said, “The edges blurred. It wasn’t anything romantic. I broke down during my senior year and went away for a while. I spent most of the time reading, really. I read all of Proust. The pills helped a little. I finally graduated and moved to the city and tutored rich kids. But last summer, I got tired again, so I moved back in with my mom. She thought it would help to get me back here, to remind me of my glory days . . .”
I waited for him to mention his dad, knowing he must have played a hand in all this. I wanted to ask when he died, but instead I said, “Is it helping?”
“I’m not you, all right? You’re just a kid. I know you love the fucking Bell Jar, but you’re gonna be fine. Trust me.” I turned toward the window, and he squeezed my arm. “Most Likely to Succeed,” he said. “More like, Most Likely to Smoke Weed.”
“How about you get to know me before you tell me who I am?” I said. I didn’t want it to come out so mean. Until then, it didn’t occur to me that he didn’t know about my dad, that this fact that dominated my existence wasn’t written on my face, that his mother hadn’t mentioned it.
He parked in front of my house. “You’re right,” he said, resting his hand on my thigh. “I do want to know you. I’m just—trying to keep my distance.”
My brother watched us from the kitchen window. His blond curls were getting really wild. I would have to give him another haircut soon.
“That’s my brother,” I said. “And my mom’s probably on the couch, watching Law & Order and knitting more shit I don’t need.”
“Where’s your father?”
“Papa died a year ago,” I said, as my brother pounded on the glass. “Or maybe it was yesterday.”
• •
Mama was on the couch as I predicted, under a blanket she had made. Blue’s Clues buzzed on the TV. There were spools of yarn at Mama’s feet. She was knitting, always knitting—something she never did when Papa was alive, when she worked in a Rutgers lab.
My brother came in from the kitchen. As I kicked off my shoes, he said, “That was a Nissan Sentra.” This made Mama perk up.
“Who took you home in a Nissan?” She knew Koz drove a Ford. I told her it was a friend from the team, and she went back to knitting.
Mama used to be a real person, with friends, a job she liked, a sense of humor. She also worried about me and my brother getting cold, as Jewish mothers do, and that was the only thing left, her covering us in layers of wool as if the warmth would fix everything. It made me wonder what would be left of me if I fell apart. Would I spend my days holed up with a book? Running laps? Studying until I went blind?
My brother opened his presidents book. He already knew the names of all fifty states and capitals. The names of fifty breeds of dogs, every car that passed our house, the trees in the woods; in the summers, he sat by the creek out back, naming all of the fish and even the rocks. Where had he come from? When I was his age, I was always running, running, running. It must have been all the time he spent indoors. Next year, he’d go to kindergarten, leaving Mama alone.
I pulled him up and said, “Let’s get some air. We have an hour before dark.”
A few boys played basketball at the park; one kid shot and missed wildly, and the others cracked up. When we got close, my brother dropped my hand.
“Did you know that William Howard Taft was the fattest president?” he said.
“That’s quite an honor.”
“He once got stuck inside the White House bathtub even.”
“How did they get him out?” I asked, as we reached the frozen creek. Scraggly trees swayed behind it and my brother’s face clouded over. He didn’t like not having all the answers, so I moved on. “What a thing to be remembered for.”
On the way home, I saw that even the laziest people had stripped their homes of Christmas decorations. Which was too bad, because all the strung-up lights made the town look almost pretty.
Neel Shah was playing piano in the house across from ours. Papa loved hearing the boy play. He adored classical music and played nothing else in his car. On one rare evening when he was home early, our family stood outside Neel’s house, listening to song after song. We went in after I said I was tired, which was something that kept me up at night a few weeks later, after Papa’s Volkswagen Passat was crushed by a Dodge Neon on his morning commute. Would it have killed me to stay out a bit longer, hear a few more notes, to give Papa another moment of peace? I couldn’t forget the look on his face as he put an arm around me and my brother and said, “That, my dears, is the sound of perfection.” I nodded, though I’d never understand why it made him so happy. It just sounded like a lot of noise to me.
• •
I sat in my car in the junior lot after the next meet, not ready to go home. It had been an indoor meet and my lungs burned from running through the thick, dead air. I don’t know how long I was sitting there when Koz tapped my windshield.
I rolled down the window. “You scared me,” I said.
“My bad.” He wore his jersey and the blond hairs on his arms pricked up from the cold.
“Where’s your coat?” I said. “Get in. I don’t want you to freeze to death because of me.”
“That’s the most you’ve cared about me in a while. Ever since your coach showed up,” he said, though he did get in, pushing aside my mostly unread copy of Swann’s Way.
“Stop it,” I said. “He’s practically twice my age.”
“That’s what makes it so fucking gross.”
Koz’s minions walked by, humping the air when they saw us. I honked and they jumped away. I pulled out of the lot and the swing set receded in my rearview. We cruised down Tingley, passing the strip of restaurants by the fire station.
“Did you see that?” Koz said. “They’re tearing down Carmine’s for another Indian restaurant. Fucking A.”
“Carmine’s was kind of gross anyway.”
His lips got tight. Carmine’s was where we went on our first date. After we split a giant bowl of tortellini, he said, “Big calves, big eyes, big appetite. I like it,” and I heard myself telling him how Mama joked that I had big calves because I stood on my toes around Papa to try to be as tall as he was when I was little. I don’t know what I had against Carmine’s all of a sudden.
“There’s something you should know,” he said. “Lecky’s cousin went to Harvard with Coach Benny, and apparently he, like, went psycho there. You know what he did?” I put a hand on his shoulder but couldn’t stop him. “He jumped on a table in the dining hall and started shouting at the top of his lungs. Took out a knife and started carving up his neck. Blood spraying all over the place. They had to drag him away—”
“That’s bullshit,” I said, braking hard at a stop sign. “He doesn’t have any scars.” I tried to focus on the road. There were piles of snow on either side of it, already black and slushy.
Koz’s voice shook. “You and me have something special, Ox. I don’t want you to get caught up with—someone dangerous.”
“That’s sweet of you, but I can hold my own. I’m a big girl.”
“I don’t want you to think you’re invincible. I love you.”
“Stop,” I said, but the look in his eyes was so helpless that I squeezed his hand. On his street, the snow banks were cleaner than on the main road. The snowman on his neighbor’s lawn was melting, flashing a demented smile. I saw his tiny mother in the kitchen, making dinner for her only son. The American flag they put up after 9/11 flailed in the wind.
“Here we are now,” I said. “America.”
Koz dropped my hand and said, “I want you to know who I am.”
“What?”
“That’s what he kept shouting,” he said, as he opened the door. “Over and over and over.”
• •
“Would you like a hug, sweetie? A Xanax?” said Mrs. Gold, peering into me.
I was at her kitchen table, suffering through a passage about “The Hollow Men.” I knew Benny was there because I smelled pot.
“I’m just nervous,” I said, after too long. “Just a month to go before the test.”
“You have nothing to worry about, kid.”
The phone rang and Mrs. Gold said it would be a minute, so I followed the skunky smell up the stairs. Photos of Mrs. Gold and her husband crowded the wall; in one, they stood in the Grand Canyon, looking tan and impossibly young. I remembered Mrs. Gold crying for him. With his big nose and bulky camera, Mr. Gold didn’t look like a man who could inspire much passion, but I guess that’s how most people seemed when you weren’t the one who loved them.
I walked down a dark hall until I saw a room with a fish tank and lava lamp, bubbling around like an angry fetus. Benny stood by the window, smoking a joint. He faced the neighbor’s house; the chimney sent puffs of smoke into the night air.
“Hey,” I said, and he fumbled with his joint.
“Jesus, I didn’t see you there.”
“Sorry. Your mom’s on the phone,” I said. “I don’t mean to be in your way.”
“No,” he said, grabbing my wrist. “Stay a minute.”
I came closer. I couldn’t see his scars because he wore a turtleneck. It occurred to me that he always wore a turtleneck or a sweatshirt—it was cold now, but he couldn’t hide forever.
“Can I be honest?” I said, and he nodded. “I couldn’t get into Swann’s Way.”
He laughed. “Me neither.”
“But I thought you said—”
“It made for a better story. I was too sedated to read much at the hospital. You know what I read? Comic books.”
“Oh,” I said.
He put out his joint and said, “This is a bad habit I’m trying to break.”
“We all have them.”
He brushed a strand of hair away from my face and said, “Not you, my dear.”
He put his hand around my waist and pulled me toward him. He kissed me and kissed me. His tongue was warm and ashy. My bones melted. It was nothing like being kissed by Koz, who was sloppy and eager to please. I cupped his face and that was when I saw them, the small cuts under his ears. They didn’t make me want to leave. I pulled down his turtleneck, running my hands down his neck, feeling the rough, jagged skin underneath.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he said, pushing me away.
“I just wanted to see.”
“So somebody told you,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “It all makes sense now. What was this, some kind of bet?”
“It’s not like that. I just wanted to know if it was true.” He looked so hurt that I didn’t know what to do next. I tried conjuring the literary characters who instructed me over the years, but what popped into my head was Lily ranting in the hall. If he wanted to date someone who gave him head all the time, then he should just be with a white girl.
I pulled down his sweatpants, got on my knees, and put his dick in my mouth. It was tender and almost hard. He put his hands on my shoulders to push me away, but they just stayed there as I tried to bring him to life. He moaned softly, and I was surprised by how much he sounded like Koz when I touched him, all the world’s men reduced to the same boyish sound. He began to cry and was limp and I gave up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just been so long.”
A light year, I thought, though I still didn’t know what it meant. As I stepped into the hall, I remembered the pictures of his father.
“When did your dad die?” I said.
“Ten years ago,” he said. “Or maybe . . .” I walked away before I could hear the rest.
• •
On the bus to States, Benny blandly wished me luck, like I could have been anybody. Anytime I tried to talk to him, his eyes just glazed over and he gave me an empty smile that shattered me. I read “Ariel” with my head against the window, my hoodie up. I was thinking of the crying sound Benny made in his room. What had I done? What did I think he could give me?
That year the Championships were in East Orange. A patchy field of grass separated the track from the parkway, where cars zoomed behind a wire fence. Koz took second in the boys’ mile, and the girls were called before I finished warming up. I got to the starting line and moved into the second row, behind Misty O’Farrell and her ponytail. Lito gave me a look, like, Are you nuts? I shrugged. Why should I be the one setting the pace? Let someone else do the work, for once. I didn’t care about Lito. What worried me was that Benny wasn’t watching.
I took the first lap nice and easy. After the first 400, there were five girls in front of me. Benny wasn’t near the starting line. He was walking toward the parkway. By the second lap, it was just me and Misty, that Irish waif. I was tired of watching her blonde ponytail bobbing up and down, like a halfhearted whip, striking at nothing. I passed the dumb bitch. Then I did the stupid thing I always do: I searched for Papa in the stands. He was always asking if he could see me run, but I always told him, No, no, you’d just make me nervous.
I was still ahead as the bell clanged at the final lap. I could still see Benny in the distance. He had almost reached the fence before the parkway. I didn’t think he would try to climb it, but Koz’s story made it seem like nothing was off the table. Whatever he was doing was my fault. I ran off the track two straights from the finish. Past the coaches, past Koz, past the crowd, past patches of icy grass and a few ducks, stopping just behind Benny. I tried to catch my breath. It came out white and dusty, like car exhaust. He wouldn’t look at me.
“I didn’t finish the race,” I said.
“Another mistake. But you’re young. You’ll make plenty more.” The cars flew past us. He picked up a rock and lobbed it over the fence, just missing a truck.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“A lot. But you know that already. You had your fun, didn’t you?”
“I wasn’t just having fun. I liked you. You let me be who I am.”
“Just who you are right now. Don’t worry. It’ll pass.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I bet you are.”
More cars zipped by: two taxis, a truck with a horse swinging its tail in the back, a beat-up minivan with black tape over its windows. Koz ran up with a medal around his neck, looking pale and cold.
“Leave her the fuck alone, man,” he said, coming at Benny fast. I hadn’t seen the two of them standing together until then and didn’t realize how much bigger Koz was.
Benny held up his hands and said, “I’m trying.”
“Stop it,” I said, trying to move between them. “It’s my fault. Please.”
“Too late,” Koz said. He cocked his arm back, hesitated for a second when he saw the blank look on Benny’s face, and punched him anyway. Benny fell and moaned, covering his face. Koz stared at his hand, Benny’s blood dripping down his fingers.
“Are you coming with me or not, Calf?” He reached his fucked-up hand out to me.
Benny looked up, his face wrecked. “Why don’t you ever call her by her fucking name?” I looked at Benny and back at Koz.
“Fuck,” I said, falling over my leg. “Fucking cramp.”
It was a cowardly move, I knew. Koz wasn’t buying it.
Benny said, “Here. Let me help you,” and he slammed his head against the fence one, two, three times before we pulled him away, his forehead streaked with blood and rust. I looked for an authority figure. I pictured Detective Olivia Benson from Law & Order coming to save the day. But it was just Coach Lito running up with his fists clenched at his sides, reeking of Jack.
“What the fuck?” he said, and a few coaches followed him and escorted Benny to the bus.
Koz wouldn’t talk to me. I followed him to the bleachers, where the rest of the team was sitting. He rubbed his hand, and I saw how badly I had fucked everything up.
“At least put on a sweatshirt,” I said.
The Hawks ended up placing third—it would have been second, if I had finished my race, and first if Koz didn’t get DQed for punching Benny, though the coaches argued it wasn’t fair because all that happened after his race. Mrs. Gold arrived in the Nissan Sentra as the team dragged our equipment on the bus. Benny climbed out in a daze. He and his mother looked hunched over and old as they bucked against the wind. I wanted to go up to them, but I knew I would only make things worse, so I got on the bus as their car receded into the traffic.
• •
Benny was in the hospital after that, first for his face, then for his mind. I knew I had ruined him enough and didn’t consider visiting, though I did spend the weekend standing outside Koz’s house, under his American flag. He wouldn’t answer the phone or the door.
The entire school knew what happened by Monday. Everyone went quiet anytime I turned down the hall. I walked by Mrs. Gold’s room four times before I went in. I was afraid to ask about Benny, so I asked if we were still on for our last SAT session the next evening. Her face was pinched and stony, and I knew I shouldn’t have come.
“You and I are done, kid. You’ll be fine without me. And I’ll be more than fine without you.”
“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know how much she knew and didn’t want to find out.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, returning to her quizzes.
• •
Koz sat on the other side of the cafeteria, avoiding my gaze. I ate the chocolate chip cookies Lily stole, which were gooey and underbaked, just perfect. Lily and Vinay memorized the answers to Ferraro’s latest test, their lips moving silently. She kept glancing at me but I just stared at Koz. She put an arm around me and said, “Damn girl, you must be hungry.”
“I’m fine,” I said, knowing I’d break down if she kept being nice.
“Suit yourself.”
Lunch was almost over, and now was my chance. I needed to get Koz’s attention. The teachers were already congregating by the exits. I climbed up on the table, nearly losing my balance. “What the—” Lily said, and I waited a beat until hundreds of eyes were on me. Even the IQ of 2 Crew perked up. The problem was, I had to say something. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. Koz was looking in my direction at last.
“I want you to know,” I said, holding his gaze. He put down his sandwich. I tried to channel Benny, to think of what was going through his head when he jumped on the table in his dining hall. It was a popular day for Lily’s hoodie—dozens of kids wore black sweatshirts with fire climbing up their chests, a room of flames. “I want you to know how proud I am of track and field. We got third in States!” I said. “Burn, baby, burn! The Hoover Hawks are on fire.”
I jumped down to tepid applause, and I walked away fast. Just before the front lobby, I heard footsteps behind me. Koz was rubbing his bandaged hand.
“Nice job up there.”
“I’m sorry, Koz.”
“It’s too late for that. You made your choice on the field.”
“I guess I did,” I said, scuffing the floor with my sneaker. “I didn’t mean what I said about Carmine’s. You know I loved that place. The tortellini was amazing.”
“Tortellini? Do me a favor. When you get home, open the fucking windows. Tortellini,” he said again, shaking his head, and then he disappeared around the corner.
I passed Mr. Ferraro in the lobby. He was putting up another batch of Never Forget posters around the 9/11 memorial. Why not forget? I wanted to say. What good is it to remember? I helped him put up the rest anyway. It didn’t take very long.
He stepped back to admire his handiwork. “What do you think?”
“I think you need to make up some new test questions.”
• •
My brother woke me up at dawn the day before the SAT. I kissed his forehead and wiped the sweat off his face. He didn’t wet himself this time.
“Everything’s fine, rabbit. You were just having a bad dream.” I climbed into bed with him and stroked his hair.
“Sana? When will the dreams stop?”
“Soon, soon. You’ll see. Just go back to bed.”
“Will you stay with me?”
“Of course I’ll stay,” I said. Then something occurred to me. “How long is a light year?”
“A light year is a measure of distance, not time,” he recited.
“What does that mean?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes. He didn’t know everything.
Grisha ran in jagged circles in his cage, thinking he’d get fed because we were up. I watched my brother close his eyes, wondering how much he remembered Papa, knowing that one day he would be out of his dreams, that he wouldn’t remember a thing about him. I was devastated for him, but I also thought he was lucky to have his head cleared of someone he loved forever. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wouldn’t forget.
There was only an hour left before I had to get ready for school, and the sky was turning purple, the moon growing faint. The only house that was lit up belonged to Neel the piano maestro. Every morning, when I got up for school, I saw him finishing up his routine, stretching his fingers. I opened the window as he began to play, though I was too far away to hear a thing, not that it would have made a difference. As the sun crawled up, his father pulled out of the garage, probably leaving for the city. He waved good-bye to his son, but the boy didn’t look up, not even once, because he was so determined to finish playing his song.
