Like No Other (15 page)

“You’re the boy from the elevator, right?” she whispers. I nod, and she smiles. “Does Devorah know you’re here? Is she meeting you?” The fact that Devorah told her sister about me is as good a sign as I’ve gotten all week. I have to fight the urge to leap up and hug this girl.

“No,” I say as low as I can. “She doesn’t know I’m here. But we’ve met. I mean, since the elevator.”

“I knew it!” Hanna says, looking pleased with herself for a second before she glances back nervously at the house. “No one can know you’re here. Even staying on the street is pretty risky. But if you can get around to the backyard, I’ll make sure Devorah sees you. Her window is on the second floor.”

“Is the backyard really safe?” I ask. “You guys don’t have, like, a pair of Dobermans back there?”

“No,” she says, laughing. “And my mom hasn’t cleared the weeds in about three years, so no one will be back there, I promise. There’s an old playhouse near the fence that you can hide behind, but everyone is getting ready for Shabbos so I don’t think anyone’s going to be looking as long as you don’t make noise.”

“Thank you,” I say gratefully. She shrugs self-consciously and then runs back across the street, where I hear the door open and shut with a thud.

“You’re
in
, man!” Ryan whispers, punching my shoulder.

“Don’t congratulate me yet,” I say.

We make plans to meet back in front of the bakery, and Ryan jogs off, leaving me to decide how best to get across the street and into the Blums’ backyard without looking like a shady intruder. Which I am, I guess. Something my mom likes to say when she’s up on her equal-opportunity soapbox floats through my head:
People have enough reasons not to like you just based on how you look; don’t give them any more based on how you act.
Creeping around a lily-white neighborhood with a big backpack and climbing into people’s yards is probably exactly what she’s talking about, but Hanna is giving me a shot that I can’t turn down. I have to see Devorah. It’s like breathing at this point, or eating. It feels like I need her to live.

There’s still no sign of anyone outside on the street—I must have lucked out and arrived just late enough so that everyone is already home from work—so I figure my best bet is to simply make a dash for it, around the car, across the street, through the thin passageway between Devorah’s house and her neighbors’, and into the yard. I’m about to spring into action when my phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s a text from my mom:

Where are u? Never can find u these days. Need milk. XO Mom

As I’m reading that one, trying to ignore the guilt it stirs up, a text from Ryan appears on the screen:

Dude you described just came out of store. Be careful.

Jacob’s on his way. There’s no time to wait now. Still clutching my phone, I jump up and sprint as fast as I can across the street and into the alley between the houses, where I have to turn sideways to fit through. I shuffle along, wincing at every twig that crunches under my sneakers, until the red brick spills out into an overgrown square of grass littered with rusted toys and shaded by a big magnolia tree. The entrance to the backyard from the house seems to be a basement door that’s padlocked from the outside, so at least I know there’ll be no element of surprise. I see the playhouse Hanna described, which is bowed and rotted through in some places, but it gives some cover so I crouch behind it and stare up at the three windows on the second floor. I don’t know which one she’ll appear at, but I want to be ready when she does. I realize too late that I probably should have spent my energy making a sign, instead of dreaming up the metaphorical statement I’ve got in my backpack, tied to a very risky gift. But it’s too late now.

I see movement in the center window and duck my head. There’s the sound of the storm window being shoved open, and then Devorah’s voice drifts down through the warm evening air: “I can’t believe you’re hot, Hanna, it’s
freezing
in here!” I smile to myself and silently thank my girl Hanna for being so sly. Devorah definitely doesn’t know I’m here. But now it’s up to me to make my presence known.

I stand up and hear her gasp before I’ve even had time to lift my eyes up to her face. She’s framed perfectly in the window, her arms above her head pushing the storm window up, her face a pale circle glowing in the center of a dark square. Her eyes widen, and her mouth drops open.

“No, it’s nothing, I just saw a squirrel and it scared me,” she says, turning back into the room for a moment. “Go downstairs, I’ll just be a second.”

She looks back down at me, and I open my mouth to say what I came to say, but she raises a finger to her lips and shakes her head urgently. So I do the only thing I can, the only thing I feel, which is to raise one hand to my heart like I’m about to say the Pledge of Allegiance, only not to any flag but to Devorah. And I just stare up at her and think,
I love you I love you I love you.

The light is getting hazy, that soft orangey glow that will soon give way to purple dusk, but it’s bright enough still that I can see her features perfectly as they crumple, her chin quivering, her eyes folding into little winks. I was a little afraid she’d be angry that I showed up at her house, but I never thought she’d cry. I start to feel awful, until she breaks into the most heartbreaking smile, laughing and crying at the same time, and puts her hand up to her chest, too, so that we’re just standing staring at each other, knowing we’re both thinking the same thing.

I don’t know how much time passes—probably only seconds, though it feels like hours—but somebody must be calling her down to dinner, because she turns again and yells, “I’m coming!” and then looks back at me again, wiping her tears away. She holds up a hand, and then she disappears from the window. Is she asking me to wait?

I crouch back down and tuck my chin, pressing my forehead against the warm, spongy wood of the playhouse. Hanna was right: It seems like no one has spent time back here in decades. The sun’s almost down, but in the light streaming in through the half-sunken roof I can see toy cars and plastic dolls buried in the weeds, crusted over with rust and dirt. It’s a sad tableau, but it’s also the perfect place to hide the cell phone.

It’s one of those old-school Nokias that no one uses anymore; I got it from the T-Mobile store near work for $19.99 plus $20 to buy us three hundred minutes’ worth of phone calls, which, based on the amount of time Devorah has free to talk, I figure should last us about eight years. I set everything up last night and already committed the number to memory, although of course it’s in my phone under both “D” and “Pandora,” just in case one of them accidentally gets erased. In Devorah’s new phone, I’ve programmed my number in under “J.” That seems like the safest choice in the hypothetical, worst-case scenario event that one of her parents or someone else finds it before she does. Oh, and I’ve set my outgoing voice mail to the default female robot voice that just says my number, not my name. Covering all my bases. The ringtone, though, that’s pure Jax; I couldn’t help myself. I know it’s risky not to just leave it on silent, but she can always turn the volume off. I just need her to know that I put thought into every detail. I’ll give you one guess what the song is. When I call, I want it to sound like what falling in love feels like.

After a few minutes, when Devorah still hasn’t resurfaced, I decide to get to work, putting plan B into fast and decisive action. (
Action Jaxon—maybe J-Riv was on to something after all.
) I unzip my bag as quietly as possible and pull out the string, which is already tied on one end to the Nokia. That should be enough to anchor it to the ground, but just in case I loop the string around a nail on the back of the playhouse, too, letting the phone drop into the yellow grass inside. As for the other end, I had hoped to let it loose—which would probably be more romantic—but the breeze isn’t strong enough, and besides, then it might fall, forgotten, into the weeds after I’ve left. And if she doesn’t see it, she won’t find the phone. Or get the sappy metaphor. Because it’s more than a decoy hiding the real present; the next time Devorah looks out her bedroom window, I want her to know that it’s a message from me, to let her know that I love her, and that I won’t stop until she feels that freedom that she’s always dreamed of. Until she feels like she’s flying.

D
evorah

S
EPTEMBER
12, 7:18
PM

“B
aruch a-ta A-do-nay Elo-hei-nu me-lech ha-o-lam a-sher ki-dee-sha-nu bi-mitz-vo-tav vi-tzi-va-noo li-had-leek ner shel Sha-bbat ko-desh.”

My mother’s sweet alto rings out over our Shabbos table, and I know I’m supposed to be praying and giving thanks and channeling joy and positivity. After all, Liya is finally home, blissfully unconscious in a sling on Rose’s chest. The storm has passed, the neighborhood is clean again (and so is Rose, having emerged from her ritual bath just as the baby started sleeping for five-hour stretches at night, which has helped her to dezombify somewhat). We’re all healthy, and Rosh Hashanah, the new year and first of the High Holy Days, is practically around the corner. But all I can think as I light my Shabbos candle is:
Shit. Shi
t. Shit shit shit shit shit SHIT.
I would owe Jaxon’s mother two dollars for cursing that much. And all because her son is stupid and romantic enough to show up unannounced
in my backyard
.

My inner monologue goes something like this:

I mean, what is he THINKING?

(He loves me.)

Someone could see him!
Everyone
could see him.

(I might love him, too.)

Not that any of that will matter once he gets caught.

(This is the bravest thing he could do.)

This is the most selfish thing he could do.

(Hanna knows now. At least she can help, and that’s a relief.)

Jacob knows now, and if he catches Jaxon here, we’re dead. Maybe literally.

(How can I sneak off to see him again?)

How can I get rid of him without arousing suspicion?

(When he raised his hand to his heart, I cried.)

Every time anyone turns toward the window, I feel like puking.

(He loves me.)

I hate him!

(I love him.)

SHIT.

I manage to make it through the kiddush and the washing of the hands without anyone noticing my silent panic attack. But after the HaMotzi blessing, as we’re passing around the challah, I shove the basket to my right without paying attention and accidentally drop it right into Rivka’s lap. My brothers snicker.

“Keep your eyes open, please,” my mother says with a laugh. And I know she’s just joking about my butterfingers, but she’s right on a deeper level, too.

“Maybe she’s got something on her mind,” Jacob says, taking a sip of his wine.

“More like nothing in my stomach,” I shoot back. Our eyes meet, and I try not to think about Jaxon. At this point, I half believe Jacob could read my mind if he tried.

“Well, there’s no shortage of food,” my father says, passing me a platter of brisket swimming in gravy. He smiles at Mom, laying his big, chubby catcher’s-mitt hand on her shoulder. “You’ve outdone yourself yet again.”

Mom beams, her face as bright as the flames licking up at the ceiling from the tapered white candles between us. “Well, I’ll never forget the very first thing your mother said to me during our
bashow
,” she says with a laugh. (A
bashow
is the first meeting of a newly matched couple, usually with the groom and his parents visiting the potential bride in her family’s home.) She sets her features into an accusatory scowl and shakes her finger, impersonating my late Bubbe Sara.
“Can you cook?”

My father chuckles and shrugs. “What can I say—she was looking out for me!”

Hanna leans forward in her chair. “What did
you
think about Mama the first time you saw her?” My father rolls his eyes good-naturedly. This is not the first time Hanna has asked this particular question. In fact, it may be the seventeenth.

“I thought she was very nice,” he says carefully.

“That’s it?” Hanna asks, unimpressed.

“What more do you want?” Isaac asks, spearing a potato with his fork. He’s one to talk, the eldest son who’s already seen his younger brother and sister both married off and who has already had not one but two failed attempts at
shidduchim
because he didn’t like the girls the
shadchan
picked. I start to open my mouth to say as much when I think better of it. I don’t know if Jaxon is still waiting for me, and I need to make sure he’s not doing anything crazy—or crazier than what he’s already done. If I can eat quickly and get to my room without anyone suspecting anything, I can check to make sure he’s well-hidden, and then write out a sign on a piece of paper, something to hold up in the window to tell Jax where to hide until I can sneak away later, when everyone leaves for
tish
.

“Hanna wants love at first sight,” Niv says, laughing derisively. “Fairy-tale stuff.”

“That is why,” my father says, clearing his throat and reaching for the water pitcher, “you should not be reading fairy tales.”

“I don’t read them,” Miri says proudly.

“Neither do I,” Hanna cries. “I just thought when you met your soul mate you’d come up with something better than ‘very nice.’” She kicks me under the table—now that Aunt Varda’s back in Monsey, Hanna has resumed her usual seat—and I grit my teeth. Hanna might be more of a liability than a confidante.

“Ahh, I see,” my father says, drumming his fingers together in front of his wiry black beard. “Well, that’s because we don’t know our
bashert
by sight. Only Hashem knows.”

“And He brings you together through the
shadchan
,” my mother adds.

Or He cuts out power to your elevator
, I think. Across the table, Jacob is staring off disinterestedly while chewing, his eyes drifting up toward the window behind me. I have to get his attention so that he doesn’t accidentally spot Jaxon, but it feels like poking a sleeping dragon.

“What was your first meeting with Rose like?” I ask, smiling what I hope looks like a real smile. He looks at me quizzically and then dabs at his mouth with his napkin.

“It was very . . . traditional,” he says, drawing out the last word for my benefit.

“Bo-ring,” Amos mutters under his breath.

“Weren’t you there?” Rose asks, furrowing her brow, and I shake my head.

“I was in the house when the Kleinmans came over, but I wasn’t in the room.” This is not exactly a lie; I was crouched at the top of the stairs, trying hard to eavesdrop but failing miserably. I turn back to Jacob and force myself to grin again, ever the obsequious sister-in-law. “Rose was giddy afterward,” I tell him.

“That’s silly,” he snaps, throwing down his napkin. “It’s not just unrealistic to fall in love before marriage, it’s destructive to our faith. Because to have romantic thoughts about someone before being joined before G-d constitutes a sin, and a union based on sin is by definition unholy.” It sounds like he’s yelling at Rose, but I know that Jacob is talking very specifically—and very threateningly—to me.

“All right, all right,” Zeidy says with an annoyed wave, trying to reroute the dinner conversation, but Jacob is just warming up. His thin lips are wet with spit as he leans in to deliver his sermon.

“In Genesis 24:67, what does it say about Isaac?” he asks pedantically, tapping his finger on the table like a frustrated grade-school teacher. “
He married Rebecca, she became his wife, and he loved her.
Not he loved her and she became his wife, but she became his wife and
then
he loved her. Love takes a long time—years, even.”

“Excuse me,” Rose whispers, as she pushes her chair away from the table and walks into the kitchen, cradling the still-sleeping Liya.

“Thank you, Jacob,” my mother says loudly. Her tone is polite, but her eyes are flashing. “I’m sure Devorah only meant that Rose was excited to be matched with such a fine young man. As we all were.”

“Okay,” he says, sighing, clearly upset at being cut off mid-rant. “But it’s important for the children to understand these things. Love is not romantic. Love is
earned,
through virtue.”

“Well said,” my father booms. “Now, would someone please pass me the peas?”

Silverware starts clinking, and Niv and Isaac start debating what kind of car Niv and Rivka should buy when the lease on their Corolla runs out, and just as I’m letting out a shaky breath into my untouched brisket, thinking that the worst is over, Rose lets out a gasp right behind me. And I don’t even have to turn around to know that she’s standing directly in the center of the big, five-foot window that looks from the dining room out into the yard, directly in line with the little abandoned playhouse that, when last I checked, my six-foot-tall secret boyfriend was using for camouflage.

“What’s wrong?” my mother asks, leaping up. “Is it the baby?”

“No,” Rose says. “But there’s something outside.”

• • •

I push back my chair like the house is on fire, but Amos is smaller and faster and is already at the front door before I can even stand up.

“Amos, wait, let me go first!” I cry, nearly barreling into Zeidy as I struggle to get out from behind the dining table. I push through the heavy front door and race down the steps after my brother, knowing full well that it actually makes me look
more
suspicious to spring into action like this, when the “something” my sister saw could be a psychopath holding a chainsaw, for all my family thinks I know. But the force that drives me out into the moonlit knee-high grass isn’t rational; it’s animal. Jaxon could still be out there, and I have to protect him. I cannot let Amos get to him first. Ignoring the cramps in my calves and the bile climbing my throat, I sprint through the narrow passage between the Eliavs’ house and ours, scraping my elbow on the rough stucco siding. “
Amos!
” I yell again.

“Cool!” I hear my little brother pant. That slows my heart somewhat; despite his affinity for zombie movie posters, I doubt Amos’s first reaction to finding a stranger hiding in the bushes would be that it was
cool
.

Sure enough, when I reach the backyard, I can see immediately that Jax is gone. But he’s left something for me: a kite, candy-apple red with a long string that twists down through the branches of the magnolia tree. It’s beautiful—or would be, if I were the only one who could see it. I look back over my shoulder and see Jacob, peering through the glass alongside my parents and brothers. Without thinking, Jaxon has raised a red flag in front of a bull.

“It’s a kite!” Amos yells to Hanna, who is rounding the corner with Miri on her heels. He gazes up at the fluttering streamers. “Where’d it come from?”

“It must have gotten blown over from someone else’s yard,” I say quickly.

“But there’s no wind,” Miri points out.

“Maybe it’s a
present
,” Hanna says.

“From who?” Amos asks, leaping for the string.

Shut up
, I scream at Hanna through telepathy.

“Devorah,” she calls, ignoring my glare, “why don’t you check and see if there’s a
note
?”

I freeze. Would Jaxon have been bold enough to leave an actual love letter? That doesn’t seem like his style—more likely, the kite
is
the love letter, a way to say it without saying it, risky but at the same time completely hidden in plain sight. Still, I’d be stupid not to check. If there is anything more damning, I have to see it before anyone else does.

“Stop it, Amos, you’ll break it,” I say, darting over to where my brother is fruitlessly tugging on a length of string snagged around a knot in the dusky brown trunk. I stand on tiptoe and run my fingers under the string slowly, feeling in the dark for a hidden scrap of paper but finding only scratchy branches. Behind me, I hear someone rapping their knuckles on the glass, but I don’t turn around. I’m almost to the kite. Just a few more inches . . .

“Can I be the first to try it?” Miri asks.

“I saw it first!” Amos cries.

“
Rose
saw it first,” Hanna scoffs. My fingers close around the diamond of nylon, and I pull back, dislodging the kite from the tree and nearly falling on my butt in the process. Amos grabs for it, but I elbow him away, turning it over in my hands, my eyes frantically searching the fabric for handwriting. I’m both incredibly relieved and unexpectedly disappointed to find none.

The window groans open, and my father’s voice fills the still night air. “Leave it alone!” he yells. “We’re in the middle of dinner. Come back inside right now.”

“Sorry, Abba,” I call, mentally preparing how I’ll talk my way out of this. Blowing in from someone else’s yard isn’t that far-fetched, is it? And even if it is, there’s no way to trace it to me. Not unless Jacob speaks up. And he couldn’t, not without proof. He’s too careful and calculating for that.

“Amos, let it
go
,” Miri says. While the three of us girls are obediently walking back toward the front of the house, smoothing out our skirts, Amos has picked up the kite where I dropped it and is yanking at it, getting snapped back again and again like a dog leashed to a post.

“It’s still stuck,” Amos says petulantly.

“
Leave it
,” my father commands from the window.

“But there’s something at the end!” Amos cries.

Hanna and I exchange a panicked look, and she doubles back, crouching to fit her head and shoulders through the door of the playhouse. A second later, the kite springs free, and Amos happily loops the string around his arm, running back toward the house, where I’m sure he will ferret it away among his toys and claim ownership. But I guess I have to let him.

“It was just a rock,” Hanna yells up at our audience in the window, running to join me by the basement door. But as we file along the dark brick side of the building, bathed in shadow, she taps my shoulder and opens her hand to reveal a small silver cell phone. She raises a hand to her lips, slips it into her sleeve, and hurries ahead.

• • •

I couldn’t say what the rest of dinner was like, because I was too busy spiraling into a panic attack, convinced that at any moment the phone hidden in my sister’s blouse would go off like some sort of explosive. That, combined with Jacob’s third degree, was nearly enough to stop my heart completely.