Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust (2 page)

But today, not even Mr. Willoughby can distract me from the back of Jesse's perfect head.

By the time I get back to my locker for lunch, Brooke is already there, chatting with our friend Chloe. I can tell from the dreamy expression on Brooke's face that they are talking about Jesse. Chloe is shorter than Brooke and me and curvier, despite being on a perpetual diet. She has blond hair, recently cut to a bob, and green eyes. She dances competitively and has really strict parents. Her dad is so mean, he doesn't even talk to us when we come over.

Chloe puts her arm around my shoulders. “I hear you are the
luckiest
girl ever.”

“It's not that big a deal.”

“Are you kidding?” Chloe elbows me in the ribs. “He
talked
to you.”

“Well, that's 'cause we used to know each other.”

Chloe shakes her head. “It's really not fair.”

“Guys, get a grip. He said, ‘Hi, how are you.'”

“An excellent start,” Brooke says. “Now you need to renew the friendship.”

I roll my eyes and pull my lunch bag out of my locker.

“I wonder why he's in our grade this year,” I say.

“I heard he flunked out of a bunch of stuff at boarding school, then dropped out for a while,” Brooke says.

It's weird. I used to know Jesse really well because he lives down the street from me. When I was in grade seven and he was in grade eight, we played a lot of basketball after school. That was the year my closest school friend, Alexis, moved to Seattle, and Rebecca Shuster formed the I-Hate-Lauren clique at my Hebrew day school. I was taller than all the other kids, my hair had erupted into this giant Jew-fro, and I had glasses
and
braces. I spent every recess playing basketball with the boys while the girls snickered. I'd come home after school, friendless and miserable, and play more basketball with Jesse. I was already five foot eight, and Jesse was only five foot three. Now he is taller than me.

When I started high school, we stopped hanging out together. His locker was in another wing of the school, and I felt too shy to talk to him. While I was hanging out with Chloe, Brooke and Em, he was skipping classes and getting expelled for breaking into the school gym to shoot hoops on weekends.

Before anyone can say anything else, Em comes racing down the hallway, dodging guys from the basketball team and Smoker girls. Em is the youngest of five kids, all much older than her, so only one sister still lives at home. Em lives in the biggest house I've ever seen. It has two staircases, but most of it's really shabby. The kitchen hasn't been renovated since at least 1980, and there's real shag carpet in the basement.

Red hair flying, glasses slipping down her nose, she skids on her flats and has to grab Chloe. “You won't believe what the musical is going to be this year.”

“Oh, do tell us,” Brooke says, sounding totally bored.

Em ignores her and takes Chloe by the shoulders.

“It's
Grease
!”

They start hugging each other and jumping all over the hall. “This is amazing,” Chloe shouts.

The guys stare at Chloe and Em, and Brooke and I step away.

Our high school puts on a musical every second year.

Last time it was
The Pajama Game
, and Chloe and Em were in the chorus because we were only in grade nine. Since there won't be a musical next year, this is their year.

And, oh yeah, they're obsessed with
Grease
. They already know all the songs and choreography from the movie. All through grades eight and nine, on a typical Saturday night we watched either
High School Musical
or
Grease
or reenacted scenes from them. Even I know all the lyrics to “Summer Nights” and I can't carry a tune. Chloe and Em's favorite song is “You're the One That I Want,” which they sing at the drop of a hat. It's cute, but also sort of annoying.

I go to the bathroom to distance myself from Chloe and Em, and when I get back, Brooke isn't where I left her. I gaze down the hallway and see her sitting on the floor with Chantal Matthews and some of the other Smoker girls. I don't really know Chantal. It's not that I don't like her or anything; she's just not into basketball or any of the theater stuff that Chloe and Em do. Chantal's always wearing too much makeup and showing too much cleavage. Her long red fingernails make me think of vampires. She usually sits at the back of every class, although I know she's smart at math. I saw her test by accident last year, and she got an almost perfect score, even on the story problems.

I walk back to where Chloe and Em are sitting. “What's up with that?” Chloe says, tilting her head toward Brooke.

We all stare down the hall a moment, and then I sit down and get out my lunch. Chloe and Em start talking about
Grease
again. Chloe wants to know if the boys will get to sing the raunchy lines from the “Greased Lightning” song and if they'll have to smoke onstage. I try to catch Brooke's eye, but she and Chantal get up and start heading down the hall toward the doors leading to the back field. Chantal usually spends her lunch hour with the rest of the Smokers under the big willow at the back of the field. After Brooke and Chantal go out, I slowly make my way down the hall to the double doors. I catch a glimpse of Brooke as she disappears under the long, drooping branches of the tree.

T
wo

A
fter lunch I have phys ed, followed by history with Mr. Whiteman. I had him last year too, and he's my favorite teacher in the whole school. He doesn't tell a lot of jokes or give you projects like making a comic strip about Quebec nationalism, but the essays and debates he assigns always make you think.

At the end of the day, Chloe and Em are off to a youth-group event at their church. Em has always been religious—she even goes to Bible study in the morning—but I'm pretty sure Chloe only goes to check out the guys.

Since Brooke was late for gym class, I don't have a chance to talk to her until the end of the day, when I corner her by her locker. “What's with eating lunch with the Smokers?”

“Drama talk is for losers.” Brooke pulls out her bag.

“Since when are you not a loser?” I tease Brooke, hip-checking her into her locker.

Brooke sticks out her tongue. “This year I'm into change. Wanna go for a run?”

I shrug. “You sure you want to run with a loser?”

“Only because I can cream you.”

Brooke and I walk to her house and change into our running clothes. Brooke used to live close to me in an even bigger house than mine, but her parents got divorced this summer. Now she lives in a townhouse near school. Brooke had to help move instead of coming to basketball camp with me for the last three weeks of August.

From Brooke's house we race uphill to my house. It's our standard run, and Brooke usually wins, but I did some research on sprinting and realized I've been starting my sprint too early. Today I let Brooke pull ahead and don't pick up my pace until I'm almost at the top of the hill. I sail past her easily and then cruise down my street. I even slow down so she can see my graceful arrival into my driveway. Brooke sticks out her tongue when she catches up, panting and huffing. She picks up my basketball from where it's resting by the net and starts dribbling fiercely. “I'm going to kill you now.”

When I was still in Hebrew-school hell, I would look forward to the weekends when Brooke and I would hang out and spend hours making forts out of cushions and blankets. When we got sick of the fort, we'd play soccer in her yard or basketball in the driveway.

Sometimes Brooke would come by my house on her bike and we'd go exploring. Before Brooke, I had only biked the streets around my house, a series of curved avenues boxed in by what my brother and I called “the busy streets.” Brooke fearlessly crossed major intersections, leading us blocks away from home. When I'd asked her if she was allowed to bike that far away, she shrugged and said, “I dunno. I never asked.”

Brooke's life was like that. In my house, play dates were scheduled by my mother in advance, and snacks were carefully and punctually prepared: neatly arranged cut-up fresh fruits and vegetables, homemade banana bread and—my favorite—peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches on whole-grain bread. In her house, Brooke merely helped herself to processed-cheese squares or granola bars whenever she wanted.

Brooke's bike routes took us farther and farther away from home, and soon we were biking down to the beach, where we would chase seagulls and build elaborate sand castles. It was a gentle downhill ride on the way there, and a long uphill climb home. Brooke, being competitive, liked to race me up the hills, but because I was taller than her then—taller than everyone until grade nine, when the guys started to catch up—I could always beat her.

Brooke introduced me to Chloe and Em at her sleepover birthday party the year we turned eleven. I immediately liked their goofy enthusiasm. While the Hebrew-school kids were obsessing about what brand of jeans they wore and how their hair looked and who had the fanciest bat mitzvah, Brooke, Chloe and Em were putting on plays in Em's basement and taking the bus to go swimming at the Kitsilano pool down by the beach. Instead of going to Jewish camp to be indoctrinated with Zionist propaganda, Brooke, Chloe and Em spent two weeks camping on the Oregon coast in a Volkswagen Westfalia with Em's parents. They got to make campfires and roast marshmallows. I had to sing Zionist songs and play war games where we pretended to battle Arabs.

I dubbed my three friends The Perfects. Everything about them—their hair and their cute clothes, the way they always had so much fun—seemed bright and shiny. I wanted to be just like them, and I wanted to go to high school with them.

Brooke and I play basketball for half an hour, sweating in the warm afternoon sun and laughing at each other's missed shots. Then Mom pulls into the driveway in her station wagon. She barely even looks at us before going into the house.

“What's up with her?” Brooke says.

“She's mad at me again.” I bounce the ball hard against the pavement.

“Gee, what did you do, touch the walls?”

I flash a grin at her. The first time Brooke came to our house, Mom asked her not to touch the walls because she might leave fingerprints. Brooke refers to my house as “the museum.” Unlike most of the other houses in my neighborhood, our house is really modern. From the street it looks like a giant glass box, except you can't see into it because of all the trees and frosted glass. The whole back of the house is glass too. Inside, our house is very white. The kitchen is white, the living room is white, and, well, everything is white and made out of shiny materials I can't identify. The living room isn't for sitting in, more for looking at. I rarely have friends over because there's nowhere to hang out except the family room, and Mom's always there, getting in the way.

Mom tried to decorate my room in all white too, so the house would be “consistent,” but I insisted on painting my desk blue and having a blue bedspread and blue blinds. My room feels like the ocean while the rest of the house is the sky on a hot day.

“It's too complicated to get into,” I say and focus on trying to sink another basket. Then I sit down on the steps to stretch my legs. Brooke joins me. “I'll pick up my bag in the morning on the way to school,” I say.

“I could drop it off tonight, if you like.”

“Nah, that's okay. I don't need anything in it until tomorrow.”

Brooke grins. “I might be going out tonight anyway, on a mission. Want to come?”

“What kind of mission?”

“Oh, just a visit to my dad's.”

Brooke's dad left her mom and lives with another woman a few blocks away. But it's no secret Brooke's parents had the worst marriage ever—they barely talked to each other—and both of them seem much happier now that they're apart.

“To do what?” I bunch my fists on my legs. Recently Brooke told me that she and her sister put water in her dad's fuel tank to mess up his car.

“I haven't decided yet,” Brooke says.

I'm spared having to answer by Mom sticking her head out the side door. “Could you please come in and help out now?” She licks her lips the way she does when she's pissed off.

Brooke and I say goodbye, and I go in to set the table for dinner. Mom focuses on making pasta sauce, dicing up mushrooms and peppers. My dad cuts up vegetables for a salad, humming along to a jazz station on the radio in his tuneless way. I avoid looking at Mom and take a quick survey of the kitchen for the envelope I didn't open earlier. I don't see it, but stuck under a refrigerator magnet is the announcement for Hebrew school. When Mom isn't looking, I quietly crumple it up and shove it into the recycling bin under the sink.

Dad coughs.

I give him my most innocent look. “What?”

Dad sighs. “So, how was the first day of school?”

“Fine. The usual.” I always say this, although today it's not exactly true. I think about Jesse for a moment and then about Brooke ditching me at lunch.

“And how was your first day?” I ask. “Did you instruct the youth of today on Jewish destruction?” Dad teaches an introductory university course on the Holocaust each fall.

Dad swats me with a dishcloth. “Classes don't start until next week.”

Even though Dad's a Holocaust historian, he's a pretty cheerful guy. When he's not reading depressing books about the slaughter of European Jews, he obsesses over his golf game and eats deli sandwiches, pickles and pretzels. He also likes basketball, but he can't play anymore because he has lower-back issues and won't do the Pilates exercises his physiotherapist recommended.

When I finish the table, Mom asks me to unload the dishwasher. I don't dare say no. It's the only thing she says to me the whole time.

When dinner is ready, Dad asks me to get Zach.