Next Year in Israel (6 page)

“Hanging out here was cool,” Mia said.

“The best,” I said, wondering how Mia could sound so calm. Jordyn was leaving us out.

“Better than Truth or Dare?” Jordyn got out a nameplate necklace from her jewelry case.

On second thought, I had made the right decision. Never-been-kissed me would have freaked if my first mouth-to-mouth was witnessed by everybody. Talk about risks that could backfire. And never mind the questions. There had probably been some good ones. What’s the worst thing you have done? What’s the most embarrassing moment of your life? Who do you dream about?

“Are Ben and Jake going to the beach?” Mia asked, still facing our cubbies.

“Yeah. You two aren’t invited.” Jordyn turned on her hair dryer.

“Rebecca and I already planned to go,” Mia said.

Not really. Getting there was a problem. The beach was a few miles away, and none of the students had cars at the
kfar
. There was no bus service because it was Shabbat, so we’d have to walk in the stifling heat, and I’d arrive there a sweaty mess.

“Whatever.” Jordyn grabbed her hair with a big round brush.

Mia glanced at me and smiled. “Tell Caleb we’ll see you there.”

Jordyn pulled her brush tight and ignored us until it was time for her to go.

~ * * * ~

After Jordyn left, I got out my bathing suit. I certainly wasn’t gonna stay in our room alone while Mia and Jordyn were at the beach.
Should I wear my nylon shirt?
Jordyn hated it, and I knew I’d end up taking it off like I had at the pool, but I just couldn’t deal with being seen half-naked. I grabbed a pair of shorts from my shelf. Maybe I could get away with wearing them and a tight cotton tee shirt over my bathing suit.

“What are you doing?” Mia asked.

“Getting ready.”

“For what?” There was a slight smirk on her face.

“We’re beach bound,” I tried to sound cheery. Jordyn would be pissed when we showed up. She’d definitely try to embarrass us. Me first. I was the weaker one.

“Seriously.” Mia put her hands over her mouth.

“What?” Was I being retarded again?

“We’re not going. I thought you understood. I was just messing with Jordyn.”

Great. I was a complete idiot. I had to say something to get rid of the nerd label I was sticking on myself. “I can be such a dork.” I felt my face turn red. “This is what I get for being a GPA junkie. My friends tell me I have to get out more. That I’m missing everything by trying to be ranked number one.” I’d look like less of a reject if she thought I had friends who worried about me. “I hope you won’t tell anybody. Some people would be shallow about it.”

She picked at her nails self-consciously as she evidently realized I thought she was more superficial than she claimed to be. “I won’t. You shouldn’t be stuck by who you were at home.”

“Good, ‘cause I really want to change,” I said. “I’m lucky you don’t care. Jordyn would.”

“True.” She smiled when I called her more tolerant than Jordyn.

I couldn’t help but smile back. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Break into the senior clique.” There were only twelve American seniors, and they’d already formed their own clique. The rest of us juniors had split into smaller sets of friends. “Not that being with a junior guy would be bad.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “Go on.”

She let go of her fingers. “First, ignore the guys until the time’s right.” Out of the twelve seniors, there were only five guys. Ignoring them wouldn’t be hard. I had plenty of experience. “The girls will be nicer to us if we don’t invade their turf. Let Jordyn have Caleb.”

Clearly, I was included. Sweet.

She nodded. “It’ll work. No one likes lurkers.”

“Stupid lurkers,” I said. “Slobbering at the
in
crowd.”

She walked closer to her bed. “We’ll make our entrance when the time’s right.”

Correction:
She’d
make the entrance. I’d try to keep a low profile and ride in on her coattails. I looked at the photo of two golden retrievers taped to the wall above her bed. She also had pictures of her family, photos with friends goofing around on ice skates, and postcards from Egypt. “What are your dogs’ names?”

“Romeo and Juliet.” Mia hugged her knees into her chest.

“Whose idea was that?”

“Mom’s.”

My pictures of Mom and Dad were separate photos. Jordyn had a picture with her mom and the same girl who had been at the airport. The threesome was standing by a fireplace, dressed up for a special occasion. Jordyn had said the girl was her fraternal twin sister, Naomi. From the picture, it was easy to see Jordyn and Naomi were polar opposites. Jordyn’s brown hair and green eyes were nothing like Naomi’s black hair and blue eyes. Jordyn was dressed to the nines in a short dress, black boots, and big hoop earrings. Naomi looked more casual, in a simple skirt, peasant top, and ballerina flats.

Mia turned on her phone, pointed it at her bed, and pressed the picture button. “I’m e-mailing pictures to my parents. That photo will be called ‘My room’s a dump.’”

“Why are you showing them?” I said. “My mom would make me come home if she knew how ugly this room is.”

Mia snapped a picture of her orange tee shirt taped to the screen. “What’d you tell her?”

“That I had a big room with pretty pink sheets, and my roommates were nice.”

Mia’s jaw dropped.

“I told her the food was gross,” I said. “She wouldn’t believe a lie about the food being good.”

Mia pulled down her keyboard. “Think I’ll e-mail them that bugs come through our window and crawl all over us at night.”

I giggled. “Good thing we patched the screen.”

Chapter 6

OUR FIRST FIELD TRIP BEGAN with Leah’s wake-up call before dawn. As we claimed our seats on the bus, an air of excitement trickled in the early morning darkness. We were going outside the
kfar
, beyond the Deleck, to the ancient city of Jerusalem. No work. No school. Just us exploring. Once we were settled in our seats, Leah handed the microphone to the stranger standing next to her. “Say hello to our tour guide.”

The older man with leathery skin was annoyingly energetic. “It’ll be a beautiful day in Jerusalem. Warm like here, but no humidity. The Jerusalem hills keep the air clean. Asthmatics love it. Any of you have asthma? We will drive east and should miss most of the traffic.”

Mia leaned her head on the seat. “He talks nonstop.”

“Shush,” I said. “I can’t hear him ‘cause of your chitchat.”

He wouldn’t let go of the microphone. It looked like an extension of his thick lips. “An accident on the highway stopped traffic for hours yesterday. No accidents today, or we’ll have to adjust our itinerary. There’s the bathroom.” He pointed to the crackerbox space in the back. “We have three stops once we arrive. You’ll like Jerusalem. It’s my favorite—”

“What did he say his name is?” Mia whispered to me.

“He didn’t.” I would have remembered a Hebrew name like Naim, our friendly work supervisor. I turned to Jordyn. “What’s his name?”

“Who cares.” Jordyn closed her eyes. “I wish he would shut up.”

Mia raised her hand. “What’s your name?”

“Zamir,” he said. “You can call me whatever you want.”

“Chatterbox,” Jordyn said.

Oh no
. She gave him a nickname. Was I next?

“That’s enough.” Leah frowned.

“Chatterbox’s fine.” He scratched his bumpy bald head. “Who’s ready to see the most amazing city in the world?”

We clapped unenthusiastically.

He switched the microphone to his left hand. “Can’t hear you.”

The applause shook the bus.

He tilted his head again. “Nobody touches the gun except for me.” I hadn’t realized he had a gun strapped to his brown leather belt.

“Why does he have a gun?” Mia kept her voice to a whisper.

“Dunno,” I said.

Her eyes gleamed as she stood up. “I’ll go ask Ben.” True to her word, Mia had kept a low profile. Was it time to make her entrance? I hoped not. It was too soon. I finally felt more stable around Jordyn, and I didn’t need Mia to stir everything up. I squished my ponytail against my seat and enjoyed a comfy slouch.

Outside the window, daylight was beginning. I pulled out the bag of goodies Jordyn had given to me after one of her grandmother’s friends had stopped by the
kfar
with a bag of snacks. I crunched the peanut-butter-and-cheese-flavored puffs.

Mia was back in about two minutes. “The gun’s a precaution. Ben said the gun wards off terrorists from trying to kidnap us.”

I chewed my cheese puff calmly. Terrorist attacks happened to other people, not me.

Mia turned on her phone and texted her parents:
In Jerusalem. Dream come true. Later
.

Skipping over the gun description was smart. There was no need to worry her parents. My parents would have freaked out if they knew our tour guide had a gun. I balled up my pink hoodie, leaned it on the dirty window and closed my eyes.

An hour later, the flat land and palm trees had become brown hills.

“Long skirts or pants,” Leah reminded us as the bus staggered at a foothill. She had told us to pack conservative clothes for the religious sites. The bus steadily climbed up the hill, behind other buses.

Jake sauntered up to us. “All shorts must come off now.”

What a guy thing to say. I slipped on my ankle-length skirt over my shorts.

“Will you be wearing a skirt too?” Mia asked.

“Pants.” He fiddled with the top button of his shorts. “No peeking while I change.”

Mia pulled on a gauzy skirt. “Bathroom, Jake.”

“There’s the folding closet—I mean
bathroom
,” I said. The bus coasted down the hill.

He laughed. “You want to strip together? Pants or skirt, Jordyn?”

Jordyn looked at her phone screen frantically. “Wish Caleb was here. It’s not fair the Israeli students don’t get to come on field trips with us.” She had been dropping his name into every conversation since she had gone to the beach with him. He had come to our room several times to see her, proving that they were together. Following Mia’s lead, I always gave him a polite hello, then pretended he wasn’t there.

“Sexting him?” Jake asked.

“Go back to your hole.” Jordyn made a sour face and continued looking at her screen. “I’m reading.”

“Porno,” Jake said. “Can I see?”

“Not erotica, you idiot. I’m rereading
The Hunger Games
.”

Jake shrugged and went back to his seat. The cliché of being a pretty dimwit didn’t apply to Jordyn. She read late at night in bed, often into the wee hours of the morning. Her books ranged from vampire romances to dystopian fiction. She told Mia she liked non-fiction even if it wasn’t a celebrity biography.

Later, after our bus parked, we got out, and as we followed Chatterbox and Leah through a crowded sidewalk to our first site, Jordyn bumped into a woman trying to maneuver around our group.

“Excuse us.” Jordyn put her elbow down. It had hit the woman’s purse.

The woman glared at her. “Excuse you. Button up. This is a holy place. You young girls dress like prostitutes.”

Jordyn made a face and buttoned up her white blouse.

“How rude,” Mia said. “Your shirt isn’t skin-tight or see-through.”

“Yeah,” I chimed in, hoping to get on her good side.

“Well she’s got some
chutzpah
,” Chatterbox said. “It’s easy to offend the Orthodox.”

At the crowded plaza, tons of men congregated, dressed in black suits and big hats like they were at a funeral in the dead of winter.

“They must be boiling in their clothes,” Jordyn said. “Look at their freaky hair.” It looked like a haircut gone wild because of the short crop in the back and long curly pieces on each side.

Chatterbox passed out round skullcaps to the boys. “In case you don’t know, the
kippah
is to remind you that God is above. Judaism was the first religion to believe in one God. Christianity and Islam followed. All three religions believe their faiths began here in Israel.”

I yawned without opening my mouth.

He pointed to the enormous wall in front of us. “This is called the Western Wall, and it was part of the Temple, which was the center of Jewish life. King—”

“Can we go look?” Ben asked. “We already learned this in class.”

“It’s part of your history,” Chatterbox answered in a sharp voice. “The Temple was built before—”

“We know,” Ben said. “It was taken over, destroyed in a war, rebuilt, and destroyed again in more wars. Who really cares about the dates?”

Memorizing the dates was impossible. Between the groups who didn’t believe in Judaism and those who wanted to be in charge of Jerusalem, it was as dramatic as a soap opera.

Chatterbox nodded. “The Wall is the only remaining artifact from the Temple complex. It was one of the four walls built to support the plaza on which the Temple stood. Girls, follow Leah to the women’s section. Boys, stay with me.”

“Separate sides,” Jordyn said loudly. “How anciently sexist.”

“It’s traditional,” Leah said, winding us through people. The closer we got to it, the smaller I felt. I couldn’t see over the top, and the bricks didn’t seem to be arranged in a particular order. Some bricks showed their age with cracks or holes. As I expected, tons of people were praying in front of it, like we were in some kind of religious scene in a movie.

Leah pointed to a woman wearing a headscarf who was handing out scraps of paper. “If you want to put a
kvittle
into the Wall.”

Mia took a paper and a miniature pencil, then walked even closer to the Wall. She was facing straight ahead, not looking at any of the people around her. As soon as she was close enough to touch it, she wrote something on her paper, folded it, and stood there in silence for a moment and closed her eyes. I wondered what kind of message she had written. Was it a big-scale wish for ending world hunger or was it a more personal hope, like snagging a senior?

Tons of notes were already stuck into the cracks, and it took her a moment to get her note secured. It wobbled and fell out, but she caught it and folded it smaller and tried again.

After the note stuck, she walked to us, with an extra oomph in her step. “That was mind-blowing. I just prayed for the world.”