Intentions (2 page)

I wonder how long I’m going to have to stay here like this when my phone starts to vibrate in my pocket. Shit! Probably my parents: WHERE ARE YOU?

I grab on to the wall to steady myself. I try to hold my breath.

Then I think, wait a minute, why is she crying? I’ve been assuming that she seduced him, that she’s an evil woman who besmirched my darling hero of a rabbi. But if that is so, why is she sobbing, “How can I get married now? How can I get married
here
now? Oh my God! What have I done?”

She has a strong Southern accent, completely out of place here in Pennsylvania. And then I get it: she is marrying someone who grew up here. They’re getting married at the temple. And she came to meet the rabbi, to get to know him. Boy, did she.

And so did I.

CHAPTER 3

INTENTION

“
Shalom
, everyone,” the rabbi says. He beams at us with those sparkling dark eyes of his, and holds up his hands, palms down, as if to bless us.

I want to hurl things at him—words, shoes, vomit.

But everyone else is answering him back, “
Shalom
, Rabbi.” I turn around. They’re all gazing at him the same way: with respect, adoration, and love—mixed with a little embarrassment, though, because kids our age aren’t supposed to feel this way about adults. The only ones who aren’t looking at him with adoration are Alexis, who seems to be sleeping, and Adam, the rabbi’s son. He’s glaring.

And so am I. Rachel Greenberg, the former rabbi-adorer, is

now

sick to her stomach with rage

and disgust.

And stuck in the front row because I got to class late, having stayed hidden in the stall until Crying Bride left. Then I cleaned myself up, reassured my parents that I was alive and well (my first lie), and snuck into class right before the rabbi. Of course he
was late. He probably had to, I don’t know, go to rabbi confession or something. Nah, he probably just took a shower.

I wonder what
she
did when she got back to wherever she was going. She probably threw herself into a scalding tub. No, into a
mikvah
! For purity. Ha. I must have laughed out loud, because the rabbi clears his throat and looks right at me.

Why did I come to class? What was I thinking?

“Tonight we’re going to talk about prayer, about how to pray. And then, after the break, we’ll go into the sanctuary—”

Are you kidding me, you creep? Return to the scene of the crime?

“—and pray, with
kavanah
, with intention.” He pauses and looks out at all of us, one at a time, catching each of our eyes. I try to avoid meeting his but I can’t, and as I look into his eyes, I doubt myself. Doubt what I heard. Doubt what I think he did. But then my stomach roils, as if my stomach brain—we have a kind of brain in our stomachs! I learned this in science class!—knows better than my other brain.

I look down at the floor, nauseated. The tiles are black and white, but they seem gray.

Gray. Not black and white.

Maybe it
wasn’t
what it seemed.

“Rachel, Rachel, are you there?”

What?

“Did you hear what I asked you?” the rabbi says.

I shake my head, not trusting my voice.

“I asked what you think about when you pray.”

I shrug my shoulders, stare at the blackboard behind him.

He sighs, loudly, and continues. “Class. You think you already
know how to pray, and in one sense you do. When we pray, first we have to learn how to do it—the words of the prayers, what they mean, in what order to say each line, and in which order to say the prayers. You already know all of that. That’s called
keva
.”

I look up because in spite of it all I’m interested.

He pauses, looks at us. We know the drill. Everyone says “
keva
.” Even me.

Shit, I can’t believe he got me back on his side.

How can I sit here and listen to him? Pretend nothing happened? Because I know something did.

“It is important to pray with
keva
,” he says. “But to really reach God we need to pray with
kavanah
, with intention. What do you think I mean by that?”

He looks at me. Of course me. This is exactly the kind of thing I love to talk about. Not anymore. Tonight I want to spear him in the heart with a hot poker. Oh wait,
he
is the hot poker. I crack myself up. I am so funny I should take it onstage.

“Rachel, is this funny to you?”

Might as well go with it. “A little funny, yeah,” I say.

There are sounds of approval in back of me. “Dude!” someone says.

I turn around. Adam. He’s smiling at me, not his usual half smile, but a big full-on grin. And he’s wiggling his eyebrows. Next to him in the back row, Alexis has a look of—can it be?—admiration.

But when I turn back, Jacob Schmidt, Jake, my almost boyfriend, sitting a couple of chairs away from me, is frowning. He raises
his
eyebrows in a question. We were friends when we were little, and ever since he moved back to town a year ago I’ve wondered
if we could be more. Lately, we’ve been flirting like mad. But it’s getting kind of intense, and I’m not sure I’m ready.

I turn back to the rabbi and give him a dirty look only he can see. He looks at me, confused. And then I give it to him.

“Oh, Rabbi,” I say. “Did I offend you? It was not my
intention
.”

He winces.

Before the rabbi can say anything, Jake speaks—I’m sure to save me. “Do you mean by ‘intention’ that we have to give the prayers our full attention?” He emphasizes the
a
in
attention
: UHtention. He looks at me. I give him a smile. I’m dying inside because of the stupid rabbi, but Jake just makes me smile. He’s so smart. He’s handsome. He’s intense. I love that intensity of his. But maybe he’s too Good. Maybe he’s a nerd. That did sound a little nerdy. UHtention.

I groan. Aloud.

“Rachel, why don’t you go out into the hall until you can pull yourself together?” the rabbi says, and now—I can’t help it—I feel like crap.

“Sorry,” I say. “Bad day. I’ll calm down.” I give a little smile to him, and to Jake—they are both looking at me with the same exact expression, I swear: disappointment, relief, and hope.

The rabbi says softly, “Thank you,” and smiles, and I want to die. I should want to kill him. I
should
want to tell everyone what he did so he will be known for what he really is, so he will be humiliated, kicked out, drawn and quartered, tarred and feathered, hung by his—What
do
you do to a Bad Rabbi? But instead I look up and try to count the squares of tile on the ceiling. There are too many, and I lose count. But at least I
make it through the first half of class without getting myself into more trouble.

During the fifteen-minute break, Jake and some of the other boys usually play basketball in the playground with the rabbi. I love to watch them, especially Jake. Because he’s a swimmer, he’s lean, and strong, and when he jumps up and gets that ball into the net, I want to know what his back feels like at that moment. I’m kind of hung up on his back. I wonder if that’s weird.

But seeing the rabbi joke around with them tonight as if he hadn’t just … I couldn’t stand it.

I need to tell someone what I heard. If I could get Jake away from the basketball game, I would. But maybe he wouldn’t believe me. Also, how awkward would that be? I’d have to talk about sex—yeah, no way.

I can’t tell Adam, that’s for sure. It’s his father. I look at the other girls in the class. I’ve known most of them for years, but I’m not close to any of them. I come back to Alexis. She’s my only option. I have to try.

“Nice sweater, Raebee,” she says to me now. I forget what I’m wearing. Oh, that new sweater Mom got me.

“Thanks,” I say.

“You always look so great in red.” She smiles. It’s a good Alexis moment!

“Thanks!” I say again, this time my eyes welling up for some reason, though honestly I’m not sure if she’s being sincere or sarcastic.

“Come with us?” she says, and I quickly say, “OK!”

I glance back at Jake and then walk down the hill to the
Wawa with Alexis and Adam and some of the other kids. They go to get candy, get away. Maybe I should put something in my stomach, since I threw up my whole dinner. Pretzels.

I watch Alexis walking ahead of me. She doesn’t notice I’m not next to her. Now that my parents are so not “the happiest couple in the world,” I can imagine how depressing it’s been for her. Her house used to be so full of life. She loved coming to mine because it was calm, but I loved going to her house because it wasn’t. In my house the walls are beige. Dinner is always at six o’clock, and the food is
fine
. At her house there are bright colors everywhere, and back in the day, you never knew when there would be a real meal, but you could count on something exotic to try—popcorn made in truffle oil, anchovy paste on homemade crackers, dark chocolate sea-salt caramels dipped in peanut butter. Her brothers were loud and obnoxious and teased us mercilessly, but they also let us in on the secrets of the world, because they’re so much older. Alexis’s mom and dad, who insisted I call them Mark and Ginny, talked all the time about politics, books, relatives, neighbors. They argued, too, now that I think about it, but the fighting seemed like it was a natural part of the mix.

Alexis and I had sleepovers every weekend, and no matter which house we stayed at, we were happy.

Then, last year, we started spending most weekends at my house. I didn’t know why, and when I asked her, she just shrugged. I still don’t understand why she never told me that her parents were having trouble. I’m dying to talk to her about mine. The first I knew her folks had split up was when her dad moved into that crummy little apartment behind the Wegmans. We had
one sleepover there, and it was so awkward and strange, with Alexis and me sharing a twin bed, head to toe, because her dad didn’t have two spare beds. When he took us out for dinner at a Chinese restaurant, the three of us sat there with nothing to say. I thought her heart would break when he moved all the way to California suddenly last spring; her older brothers were already living there. Now she can see her dad only in the summer. Her mom got a puppy, but a dog can’t fill up all those empty, silent rooms. I haven’t slept there since, and Lex never wants to come over to my house anymore.

I look at her walking ahead of me now, and I know what she’s been through, or close to it.

I walk faster to catch up.

“Hey, Alexis,” I say. I bravely loop my arm through hers. Adam’s on her other side.

“You really got to my dad tonight,” he says with a smile. “Way to go.”

“Yeah, you’re usually such a suck-up,” says Alexis, pulling away her arm. “I was shocked, shocked!” she laughs, putting her hand to her head in a dramatic gesture. She grabs Adam, and the two of them dash into the store ahead of me.

I feel sick. I just can’t figure her out.

Does she like Adam? I doubt she’s going to stay with the guy in California. And Adam
is
hot. OH, wait a minute.… It never made sense to me that Adam was the rabbi’s son. Not until tonight. I always thought, how could such a good guy have a bad-boy son?

Adam’s always been a rebel, especially in Sunday school. And since we got to high school, there have been all these
rumors about him: that he deals pot, that he sleeps around with girls
and
boys, that he had an affair with a student teacher. I don’t really believe all that stuff. But he
is
hot, and it’s easy to see how he could get pretty much any girl or boy he wanted.

Like his dad? Oh God. (Oh, Rabbi!)

The weird thing is, Adam looks like his father. He lifts weights and wrestles, so he’s buff, not chubby, but they do look alike. God, poor Mrs. Cohn. She’s the straightest, sweetest, most innocent lady I know. I think. What do I know?

I need to make sense of this. I need food.

I walk in and head straight for the pretzels. While I’m at it, I grab some Twizzlers and a Snickers, too. I’m walking over to the sodas to get not a ginger ale but a Diet (oh, the irony) Coke when I see Alexis and Adam stuffing Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes, my favorite, under their jackets. I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and quickly walk away. Other kids are in line; I go stand behind Marissa.

“Hi,” I say to her.

“Hey,” she says to me. “What’s up?”

Then Adam comes over to me, leans close, and says, “Hey, Ronderful Rachel.” Then he whispers right into my ear, giving me chills. “Why are you
paying
for that stuff, honey?”

Alexis comes over to my other side, starts playing with my hair. I sigh. Why does it feel so good to have someone play with your hair?

“Sometimes I miss mine,” she says.

“Grow it again!”

“Nah,” she says, grabbing my arm and yanking me out of line. “Stuff it under your shirt. Don’t pay, Raebee.”

Why has she started using my nickname again all of a sudden? Until tonight, she hadn’t used it since—since forever. But there is no way I’m going to shoplift junk food. My world may not be golden anymore, but I’m not going to turn it into shit. Or some such metaphor.

Just then the door opens and a really cute guy walks in, probably from the college. He’s not at all my type—or what I thought was my type—he’s tall, blond, Nordic-looking. Definitely not Jewish. His ancestors probably murdered my ancestors. I must be staring right at him, because he stares right at me. I feel bold, crazy.

“How you doing?” he says.

And as if I’m in a movie, I say, “I’d be doing better if you’d come closer.”

He laughs and leans in toward me, and I reach up and kiss him on the lips. He grabs me and gives me the longest and most delicious kiss in the world. Then he has his hands up my shirt and I have mine down his pants and—

OK, none of that really happens except in my weird little mind.

What really happens is he says, “How you doing?” and I say, “Fine,” and then I back away from him, smack into the rack holding chips and pretzels. It comes tumbling down with a clatter and a crash.