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A HOUSE.
We were going to live in a house. That, all by itself, was actually a pretty cool idea. Not worth moving to Indiana for, but since I had to go anyway, at least there would be a house. Big yards, grass, trees, quiet streets, and most important—space, lots and lots of space to stretch out, to leave my stuff everywhere, to have a bicycle AND a skateboard AND a scooter. I wasn't much excited about anything, but I was, I admit, a little excited about living in a house.

Apparently houses come in all sizes. Pam's, it turns out, is a Small House. A Small And Very Cluttered House. It wasn't an
actual
shack; she wasn't a tenant
farmer or anything, but the life of a struggling antiques dealer, even in Appleton Indiana, does not provide for a large estate. There was a yard, a nice one with a big oak tree, and a cracked sidewalk that wound its way from a white picket fence to a yellow front door. But the house, even from my blurry viewpoint in the passenger seat of our clanging vehicle at eleven o'clock on the longest night of my life, was way tiny, and sort of run-down.

“Be nice,” Mom whispered as she turned off the engine.

Before I could say anything, there was Pam, waving from the front porch, and a large dog running out to meet the car, barking and snarling.

Aunt Pam is not technically my aunt. She and my mom went to college together, and then Pam moved out here with her then-husband, Roy. That didn't last long, which you'd understand if you saw Pam now: short bowl-cut hair, corduroy shorts, flannel shirt, Birkenstocks. My dad always used to say that Pam looked like National Public Radio. After her marriage fell apart, she stayed in Indiana, got a big dog named Simon, bought a house, and opened her store. It had been twenty years since college, but she and Mom were still best friends.

“Ruth!” Pam called, and all but skipped into Mom's arms.

“Pam!”

I was still in the car, because Simon was pacing in front of the passenger-side door, drooling and growling.

“Don't be afraid, honey!” Pam yelled. “He only bites Republicans!”

I warily opened my door, and Simon jumped up and licked me, then immediately ran back to the front porch. I stretched my arms, unfastened my seat belt, and took the first step into my new life.

Even though the outside looked like something from the set of
Larry the Cable Guy
, the inside of the house was sort of wild. The foyer connected to a largish living room, small dining room, and kitchen. There were about twenty weird voodoo masks hanging on the walls, as well as these wood carvings of naked African women painted entirely in red. Near the dining room table was a rocking horse and a surprisingly realistic cactus made out of papier-mâché. Exotic mobiles and big plastic chickens hung from the kitchen ceiling. Side by side with the voodoo stuff, the living room was decorated with old road signs (one said “New York City, 695 mi”), a couple of wood stoves, and…no television. Anywhere.

“You're down here, Evan,” Pam said.

I followed her into a small bedroom. It was pretty bare—just a dresser, a bed, and a little desk. I looked
for an internet cable or even a phone jack. No luck. I didn't even bother wondering whether the house was wireless.

“This used to be my study,” Pam said. She touched my shoulder. “You can decorate it however you like. Heavy metal posters. Pictures of girls. It's your space.”

She was working very hard at being accommodating.

“Thanks,” I said. “This'll be great.”

Pam wiped a strand of hair out of her face, then gave me this super-concerned look. “This must be a very emotional time for you.”

Well, yes, it was. And since I'd just been in the car with Psycho-Mom for the last fourteen hours, I wasn't in the best frame of mind to be discussing it.

“I'm fine,” I said.

“Okay, then. But if you ever need someone to talk to…” For a moment I was scared Pam was about to ask if I wanted to join her art therapy class or something.

Mom called from across the hall. “Which bed should I take?”

“Take your pick,” Pam called. “You're the guest.”

We walked two steps and we were in the master bedroom. Pam's house was smaller than our New York apartment! Only two bedrooms, which meant that Mom and Pam would be sharing. And once again, the décor was, well, elaborate, with bright
purple walls and four large paintings of some Chinese guy wearing a wig. There were two twin beds, one by a window, one by the far wall.

I have to imagine that Mom was having second thoughts, but she did her best to remain upbeat.

“This one by the window would be perfect,” she said with a smile. “Evan. Help me unpack.”

It was almost eleven thirty by then. I was completely overwhelmed and exhausted. I was hungry. Simon was following me around trying to get me to throw a disgusting old tennis ball covered with dog spit. As far as I was concerned, she could unpack her suitcase just fine by herself.

I helped her unpack.

 

The next day we went to a local department store to shop for what my mother thought were fun “boy” things for my room. I mostly stared straight ahead in a daze.

My cell phone buzzed. It was a text from Bill.

My fingers were suddenly trembling so badly I typed back:

Bill knew who I meant. He texted again:

I leaned back against a new washer-dryer set. At that point I wouldn't have minded throwing myself inside and setting the dial to “disappear.”

Another text:

“Say, Evan?” It was Mom, holding up two lamp-shades. “Which one do you like better?”

My second-best friend had horned in on my sort-of girl at Jenny Cohen's bat mitzvah, and my mother expected opinions on interior decoration?

“Evan?” she said.

I needed air.

“Okay,” Mom called as I ran past household cleansers to the door. “I'm picking the green one!”

We got home at four, loaded down with lamp-shades, throw rugs, detergent, tube socks, trash bags, and a million other things I wished I could go through life never having to think about. Once I was done unloading the car, I went to my room, shut the door, and reached for
The Fellowship of the Ring
. I guess I was trying to block out the Midwest by losing myself in Middle Earth. Didn't work. Just before dinner, I heard the phone ring.

“Evan!” Pam called. “Your father!”

My dad! A voice from my real life! From the city of my birth! I was up from my bed like a shot. But as I opened the door, I stopped short. I looked around me. The weird African art. The papier-mâché cactus. The stupid plastic chickens! Why should I speak to the man whose raging libido had relegated me to a life in hell?

“Tell him I'm out,” I said.

“But honey,” Pam said, “I already told him you were here.”

“Tell him he can talk to Mom!”

I slammed the door so hard, the New York highway sign in the living room crashed to the floor.

I'll spare you a detailed description of my next few days as a citizen of the Hoosier State. I guess it's important to say that Dad called every night before dinner and that each time I refused to talk, then gave my closet door a few swift kicks. I might've busted it off its hinges if I hadn't found a way to work off some of my rage. Pam had an old ten-speed that fit me perfectly. I spent a few days riding past homes and farms and more homes and more farms. As for stores? Well, for a guy who grew up in a city with all-night everything, there wasn't much. Pam lived a few blocks from Appleton's main street (actually called “Main Street”) but the pickings were slim. There wasn't even a
Starbucks. Along with Pam's store, there was an ice cream parlor called Calvi's, a general store, an Italian restaurant, and an Army Navy. I guess if you wanted a chocolate sundae and a pair of fatigues, you were all set.

What the town lacked in shopping options it made up for in churches. Main Street was brimming with them. The First Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Unitarians, and the Lutherans—they had them all. There was only one house of worship that seemed to be missing.

When I realized there was no synagogue, I relaxed a little bit for the first time since I had arrived. After all, how was I going to have a bar mitzvah when there was no rabbi in town?

I think it was day seven post–New York when I came home from another long, boring bike ride to find Mom tooling around on the internet. (A dial-up connection, of course, but by that point I wasn't complaining. We were lucky Pam even had a phone.)

“Ev, come here, check this out!” my Mom said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw she was typing intently into a search box. The words I saw were:

I thought, Well, that's gonna come up empty.

“Oh, look!” she said. “This is perfect.”

A web page was appearing: a picture of a building that looked more like a firehouse than a synagogue and a photo of an elderly guy with a long, gray beard. The caption said:

Mom reached for the phone.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Calling the rabbi.”

“No, you aren't,” I said.

“Evan,” she said. “This is your religious education.”

“I don't want a religious education! I want to go home!”

Mom ignored me completely.

“What do you even know about this guy?” I asked, looking over her shoulder at the screen.

“I don't know anything yet,” Mom said. “That's why I'm calling him. Stop panicking. A rabbi's a rabbi.”

“Some rabbis are child molesters.”

“No, Evan, priests are child molesters.” Mom nodded toward the screen. “Rabbis are nice.”

I made a final stand. “I'm not going!”

“Oh, yes you are!”

“You can't make me!” I yelled.

Later that day, I found myself next to Mom in Aunt
Pam's old Subaru headed for my first haftorah lesson with Rabbi Herman Weiner. Forty-five minutes of silence later—hey, I was already freezing out my dad, so why not my mom too?—we drove around a corner and there was the building from the website. It turns out it really
was
a firehouse—an old one, now converted into the Cranston, Indiana, Community Center. Rabbi Weiner's office was on the second floor.

“Ah, you must be Evan!” he said when I walked in.

He was even older than his picture—I'm talking ancient, like he went to yeshiva with Moses. But with a single look my way, his face lit up like I was the first Jew he had seen in decades.

Mom pushed me forward. “Evan's so happy to meet you,” she said.

I spent the next hour slogging through my haftorah, the ancient Hebrew text I was expected to chant at my bar mitzvah. It was excruciating. Rabbi Weiner leaned over me with his old-man breath, correcting my pronunciation. Then he told me I had to translate the entire thing into English and give a speech about what it all meant.

“A speech? Isn't the Hebrew enough?”

“You are becoming a man!” he croaked. “You must tell everyone about your journey!”

I didn't want to have a bar mitzvah. I didn't want to chant a haftorah. I didn't want to tell everyone
about my journey. I wanted to throw myself under a truck.

“Evan's free every day until school starts,” Mom said.

Rabbi Weiner smiled like he had just won the lottery. “Excellent! We'll meet again tomorrow!”

There was day at some point in the next week when I came out of my lesson with Rabbi Weiner and Mom was sitting in the car looking completely burned out.
So I spoke to her for the first time in days.

“What's wrong?”

“I don't know, kiddo,” she said. “This is hard, doing a bar mitzvah out here. Maybe your dad's right and you should do it back in New York.”

Joy! Justice! I suddenly couldn't wait to call Steve and Bill to break the good news.

But then disaster. Mom found out that Angelina had moved into our old apartment with Dad. All of Appleton heard the screaming that night. And that was the end of my New York bar mitzvah. Even worse, I suddenly wasn't allowed to invite a single member of Dad's family! Furthermore, she would not accept one penny (“NOT ONE PENNY!”) from my father for the party. He could keep his tainted money. She would do the whole thing herself!

The situation sucked. And I had no one to talk to. Bill was too busy sucking face with Nina to talk about anything else, and Steve seemed distant the couple of times we spoke, like I was already some landmark on the road fading from sight in the rearview mirror.

“By the way,” he told me the last time we talked. “Aaron Siegel's bar mitzvah's a week before yours.”

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

Aaron Siegel was the richest kid in our class. He was having his bar mitzvah at the Pierre Hotel, and his father had hired Beyoncé to sing the Hatikvah.

“Well, the week after, his dad is flying some of the guys down to their condo in Florida. Isn't that cool?”

You know in books where they say a person's skin goes cold? Well, that's what happened to me. Like ice. Nobody was going to miss out on a free trip to Florida—especially not if the option was to take a plane and a bus to attend my bar mitzvah in nowheresville Appleton.

“Yeah,” I choked. “Cool.”

“It's just that I'm really torn about what to do,” Steve began.

I cut him off. “Don't worry about it, dude,” I said. “Have fun.”

“For sure?”

I don't think I had ever heard anyone sound so relieved.

“Yeah,” I said. “For sure.”

“Thanks, dude,” he said. “We'll talk later, okay?”

I sort of knew that we wouldn't—not soon anyway. He had New York things to do. And me? I had this:

 

Please join us for a reception afterward:

 

The Methodist Church

Main Street, Appleton

Basement Community Room

 

So for a quick recap, here's how things stood:

Could anything possibly go right?

 

Thank god for Simon, that lovable, slobbering monster of a dog. It was because of him that I finally made a friend in Appleton. It was week two of my sentence in Hoosier jail. Simon and I were outside one morning playing fetch with one of Pam's naked figurines. After a few throws, Simon jumped the picket fence and dropped the statue in front of this skinnyish girl with her face buried in a book.

“Hey there, doggie!” she said.

Simon started licking her hands and barking. She scratched under his chin, then looked my way.

“You must be Evan,” she said.

“I must?”

“Pam told me you were here.”

She wrestled the figurine from Simon's mouth,
cocked her arm, and hurled it into the woods. Then I noticed the book she was reading—most girls are reading books about horses or guys named Chad; this girl was reading
The Corrections
. I was impressed—not only was this girl well-read, but she had a major league throwing arm.

“Did I just throw a naked lady?” she asked me.

We both started laughing.

As Simon tore after the figurine, I took a closer look. I had expected every girl in the Midwest to be some blond, blue-eyed, corn-fed beauty, but this girl wasn't that at all. She had long brown hair that fell straight into her face. Her eyes were small and kind of close together, like she was scrutinizing you. Her knees pointed in toward each other. On the plus side, she had a very nice, welcoming smile. Not to mention the beginnings of a real figure. My hormones gave her a tentative thumbs-up.

“What did Pam tell you about me?”

She smiled. “She said your parents just split up, you're too smart for your own good, angry at the world, and you could use a friend.”

Before I even had a second to respond, the girl said, “Want to come to the library with me? It's not much, but they have a new room of DVDs.”

“I will,” I said, “on one condition.”

“What?”

“You have to tell me your name.”

Her name was Patrice.

It turned out that Patrice's parents had split too, except that she lived with her dad. Over the next few days, she showed me around town (what little of it there was) and introduced me to some classic movies. Patrice seemed to like movies better if they were in black and white.

She came with me the day I checked out the Methodist church. When we walked in, the basement was filled with a bunch of folding tables, like it was set up for bingo. In the corner was an upright piano that they probably used for square dances. The whole place smelled like old cottage cheese. I was miser-able—this was the worst place you could possibly pick to have a party.

“Look at the bright side,” Patrice said. “It won't look so bad with these tables folded up and some decorations. It's actually a pretty big space.”

Which is when it hit me. How would I fill that space? If I was going to have this bar mitzvah in the middle of nowhere, who in the world would come? At that point I had a list of four: my mom, Pam, Patrice, and the rabbi.

I needed more friends.

But how? The only other neighbor my age I knew about was this curly-headed kid named Archie who
lived across the street. Pam said he had some sort of really bad muscle disease and needed crutches to get around. Every once in a while I'd catch him staring at me through the window. Apparently he and Patrice were friends, but when I asked her about him, she just said he was complicated. I didn't know what that meant, but I thought he was pretty spooky, so I didn't push it.

Aside from Archie, Patrice's main buddies were her old movies and long novels. Clearly she wasn't going to be any help getting people to my bar mitzvah. If I wanted any kind of party at all, I had to find a way to get in with the Appleton in crowd. And the more I mulled it over, the more I knew what that meant: I had to meet Brett.

Practically every adult I met at first in town had mentioned Brett. “You're going into seventh grade,” they'd say. “You must know Brett Connelly.” Or “If you like football, you're gonna like Brett! He's going to play in States one year.” Or “You know who you should meet? That Connelly boy!” The more I heard about him, the more he began to seem like a Mafia don—if you got in good with him, you were set. If you were in his crowd, you were cool.

I was hoping I could just bump into him one day, but our paths never seemed to cross. Finally, about a week before the start of school, Patrice and I were at
Calvi's sharing a sundae when she started quizzing me on my haftorah.

“Okay,” she said. “Let's hear it. Whip off a few lines.”

Just as I opened my mouth and began clumsily declaiming, “Koh-amar…,” the door swung open. And in he walked.

Brett. All blond, all muscle, a smile with more teeth than I had ever seen in one mouth in my life. Beside him were two goony-looking guys, one tall and pimply, the other short with a pushed-in face. Two girls brought up the rear: the first blond and blue-eyed and perky and giggly; the second dark-haired, a little taller, a little heavier.

“Chocolate sundae, my man!” Brett called.

Mr. Hanrady lit up like a ten-year-old with a new Game Boy when Brett walked into the store.

“You got it, QB!”

To be honest, I could see why Mr. Hanrady was so stoked. There was something about Brett—a swagger that made you want to be near him. He was actually magnetic, like they say about movie stars.

“What jerks,” Patrice whispered.

This was a running theme with Patrice—anyone who was cool was a jerk. Everything could be going great and suddenly she'd get quiet, just giving some random kid the evil eye. That's what she was doing
now, staring down the dark-haired girl with a really uncomfortable intensity. I didn't get it. Sure, Brett seemed cocky—with no prompting, he was telling Mr. Hanrady how he was going to lead the Quails to victory over the Thunderhawks in the first game of the season—but he didn't seem like a bad guy.

“What's wrong with him?” I asked Patrice. “He seems okay to me.”

Before she could answer, something went
thwap
against my back—a rolled-up napkin. Across the room, the two goons were giving Brett high fives.

“Nice throw, Brettmeister!” the tall, pimply goon called.

“Bull's-eye!” said the short goon.

“Hey, Brain!” Brett called.

I blinked. “What?”

“That would mean you,” the short goon said.

I glanced at Patrice. She rolled her eyes.

“Brain?” I said. “I'm the Brain?”

Brett nodded. “You're from New York City, right? You must be the Brain.”

Somehow Brett seemed to know who I was. It was kind of exciting, the idea that people had been talking about me before they had even met me.

The dark-haired girl looked unhappy. She screwed up her brow.

“Why is he the Brain? Is he supposed to be smart?”

The blond girl giggled and squeezed Brett's arm.

Brett walked closer to me. I closed my bar mitzvah practice book and covered it with a napkin. Sure, my goal was eventually to invite Brett and all his friends to the party. But for all I knew, I was the first Jew any of them had seen outside of a
Seinfeld
rerun. Friends first, yarmulkes later.

“You play football, Brain?”

I was shocked. Was this some sort of a test? If so, I didn't want to fail it. The fact of the matter was that Rabbi Weiner was probably a better football player than I was.

“A little. More basketball.”

“I got it!” the tall goon said. “Maybe the Brain can join the cheerleaders.”

The short goon found this hilarious, to the point that he began to do a little fake cheer, pretending to be me, I guess. The blond girl giggled. The dark-haired girl smirked. When the tall goon started chanting along, Brett decided he had heard enough.

“Shut up, barf bags! You know, Fudge, we do need a new wide receiver.”

Apparently the short goon's name was Fudge. “Hey,
I'm
the go-to guy! What are you talking about?”

Brett winked at me. “Love to make my boy nervous.”

Suddenly the blond girl jumped up, as if from out of a trance.

“Oh, oh, oh!”

“What?” said the dark-haired girl.

“I love this song!”

Some perky pop thing sung by a girl from the Disney Channel was blaring out of Mr. Hanrady's radio. Suddenly the blonde was jumping and singing along, then writhing on the floor, kicking over Patrice's head and spinning around. I mean, I guess she was a good dancer—it was hard to judge: I had never seen anything like it. When she finished, she lay on the floor, spread out like Jesus on the cross, utterly spent. Brett cheered, then picked her up and carried her over his head.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I give you Kendra Peterson! Look out,
American Idol
!” He turned to me. “Isn't she the greatest, Brain?”

I wouldn't have said she was “the greatest.” But she was certainly something. And I needed friends.

“She rocks!” I said.

“Oh, Jesus,” Patrice whispered.

Brett tossed another napkin my way, then laughed sort of affectionately.

“Good taste, Brain,” he said, and turned back to his table.

After that, he and his gang left us pretty much
alone. They ate their ice cream, we ate ours. But even while I was keeping up my end of the conversation with Patrice, I couldn't help noticing some of the dynamics at their table. From the way the dark-haired girl (whose name, it turned out, was Lucy) was hanging on Brett's every word, it was pretty clear she liked him as much as Kendra did. And Fudge made no secret of the fact that he had a major thing for Lucy. He even jumped up on the table and did this wild dance in her face, all arms and legs, until she shouted, “Get away from me, Fudge!”

It wasn't long before Patrice and I finished our sundaes. Since we had a date back at her place to watch another old movie, we decided to get going. But on the way out the door, something surprising happened.

“Hey, Brain.” Brett swiveled around in his chair. “Want to hang at the quarry tomorrow? A couple of us are going swimming.”

I looked at Patrice. “That sounds cool, right?”

Lucy turned quickly. “Not
her
, Brett. She can't come.” She smirked at Patrice. “Nothing personal, of course.”

I could tell that Patrice was trying as hard as she could to pretend she didn't care. But I could also see the hurt in her eyes. Clearly she and Lucy had some major history.

“I wouldn't go with you anyway,” she said, then
pushed through the door to the street. As for Brett, he ignored the entire exchange.

“We'll meet here after lunch?” he went on. “Sound like a plan?”

I thought of Patrice stewing outside. I thought of the large empty basement of the Methodist church. I turned to Brett.

“Count me in!”