This Is Just a Test Read online

  There were only two Jewish girls at my school, who made up the rest of my Hebrew class. That was the only place I talked to them. In regular school I didn’t talk to them at all. I was pretty sure Mom was going to say I had to invite them. The only girl I thought about inviting was Kelli Ann, because my grandmother kept insisting there would be dancing. My face turned red, I could feel it.

  “I’ll need a list,” Granny M said. “If I’m going to hire a calligrapher.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I told her.

  “Let me see the invitation,” said Wai Po. She scrunched up her face while she read it. “Where is David’s middle name? His Chinese middle name. It says David Horowitz. It has his name in English and Hebrew. Where is Da-Wei?”

  Now Mom turned red. “I missed that completely.” She said something to Wai Po in Chinese. I recognized the word gui, from when Wai Po went clothes shopping with us. It meant “expensive.”

  Wai Po scowled and answered in a short burst of rapid-fire Chinese. Judging from her tone and the length of her answer, I was willing to bet that she wasn’t saying, I am totally fine with what’s going on and just want David to enjoy his bar mitzvah. She picked up Bao Bao and left the room as Dad walked in.

  “How’s everything going?” asked Dad.

  “Could be better,” said Mom. “Ma just pointed out that we forgot to include David’s middle name on the invitation.” She waved the invitation at him, like a fan.

  “I can’t believe we missed that,” said Dad. “Oh well, we’ll just have to reprint them.”

  “So suddenly we’re the Rockefellers?” said Granny M. “If we had a wrong address, maybe we’d reprint. If there was a mistake. But there isn’t a mistake. Besides, the Chinese name is just more confusing.”

  It was a Tuesday, and the potential for World War III loomed above us.

  “It sounds better with the full name,” my mother said. “But you’re right, Marjorie. I think we can manage without it.” I wondered if Granny M had left out my Chinese name on purpose. I looked from Mom to Granny M to Dad. Was I supposed to say something like that’s okay, so they wouldn’t have to spend more money? But I wasn’t sure if it was okay, so I didn’t say anything. “Reprinting them would be a waste—of money and of resources.” Mom sighed. “I’m not sure there will even be time to make new ones. I’ll just explain things to my mother.”

  “Maybe we could hand-deliver the invitations so we could save on postage,” I said. “Then we could explain when we give out the invitations.”

  “It’s better to mail them,” said Granny M. “That’s doing it right.”

  “And expensively,” muttered my mom. I don’t think she meant Granny M to hear her say that, but Granny M gave Mom a look.

  Mom gave her a look back.

  Dad clapped his hands. “Speaking of doing things properly, we should talk about the Thanksgiving menu!” You could see that my dad was working hard to change the subject. He does that when things get uncomfortable.

  “I’ve got the menu under control,” said my mother. She tapped her head, where I guess the menu was written. Or engraved.

  “I can make the turkey,” said Granny M.

  “That’s so much work,” my mother said. “I’ve got it.”

  “Psshht,” said Granny M. “I’ve made a million of them. Besides, Ben loves the way I make turkey.”

  Mom looked at Dad and Dad shrugged. I thought Dad was pretty smart, not saying anything. “Well,” said Mom. “I suppose that would free up the oven for the pies and casseroles.”

  Wai Po walked back in, this time with Bao Bao on a leash. “We are going for a walk,” she said stiffly.

  “We’re talking about Thanksgiving,” said Mom. She was trying to act like everything was okay. “Is there anything special you want me to add to the menu? Marjorie said she would make the turkey.”

  “Turkey is so dry,” said Wai Po as she and Bao Bao marched to the door. “What about a nice Peking duck?”

  After Wai Po made her Peking duck comment, there was a whole discussion of The Proper Foods to Bring to Thanksgiving. Granny M kept saying that we had to stay traditional. Wai Po wanted to cook Chinese food. “I do not want my grandchildren to forget that they are Chinese,” she said.

  “Part Chinese,” said Granny M.

  The way they were talking, you’d think there was a dotted line dividing us into equal and separate halves.

  “All foods are fine,” said Mom. “It will be delicious.” This only made both grandmothers unhappy.

  That night I dreamed that my grandmothers became animated poultry carcasses. Wai Po was a roasted brown Peking duck and Granny M was a golden-yellow turkey. Granny M’s turkey hit Wai Po’s duck with a spatula, while Wai Po’s duck fought back with a pair of chopsticks. Then a timer went off and they both exploded.

  When I woke up, I started worrying that my grandmothers would get into a fistfight at the synagogue in front of everyone I knew, including Kelli Ann. If I invited her. It was a scary enough thought that I studied for my test on the Industrial Revolution, even though it wasn’t for another week.

  My school, Dwight D. Eisenhower Junior High, was originally built for five hundred kids. There were now seven hundred and fifty-two of us, which meant things were kind of crowded. If you were in seventh grade, you had to share a locker, and lunch started at 10:42 so that all the kids had a chance to eat. Trying to get to class felt like swimming upstream, while every other fish in the river swam downstream, straight at you.

  Usually, I spotted Kelli Ann within the first ten seconds of the end of second period, and then I had to pretend not to see her while heading in her direction. But today I was so busy thinking about my weird dream that I really didn’t see her until the crowd practically pushed us together.

  “Oh, hey.” Short but friendly and a little cool, with a bit of a chin lift. Yes, I’d been practicing for this moment, to say just the right thing, in just the right way.

  Kelli Ann looked at me and smiled. “Hey, David.” She pulled her hair around her neck so that it was all on one side. Her hair was wavy and the color of caramels, which used to be one of my favorite candies until I got braces. “What’s up?”

  “Not much.” Uh-oh. I hadn’t counted on having a conversation with Kelli Ann. “Um, are you theady for Ranksgiving?”

  Kelli Ann wrinkled her very cute nose at me. “What?”

  Here is my one contribution to the betterment of humanity: When someone doesn’t hear you clearly the first time, don’t repeat exactly what you just said. It just gets more confusing, because the other person’s brain has already messed up that sentence pattern. Say what you want to say, but a little differently.

  “Ready for a long weekend?” I said.

  Kelli Ann shrugged. “I’m spending it with my dad, which means we’re spending it with his new girlfriend.” She always looked so happy that I assumed her life was perfect. I wasn’t sure what to say when I found out it wasn’t. I decided to agree with her. That was pretty safe.

  “That stinks,” I said. “Sorry.”

  Kelli Ann shrugged again, and I wondered if I made a mistake, saying that her life stunk. If someone ever wanted to make a helpful version of Trivial Pursuit, they would create a How to Talk to Girls category. What should you say to a girl when you have fifteen seconds to talk? Unfortunately, I ended up smiling idiotically (Your life stinks! That’s great!), and watching Kelli Ann slide away to the girls’ locker room door.

  In PE, we had to wear a gym suit, which was really not a suit, just a yellow T-shirt and blue shorts. I guess the school wanted us to be easy to spot in case anyone tried to flee the grounds.

  I left the locker room and headed out to the field. Hector was already running laps. We usually had to do three at the beginning of PE and three at the end, which meant there wasn’t a lot of time left for whatever activity Mr. Multer chose for the day. If you ask me, he planned it that way. I caught up to Hector so we could talk, even though he was a lap ahead of me. Kelli A
nn wasn’t outside yet. The only girl running down the worn trail around the field was Joy Bachelder, who made it her personal goal to come in first, even though it wasn’t a race.

  “It’s freezing,” I said to Hector as we cut through the November air. “You want to do some trivia?” Running laps was a great time to practice trivia questions; it made the running less boring.

  Hector nodded. He was breathing through his nose, which was what you were supposed to do to keep your throat from getting raw. I pulled out the Pocket Book of World Trivia, a book I’d gotten from the drugstore to carry around so that I would always be ready to practice. “What is the official language of Quebec, Canada?”

  “They speak English in Canada, don’t they?”

  I flipped to the answer page. “But French is the official language of Quebec.”

  “Zut alors! Or however you say that in French. Gimme a movie one.”

  “What was the first movie to show a toilet flushing?”

  “A toilet flushing? That’s a weird one. Let me think.” When we didn’t know an answer, we tried to reason it out so we could make the best possible guess. “If it was the first, it was probably an old one,” Hector said. “And a lot of old movies didn’t even show bathrooms.” We ran a few yards. “Wait! That Hitchcock movie with the shower scene. Psycho.”

  I checked the answers. “Correct!” That was some pretty good deducing. I tried not to trip over my feet as I scanned other questions in the same chapter, marked Amusements. “What famous cartoon character was almost named Mortimer?” I asked.

  “Ummm. Was it Casper the Friendly Ghost?”

  “No, Mickey Mouse.”

  Hector laughed. “Mortimer Mouse. I don’t think so. By the way, we’re going to Walt Disney World for Thanksgiving.” He said it like it was no big deal, because we’re supposed to be too old to get excited about things like Disney World, but I could tell he really was. Hector’s family went on a lot of these vacations, and he was excited every time.

  “Cool.” I tried to say it like I meant it, but it was hard to be happy for Hector in the Magic Kingdom when I was going to be stuck in the Land of Battling Birds. “When are you leaving?”

  “Tonight.” Hector started talking faster. “My parents have had it planned for a long time, only they didn’t say anything until yesterday. I think they were going to keep it a secret until today. They only told us because my little brother was asking if ducks would lose their beaks after exposure to radiation.”

  “Your brother saw The Day After?” Alonso seemed awfully young to be worried about nuclear radiation.

  “He heard me telling my parents about it, the part about the teeth,” explained Hector. “I thought Alonso had gone to bed, but he was listening on the stairs. He does that.”

  “What do ducks losing their beaks have to do with Disney World?”

  “After he heard us talking, he started crying and freaking out. My parents told him about Disney World to distract him,” Hector said. “It almost worked, except now he keeps asking questions about the beaks of Disney ducks, like Donald and Daisy. And I keep thinking about the beaks of real ducks because Alonso has a point: If humans lose their teeth, ducks will probably lose stuff, too. Like feathers.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Feathers are always the first to go.”

  Hector finished his laps and I took my last one alone. Kelli Ann was running now, and I wasn’t sure whether I should speed up and pass her so she could see how fast I was, or try to run beside her. Before I could decide, Mr. Multer called us in. I figured that meant we’d go inside and spend the rest of the time playing dodgeball. But when we headed back into the gym, Mr. Multer had a boom box plugged into the outlet. There wasn’t a ball in sight.

  “We already did our dance unit,” Hector said, loud enough for Mr. Multer to hear. We did square dancing for a torturous two weeks; I spent most of my time counting people to figure out if I would get paired with Kelli Ann for the Virginia reel. We got paired once out of thirty-two possible times.

  “We’re not dancing,” Mr. Multer said. He put a cassette in the boom box, which he must have brought from home; the school just owned record players that were centuries old. “We’re doing aerobics.” He clapped his hands. “Everyone find a spot and march in place!”

  Mr. Multer hit play and we heard the drums from the beginning of the Go-Go’s “We Got the Beat.” I decided that I needed to be in the back of the room. A lot of guys stood back there, too. Then Mr. Multer told us to grapevine right, which meant to walk sideways while crisscrossing your legs. The girls moved in unison, as if they’d been practicing for months. Hector and I ran into each other.

  “He said to go right,” said Hector.

  “I thought he meant his right.” Apparently, I’d overthought it.

  “This makes me miss square dancing,” Hector said.

  I would have agreed, except I had a clear view of Kelli Ann in the second row. She was next to Michelle, her best friend. They looked at each other and laughed a lot and their long legs didn’t get tangled up in the grapevine. Kelli Ann’s hair was in a ponytail, and, for a moment, I just watched it swing back and forth. That would be a good way to hypnotize junior high boys, not just me.

  “Okay,” yelled Mr. Multer. “Pivot turn!”

  Suddenly, all of us who were cowering in the back row were at the front of the class. It was hard enough to try to figure out what Mr. Multer wanted us to do, but trying to do it in time to the music with the whole class (and Kelli Ann) watching was impossible.

  By the time it was over, it was clear that I didn’t have the beat and I was never going to get it. And I was never going to get a move Mr. Multer called the mambo cha-cha.

  I was still trying to figure out the mambo cha-cha and the V-step on the way to English, which might explain why I crashed into the door.

  “Smooth,” said Scott as I sat down next to him. I’d changed seats when we’d formed the trivia team so we could pass questions back and forth during class.

  “Well!” said Mr. Haggerty, straightening his tie. He had the world’s largest collection of knitted ties. They were bumpy and floppy, like Mr. Haggerty. “It’s your last Thanksgiving before 1984.”

  Mr. Haggerty was mildly obsessed with the idea that we were going to read the book 1984 in the year 1984. It was as though he planned his whole career so he could make this joke, which was kind of sad. Then again, if there was a nuclear war, he’d be going out on top.

  If you haven’t read it yet: 1984 was written in the forties by a guy named George Orwell (Scott called him George Bore-well) about a society in the distant future, also known as right now. According to Mr. Haggerty, who was supposed to be saving 1984 (the book) for 1984 (the year) but was giving everything away, the 1940s version of the 1980s was pretty bad. It depicted a never-ending war. The leader was a guy named Big Brother who may or may not exist, and he watched you all the time. Also, the book mentioned sex, which Hector’s parents were very upset about.

  Mr. Haggerty said that in the book, the future was scary.

  The thing was: That future was right now, and now was scary, too.

  My dad told me we had no idea what living in a scary world was really like. “Try hiding under your desk and pretending that it will save you if there’s a bomb. That’s what your mother and I did. Or what about the Cuban Missile Crisis? Did you learn about that yet?”

  We learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis in Mr. Hudson’s class, but the thing was, it didn’t feel like things had gotten that much better. Just because the US and the Soviet Union were talking more than they used to didn’t mean they were getting along. Someone could go too far at any moment. The Day After proved it. War Games proved it. The Korean jet at the bottom of the ocean proved it. All it took was the push of a button—it just wasn’t that hard. Hadn’t President Reagan called the Soviets the “Evil Empire”? And who even knew what they were calling us?

  Mr. Haggerty spent most of the class showing The Autobiography of Miss Jane
Pittman, which was based on a book about the past instead of the future. In spite of his lousy sense of humor, he was smart enough not to try to lecture about anything the last period before Thanksgiving break.

  As the opening credits came on, I thought about what Mr. Haggerty said. What if this wasn’t just the last Thanksgiving before 1984? What if the Russians pushed the button and this was the last Thanksgiving ever? What if my talk with Kelli Ann in the hallway was the only good conversation I’d ever have with her—or any other girl? What if 1984 ended up being the last book I ever read? What if I never got to become a man? Or what if I survived but ended up sick, with bad skin and no hair or teeth?

  Scott leaned over. “Guess who I am,” he said, then switched to a high-pitched voice, like a little kid. “‘I’m going to Disney World with my mommy and daddy!’” Apparently he had talked to Hector, too.

  I imagined the mushroom cloud hanging over the Magic Kingdom.

  “It’s one way to spend Thanksgiving,” I said. Then I added, “If you’re about five years old.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I felt like a jerk. But Scott laughed.

  “Hey, if you’re going to be in town, you should come over after school today.” Scott said this as a statement, not a request. He leaned in close.

  “I have a plan,” he said. “You’ll want to be in on it.”

  After school, Scott and I walked together, but instead of going in the direction of his house, we went out to Stone Gate Drive, and then turned down a street that wasn’t very developed. The houses were small, but on huge tracts of land. Scott walked up to a small tan house, and pointed to the field behind it. “There,” he said. “We can dig back here.”

  “Dig what?”

  “A fallout shelter,” he said. “We’re not getting toasted when the big bomb comes. We’re going to be survivors.”

  It took me a moment to absorb this idea.

  “Won’t the owner of the house mind?”