Where You End Read Free Page A

voice was right behind me, and I stole a second before turning around, smiling right through my frosted cheeks. I had expected the register to be lower (yes, more like a bass) and I was glad I still had enough wits to find that thought funny.
    â€œI mean here, at school,” he clarified, stomping his own snowy heels on the mat. No bass, just a big wool scarf he uncoiled off his neck in a way that made me need to look away.
    â€œI know,” I said. “My mom made me come.”
    My mom made me come. My mom made me come. My mom can’t even make me finish what’s on my plate these days.
    He said he thought the snow was pretty, and I agreed with a smile.
    â€œAfter you, Miriam.”
    My name sounded so pure and full, like I was the first Miriam, his Miriam. It’s what I miss the most, the sound of my name in his mouth. I spent the rest of that day letting Elliot’s voice bounce like a dollar-store ball inside my empty head. Miriam in the chemistry lab, Miriam in American History, Miriam in French Literature, Miriam in Trigonometry, Miriam in the darkroom.
    When school let out, the snow had stopped and settled everywhere, and I took a moment to pull up my hood and tease out my bangs before starting out toward the bus stop. Our rides were stuck at home under a new coat of frost. As I tucked my jeans into my boots, I noticed letters in the snow:
    WAIT FOR ME
    And in parentheses that should have alarmed me:
    (PLEASE)
    It could have been for anybody, but this is my story, and that was my moment, and I wanted someone to want me to wait. So I waited.
    When Elliot came out, he puffed his breath in the cold and asked how I was getting home. I told him the buses were probably stuck, and, with his hands in his prep school coat pockets, he motioned to the street with his shoulder. We stepped right over the snow message and just walked, my gray sweater to his blue coat, all the way there. We talked about what we saw: little kids licking their gloves, the empty streets at rush hour, angels on the dirty sidewalks, the pizza delivery guy brushing snow off his bike with his bare hands.
    We must have looked happy. I bet we looked handsome.
    I blush like a Polish girl when it’s cold out and my hair straightens out and sticks to my face. Elliot’s lips turn sort of blue. He hunched his shoulders to keep warm, like my father’s Bob Dylan on the cover of Freewheelin’ , and sometimes we bumped into each other, gently, to slow it all down. I learned he liked music. He learned I liked pictures. When we got to my place, two candles were lit in the menorah behind my window and neither one of us had mentioned the writing in the snow.
    Dad was home early and my parents were shuffling between the kitchen and the living room, busy in the evening buzz. Elliot and I stood outside on the porch, like in the movies.
    â€œThat’s nice, the candles.”
    â€œThanks, it’s for Hanukkah.”
    â€œYou light a candle every night?”
    â€œEvery night for eight days.”
    â€œWhy eight days?”
    â€œThat’s how long it took for the light to come back ”
    That was our first kiss. I can still feel the porch light flooding us, but our voices now blend in my head. I try hard to focus on the memory of that day. I sit up a little in my planetarium chair, tune out the narrating voice, and think hard, trying to taste the salt in that kiss we had in honor of the Maccabean revolt. Had I looked up that night, I would have seen the stars fretting, shrieking this is no miracle, no wonder, no salvation.
    Instead, I closed my eyes and took the kiss with everything that came after. No regrets. According to this program and its soothing narrator, by the time I could’ve heard the stars’ advice, the universe would have already expanded. The concept comforts me. It’ s not my fault things keep moving.
    As the lights turn back on and my eyes adjust to the missing stars, I let people walk past