“You have some—uh—” He reached out and brushed at my nose. “Some whipped cream there.”
Strange, you’d think my blazing-hot face would have melted any cream. “Oops.”
“It’s cute.” He was looking at me again, but this time without the wicked humor of before. His gaze softened.
Iwantedthis boy.
No avoiding it. No pretending otherwise. Every nook and cranny, from my heart to my ribs to my fingertips, wanted him. Madly. Desperately. Unavoidably.
Of course I’d noticed a ridiculous crush growing. But I’d thought I’d had a hold on it. Crushes could be shunted aside and kept under wraps. This—this full-body desire—threatened to knock me over. I didn’t have the time for complex, giant emotions: those were scary and difficult and blotted out reason. I didn’t want to deal with them, not this summer, when I wanted to focus on finding out more about my grandmother. Sure, I’d been prepared to have a fling, but a fling was very different than obsessive longing.
So I couldn’t handle Noah Barbanel looking at me the way he was right now. I couldn’t handle opening up to emotions capable of consuming me.
I pushed my chair back and stood. “Time to head out.”
He blinked. “We don’t have—”
“I feel like walking a bit.” I pitched my sundae cup into a nearby trash can. “Let’s go.”
Nantucket’s Unitarian Universal meeting house didn’t look too different from the UU church where my Girl Scout troop had met growing up. It had red pews and white walls and, every Friday night during the summer, held services for the island’s small Jewish community.
I usually found temple boring in a familiar way, like eating oatmeal or unloading the dishwasher—occasionally tedious, rarely exciting, sometimes pleasant. At services, I’d see my friends from Hebrew school, and sometimes we’d sneak out to wander the hallsand examine artwork by the little kids or the entry hall’s Tree of Life mosaic. We had a massive congregation, made to accommodate five towns’ worth of Reform Jews, at least on the High Holidays.
This congregation had to be tiny, which made me think texting wouldn’t fly, nor would silently singing the songs in the back of the siddur, which was how I’d spent far too many hours entertaining myself instead of paying attention to sermons. (“My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” verses 1–4, looking at you.)
Noah led me into the back halls, where Rabbi Leah Abrams had her office. He tapped lightly on her open door.
“Noah!” She rose from behind a desk piled high with books, and came forward to hug him. She was tall and on the skinny side, with a pretty purple scarf tied around her bald head. Placing her hands on the sides of his shoulders, she leaned back to see him better. “You look so grown-up!”
His cheeks pinkened and I bit the inside of my own so I didn’t smile too hard.
“Your grandmother tells me you’re going to Harvard next year.”
“Yeah. I am.”
“How exciting! Do you think you’ll get to work at the Arboretum?”
“I’m actually studying econ, not botany.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised. “Well! Very useful.” She turned her smile on me and lowered her voice confidentially. “I studied theater. Not the most lucrative career.”
“I’m thinking about history,” I said, which surprised me, since I almost entirely tried to avoid talking to adults about college. “I’m Abigail.”
“Yes, of course, come sit. It’s your grandmother’s past you’re interested in?”
“Yeah.” We sat in two matching chairs across from her. “She came over from Germany in 1939. She was only four, so she didn’t remember much about her family...”
The rabbi nodded thoughtfully as we filled her in. When we finished, she pressed her finger tips together, hands splayed wide. “All right. Interesting. I do have a theory of where you should look next. Have you two learned about Kindertransport?”
The only kinder I knew was garten. I shook my head, as did Noah.
“Kristallnacht?”
This time we nodded. I’d learned about Kristallnacht in history class, taught about the event coolly and emotionlessly, like it was just one more bullet point to memorize—and perhaps to most people, it was. 1938, Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass: Jews were murdered and arrested throughout Germany and its territories; businesses were smashed; and almost three hundred synagogues were destroyed.
O’ma had never explicitly said she’d been sent away from Germany because of Kristallnacht, but the dates lined up.
“Kristallnacht made the international community sit up and take note. A lot of things can be brushed under the rug—but not rampant murder. Jewish, Quaker, and British leaders went to the prime minister, requesting England allow in Jewish minors. A bill was prepared the next day. It passed Parliament quickly, and three weeks after Kristallnacht, the first transport of children from Germany to Britain arrived. All in all, ten thousand children under seventeen came from Europe to live in the UK.”
