"Now, Louise," my mom said, reaching out to give Mrs. Abramowitz's shoulders a squeeze. "Remember what you told me when it was the restaurant that was burning. It's the people that matter, not the building."
"Right," Mr. Abramowitz said. He and Skip were standing there with some other men, huddled in the wind. "No one got hurt. And that's what's important."
"No," Mrs. Abramowitz said, mournfully. "But … but the Torah. It's just too awful."
I looked questioningly at Ruth.
"The Torah," she explained. "You know, the holy scrolls. They think that's what they lit on fire first."
"They?" I stared at her. "What are you talking about? Someone set this fire? On purpose?"
"Judge for yourself," Ruth said, and pointed.
Following the direction of her gloved hand, I looked. Across the street from the synagogue stood our town's only Jewish cemetery. Because there aren't a whole lot of Jews in southern Indiana—there are more churches here than there are McDonalds, for sure—the cemetery was pretty small.
So it had been pretty easy for whoever had gone to town on it to knock over every single headstone.
Oh, yes. Every single one. Except of course the mausoleums, which they couldn't knock over. But they'd satisfied themselves by spray-painting those with swastikas. Swastikas and something else. Something that looked familiar.
It took me a minute, but finally, I recognized it: the symbol I'd seen on Nate Thompkins's chest.
C H A P T E R
9
"It's a gang," Claire said.
"It's not a gang, all right?" I was pacing up and down the hallway outside Michael's room. "Nate Thompkins wasn't in a gang."
"Just because his sister doesn't want to believe it," Michael pointed out, "doesn't mean it isn't true."
"She said all they wanted to do was scam prescription drugs," I said. "Does what happened over at the synagogue look like the work of people whose primary interest is in partying?"
I threw an aggravated look at the two of them, but it was no good. They refused to get as upset about it as I was. This was partly because Claire was sitting in Michael's lap. I guess it's hard to get upset about murder, arson, and bias crimes going on in your own town while you're getting cozy with that special someone.
"Grits, then," Claire said, with a shrug.
I blinked at her. "I beg your pardon?"
"Well, think about it," Claire said. "We were all so worried when the Thompkinses moved in, that the Grits were going to try something. You know, burn a cross on their lawn, or whatever. Maybe the Grits did it. Killed Nate."
Michael brightened. "Hey," he said. "Yeah. And Grits hate Jews, too."
"Oh, my God." I stared at them. "Would you two stop? Grits couldn't have done any of this."
"Why not?" Claire asked. "When we had to read Malcolm X in World Civ, a lot of the Grits wouldn't do it, because they said they wouldn't read a book written by a black person. Only they didn't say black," she added, meaningfully.
"And I heard a Grit," Michael said, "at the grocery store the other day, going on about how the Holocaust never happened, and was all made up by the Jews."
"Would you two cut it out?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Not all Grits are like that."
"She just says that," Michael said confidently to Claire, "because she's dating one."
Claire looked at me with bright-eyed interest. "You are? Oh, my God, Jess! That's so politically correct of you. But does he talk about NASCAR racing all the time? Because that would really bore me after a while."
I tried to give Michael the same kind of evil death glare Great-aunt Rose had down so perfect.
"Don't try to blame all this on the Grits," I said. "The Grits have been around a long time, and so has the synagogue, and we never had a problem like this before."
Michael looked thoughtful. "Well," he said. "That's true enough."
"Grits are, for the most part, hard-working people," I said, "who haven't had the same advantages as us. It's wrong to blame them for every bad thing that happens in this town just because they happen to have less money than we do."
Claire went, "Well, there's only one explanation, then. It has to be Nate's gang."
I rolled my eyes. I couldn't believe we were back to square one all over again.
Fortunately at that moment footsteps sounded on the stairs. We turned to see Douglas, covered from head to toe in protective outerwear, but looking chilled to the bone nonetheless, come staggering into the hallway. His face, the only part of him that wasn't covered, was flushed. There were snowflakes in his eyelashes.
"Where have you been?" I demanded.
"Nowhere," Douglas said, with deceptive innocence, as he reached up to pull off his knit ski cap. His hair, beneath the cap, was sweaty looking, and stuck up at weird angles. He looked like a demented snowplow driver.
"What?" Michael said. "Did Dad corner you about the driveway?"
"Uh, yeah," Douglas said, ducking into his room. "Yeah, that's where I was."
He shut the door, so we were all looking at the DO NOT DISTURB sign he'd pinned up there.
Mike glanced at me. "Do we start worrying about him now," he wanted to know, "or later?"
The phone rang. I didn't rush to pick it up, or anything, since no one but Ruth ever calls me. And I knew Ruth wasn't home. She and her family had gone over to their rabbi's house, to try to console him over the loss of the Torah, which turned out to be a really bad thing. Like someone coming in and burning your Bible, only worse, because Torahs are harder to replace.
So you can imagine my surprise when my mom called up the stairs, "Jess, it's for you. Your friend Joanne."
Which would have been fine, of course. Except that I have no friend named Joanne.
"Hello?" I said curiously, after picking up the extension in Mike's room.
"Mastriani." It was Rob. Of course it was Rob. Who else would call me, pretending to be someone named Joanne?
"Oh," I said, watching with a fair amount of disgust as Mikey and Claire started kissing. Right there in front of me. Granted, it was Mike's room, and I guess he could do what he wanted to in it, but excuse me, ew. "Hey."
"Listen. About tonight," Rob said, in his deep voice. I wondered how he'd managed to fool my mom into thinking he was someone named Joanne. Had he spoken in falsetto? Or had he had his mom ask for me? Surely not. I mean, then he'd have had to admit to his mom that I hadn't told my parents about him. And that was something I was pretty sure Rob wasn't going to admit to anybody.
"You still want to do something?" Rob asked.
I prickled immediately. "What do you mean, do I still want to do something? Of course I still want to do something. We're going out, right? I mean, aren't we?"
Mikey and Claire, distracted by my tone of voice, which had suddenly gotten a little shrill, stopped kissing, and looked at me.
"Is that the Grit?" Claire mouthed, excitedly. I turned my back on them.
"Well," Rob said. "I don't know. I mean, yesterday at the mall, you seemed to wig out a little."
"I did not wig out," I said, appalled. "That was not wigging out. That was just … I mean, come on. That was weird. I mean, your mom, my mom. Whatever."
"Right," Rob said. But he didn't sound very convinced. "Whatever."
"But of course I still want to go out tonight," I said. I was clutching the phone very tightly, so tightly my knuckles were white. "I mean, if you want to. Go to dinner. Or a movie." Or to your uncle's Christmas Eve wedding. Whichever. Or both, actually.
"Well," Rob said, stretching that single syllable out unbelievably far. I hung onto the receiver in breathless anticipation. This was, I knew, ridiculous. Ruth would have killed me for it, if she'd known. Ruth has very firm rules about boys, and one of the rules is that you should never, ever chase them. Let the boys come to you.