Apparently I could ask her if I ever got up the nerve to be that nosy, because somehow Chloe and I were becoming friends. The three of us had exchanged cell phone numbers at lunch and had agreed to meet the next day as well. Dinner was more complicated; Hunter was obliged to sit at a table with the soccer team as a kind of bonding activity, and Chloe had promised to hang out with her roommate, in whom I had less than no interest. That was fine, though; I needed alone time, and besides, at least once a week I wouldn’t be eating in the dining hall anyway. Friday nights were reserved for Shabbat dinners with Gardner’s Hillel group.
I’d had high hopes for making friends with some of the other Jewish kids at school, who I assumed would share some of my fears about the rise of anti-Semitism. But from the very first Friday night I spent at Hillel, it was clear to me the kids at Gardner were nothing like my former friends back home. They were mostly from New York and Los Angeles, and I could tell few of them were scholarship kids, though my guess was that the misbehavior that got them sent here might have been as simple as not making the kinds of grades their parents expected. They were sophisticated in ways I was not, telling stories of bar and bat mitzvahs that sounded more like that MTV show about wealthy sixteen-year-olds. Their parents had hired aging rock stars to perform at their parties; mine had rented out the basement floor of our temple and put my sister in charge of making a playlist on her phone. They were fashionable and beautifully dressed and I was scared to talk to them. In some ways, they reminded me of Chloe. I supposed I should give them a chance; they’d invited me to hang out with them after dinner, but I really just wanted to go to my dorm room and be by myself for a while. Being around them made me miss my family, especially Shana, and I thought maybe I should call home. I could always hang out next week.
When I got back to my room, there was a note taped to my door.
Dear AMINA,
Would you rather spend three years at Gardner studying on your own? Or would you rather hang out with some like-minded people, have some fun, and add an extracurricular to your college transcript at the same time? If you’re on Team Fun, then find the most secret, safe place on campus and meet there next Saturday at midnight and we can get started.
Hope to see you there!
I had no idea what to make of this. I put all thoughts of a family phone call out of my mind and read the note over and over again, trying to figure out what was going on. Did Gardner have a secret society? If so, why would I be invited? Maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe it was just some sad, desperate person who needed friends. But why make it a game, then? And why such a hard game? I had no idea what the most secret safe place on campus was. Although I was reminded of the conversation Hunter, Chloe, and I had had at lunch, about how the Rathskeller would not be the safest place to hide if something bad were to happen. Was this Hunter’s way of showing that he’d known that already? Or perhaps Chloe calling his bluff?
I debated whether to check in with them. The note hadn’t specified that I had to keep it secret, though it seemed implied. I had some time to think, anyway, and I decided to use it. Maybe one of them would bring it up.
The following week flew by in a whirlwind of classes and homework and lunches with Chloe and Hunter, who’d fallen into a routine of finding topics to fight about ranging from the trivial to the serious and everything in between. It was hilarious to watch them argue about whether rap and country went well together; I didn’t really listen to either, but Hunter was obsessed with rap/country collaborations, whereas Chloe thought they should always be kept separate. “There’s a reason Taylor Swift didn’t start bringing rappers into the mix until she was all pop, all the time,” Chloe said, at which point Hunter got out his cell phone and played a clip of her doing a jokey rap with T-Pain from way back that had all of us laughing so hard people started coming up to our table to see what was so funny.
I tended to have opinions about the more serious topics, like when they debated whether you could separate art from the artist. Chloe thought the artist was completely irrelevant, but I didn’t. “I had to stop watching one of my favorite TV shows when I found out the star was a rapist,” I said. “I couldn’t pretend he was someone else anymore. And I tried to watch this comedian I used to love and his act just comes across so different now, like all his pro-woman stuff was just a way to get access.”
Hunter’s eyes got all sparkly, and even though I’d only known him a short time I already had a sense of what was coming. I was in trouble. “All the examples you just gave are for people who you liked and then found out were awful,” he said. “What about people everyone always knew were awful? Do they count?”
“What do you mean?” Chloe asked.
“Well, we know Amina’s a big reader,” he said. I’d told them about growing up a huge bookworm and how that basically hadn’t changed at all, though now I read different stuff. “I bet you liked Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when you were little, didn’t you? What about Matilda? That’s, like, bookworm candy.”
My real Roald Dahl favorite was “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” but I didn’t see the need to argue details. “Sure, I’m a fan.”
“You know Roald Dahl was a massive anti-Semite, right?” His eyes were super wide now, reminding me of the boy who’d asked the apocalypse question at Game Night.
“That sounds familiar,” I admitted.
“Did you stop reading him?”
“I didn’t have to,” I said. “I grew up.”
“Okay, fine. What if Ms. Cavanaugh assigns us T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound? You going to just refuse to read? What about other kinds of art? Are you going to stop going to museums?”
Now Chloe looked interested. “No more Picasso?” she asked. “Why stop at art? What about music? And what do we do about Michael Jackson?”
They both watched as I tried to come up with an answer. Hunter was onto something, but it wasn’t everything. “Okay, fine, I hadn’t really thought about the older stuff. But there’s a difference between people who did horrible stuff way before I was even alive, people who are dead now, and people who were doing bad things at the same time as they were making the art I like—books, movies, whatever. It doesn’t feel like the same kind of betrayal, you know?”
Chloe nodded, but I hadn’t convinced Hunter. “Just because the standards were different back then doesn’t mean what they were doing wasn’t wrong,” he said. “Is it really okay to let them off the hook just because they didn’t know better? As if being anti-Semitic or horrible to other people was ever really okay?”
“You have a point,” I said. “You’re going to be a really good lawyer.”
He grinned. “If I even get into college. I’m going to have to find some extracurriculars, and soon.”
Funny that he’d bring up extracurriculars. Was that some sort of hint? Had he sent the note? Was he waiting for me to figure it out? I watched his face but it was as open as it always was. Chloe hadn’t responded either, except to say that extracurriculars were the least of her worries. “Speaking of which, I have to go,” she said. “Did you know there’s an amazing greenhouse on campus? It’s perfect for photo shoots. I’ll join the Garden Club to get access if I have to, but I am fully taking that place over.”