surprisingly lucid: She and Ada. It’s all coming back, she thought excitedly. Endless discussions about boys who did or did not have an “artistic personality,” and heart-to-hearts about their parents—after all, almost from the start they were more loyal to each other than to their family secrets. Now she thinks that if not for Ada she would not even know that it was possible, that such closeness was allowed between two people. And there was the Esperanto they started learning together but never finished … On the annual school trip to Lake Kinneret, she told him, on the bus, Ada had a stomachache and announced to Ora that she was going to die, and Ora sat next to her weeping. But when she really did, you know, I didn’t cry, I couldn’t. Everything in me completely dried up. I haven’t cried even once since she died.
One small road and an alley separated their houses in the Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood. They walked to school together, and together they walked home, always holding hands when they crossed the street; that was their habit since the age of six, and that is how they did it at the age of fourteen. Ora remembered the one time—they were nine, and they had fought about something that day, and she didn’t hold Ada’s hand when they crossed, and a municipal van came around the bend and hit Ada, tossing her high up—
She could see it again: her red coat opening up like a parachute. Ora was only two steps behind, and she turned back and ran to hide behind a row of bushes, where she kneeled on the ground with both hands over her ears, shut her eyes tightly, and hummed loudly to herself so she wouldn’t see or hear.
And I didn’t know it was only a dress rehearsal, she said.
I’m no good at saving people, she added later, perhaps to herself, perhaps to warn him.
And then it was Chanukah break, she said as her voice grew smaller. My parents and my brother and I were on vacation in Nahariya, we went there every year, to a guesthouse, for the whole holiday. The morning after vacation I went to school and waited for her by the kiosk where we used to meet every morning, and she didn’t come, and it was getting late so I walked on my own, and she wasn’t in the classroom, and I looked in the playground by our tree, in all our places, and she wasn’t there, and the bell rang and she hadn’t come, and I thought maybe she was sick, or maybe she was late and she’d be there soon. And then our homeroom teacher came in and we could see that he was confused, and he stood with his body kind of leaning sideways and said, Our Ada … And he burst into tears, and we didn’t understand what was going on, and a few kids even laughed, because he let out this kind of sob, from his nose …
She spoke in rapid whispers. Avram pressed her hand hard between his palms, hurting her, and she didn’t pull back.
And then he said she’d been killed in an accident, last night in Ramat Gan. She had a cousin there, she was walking down the street and a bus came, and that was that.
Fast and hot were her breaths on the back of his hand.
And what did you do?
Nothing.
Nothing?
I sat there. I don’t remember.
Avram breathed heavily.
There were two books of hers in my backpack. Two Youth Encyclopedia volumes I brought to return to her after the vacation, and I kept thinking, What am I going to do with them now?
And that’s how you first heard about it? In class?
Yes.
That can’t be.
It can.
And what happened afterward?
Don’t remember.
And her parents?
What?
What about them?
I don’t know what about them.
I’m just thinking, if something like that happened to me, an accident, my mom would probably go crazy, it would kill her.
Ora sat up straight, pulled her hand away and leaned back against the wall.
I don’t know … they didn’t say anything.
But how?
I didn’t …
I can’t hear, come closer.
I didn’t talk to them.
At all?
Ever since.
Wait, you mean they were killed, too?
Them? Of course not … They live in the same house to this day.
But you said … you said you and her, like sisters—
I didn’t go there …
Her body started to harden. No, no—she let out a cold, foreign shard of laughter. My mother said it would be better not to go, not to make