The Dubious Pranks of Shaindy Goodman: Chapters 17–23

In her haste to arrive, she must not have looked at a mirror, and there’s a smudge of makeup under her eye. She looks just as disheveled as I feel.

There are pictures on a bulletin board of various students over the years, all of their bright faces mocking me from the wall, and the desk in front of me is like an insurmountable mountain.

I want to tell her about Gayil, about the strange and intoxicating sensation that had come with being her friend.

“I need to get back to work. You’re grounded. There will be no more nighttime adventures, because you aren’t leaving the house for a month,” she says, and then, her wide eyes turning gentle and imploring and her voice wobbly, “Shaindy, I want to understand.”

Her voice is caustic, and it burns me even though I know that it isn’t directed at me.

And rollerblading has become intrinsically tied to my not-quite-friendship with Gayil, has become part of that secret, twisted part of my life.

All three of us watch her from the window, and I can feel the helplessness build up inside of me, the sense that Gayil is a force that we can never defeat. That this twelve-year-old girl is powerful enough that my mother can’t do a thing against her, that my high school sister can’t touch her, that our family will never be able to mar her family with the stain she’s left on me.

But I know that it’s wishful thinking from the moment that I see Gayil again, sitting cross-legged against her pillow with a book on her lap. There’s a cross section of a shark swimming across the centerfold of it, and I’ve never thought that something was more apt.

“That’s what our teacher said last year. I’m perfect.”
It’s strange how something so arrogant can be said with such disdain.

I had been in the back of her little posse, the seven of us a loose gaggle of mismatched girls who’d been united only by the school we’d had in common.

She’d had a cold the day after, had been sick and lethargic, and had begged to be excused from any activities, and I hadn’t thought anything of it.

There is something else rising beneath the fear, a flowing energy that slams into Gayil’s rage and holds it at bay. Anger, my own, and it surges through me to bolster me.

The mild summer winds intensify into full-blown gales, hurling fire-orange leaves from the young trees of the development, and I sit outside in the cold without a coat, exulting in the chill of the wind on my face.

It’s spiteful and cruel and vicious, everything I’ve always been told never to do, and it’s exactly what I’ve learned from her. I am Gayil now, just not in any of the ways that I’d thought I would want to be her. I am everything that would appall the model class where I’ve been for eight years.

I’m still planning furious plans that I know will never come to fruition.

None of these will do enough to persuade anyone that Gayil is the guiltier one, only make it clear that I have some vendetta against her.

They swing big blocks of concrete from side to side, clanging and drilling in a cacophony of what looks like chaos to me.

I start with the beginning, Gayil at her window with that sign, and I painstakingly describe every incident that had followed.

The rest is all Gayil, and the parts of this that are my fault are much less egregious than the ones that are Gayil’s.

“It feels a little like I’m rewarding bad behavior. But I did make you a promise, and I see that this is...well, you’re going through something very difficult right now.” She takes a breath. “And I know that it’s only going to get harder. So I’m rescinding my original punishment.”

I glare at her, and Gayil glowers back, the two of us frozen in fury.

Gayil is begging me, as though she has any right. As though this isn’t all on her, and I’ve been her hapless victim.

She shakes her head, ponytail swinging against the collar of her navy polo, and I burn with humiliation by proxy, imagining a class where everyone knows that I don’t belong.

I might have embellished some parts for the letter that will incriminate Gayil, but I don’t have the courage to do that to Tzivia’s face, when she had been one of Gayil’s targets too.

I slip through the fence, wander between large vehicles and pallets piled high with building material.

Why do I want to understand Gayil? What is it about her that I just can’t shake from my heart? Is it just that she’s smart and popular and charismatic, this perfect girl living next door?

Nothing scares me more than being alone, she’d said, and it had been a haunting, broken revelation, as broken as Gayil being positive that everyone hates her.

My life might be in shambles, but I don’t think I’m done just yet.

It’s dismissal time and the end of the workday, and the streets are crowded with girls coming home from school and adults with strollers laden with their Thursday shopping for Shabbos.

Anger is so hard to maintain, to hold on to, and I am sure that it had all drained out of Gayil once she’d gotten her revenge. I can start the cycle again—can awaken it within her, can get my vindication, can watch as Gayil gets hers in return—but what is the point?

“I don’t understand,” she says, and she sounds frazzled, uncomfortable and anxious.

“Your suspension has been rescinded,” he says. “You seem to have a friend on the school board who interceded for you.”

Most of the class is already there, taking notebooks out of their lockers and putting their backpacks into them, and there are cool glances cast my way, distaste emanating from them at me.

“Thanks, Morah Neuman,” Gayil says, the de facto spokesperson for the class.

I hesitate, and someone says, “Shaindy? Is that you?” It’s Rena, eyeing me with misgiving, and I twist around.

I don’t want to lie, not on Yom Kippur, but I don’t want to create the kind of rift that is creeping up around us.

Devorah greets Rena with a wan smile, and Sheva is still davening from her siddur, turning pages quickly.

It feels insurmountable now, with my head heavy from fasting and prayers, from how late it is and how tired I am, to think back through the past, to figure out who it is that I want to apologize to. There are the obvious choices, Gayil’s five targets, but I don’t want my Yom Kippur to be only about that. Not when there is a whole year to mull over.

The silence is gone, and in its place is laughter and relief, recovery from an ordeal that we have put ourselves through as a community.

I’m not sure what I expect from her now. Maybe a reminder that we’re even, or a threat if I say anything to her friends. Maybe just a snide comment.