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.Her enthusiasm became my enthusiasm.I could feel a glimmer of what Kate was talking about.like maybe there could be something beautiful about me.I wondered why I’d let Carlos treat me the way he had; how I came so close to letting him break me.I didn’t stand up to Carlos, and it wasn’t me who got us out of the bathtub with Ron that day—it was Lisa.“You must be your own guardian.You get to say what happens to you.”We spent the rest of the session with Kate going over a list of what she called Didjaknows, which were a series of facts introduced by the question, “Didjaknow?”“Didjaknow Cool Whip can trigger yeast infections? And so can anything else heavy in sugar, when applied to your labia majora.Do we all know what a labia majora is?”“It can trigger what?” asked a concerned voice across the room.The owner of the voice was a thick, pretty white girl with big green eyes wearing a sparkling stud of a nose ring and tall leather boots.Her name was Eva; I’d seen her in two of my classes.Her style was hip-hop with a club girl twist.Her pink lipstick was outlined in deep red lip liner, and her long brown hair was highlighted blond and pulled into a sleek ponytail.“Does it always cause an infection, really?” she asked.Everyone laughed.“Whatchoo been up to?” Jonathan quipped, laughing and taking more high fives.Kate smiled.“Not always, dear, it’s just something to watch out for.”“Oh,” Eva said, still showing obvious concern but slowly beginning to smile.“Well.I’m just asking,” she said, her hands raised in mock defense.“ ’Cause it doesn’t say all that on the label, and a girl needs to know,” and then she laughed, too; we all did.Eva lived on Twenty-eighth Street and Eighth Avenue, close to Prep.Other than a visit to one of Daddy’s friend’s apartments growing up, I’d never been inside a home in Manhattan before.I expected it to be “rich” like Daddy said, but instead Eva and her father, Yurick, a Holocaust survivor, lived in Chelsea’s version of the projects, in one of a cluster of tall redbrick buildings that primarily housed elderly and low-income families.Yurick was a painter.His mother, Eva’s grandmother, had smuggled him out of the Warsaw ghetto when he was an infant, saving his life.There were abstract paintings of the Holocaust all over the walls of their large, sun-filled, two-bedroom apartment.“They make me feel guilty for having food,” Eva half joked, gesturing over the microwave, toward a painting of a gaunt and horrified cluster of people lost in the woods.“You’re hilarious,” I told her as she served us a late dinner, two plates of creamy bowtie pasta with peas and carrots.Eva was always making me laugh, and she was deeply insightful, easy to talk to.The moment I met her in Jessie’s class, I decided I liked her instantly.Eva became my first real friend at Prep.Our short talks after class had grown into lunches on the stoops of Chelsea brownstones, which grew into visits to her apartment, and eventually into sleepovers.We were quickly becoming close.I told Eva an edited version of my situation, withholding the full extent for when I felt more trusting.Without ever really stating explicitly that she wanted to help me, she did.We had dozens of sleepovers and hangouts on Twenty-eighth Street.Eva would always cook something, loan me clothing, let me take hot showers upstairs.Often, she split her extra snacks with me during lunchtime at Prep, and she never once showed a sign of being inconvenienced.“Does your dad remember much about the war?” I asked, dressed in my pajamas in her kitchen, ready for bed.I always felt it was easier keeping the conversation about other people.And after taking “Facing History and Ourselves” with Caleb, I’d learned all about genocide and the Holocaust.It felt good to be able to engage Eva in conversation with some confidence.“Parts.He was really little, but his dad was the head of an important Jewish organization, so mostly his memories are of after the war, when my grandfather counseled survivors in their living room.My dad overheard all of it, which had to be tough for a small kid,” she said.Eva loved psychology, and she had a way of seeing deeply into people, always listening to someone’s sharing from the angle of discovering their motivations, struggles, and needs.“I think his paintings are cathartic for him,” she said.“After you experience trauma that deep, you need to do something to heal.Something to make meaning out of all the loss.”I ate everything Eva gave me, and then a second plate, too.“There’re clean sheets on the couch for you, Liz.For whenever you get tired and are ready to sleep.”With Eva, I felt totally understood and cared for.She was safe, loving, and funny.I looked forward to seeing her every day, and I wanted her to be a part of my life always.Sometimes, another new friend from Prep joined us at Eva’s house.His name was James, and he took history class with us.James was over six feet tall, half-black and half-white, with beautiful caramel skin, a toned, muscular build, and a very messy and very large Afro.He loved all things Japanese, and often wore T-shirts with Japanese characters across the chest, or old martial arts shirts from his kung fu class.His clothes were always disheveled, and he had an innocence about him that made me want to be his friend.We connected one day when our teacher unknowingly repeated a nervous tic throughout his lecture, saying the word mmkay dozens of times in a single class session.It was so frequent and so funny that I looked for witnesses and saw James beside me, holding back laughter.I slid him a note marked, “Matt says mmkay,” with tallies underneath, tallied to well over a hundred [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]