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By coincidence, my fifteenth birthday fell on the last day of Ulpan.

I don’t know if Dad called and told him or what, but somehow my teacher got wind of it and led the whole class in a shaky chorus of the Hebrew happy birthday song. As you can imagine, it was mortifying. Of course, I turned red as a beet. I always do when people sing “Happy Birthday” to me.

Later that night, Dad took me out for dinner at a local shish kebab place and gave me my present over a plate of shwarma. At first when I opened the box and found a cellphone, I was ecstatic. Pretty awesome birthday present, right? Well, as it turned out, not so much.

“This is for emergency use only, Mack,” Dad explained in his most authoritative parental tone. “I get nervous with you running all over this city and I want you to be safe. But you’ll have no more than ten minutes of call time per month, so use it wisely.”

Um, hello? What was I supposed to do with ten minutes a month? For a teenager, it was like getting a key to the candy store and being told you could only have one jelly bean. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I smiled and did my best to hide my disappointment. After all, what did I expect? Mom had always been the one to buy the presents in our family — Dad would just sign the card and show up for cake.

Presents aside, now that I was fifteen, what I had really been hoping for was the green light to start dating. When I brought it up, though, Dad looked pained — like someone had just stuck a pin in his butt.

“Well, uh — I don’t think this is the right time to discuss that, Mack,” he stammered.

My heart sunk. This was not how I’d imagined this conversation happening. At this rate, I was never going to have a boyfriend!

“What do you mean ‘not the right time’?” I whined, trying to keep from crying. “I’m fifteen years old now, Dad. All my friends are dating!”

That last part wasn’t exactly true, but I thought it made my argument sound more convincing. Unfortunately, Dad didn’t agree.

“Oh gosh,” he said, pushing his couscous nervously around with his fork, “Let’s wait a little bit longer on this one, okay, honey?”

I could hear a slight hint of begging in his voice; I knew he was dying to drop the subject, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why. In all his years as a parent, he’d never imagined having this conversation with me. Mom had always handled the tough parenting subjects. You know, the birds-and-bees talk, the first-period talk, the say-no-to-drugs talk. He’d been on the sidelines of my childhood, and probably never expected he’d have to handle the ready-to-start-dating talk all by himself!

Maybe it was because it was my birthday, but I was feeling kind of generous. So, in a rare moment of weakness, I took pity on him and let him off the hook — for now, anyway.

After my birthday I began to see less of him as he started working longer hours at the university getting ready for the beginning of the first semester. Sometimes he wouldn’t get home until after dark. Of course, I was always there waiting for him. The local pizza guy already knew our order by heart.

Some things never change.

At least Ulpan was finally over. And there were still a couple of weeks before the beginning of school in October, so Marla suggested we celebrate the end of summer by going on a trip to a nearby beach town called Netanya.

Naturally, Dad didn’t want to let me go, but when I promised to be home for dinner he finally agreed. We hopped on a bus early in the morning and got there just over an hour later. Unlike Canada, where it would take weeks to get from one end of the country to the other, nothing in Israel is very far. They say the entire nation is about the size of New Jersey.

The first things I noticed in Netanya were the palm trees. They were everywhere, as abundant as maple trees back at home. And there were miles of the most beautiful sandy beaches I’d ever seen. We spent the whole time splashing in the Mediterranean, eating ice cream, and lounging on the sand — Marla in the sunshine working on her tan and me right next to her, under an umbrella, slathered with SPF 45.

While we lay there, I thought a bit about my friends back home and how they’d spent their summer sitting on the banks of the mud-bottom lake at Camp Towango. Steffi would have been so jealous of this beach. Scratch that — all my old friends would have been jealous if they could see where I was. God, it’s amazing how quickly you can lose touch with people. I’d barely spoken or written to any of them all summer. And you know what? I wasn’t missing them at all. Not even Christina. It was strange to think that in only a couple of weeks I’d be seeing them again when I flew back home to Toronto.

I dreamt about the beach that night — the blue water, the soft sand, the warm breeze, and the cloudless sky. When I woke up the next morning it was almost eleven o’clock. I stretched my arms lazily up in the air, enjoying the feel of a good sleep-in. But just as I was getting out of bed, a deafening noise pierced the air.

“Waaaaaa-oooooo … waaaaaaa-ooooooooo … waaaaaaa-ooooooooo … waaaaaaa-ooooooooo …”

I almost jumped out of my skin.

Oh my God! The air raid siren!

My brain seized up with fear as I tried to remember what to do.

Are we under attack? Are bombs falling on us? Panicked, I grabbed Frou-frou and Mom’s sweater (her picture still inside) and ran to the bomb shelter. My heart was pounding out of my chest. The siren was so loud, so constant, and so urgent. There was no escaping it.

I can’t believe I’m all alone! Daddy! Daddy! I wish you were here with me!

I grabbed a gas mask and pulled it over my face, then set to work sealing the doors with duct tape. The siren screamed in my ears the whole time.

“Waaaaaa-oooooo … waaaaaaa-ooooooooo … waaaaaaa-ooooooooo … waaaaaaa-ooooooooo…”

Oh no! Somebody help me! I don’t want to die! What do I do now? Where’s the instruction sheet?

I found it and frantically began reading the directions.

In Case of Emergency

Bring radio into shelter.

Damn it! I messed up the very first instruction!

I stared at the sealed door and imagined a giant green cloud of poisonous gas forming on the other side.

Oh well … too late to go get the radio now!

I sat down on the floor and started to cry. I felt more hideously alone in that moment than ever before in my entire life. A couple of terrifying minutes later, the siren stopped just as abruptly as it had started. What did that mean? I wiped my eyes under the gas mask and checked the instruction sheet. My breath sounded like Darth Vader.

Do not leave until you hear the

“all-clear” signal.

I cowered in the corner and waited. I had no idea what an all-clear signal was supposed to sound like, but I figured I’d know it when I heard it.

Hours went by; the morning passed into afternoon. I was sure we were at war. I strained my ears to listen for gunfire, but I couldn’t hear anything besides my own breathing in the stupid gas mask. My face was hot and sweaty and uncomfortable, but I was too scared of the poisonous gas to take it off. I thought about Dad and prayed that he was all right and that he’d made it to the university bomb shelter. And for the first time ever, I found myself wishing I hadn’t been so hard on him all this time. After all, he was hurting, too.

Feeling desperately alone, I picked up Mom’s sweater and pulled the neck down carefully over my gas-masked head. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew there was a loud knock-knock at the shelter door.

“Who’s there?” I yelled, my whole body quivering with relief. Was it the army coming to save me?

“It’s me, stupid,” came a familiar voice from the other side. “What are you doing in there?”

“Marla?”

I jumped to my feet, un-duct-taped the door, and flung it open. “What do you mean ‘what am I doing in here’?” I gasped. “What are you doing out there? Didn’t you hear the air-raid siren?”

She started to laugh. “Um, yeah. But that was hours ago. Don’t you have a radio? What were you waiting for, the army to personally come and release you?”

“No!” I lied. But I could see in her eyes that she knew she was right. My cheeks burned red with embarrassment. Thank God for the gas mask. I kept it on for a little longer to give my face a chance to turn back to its regular colour. “So, how’d you find me in here?”

“We were supposed to meet for coffee today, remember? I waited and waited, but when you didn’t come, I figured something might be wrong. I knew this was your building, so I came to find you and see if you were all right. By the way, you shouldn’t leave your door unlocked. That might be okay in Canada, but not here.”

“Yeah, okay. So, were we bombed? Or gassed? Are we at war?”

“No, lame-o. Next time listen to your radio! It was just a practice. They do that every now and then to keep us on our toes.”

A practice? All that for a practice? I wasted a whole day in this prison for nothing? What kind of a stupid country is this?

Suddenly, I was mad. What a fool I was, waiting around with my teddy bear to be rescued! I ripped the gas mask off, threw it on the floor, and stomped out of the shelter. The look of amusement quickly disappeared from Marla’s face.

“You know, everyone gets freaked out the first time they hear the siren,” she said, following me to my room. “The first time I heard it go off was a couple of months after we got here from Buffalo. My poor cat actually jumped out the window! Splat!”

I didn’t know if she was joking or not, but it didn’t really matter, anyway. I was too pissed off to laugh.

“Cool apartment, Mack,” she said, flopping down on my bed while I rummaged around in the closet for a pair of shorts. “Is your dad at work?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling them on. “Maybe you can meet him next time.”

“Sure, whatever. So, where’s your mom? Does she work at the university too?”

I froze in my tracks.

Oh my God! How am I going to tell her about Mom?

I turned around slowly and stared at her.

“Um, well … you see … um …”

Make up a story, Mack!

“ … my mom’s … um …”

Say she’s on a vacation … or out grocery shopping or something!

“ … she’s, well …”

Just say anything! You don’t need her pity.

“ … she’s … she’s dead.”

And there it was. The terrible awful truth, hanging in the air like a bad smell.

Suddenly serious, Marla sat upright on the bed. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Back home the news had been splashed all over the TV and the papers. Everyone I knew had seen or read about it, which was good in a weird way because it had saved me from having to tell the story myself … until now. For a split second I thought about making up a total lie, something less violent. But Marla was a good friend. I knew I owed her the truth.

I took another deep breath and closed my eyes.

“It was a hit and run. It happened down the street from my house in Toronto. She was walking home from work. The driver ran a stop sign … they never caught him. Her name was Elizabeth.”

As simple as that. The facts of Mom’s tragedy in fifty words or less. For Marla’s sake, I left out all the truly horrible parts.

Like the blood-stained road. And how even after they scrubbed it clean and even after countless rainfalls, I could still see a shadow permanently ingrained in the pavement. And how I had to walk past it every morning on my way to school and every afternoon on my way home.

And I didn’t mention how Mom’s personal items were returned to us in a manila envelope: her watch, her wedding ring, her key chain, and her wallet, which I knew without even opening was still stuffed with my baby pictures.

And I didn’t say anything about how my own twisted brain sometimes forced me to imagine her last, horrifying moments, seeing the car coming, freezing with fear, and knowing that she was about to die. And how often I tortured myself wondering if, in that split second, she thought about me.

I took the hem of Mom’s sweater between my fingers and held it out for Marla to see.

“This was hers,” I said as my thoughts flew back to the day I’d snuck into her closet to take it. It was right after Dad had told me about the move. Thinking about it now, I could still smell the leftover traces of Mom’s lily-of-the-valley perfume, which had wafted underneath my nose as I ran my hands over the stack of cashmere sweaters on the shelf above my head. Mom loved cashmere so much that she wore it even in the summertime. Dad and I had given it to her as a gift every birthday, Christmas, and Mother’s Day for as long as I could remember. By the time of the accident, it seemed like Mom owned a cashmere sweater, scarf, and pair of socks for every colour of the rainbow.

I had taken this sweater down and pulled it over my head, letting the smell and feel of Mom take over. And that was when the tears finally started to flow. Months and months of pent-up sadness spilled out of my eyes and down onto the soft lilac knit of the cashmere. I sunk into a puddle on the floor of that closet and cried for my mother and the memories I worried would soon fade away.

“Mommy mommy mommy,” I sobbed. As if saying her name over and over again could somehow bring her back. I needed to know when the sadness would go away … when I would stop seeing her face in crowds and hearing her voice in my dreams … when I would start to feel normal again.

And I was still waiting for those answers. It had been over a year since the accident, and my memories of her were slipping further away with each passing day.

“Mack?”

I opened my eyes and looked up into Marla’s face, ready for the inevitable look of pity. But instead, for the first time ever, I saw my own pain staring back at me.

“I know exactly how you feel,” she said softly. “My mom’s dead, too.”

My mouth fell open with shock. “Really? When? How?”

She turned her head and nodded towards my window.

“Believe it or not, it happened right down there.”

“What?” I gasped, walking over and peering down at the busy intersection below. I turned and looked back at Marla, my face covered in question marks.

“Was it a car accident?” I asked, remembering the frenzied rush of crazy drivers and blaring horns.

“No — a bus bombing,” she explained, her pretty face crumpling with sadness. “It was almost four years ago now. We were going to the market together, only we got into an argument about something stupid on our way to the bus stop. I got mad, turned around, and came home. And she got blown up by a terrorist.”

Suddenly, Marla stopped talking and bit her bottom lip. I knew right away that she was leaving out her most horrible parts, too.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe it!” I whispered, sitting back down on the bed. “That’s just so awful!” An icy chill passed over my body, followed quickly by a layer of goosebumps. I rubbed at my arms, trying to smooth them away. “Aren’t you angry, Mar?”

She looked surprised at the question. “Of course I’m angry. My mom was murdered, Mack! You, of all people, can understand how that feels. Aren’t you angry, too?”

I nodded.

“At one point, I couldn’t even leave my house I was so angry,” she continued, wiping away a stray tear from the corner of her eye. I could hear the control she was putting into each word, trying to keep her voice from breaking. “For a long time, I wanted to die, too. I used to wish Mom and I had never argued that day — that I’d been with her on that bus. At least that way I wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of living without her. It’s been almost four years since the attack, but some days I still feel like that.”

I saw a couple of big tears roll down Marla’s cheeks before she turned her face towards the window. “You know, my mom was a really good person — a doctor, for God’s sake. She didn’t deserve to die. I mean, just think of all the lives she could have saved if she was still alive.”

When she turned back to me her cheeks were soaking wet. She lifted the hem of her T-shirt and began wiping them.

“Oh Mar …,” I started to say, then stopped. I wanted to say something to make her feel better, but I knew from experience that there were no words for that.

“My dad tries to help,” she went on with a small sniffle. “He tells me I can’t let the guilt and anger and sadness take over my life. He says being angry all the time doesn’t solve anything — it just eats away at your insides. I know he’s right, but it’s still hard sometimes, you know?”

Her voice finally broke on the last word. I reached out to give her a hug. We sat like that for a few minutes, letting our tears fall and thinking about what each other had lost. Finally, Marla sat back and forced out a shaky smile.

“Hey listen, do you ever go up to the rooftop?”

I shook my head. “No, what are you talking about?”

She stood up and flung off her sadness like a heavy winter coat. “All these buildings have access to the roof. Let’s go up and look at the view.”

In less than a minute, she located the access door and we were on our way up. When we got to the top of the stairs I gazed around in amazement. It was beautiful. A sunny terrace with plants and deck chairs, solar panels, and, even though it was only four stories high, a great view of the huge, sloping Mount Scopus. I couldn’t believe I’d been here for eight weeks and not discovered it myself.

It was already late in the afternoon, the sunlight was dusty and soft, and we had nowhere else to go, so we stretched out on the chairs and watched the sun go down. We talked about our mothers and shared some of our best memories. It was the first time I’d been able to do that without an unbearable ache taking over my body. I even found myself laughing once or twice.

I told Marla about Mom’s obsession with cashmere, how she always sang in the car to help cope with her phobia of driving, and how she used to make pancakes on Sunday mornings and pour them into the shapes of all my favourite storybook characters.

“Cinderella, the Big Bad Wolf — she could do them all!” I said proudly.

And Marla told me about when she and her mother used to go to restaurants in Buffalo and pretend not to speak any English to see who could make the waiter laugh first. And how after they moved to Israel, they would sometimes rent a car and take off on “girls-only” weekend drives through the desert.

For the first time in ages, my aching heart came out of hiding. And it felt good. When the sun finally went down, the cool evening breeze made the air feel almost like a summer night in Toronto. And the moon rising over the mountain and the endless ceiling of stars hanging overtop was an incredible sight to see. We stayed up there until we saw Dad’s car pull into the parking lot below.

“C’mon,” I said, taking Marla’s hand and pulling her out of her chair. “I’ll introduce you to Einstein himself.”

Then I took Marla downstairs to meet him.