The Wonder Spot by Melissa Bank

choice?
    When I looked up, he was watching me. He said, “Just do the best you can.”
    I stared at the test for a long time, and particularly at the sentence “The teacher brought the book to school,” and prayed for a divine force to fly the Hebrew translation into my brain.
    None came and there was no point in guessing. Finally I decided to write a note:

D EAR M OREH P INKUS ,
    I DID NOT HAVE MY BOOK , AND THEREFORE COULD NOT STUDY FOR THIS TEST .
    S ORRY ,
S OPHIE A PPLEBAUM

    I handed in my test, and left the room, even though I could feel Moreh Pinkus staring at me. I went down the hall to the powder room.
    Margie was standing at the closet door. Her cheeks were as flushed as they’d gotten after her home runs, and I noticed her hair was back in a barrette instead of up front in two bunches.
    She stepped aside and ceremoniously opened the door to the closet; like a lovely assistant in a game show, she gestured at the shelves lined with plastic-wrapped merchandise from the gift shop.
    â€œIt was unlocked?” I said.
    She set her woolly hair free and demonstrated inserting the barrette in the lock.
    She’d already made a pile on the floor of what she wanted to take—mostly jewelry, but also boxes of multicolored Hanukkah candles and net satchels of gold-foiled chocolate coins. “Check it out,” she said, handing me a big plastic bag of jewelry, each piece in its own little bag. I dumped the bag and spread its contents on the counter.
    She brought her own stash over to try on next to me.
    I found a silver cuff that looked a lot like an MIA bracelet, except it had Hebrew writing where the soldier’s name and number belonged.
    I looked at my wrist in the mirror, and then I saw all of me and then both of us, and what I saw was the enormity of this crime through my father’s eyes: If there was a God, this was about as close as you could get to stealing from Him in the modern world; this seemed so obviously wrong, so symbolically wrong, we might as well have melted the jewelry down and created a golden calf to worship.
    But it wasn’t God or religion or my father that made me take the bracelet off. It had nothing to do with getting caught or getting in trouble with anyone but me.
    I thought, What am I doing? and I surprised myself by saying it aloud. As soon as I did, I got this great feeling; it was like I’d been holding my stomach in for a long time—only what I’d been holding in was my personality—and I let it out now.
    All Margie said was, “What’s your problem?” but she spoke as though she was once again the boss of the world, addressing the Sofa of yesteryear.
    She looked at me in the mirror; she was fastening the catch on a Star of David necklace. She was going to wear it.
    I said the thought as it occurred to me: “You want to get caught.”
    â€œI don’t care,” she said. “I think my parents are getting a divorce.”
    I wasn’t sure what her parents’ divorce had to do with her theft, but I knew it did. Maybe she was getting back at them, or she feltshe deserved these stolen goods in return for what was being taken from her.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said, and meant it.
    She shrugged. “You don’t want anything?”
    â€œNo.”
    She didn’t even look up when I left.
    Miss Bell was coming down the hall.
    Instead of saying hello, she asked if I knew that there was a bathroom right by the classrooms.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo why don’t you use it?”
    I said, “This one’s nicer.”
    Her eyes didn’t register that I’d answered her question.
    It was scary to walk away from her, just as it had been to walk out on Margie, but I was determined: I would be a slave to no person.
    In class, a few students were still struggling with their tests. Leslie Liebman was reading her answers with obvious pleasure—she just couldn’t get over how correct they