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love?”
    “Love kind of love. The kind you fall into when you fall in love.”
    “What’s that?”
    “What?”
    “Love.”
    “Oh, Gittel, one day you’re gonna fall in love and know.”
    “We don’t fall in love.”
    “Everyone does.”
    “We don’t do such things.”
    Kathy sat down heavily on the couch. “Oooo—you just look—here’s my niece. She’s just a baby here. Now she’s nineteen and all in love with Rob. He’s her neighbor and they’ve been friends since eighth grade.”
    I was bewildered. “Do gentiles have a deadline for falling in love? Like we have to get married. Is not falling in love a terrible thing? Like for us not getting married?”
    “Well, it’s complicated,” she said. “Let’s look at the pictures now.”
    I sat down next to her on the couch in front of the TV. She showed me her two brothers and sister dancing in the garden. She showed me her father holding her when she was two, pigtails sticking out from the sides of her head. She showed me more pictures, but I don’t remember because she looked up at me then and said, “Gittel, why are you crying?”
    “I’m not crying.”
    “I see the tears in your eyes.”
    I could see the black-and-white pictures blurred and fading in front of me.
    “I…don’t know.”
    “Gittel, don’t cry. Tell me what happened.”
    “I did.”
    “Tell me again.”
    “Why?”
    “It will make you feel better.”
    “No.”
    And I cried and I cried and couldn’t stop. I could hardly bear this when it happened because the tears always came without warning, sometimes in the kitchen or in school with my friends, and I would have to run to the bathroom or my room and tell them that it was nothing, just stomach cramps, because no one was allowed to know that I haven’t forgotten. No one was allowed to remember what I knew. Sometimes I hit myself to stop it. I would hit myself hard on the head and in my face until it hurt, until I would get angry instead of sad, and then I would stop crying. But that day, I didn’t. I cried and I told Kathy about Devory, how she was always knocking on my window.
    “Devory?”
    “Devory…”
    “What does she tell you?”
    “She doesn’t speak. She only comes to my window every night, knocking. I can see her outside in the wind. Her hair is always wild, flying in the cold, and she wears the same light blue nightgown, the torn one that she got from her sister.”
    “Do you open the window?”
    “I have to. If I don’t she keeps knocking, and I can’t go back to sleep.”
    “So why don’t you open it right away?”
    “I do, but then she just disappears. Last night I ran, I ran really fast, but as soon as the window is open she disappears. There is only wind.”
    Kathy stroked my hair. I wept.
    “Tell her to leave me alone.”
    “Don’t cry like that, Gittel. Come here.…”
    “I’m so scared.”
    “I know.”
    My mother called my name. I could hear the door opening downstairs and her voice screaming for me, trying to find where I was. I sobbed quietly. I did not move from Kathy’s arms. My mother called for me again.
    “Gittel? Gittel, where are you?” Finally, the door shut. I would come up with an excuse afterward. She could not know that I was up here.

CHAPTER NINE
1999
    I cried all the way to school the morning after I decided Kathy must die. I sat in the last seat of the van, where no one liked to sit, and bumped unhappily until we arrived. I didn’t want to kill Kathy. I liked her. And what would her husband say? He really loved her and if she died he wouldn’t be able to kiss her anymore. I was devastated, but I had made my decision. The advantages of Kathy’s death were just too overwhelming, and I was sure she would understand.
    I was first to arrive at school that morning and I stood outside the door waiting for Chani. As soon as I saw her traipsing through the swinging doors in the hallway, I ran over and soberly informed her that I had a big secret to tell her and she must