Me, My Elf & I Read Online Free PDF Page B

why I go to school.”
    “I got an aunt like that,” Mercedes tells us. “She’s real old school. Keeps her kids home and teaches them there. Makes my cousins wear dresses. I think she’s a Jehovah’s Witness or something.”
    “It’s been hard for the rest of my family to get used to Brooklyn,” I say. “So don’t be surprised if they seem out of place.”
    “That’s the great thing about living here,” Ari says. “You can be anything you want to be and nobody cares.”
    I lean back against the hard orange seat and smile. “That’s exactly why I love it. Where I’m from everybody is the same and if you’re different, nobody gets it.”
    “Yeah, well, welcome to New York, baby,” Ari says as the train emerges from an underground tunnel and climbs up an elevated track. He points out the window to a green statue far away in the harbor beyond the graffitied buildings and the highway choked with cars. I squint until I see that he’s pointing to the Statue of Liberty, torch raised for all the newcomers like me.
    “It’s good to be here,” I say.
    After two more stops I stand up.
    “You live in the Slope?” Ari asks.
    “I have no idea,” I say.
    “If you get off here, then you do,” he tells me. “And so do I, which must mean we’re practically neighbors.”
    We run up the stairs and I realize that my neighborhood is finally becoming familiar to me. I recognize the Pavilion Movie Theater on the corner and the Connecticut Muffin coffee shop across the street, where I’ve already imagined my first erdler date. First we’ll see a movie, then, holding hands, we’ll walk over to the coffee shop to discuss the film while sipping something hot and sweet. I’ve got the plan, now I just need the guy.
    “Let’s cut through the park,” Ari says, pointing to the stone wall surrounding acres of grass and trees.
    I’m so happy when we get inside the park that I want to run down the grassy hill into the big open meadow, kick dandelion fluff, or dance on the clover. I want to shimmy up the big maple tree in front of us to sit where a red-tailed hawk has perched high in the swaying branches, surrounded by slowly fading fall leaves. The only thing that would make this better is to have my imaginary date boy to share it with. We could roll down hills, jump in ponds, and chase squirrels through the open fields. But of course that’s the kind of thing we’d do in Alverland, not in Brooklyn, where nature isn’t something you’re a part of, but something set aside for picnics and kite flying. Still, I feel so rejuvenated by the green space around me that I start to hum.
    Ari joins in, singing the words so familiar to me, “Cast a spell of beauty, cast a spell of love, join me in the meadow, fly with me like the dove.” He has a lovely mellow voice with just enough gravel to give it a satisfying edge.
    I harmonize with him on the chorus, “Through the sky, through the sky, fly with me through the sky.”
    He smiles broadly after the last note. “You like that song?”
    “Of course,” I say with a laugh.
    “What do you mean, ‘of course’?” Ari asks. “Most people don’t know Drake Addler’s music. I thought it was only goths like me.”
    “What’s a goth?” I ask.
    “Me,” Ari says, opening his arms for me to take a good look at him, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to see.
    “Is goth your religion?” I ask, because my dad has told us that erdlers take their belief systems very seriously and sometimes have wars over who’s right.
    Ari laughs. “No, I’m a Jew through and through.”
    “I’ve read about Jewish people and the horrible things that happened to them,” I say. “Are you really religious?”
    “Nah,” Ari tells me. “Just a regular New York Jew. No pork—”
    “Except bacon at a diner,” Mercedes says and Ari laughs.
    “Synagogue during Passover. Cheesy bar mitzvah with a god-awful DJ when I was thirteen. Stuff like that,” he adds.
    “So a goth Jew is one who