It's My Party and I Don't Want to Go Read online

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  It all started because I was afraid of a cake. It would be a lot less embarrassing if I said the cake was poisoned or really a meat loaf covered in mashed potatoes pretending to be a cake (gross), but no. It was just a plain, boring chocolate cake.

  “I’ll go up with you if you want,” Zoe whispered. We sat straight in our chairs, trying not to wrinkle our fancy dresses. They both had big poufy skirts that crinkled when we moved and sleeves that hung loosely to our elbows, only mine was purple and hers was green.

  The whole room applauded. Not for Zoe—they were all staring at the front of the room, where my big sister, Hannah, stood behind that terrifying cake. Some of her friends smiled by her side, their braces glinting in the light from all the candles and the flashes from the professional camera.

  Beads of sweat popped all across my forehead. Because soon she’d call me up to smile by her side and light one of those candles. Up in front of the room. In front of all two hundred and forty-seven eyes (and Uncle Barry’s eye patch, which was somehow even more intimidating than an extra staring eyeball). All judging every move I made. Against Hannah. And against my pretty, popular older sister, what would they think of me?

  “… to light candle number ten, my younger sister, Eliana!” Hannah announced with a gleaming smile.

  I raised my hands to clap, but they stopped midair. Eliana? Already?

  That was me.

  “My younger sister, Eliana!” Hannah repeated through clenched teeth. Those two hundred and forty-seven eyes and one eye patch spun around the room, searching for me. I froze in place, breath catching in my throat.

  “MY YOUNGER SISTER, ELIANA!” Hannah was getting a little screechy now, the way she got when I was dawdling and making her late for theater club or debate team. You didn’t want to get in Hannah’s way when she got like that. That was how you got her lines screamed in your ear while you were just trying to get ready.

  “Ellie! Go!” Zoe gave me a little push. By the time I stumbled to my feet, the whole room had found me. I felt every one of those eyes piercing me like a thumbtack, trying to pin me to a giant invisible bulletin board.

  They already had to be wondering what was taking me so long, which was bad enough. I knew what else they were probably thinking. Why’s she moving so slow? What’s wrong with her? Why does she look so stupid? Especially compared to that sister of hers?

  My whole body was running with sweat when I made it to Hannah, and the fire from all those candles just made it worse. “Finally, Ellie!” Hannah hissed. She was still smiling beneath the glossy pink lipstick she was allowed to wear for special occasions. “Are you okay?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Unless you’re dying, light your candle before the whole cake’s covered in wax.”

  She handed me a candle. I touched it to the flame, and it blazed to life. I let out a long breath, making it shiver. Light a candle. I could do this.

  Except the only empty candles were way on the other side of the cake. What genius had decided to light the closer candles first, meaning that any latecomers had to stretch their arms alllll the way over a field of fire? I’d never really thought about how I was going to die before, but now I knew. I could see my own obituary:

  Eliana Rachel Katz, age almost-eleven, went up in flames Saturday night in front of an enormous crowd of people. Her mother said tearfully, “I shouldn’t have made her get that itchy dress off the clearance rack! If only I’d let her get the soft, silky, and much less flammable one off the mannequin, she’d be alive today.” Other guests said, less tearfully, “Who?” Because nobody could ever possibly stop celebrating Hannah for any reason whatsoever, guests did the conga line over the deceased’s charred body.

  An elbow bit me in the side. I jumped. The candle wobbled in my hand, shaking loose a big glob of wax. It hit the table, just barely missing my hand. My heart thudded. I didn’t have to look up to know that all those eyes were still staring at me, judging everything I did. I could feel them prickling.

  “Ellie, stop spacing out!” It was truly amazing how Hannah could whisper and screech at the same time.

  I couldn’t ruin my only sibling’s bat mitzvah. I could do this. I raised my candle, taking a deep breath to fill me up with courage …

  … only it kind of felt like I’d inhaled the fire instead. It filled me up, scorching my lungs and my ribs and my stomach, making the chicken fingers and fries I’d eaten earlier bubble unpleasantly. It left no room for any air. Just my heart, pounding against my ribs as if it were trying to escape.

  I sucked in another breath, but it only fanned the flames. For my next one, I took such a big breath that it wheezed in the back of my throat. I tried another, then another. It didn’t help. Could I suffocate to death while I was still breathing?

  I gulped air, then choked. Black speckles danced at the corners of my vision. My knees wobbled. My mind was blank, but somewhere a tiny, desperate voice pleaded, Don’t fall into the cake of fire.

  That cursed cake. I knew there was a reason to be afraid of you.

  I barely felt Hannah prying the candle from my hand, even though she had to unstick each finger individually. They’d all gone totally numb. Once she’d taken the candle, she grabbed my hand in hers and raised them both above her head. “Stage fright,” she called. The crowd laughed. Somehow, that fanned the flames inside me worse than any of my breaths had, making them jump wildly.

  They were going to eat me alive.

  I must have missed Hannah lighting the candle, because suddenly she was nudging me gently to the side and reading a new poem that would invite our parents up to light their own candle. Her words echoed in the emptiness between my ears, as if I were hearing them from the other end of a long tunnel. I tottered off to the side of the dance floor, and I definitely would have fallen over if Zoe hadn’t suddenly appeared to catch me.

  “Those heels. Hard to walk in them,” she told a group of distant cousins who were staring at me like I’d sprouted a second head from my shoulder. Then she whispered, “It’s okay, Ellie. Lean on me.”

  I did lean on her, all the way out of the big main room and into the hallway to the bathrooms. There, Zoe and I sagged together against the flowered wallpaper and sank to the dirty green carpet. I traced where the wallpaper met the floor. It was peeling along the bottom. I pulled a strip loose and let it curl to the floor.

  “Ellie, what’s wrong?” Zoe whispered frantically.

  The world around me was getting fuzzy. I closed my eyes so that I wouldn’t have to see Zoe watching me die. Blackness swamped me, which was surprisingly soothing. Maybe that was also due to the fact that we’d finally escaped all those staring eyes. Nobody was watching me except Zoe, who didn’t really count as a person.

  I mean that in the best possible way. I’ve known her forever. My family’s condo was across the hall from her family’s condo until we were eight, when both our families bought houses and moved out. So we g
rew up running back and forth between our unlocked doors, grabbing food out of each other’s refrigerators, and sleeping in each other’s beds. We used to tell people we were identical twins, which would get us funny looks considering Zoe’s Black and I’m about as white as you can get.

  Zoe said, “It’s going to be okay,” but there was still panic in her voice. “You have to breathe, or you’re going to pass out.”

  I am, I wanted to tell her, but I couldn’t get any words out over the whistling sounds of my gasping and gasping and gasping.

  “I think you’re hyperventilating,” she said. “This happened to my dad after my grandma died. It’s not good!”

  I wished I were capable of screaming at her, I know it’s not good! I’m the one who can’t breathe!

  “Are you having a panic attack or something?”

  A panic attack? Seriously? If I could’ve shouted at her, I’d’ve done it then. Because this wasn’t mere panic. This was something way more than panic. I’d panicked before, feeling nervous before a test and worrying that I’d fail. This wasn’t panic—this was something physical.

  The soothing blackness and the quiet were already starting to help, though. Some of the flames inside me died down, leaving a little room for air. I tried to tell Zoe so, but my throat was still too strangled to speak.

  I had no idea how long we sat there. I thought I was going to die. But eventually the flames shrank until they were nothing but a pile of cool ashes sitting atop my diaphragm.

  I opened my eyes, squinting at the light. “I’m alive.”

  “Thank goodness,” Zoe said.

  As if the partygoers could hear us, a roar of applause swelled in the big room. I pushed myself to my feet, cringing at how the sweat had gone all cold and sticky on my skin. “We should get back in there.”

  Zoe rose, too, her dark eyes full of concern. “Are you sure?”

  I rolled my shoulders till they cracked. “Yeah. I’ll be fine now.” And I would be, I knew it. Because I wouldn’t have to get back in front of the crowd or talk to anyone I didn’t know. I could just hide in the back with Zoe and eat cake. And after all that cake had done to me, I wanted to slice it open and chew and swallow it.

  “What about your own bat mitzvah?” Zoe murmured as we reentered the banquet hall.

  I had no idea what to say back to that. Fortunately, it was just then that the DJ broke out the bright stomping beat of “Hava Nagila.” We had no choice but to step onto the dance floor and get sucked into the hora, swirling round and round in circles with all the other guests. Hannah was in the middle, getting hoisted into the air on a chair. Nobody was looking at me, which was fine. I was just one of many.

  My mom danced by me, twisting down to look at me before she sailed past. “You okay?”

  I forced a smile. No way I was going to let on that I couldn’t even handle something small like lighting a candle. “Yeah! Totally fine! Just had to run to the bathroom.”

  She gave a little laugh like we were sharing a secret. “Eat too many sliders?”

  I managed to force a whole laugh before she disappeared back into the crowd. See? Look how fine I am. More than fine. I’m just peachy.

  Still, as Hannah got lifted up and down on the chair in the middle of the dance floor, Zoe’s words crawled through my mind. What about your own bat mitzvah? It was a valid question. After all, I barely had to do anything for Hannah’s bat mitzvah—just get up in front of the crowd and light a stupid candle with her. And I couldn’t even handle that. That evil cake sent me into a spiral of fear. How was I going to spend the whole day in front of all those eyes, and not just lighting candles, either—singing in Hebrew, making speeches, and smiling for pictures?

  Don’t worry. That’s almost two whole years away, I told myself firmly as the crowd rushed to bring our hands to the center of the dance floor, then swooped back out. You have plenty of time to figure out a plan.

  Over the next year and a half, I tried to figure out ways I could possibly do everything that would be required of me as a bat mitzvah girl. The only conclusion I came to?

  The only way I wouldn’t freak out during my bat mitzvah was if there was no bat mitzvah.

  It’s never a good thing when you overhear your parents saying your name in the other room, followed by a “Shhhh!” You know the only thing that means? They’re talking about you, and they don’t want you to know. Maybe they’re saying, “Is it time to tell Ellie about our upcoming move to frozen Siberia?”

  I shivered. I didn’t like the cold. My dad didn’t like winter, either. I didn’t want to wear my puffy winter jacket all the time. It made me look like the Abominable Snowman! So why would we move to Siberia? It didn’t make any sense.

  Okay, maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I should find out what was really going on. I kept walking down the hallway and stuck my head inside the living room. Mom and Dad were sitting on the couch, mugs of coffee on the table in front of them. As soon as they saw me, they raised those mugs to their mouths and took a sip. Probably to hide their guilty faces.

  But when they lowered them, they just looked normal. Bored, even. “What’s happening, Ells?” Dad asked.

  I glanced around the room. Nothing seemed off. The posed family photos of the four of us we took every year still hung on the wall. Pictures from Hannah’s bat mitzvah, almost two years ago now, dotted the wall above the couch. Embarrassing naked baby pictures of Hannah and me still decorated the mantel above the nonworking fireplace. Folders and papers were spread out on the coffee table, brown rings on them from the coffee mugs. “What are those?” I asked suspiciously.

  Mom’s glasses slipped down her nose as she looked at me. “We realized this morning that we only have four months until your bat mitzvah!”

  Dad did a fake sniff. “Better enjoy the four months you have left of your childhood.”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Anyway, we figured we should get planning seriously. We have the venue reserved, of course, but we have so much else to do.”

  My blood seemed to freeze in my veins. Which was perfect, because it meant I’d be right at home in Siberia. Living in an eternal winter seemed way more fun than thinking about my bat mitzvah, considering I hadn’t come any closer to figuring out how I was going to put the brakes on this whole thing.

  Then again, maybe I could use this impromptu family meeting to my advantage. If I knew what they were planning, I’d know exactly what I had to do to sabotage said plans. I couldn’t just come out and tell my parents that I didn’t want a bat mitzvah. They’d look at me all confused and disappointed, and wonder why I couldn’t be more like Hannah. I’d had enough of people wondering why I couldn’t be more like Hannah, thank you very much.

  I smiled brightly. “Tell me everything.”

  Just as my dad opened his mouth, footsteps tapped through the door behind me. I held back a groan. Only one person had such perky footsteps. And okay, there was only one other person who lived in the house. But it was still the footsteps that told me Hannah had come in.

  I had plenty of time to learn every single mannerism Hannah had. Watching her finish her rehearsals with the drama club. Watching her practice for debate team. Watching her work on the talent show committee. She did everything that could possibly put her in front of a cheering crowd. And I was part of that cheering crowd.

  Well, if one person sitting in the back row met the technical definition of a crowd. And I never actually cheered, either, because then I might cheer too loudly and people would turn around and then everybody would know I was there.

  She’d told me more than once, “Ellie, you don’t have to just sit here and watch me rehearse. You’re in middle school now. Why don’t you pick an activity, too?” She’d toss her hair, sending her shiny brown curls bouncing like she was in a shampoo commercial. “You should join the drama club! I can put in a good word for you with Mrs. Miller.”

  I’d just turn away and stare at the wall until Hannah got the hint and huffed away. Really, I was the one
who should have been huffing. It was like Hannah looked at me through a pair of glasses made out of mirrors—she didn’t see me, just herself reflected back.

  And yeah, maybe Hannah and I looked like each other—we were both pale and short, with a bump in the middle of our noses and thick dark eyebrows—but under those looks, she might as well have been challah French toast while I was dry, crunchy matzah.

  I almost signed my name up for the photography club—where I could be behind the camera, not in front of it—when the teacher passed around the sheet at the beginning of the school year, but I’d ended up leaving nothing but a pencil dot on the page. Because I couldn’t risk it. There was always the chance the teacher would ask me to get up in front of the group and demonstrate something or talk about myself.

  “Did I overhear that you’re planning Ellie’s bat mitzvah?” Hannah said, her voice way brighter than my smile could ever be. “I want in!”

  She didn’t wait for an invitation. Or even a reply. She just marched right in and plopped herself between Mom and Dad on the couch, bowing her head over the papers on the table. Which left me hovering awkwardly in the middle of the room, with not enough room on the couch for me to join them. I scowled at her, but she was too busy reading the papers to notice.

  Which was just as usual, really. For my birthday last year, Hannah had made me a photo board for my wall. It was huge, bigger than the headboard of my bed, all covered with pictures of the two of us. Foam purple letters spelled out SISTERS on top.

  She didn’t notice, even after hours of sorting through pictures and printing them and arranging them, that in most of them, the only one smiling was her. So why would I expect her to notice that now?

  “So we already booked the venue months ago,” Mom said. She pushed her glasses up. “The same country club you had your bat mitzvah at, Hannah.”

  “Oh good, I liked that place,” Hannah said.

  “Right, and it fit everyone without costing a fortune.” Mom flipped to the next folder in the spread. “We need to order invitations from the printer ASAP.”

  “Nobody can come if they don’t get invited!” Dad said. He and Hannah laughed, but I didn’t take it as a silly dad joke. It was true, right? If the invitations didn’t go out and people didn’t know about the bat mitzvah, nobody would show up.