The Opposite of Hallelujah Read Online Free Page A

was going with this.
    “So it’s really tough to say no,” she continued. “It’s not like my family is very observant or anything—I don’t think I’ve been to temple since my bat mitzvah, which was, like, a zillion years ago—”
    “Three,” I reminded her. I didn’t meet Reb until freshman year, so I didn’t go to her bat mitzvah, but knowing Reb, I was sorry to have missed that party.
    “—but God always had a place at the table, I guess,” she finished. “He was always around, somewhere, like a—a crazy uncle? ‘Crazy’ is the wrong word.… You know what I mean.”
    “Sort of,” I said.
    “Why do you ask?” Reb took a leisurely sip of whatever mocktail she’d whipped up for herself, peering at me with interest over the rim of her cup.
    I shrugged. This would’ve been the moment to talk about Hannah—she was the reason I’d brought the subject up in the first place—but I didn’t like to startconversations without having some idea where they were going. I let it drop. “Just curious. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about it.”
    “Well, yeah,” she said, as if it was obvious. “Nobody talks about that stuff, really.”
    “True,” I said. Now that I thought about it, I realized I had no idea if Erin believed in God, or Derek, either.
    “Do you believe in God?” she asked, as I knew she would.
    I sighed. “Jury’s out,” I said. “Empirically, there’s no evidence. You can’t prove it—scientifically, I mean.”
    Reb laughed. “Oh, Caro,” she said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’re such a nerd.”
    “Thanks.”
    “What I mean is you’re so up here all the time,” she said, jabbing a finger at her temple. “I’m pretty sure most people who believe in God don’t think about him scientifically .”
    “Yeah, well, maybe they should,” I said.
    “Maybe,” Reb allowed.
    The truth was that I had never given God much consideration, and I guess when I had, I’d mostly thought about him as some kind of robber bridegroom straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales who stole young women away from their homes. My religious upbringing, for all its bells and whistles—the Catholic school education of my childhood, the floofy white dress I’d worn to myFirst Communion, the five rosaries I’d gotten from my grandmother over the years, all hidden away in the bottom of my jewelry box—wasn’t very deep or particularly insightful. My parents (well, my mother—my father was always curiously evasive of the subject) mostly spoke of God when they were angry with me. “God can hear you,” when my mouth was especially sharp or filthy, or “God says, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’ ” when I was being disobedient. And of course there was Christmas, with the blown-glass nativity scene my mother treasured, despite Joseph’s having long since lost one of his hands and our often misplacing the baby Jesus. But other than that, after Hannah left, God stayed up in the attic, like the toys and old clothes I’d outgrown that my mother couldn’t bring herself to part with.

    I crept quietly into the house the same way I’d gone out. It was around four o’clock, and I was sure I’d gotten away with it, but when I turned on the light in my room, my dad was sitting in my tufted armchair, dozing lightly. I yelped when I noticed him. He opened his eyes and lifted his head slowly, a deep frown on his face.
    “Where were you?” he asked. He was weirdly calm, and he looked tired. Was he up because he was waiting for me, or because he couldn’t sleep?
    “Erin’s,” I said. “Like I told you.”
    “Did you forget the part where your mother and I said you couldn’t go? I thought you said you had homework to do.”
    “I worked on it for a while,” I said. It wasn’t untrue; between dinner and saying good night, I’d gotten fifty pages of Beloved read for AP English. “I’m almost done.”
    “I see.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Are you drunk?”
    I’d sobered up