Read Since You Left Me for Free Online

called him. He’s late, too,” I say. “Funny coincidence.”
    “Alright then. I have to run. I’ve got a level I-II at 8:30 and I can’t be late.”
    “Good luck.”
    “Don’t forget our prenatal class this afternoon.”
    “I’m there. I promise,” I say.
    And unlike Mom, I keep my promises.
    Mom smiles and pats at her thigh with the corner of the towel.
    “By the way, have you seen my phone?”
    “Haven’t seen it,” I say.
    Mom shrugs and disappears down the hall. Five minutes later she’s out the door, and I’ve got a choice to make. Do I go to school and lie all day? Or do I lie once and stay home?
    I decide to risk it at school.

“The universe is not what we think it is.”
    That’s what Professor Schwartzburg says in the middle of English class that afternoon. Then he pauses as good teachers do, waiting to see if he’s hooked us.
    He hasn’t. It’s English class. Why is he talking about the universe again?
    We hate him for this.
    Or maybe it’s just me.
    I’m in a terrible mood from dodging questions about Mom all day. Herschel wasn’t kidding about the school community leaping into action. Everyone is worried. Everyone is asking about our family. Each question has put me in a progressively fouler mood and forced me to lie more. My usual patience with Schwartzburg’s philosophical musings is hanging by a thread.
    “There is a great, mysterious force out there,” Professor Schwartzburg says. He adjusts his sports coat, yanking it down by the flaps.
    “What we thought was the fabric of the universe is not the fabric at all,” he says. “There is something greater underneath—a force that has been there all along, but has been invisible to us until recently.”
    He fails to mention there is a great, mysterious force in here, sitting four rows in front of me. It is in the form of a girl.
    Not just any girl.
    The Initials.
    It’s hard to ignore her when I see her every day in Schwartzburg’s class. Four rows. That’s all that separates us. That means I’m treated to an exquisite view of the back of her head, her left earlobe, the flip of hair when she uses her finger to push it behind said earlobe, the left shoulder upon which the hair falls, and sometimes, if only for a second, the side of her face as she turns to whisper to Talya Stein. I watch her lips moving from four rows away and try to guess what she’s saying. I imagine I am Talya Stein’s ear and The Initials’ words are for me, each one carried on a puff of sweet breath.
    “You will not find this force in our physics or astronomy textbooks,” Professor Schwartzburg says. “Scientists have only begun to understand it. They call it dark matter .”
    The Initials twists a flap of hair, spinning her finger around and around.
    She might as well be spinning me.
    The Initials is my great burden to bear. I have to see her each day, all the while knowing we will never be closer than we were in second grade. Our glory days have been over for almost as long as my sister has been alive.
    If that isn’t a powerful force, I don’t know what is.
    “Excuse me, professor,” Herschel says. “What does any of this have to do with Gatsby ?”
    We’ve been reading The Great Gatsby , which I’ve taken to calling The Great Goyim when Herschel and I are alone.
    “What does anything have to do with anything?” Professor Schwartzburg says.
    Herschel shakes his head, and his payis , the little curls that religious Jews wear in front of their ears, jiggle back and forth. Herschel is the only one who lets his payis grow in our school. He’s the most Jewish kid in Jewish school, and I am the least. Although my family is technically Jewish, without Zadie’s money I would never be in religious school. We’re like a lot of families in Los Angeles. Not seriously Jewish. More like Jewish adjacent.
    Herschel’s family used to be just like us. They pushed him into Jewish school solely for the academics, and he hated it as much as I did. He lives