Read Since You Left Me for Free Online Page A

down the street, and we’d walk to school every day bad-mouthing the hell out of the place.
    Then Herschel went on a school trip to Israel along with most of the freshman class. He tried to get me to come along, but I told him the Jews spent forty years wandering lost in the desert. Why should we volunteer to go back?
    Something happened to Herschel on that trip. When he returned, he took a cab directly from LAX to my house. I opened the door to find a bearded kid in a black suit and a fedora.
    “Herschel? Is that you?” I said.
    “We’ve got it all wrong, Sanskrit.”
    “What do we have wrong?” I said.
    “God. Judaism. It’s not what we thought it was.”
    “What is it?” I said.
    “It’s … life or death,” he said. “We have to find God. It’s our true purpose in this world.”
    That’s when I knew I’d lost him. He left L.A. as my best friend and returned as Zero Mostel in Fiddler on the Roof . Sometimes kids get flipped liked Herschel, but a few weeks of L.A. traffic and In-N-Out Burger help them come to their senses. But it’s been nearly two years since that trip, and the old Herschel is nowhere to be seen.
    Now that Herschel is a super Jew, I’m all alone at the bottom of the religious pack, slightly below Tyler, who’s only Jewish on his mother’s side. He’s part of the executive committee’s diversity initiative. Actually, he’s the entire diversity initiative. They tried to recruita few non-observant Jews when the economy slumped, but none of them lasted except him. It turns out that not a lot of non-observant Jews want to observe. Big surprise.
    “Professor, I want to read Gatsby,” Tyler says. I notice he’s been paying close attention since we started reading the book. Something about Gatsby’s search for identity is very moving to him.
    “Gatsby is all of us,” Professor Schwartzburg says, seeming to get his lecture back on course. “Just as this mysterious dark matter winds its way through everything.”
    So much for back on track.
    “I agree with Tyler,” I say, trying to score some points. “I’d like to get back to the novel.”
    I’m hoping The Initials will turn around and see who said it, but she doesn’t. Back of her head. That’s all I get. Eight months of rear view. While it’s not a terrible sight, it’s only half of what I want.
    “We will return to the novel, of course,” Professor Schwartzburg says. “By the way, how is your mother, Aaron?”
    Another teacher who won’t use my first name.
    “I’m waiting for word,” I say.
    “Keep your cell phone on,” Schwartzburg says, which is against school policy, but overnight I’ve become the guy who gets special treatment.
    “Oh, it’s on,” I say.
    “We’re here for you,” Barry Goldwasser says to me.
    I hate Barry Goldwasser.
    He’s the founder of the Mitzvah Minute Club, our school service organization. Their mission statement? Good deeds in under a minute .
    They only do mitzvahs that can be done in under a minute. On one level it’s genius. You pick up a piece of trash, you help an old lady across the street, you offer a dollar to a homeless man. It doesn’t cost you much in terms of time, money, or effort. Goodness is spread across the barren and selfish landscape that is Los Angeles, one sixty-second burst at a time.
    But if you think about it, you realize it’s total crap. What if I need ninety seconds of help? I can’t call the Mitzvah boys? If you’re going to help people, then help. Don’t put a time limit on it. That’s something my mother would do.
    “Aaron, I hope you will lean on HaShem ,” Professor Schwartzburg says. “What else can we do in these trying times?”
    I can think of a lot of things we can do, but I keep them to myself.
    Schwartzburg sighs and leans back against the whiteboard.
    “HaShem,” he says, and clutches his chest.
    The class leans forward. Either he’s having a spiritual experience or a heart attack. Stories of dark matter may not get our