Stranger Than Fiction  

I’d just started my second year of teaching at Masores High School. I was 20. The world was my oyster, and I was going to be a teacher, then a principal, then open my own school, as well as become a rebbetzin (yeah, I know, I never got past the first stage — don’t rub it in).

A day or so after Rosh Hashanah, after picking up a fresh stash of books I had on hold from the library, I walked to work, up East 16th and along Avenue I to Ocean Avenue. As I walked, a thought meandered into my brain. Rosh Hashanah has just passed. I should probably take something on for Aseres Yemei Teshuvah.

But what?

I thought of where I’d just come from, and of the person I planned on being in the future. They weren’t entirely compatible. Rebbetzins reading Chick-Lit? Kinda nisht. So just for this Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, I wouldn’t read novels. It was just for then, because really, I was an English teacher, how could I not read novels?

I thought of the book I had in my bag, a newish novel. I’d waited a little while for it to come through the hold system. I could wait just a little longer. Maybe.