The Others by Sarah Blau (e reader for manga txt) 📕

“With all due respect for your thought experiment, I didn’t murder anyone, and you know that,” I say. “What bothers me is that you’re not considering that it could be the other way around, that maybe the fact that all my college friends have died and I’m the only one left means I’m next. Is that so far-fetched? Why aren’t you looking into that?”

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

“We’re looking into all leads,” he says, but his tone says something entirely different.

“And if you’re searching for suspects who knew both murder victims, then there were a few of those at the party. Neria Grossman, who hated Dina, and Taliunger, who hated both Dina and Ronit, and who knows who else was there.”

Once again the young redhead’s face floats into my mind, and I remember the glance she cast at Ronit who passed by her in the hallway, a glance full of loathing that lasted no more than a second. I didn’t pay it much attention at the time, but now it’s back with clarity and meaning. So why am I not telling this to Micha? Why am I not giving him her description? What’s stopping me?

“I told you, we’re pursuing all leads,” he says, his tone oddly formal.

“You don’t say, Mister Officer,” I reply with a high-pitched simper.

“I do,” he says, “and don’t try to sound like a little girl, it doesn’t suit you.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t.”

He gets up and stands inches away from me. “Sounding like one doesn’t suit you, but having one would have,” he says. “Would have suited you perfectly. I think you could have made a great mum.”

And the moment he utters those words, I suddenly realize who the red-headed girl is, and can hardly swallow my shock.

14

I BARELY HAVE any friends. I’m not too torn up about it, but it does make me wonder sometimes.

Because the old Sheila, college Sheila, was one-of-the-gang Sheila, my whole identity was enmeshed and entangled with that of my friends, without any partitions or border fences. What’s mine is yours, what’s yours is mine. Today I know that’s exactly the type of friendship you ought to steer clear of.

I do have Shirley, from the museum, but she’s a work-friend, not the kind you actually invest in, even though it’s exactly the type that – due to close proximity and shared daily toil – can transform into a true friendship. Don’t worry, that’s not going to happen here.

And there’s Eli, but Eli’s a man.

Even technology seems designed to facilitate my relative solitude. Uber reduces the need to rely on rides from friends (even though I’m starting to get sick of sourpuss drivers who moan when I type in a Tel Aviv address, as if I’ve just asked for a lift to the Bermuda Triangle), and the “handyman” app eliminates the need to ask friends for help around my apartment. I once tried asking Eli to come by and help with a tiny repair, but the bizarrely intimate vision of him labouring with a drill was too embarrassing for me, and I think for him too. I didn’t give it another try.

I go through my mental list of “friends,” and realize they’re all dead. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

Now I pick up my pace on my way to meet the daughter of the person who was closest to me. She was my best friend, but in the moment of truth, I failed at being hers.

The Eretz Israel Museum is silent and still.

It reminds me of the Bible Museum, but a lot more formal and dignified; here you won’t find the director scampering between the displays while barking orders (often conflicting ones) into two phones at the same time.

From the outside, the modest folklore pavilion resembles our wax pavilion. I almost expect the figurines to steal peeks at me through the glass panes, You can’t escape us! But no, all I see through the window is the thick shock of auburn hair I should have recognized the moment I laid eyes on it.

“Hello there,” says Gali Malchin, the redhead from the party. Gali Malchin, daughter of Naama Malchin, the fourth and my personal favourite member of the Others, the one who went and hung herself in her bedroom one day.

“I missed you,” she smiles at me, and it’s Naama’s wide and gorgeous smile, from the days she still used to laugh.

I can’t utter a single sound. All my memories come crashing into each other in my head. The knife! The knife! Get the knife away from her! Gali is still smiling, but she steps away from me and lowers a stack of papers onto the table between us. Guide fact sheets. I’d recognize them anywhere; they’re always the same, whether the instructor is an eighteen-year-old girl doing her national service or a forty-year-old woman. Tell me, that’s your first thought when you see Naama’s daughter after all these years? Really?

She bends and pulls a heavy stapler out of the desk drawer, her movements as nimble and lithe as her mother’s used to be. I have no doubt that had Naama lived to maturity, she would have preserved her pliability.

But she didn’t, Naama, she remained young, whereas we, the three Others, kept growing older and rotting as if it was our God-given right. But now it’s just you.

I sense Gali’s scrutinizing stare and wonder how much she knows. Something in the way her eyes narrow at me tells me she knows more than I’d like her to.

“Ronit told me you’re in the museum guide business too,” she says, her clenched hands stapling papers, click! Her voice betrays not the slightest emotion when she mentions Ronit.

“What were you even doing at her party?” I ask.

“She didn’t tell you?” Click! goes the stapler. “I’m doing a memorial video about my mum and I wanted to interview her.”

Click! Click! Click! The sense of betrayal resurfaces like a slap in the face. “So why didn’t you come to me?” I ask, since