Read Online Sons of the 613 by Michael Rubens - Free Book Online Page A

groups of people standing outside, talking and smoking. It all seems very foreign and wrong and threatening to me.
    Josh is steering, looking ahead, but he seems to sense what I’m feeling. “We’ve got to get you to New York,” he says. “Get you out of Edina.”
    â€œNo, no, we really don’t.”
    â€œYeah, we do. Let you see what a real city is like. You’re freaked out by this? This is like a toy city. And Edina?” He shakes his head.
    He sounds like my parents. They’re always telling me that when I go off to college I’ll go to the East Coast and understand. When I tell them that I don’t want to leave, that I
like
Edina, they give each other a certain look, a look I’ve come to realize means,
How did we raise a child like this?
    In civics we were learning about the immigrant experience, and there was an essay by a woman whose parents were from China. Thirty years they lived in America, she said, and they still never considered it home, always believing that at any moment they would move back to their
real
home.
That’s my parents,
I thought.
    Josh turns onto a smaller, darker, less trafficked street and parks at the curb.
    â€œI think we should just go home,” I say as he’s stepping out of the car. It’s the third or fourth time I’ve said it in about ten minutes. It has the same effect on him as the earlier repetitions: nothing.
    â€œC’mon,” he says.
    â€œNo. This is stupid. I’m not going.”
    â€œOkay.”
    He shuts his door and walks off. I sit there for a moment and catch sight of myself in the mirror, then sigh in exasperation and climb out of the car and follow him. He’s thirty feet away already and holds the key remote over his shoulder and locks the door without looking, not slowing down or turning to see if I’m behind him.
    He disappears around the corner and I scurry to catch up, feeling vulnerable outside the bubble of strength and confidence he projects. When I round the corner I get a brief jolt of panic as I search for him, then spot him in the short line of people waiting to get into a club that’s halfway down the block.
    When I get there he’s reached the doorman, a big guy with a shaved head and a leather jacket. They seem to know each other, doing that jock greeting that guys like them do: the soul handshake that turns into a quick off-center embrace, their left hands thumping each other once on the back, their gazes bored and expressionless and focused elsewhere, just in case someone might get the wrong idea that they actually like each other or have any friendliness inside them at all.
    Josh registers my presence next to him and says, “Let’s go,” and steps through the door ahead of me. I glance at the doorman, who pays no attention to me, his dead-eye gaze already shifted to the next customer in line.
    In the vestibule between the double doors I ask Josh how he got in.
    â€œDo you have a fake ID?”
    â€œDon’t need a fake ID here,” he says, and opens the next set of doors.
    The noise that greets us is so loud, it feels like a physical barrier thumping against my chest. It takes me a bit to organize the distorted sound into parts that resemble music. The room is dark and crowded, people pressed up against the bar and gathered in front of the stage, where the band is tearing through some sort of metal-punk hybrid song.
    I hang back as Josh shoulders his way to the bar. I get a few curious glances from people and I quickly look the other way, afraid of eye contact, wishing I were home. Josh reemerges with a beer. I know that he drinks, but this is the first time I’ve ever really seen him do it, and there’s something almost shocking about it. Josh goes right past me, holding his beer just like an adult does, confident and relaxed like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I tag along as he makes his way toward the back, wondering