The Third Seat on the Bench

Chapter 1The Bench by the Fence

For three years, the bench by the schoolyard fence had held exactly three girls.

Miriam Shapiro, Hadassah Weiss and Pessy Lang had claimed it in fifth grade, when they discovered that the bench fit three if you squeezed and four only if one sat on someone's lap. It faced the big oak tree. In the morning, the sun hit it first. At lunch, they ate there, sharing a bag of pretzels and an ongoing argument about whether nectarines were better than peaches. They knew each other's families, each other's worst moments, each other's habits of tucking hair behind an ear or biting a thumbnail.

Miriam was the one who held the schedule in her head. Hadassah was the one who made them laugh until they cried. And Pessy was the one who got quiet when she was sad.

On the first Monday of Teves, Miriam arrived at the bench with her lunch bag and found Hadassah already there, talking in a low voice to a girl from the other eighth-grade class named Shevi.

"Oh," said Hadassah, looking up. "Hi. Shevi is eating with us today. Is that okay?"

"Of course," said Miriam, and her voice came out cheerful, and her stomach did a small, strange drop.

There was room, technically. They squeezed. Shevi laughed at a joke Hadassah made, and Hadassah looked pleased, and Pessy, who was at the end, opened a book and said nothing at all.

Miriam ate her sandwich and noticed that she was counting. Four on a bench built for three. It was not a big thing. It was just that the bench felt, for the first time, small.

Chapter 2What Miriam Noticed

By Thursday, Miriam had a list in her head, the kind she did not want to be keeping.

On Monday, Hadassah had laughed at one of Shevi's stories and not at one of Miriam's. On Tuesday, Hadassah and Shevi had walked ahead to class together, in the middle of a sentence. On Wednesday, Hadassah had saved Shevi a seat in the library and not mentioned it to anyone. On Thursday, Miriam had said a thing she thought was funny, and Hadassah had looked at Shevi and rolled her eyes.

Nothing was wrong, exactly. Nobody had said anything cruel. But the eye roll had stung, and a hot, tight feeling had set up house in Miriam's chest, and it would not leave. It whispered: She likes Shevi better. She is replacing you. In a month you will be the one on the outside.

At home, Miriam stirred her soup in silence until her older sister Leah said, "Okay. Who died?"

"Nobody."

"Then why do you look like that?"

"It's nothing. Just school stuff."

Leah, who was twenty-six, married, and home for Shabbos in her neat navy tichel, put her spoon down. "Is it friend stuff?"

Miriam shrugged, which was the same as yes.

"Tell me the facts," said Leah. "Not what you think it means. What actually happened?"

So Miriam listed them: the laugh, the walk, the seat, the eye roll.

Leah considered. "Those are real things. And they might add up to something. Or they might not. Hadassah could just be making a new friend and being a little careless. Or she might actually be drifting. I can't tell. Can you?"

"No."

"So you have two jobs. One is to feel what you're feeling, because it's real and it hurts. The other is not to decide the ending before you know."

"What do I do?"

"I'd say, find out. Ask her." Leah picked her spoon back up. "Not in a fight. Just honestly."

"I can't," said Miriam. "What if she says yes, I like Shevi more?"

"Then you'd know. And it would hurt. But not knowing is hurting you anyway."

Chapter 3The Wrong Way

Miriam did not ask.

She did what a lot of people do when they are afraid of a straight question. She tried something sideways.

On Friday, she brought extra pretzels and said, loudly, "Hadassah, remember in sixth grade when we hid in the supply closet and got locked in?" It was their story. Shevi had not been there. She watched Hadassah's face carefully. Hadassah smiled and said, "Oh, yes, that was hilarious," and then turned to Shevi and said, "We were so dumb."

On Monday, Miriam said, in a voice she hoped sounded light, "I feel like I never see you anymore." And Hadassah looked puzzled and said, "We eat lunch together every day?" which was true, and which made Miriam feel stupid.

On Tuesday, she did something worse. She sat next to Pessy, who was reading, and whispered, "Don't you think Hadassah's been weird lately?"

Pessy lowered her book slowly. "Weird how?"

"Like she wants a different group."

"I haven't noticed that," said Pessy, but her eyes dropped to the page, and Miriam realized with a sinking feeling that she had made it worse. Now two people were involved in the worry. And Pessy had gone quiet, the way she did when she was sad.

She had talked about Hadassah behind her back. She had not meant it as gossip. But that is what it was.

That night, Miriam lay in bed with a stone of shame on top of the stone of worry.

Chapter 4The Question

On Wednesday after school, Miriam found Hadassah at the bench alone, tying her shoe. The yard was almost empty. Shevi had left early for a dentist appointment. Pessy was at a tutoring session.

Miriam sat down next to her and did not say anything for a minute. Her hands were cold. She heard her sister's voice: Just honestly.

"Hadassah," she said. "Can I ask you something? And you don't have to say the answer I want. I just really want the true one."

Hadassah looked up, startled. "Sure."

"Do you like Shevi more than me? When I told that joke on Thursday, you looked at her and rolled your eyes."

Hadassah's mouth fell open. "What?"

"I mean, not more. I mean." Miriam's face burned. "Lately I've been feeling like I'm outside of something. And I did a few things I'm not proud of, like the supply closet thing, and I told Pessy you were acting weird, and that was wrong, and I'm sorry. But I'd rather just know."

There was a long silence. A bird landed on the fence and left.

"Wow," said Hadassah finally. Her voice was small. "No. I like Shevi, but not more than you. You are my friend in a different way." She picked at a thread on her sleeve. "The eye roll was not about your joke. Shevi had whispered something and I was trying not to laugh in the middle of yours. It must have looked awful. But I did think you were annoyed with me. You've been weird too. You stopped laughing at my jokes. I thought it was because I had made a new friend and you were mad."

"I wasn't mad. I was scared."

"I didn't know you could be scared. You're always the one who has everything under control."

"I don't," said Miriam. "I really don't."

They sat there, two girls on a bench, seeing each other with new eyes.

"Shevi's new," said Hadassah, slowly. "She doesn't have anyone. Her family moved here in the summer, and she sits alone in the other class. I think I just wanted to be nice. And then I liked her. But I didn't think about how it would look to you. I should have said something."

"I should have asked."

"Yeah," said Hadassah. "We were both guessing."

Chapter 5A Bench for Four

The next day Miriam did something unusual. She asked Pessy to take a walk around the yard.

"I owe you an apology," she said, as soon as they were alone. "I said something about Hadassah that was not fair. I was scared, and I used you to work it out. I should have asked her directly. I'm sorry."

Pessy was quiet for a while, as she often was. "I knew something was wrong," she said. "I didn't know what. I was worried it was me."

"It was never you."

"I wasn't sure." Pessy tucked her hair behind her ear. "I'm not good at saying. I get quiet. But I'm glad you told me."

On Friday, the four of them sat on the bench by the fence, squeezed. It was not the same as before. It never would be. Three girls who had known each other for years do not simply become four in a day. There were awkward moments. Hadassah used a word from sixth grade, a joke only she and Miriam knew, and Shevi's smile went blank, and Miriam felt a flicker of the old feeling and let it pass without acting on it. Hadassah, after a moment, turned to Shevi and said, "That was from Miriam and me, in sixth grade. Let me tell you," and told the whole supply closet story, with Shevi laughing in the right places, and by the end she was part of it.

It would take time. Some friendships grow the way trees do, slowly, with changes you do not notice until the shade has moved. And some friendships get smaller or looser. Miriam knew that now. It did not make the three of them less real. It meant that a bench could hold more than three, and that being brave enough to ask, even a scared question, was how you found out what it held.

At the end of lunch, Pessy opened her book on her lap and read a line aloud, because it was funny. All four of them laughed.

The sun hit the bench. It was, Miriam thought, almost exactly the right size.