I should be packing,

but instead I’m

reading Web of Spider-Man #1.

Peter is thinking about how to tell Mary Jane

he wants to be a new kind of hero.

He doesn’t want to think of the past anymore.

By the last page,

Peter’s symbiotic alien suit

decides to detach itself from its host

and save Peter’s life—one being

suddenly split into two.

I carefully slide the comic book

back into its Mylar bag.

A knock at the door startles me.

I look through the peephole.

It’s the rabbi!

I feel a rush of nervousness.

He must be here for my mother.

I open the door,

and the rabbi looks up.

It’s about time.

Is your mother home?

The rabbi doesn’t waste words.

I’m sweating and there’s a long pause.

He looks around the apartment.

It feels like when I first saw

Mrs. Goldberg, my third-grade

teacher, at the candy store

on Lexington Avenue,

like she wasn’t supposed

to be anywhere but in school.

He searches the apartment,

taking in everything he can,

then his eyes

come back to me

and he smiles.

Can I come in?

Sure—I’m not really supposed

to let anyone in, though.

He looks around the kitchen.

Do you want a glass of water?

I pour him the water,

and he takes a drink,

and for a while we talk about stairs.

Up and down, he says. Always with this city.

Up and down.

Then the rabbi sits

on the barstool

in the kitchen,

Tell me how you are, Ari.

I lean on the counter.

Good?

There is a universe

in the answer I don’t give.

He stares at me,

waiting inside the silence.

I’m reading a great book, I say.

He lifts an eyebrow.

Can I show you?

He nods.

I find Mysterious World,

dust the cover off

and straighten the torn jacket.

It’s by Arthur C. Clarke.

You know, he wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey?

He nods, raises his eyebrow,

maybe acknowledging, maybe not.

His eyebrow stays perched.

I hold it up

like a preschool teacher

and open to the first few pages.

The crystal skull stares

the rabbi in the face.

Words bubble out

of my mouth.

It’s Aztec or maybe Mayan. Nobody knows for sure. Some people think it’s fake.

They say the skulls can tell the future if you look through their eyes.

I hold up the fullest-color picture

of the skull.

This is my book, I say.

I read it every day.

The rabbi looks at the book.

Looks at me.

The book again.

He smiles.

And that’s when I tell him everything:

Bigfoot, Loch Ness, the Jersey Devil.

I flip through the pages,

my fingers a tour guide,

walking backward through

sacred pages.

These are the Nazca lines, forms of animals miles and miles long.

They can be seen from space.

No one is sure how they got there.