In September, right after school started but before the High Holidays, Shaindele noticed a new boy behind the counter. She realized he was a little older than the last one as she studied his handsome dark eyes and the attractive hollows emphasizing his high cheekbones. She watched, almost mesmerized, as he insouciantly flicked his thick, dark bangs coolly out of his eyes at regular intervals while opening and closing the heavy oven doors to check on the dough’s progress.

“I’ve never seen him here before,” she whispered to Shulamis, who took a quick look and then piously averted her eyes.

“Don’t you know who that is?” interjected a girl who was one year behind in school but a very well-informed and talented yenta and professional buttinsky. “It’s Duvid Halpern, the principal’s son. They say he got in trouble in yeshiva, and his rebbe kicked him out.”

“That’s not what I heard,” another girl jumped right in. She was two years younger than Shaindele and loved attention. Everyone turned to her.

“Really, I don’t think we ought to be—” Shulamis began but was immediately hushed by the others.

“What did you hear?” Shaindele encouraged the girl, dying to know.

“I heard he dropped out of Yeshiva Gedolah in Lakewood. That he wants to go to Yeshiva University, to be a doctor or a dentist.”

“College!” Shulamis whispered, scandalized.

All the girls were staring now, but he ignored them. He was shockingly clean-shaven, and his bare arms were tan beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his white, button-down yeshiva boy shirt. The skin of his neck—barely visible beneath the carelessly undone collar button—was the color of a delicious latte.

One of the handsome Halpern boys, Shaindele thought, wondering where one got a tan in September in Boro Park. It must be left over from the summer, which meant he’d been lying around on the forbidden beaches in Coney Island or out in the Rockaways, violating a long, long list of well-known and clearly stated rabbinical prohibitions that included indulging in mixed swimming (males and females sharing the same ocean) or ogling almost-naked women. Was she shocked, appalled? Or pleased? She honestly didn’t know.

Without even realizing it, her mind slowly began to undress him. Off went the black jacket and tie he wasn’t even wearing—uniform of every other yeshiva boy she had ever seen—and then the white shirt, the tzitzis, and the undershirt. Before she could even consider stopping herself, there he was, practically naked except for a bathing suit, sitting for all the world like some shegetz on forbidden sands.

She blushed deeply.

To their disappointment, someone else came to take their order, a short, heavy Israeli in his late forties, Moishy himself.