At the time, Leora had been enchanted by this brilliant way of seeing oneself, unfixed, unfinished. But more than that, Leora was enchanted by Naomi herself, the girl still short of seventeen who in spite of her age, or perhaps because of it, seemed to speak like a divine voice emerging from a whirlwind. Later, like nearly everything Naomi ever said, this theory seemed somehow prescient, as if Naomi had known all along that she would always remain unfinished, forever damp and yielding, shaped and changed by the slightest touch from Leora’s memory. But after Jason, Leora had to revise Naomi’s theory. Some people who had been so gently sculpted before, Leora added, are suddenly squashed—or squash themselves—into something new, throwing themselves into the kiln by force to harden themselves forever. And Leora knew it wasn’t her place to judge that choice.

JASON AND LEORA were technically still teenagers when they met, on line for computer repairs in college—both of them clinging to nineteen at a time when Leora still felt crushed by each of her birthdays, uncertain of whether she deserved them. What drew her to him, at first, was nothing more than the sudden awkwardness that overcame him when she asked him a very simple question:

“Where are you from?”

Jason hooked his thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans and shifted his weight from one foot to another, his soccer-victory grin melting off his face as his eyes shifted somewhat to the right. It’s an old ploy, this sleight-of-eye, the glance to the side as if suddenly someone far more interesting than the person asking the question has appeared on the scene. Leora recognized it. And when he named the New Jersey town where he was from, she knew why he had done it. For many people, the question “Where are you from?” is a conversation-starter, a curtain drawn open on a lighted window. Leora’s college roommate could keep people entertained for hours with stories about her home on a ranch in Wyoming, as could her classmate from the center of Barcelona and her upstairs neighbor from a rural town in Vermont. But for people like Jason and Leora, denizens of an undeclared Jewish state, the question “Where are you from?” was a dead end. They weren’t from anywhere special. Or from anywhere at all.

But Leora, watching the sleight of his eyes, surprised him. “I know where that is,” she said.

Jason shrugged, impatient. “There’s no reason for you to have heard of it,” he mumbled, his eyes shifting again.

Leora didn’t blink. “Except that I live there. Or the next town over, anyway.”

Jason’s eyes snapped back. “Really? Where?”

She named her street, and began describing where it was, awkwardly shifting her feet just as Jason had. But this time Jason’s feet were planted on the floor as he blurted, “I know exactly where that is! That’s my street!”

In a few seconds they realized that they lived about three blocks away from each other, on a street with no more than twenty houses on it. But those twenty houses sat along the town line, placing Leora and Jason in different towns, different school systems, different lives. Squinting at him, Leora tried to decide whether he looked familiar, if she could match his face with that of one of the skateboarding boys from the neighborhood. But the truth was that she couldn’t.