Hope and Other Punch Lines Read online

  ALSO BY JULIE BUXBAUM

  Tell Me Three Things

  What to Say Next

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Julie R. Buxbaum Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Buxbaum, Julie, author.

  Title: Hope and other punchlines / Julie Buxbaum.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2019] | Summary: “The tragic 9/11 event in NYC that changed the world altered the life of Abbi Hope Goldstein as well as that of Noah Stern. They did not know each other back then, but they know each other now, and while Abbi is trying to move forward with her life, Noah still has unanswered questions that he believes Abbi can help answer”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018050353 (print) | LCCN 2018055358 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6679-5 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6677-1 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-5247-6678-8 (library binding) | ISBN 978-0-525-64444-6 (international pbk edition)

  Subjects: LCSH: September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Fiction. | Fame—Fiction. | Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. | Camps—Fiction. | New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B897 (ebook) | LCC PZ7.1.B897 Hop 2019 (print) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524766795

  Cover art: iStock/enjoynz

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Julie Buxbaum

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Before

  (Fifteen Years and Ten Months…)

  After

  Chapter One: Abbi

  Chapter Two: Noah

  Chapter Three: Abbi

  Chapter Four: Noah

  Chapter Five: Abbi

  Chapter Six: Noah

  Chapter Seven: Abbi

  Chapter Eight: Noah

  Chapter Nine: Abbi

  Chapter Ten: Noah

  Chapter Eleven: Abbi

  Chapter Twelve: Noah

  Chapter Thirteen: Abbi

  Chapter Fourteen: Noah

  Chapter Fifteen: Abbi

  Chapter Sixteen: Noah

  Chapter Seventeen: Abbi

  Chapter Eighteen: Noah

  Chapter Nineteen: Abbi

  Chapter Twenty: Noah

  Chapter Twenty-one: Abbi

  Chapter Twenty-two: Noah

  Chapter Twenty-three: Abbi

  Chapter Twenty-four: Noah

  Chapter Twenty-five: Abbi

  Chapter Twenty-six: Noah

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Abbi

  Chapter Twenty-eight: Noah

  Chapter Twenty-nine: Abbi

  Chapter Thirty: Noah

  Chapter Thirty-one: Abbi

  Chapter Thirty-two: Noah

  Chapter Thirty-three: Abbi

  Chapter Thirty-four: Noah

  Chapter Thirty-five: Abbi

  Chapter Thirty-six: Noah

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Abbi

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Noah

  Chapter Thirty-nine: Abbi

  Chapter Forty: Noah

  Chapter Forty-one: Abbi

  Chapter Forty-two: Noah

  Chapter Forty-three: Abbi

  Chapter Forty-four: Noah

  Chapter Forty-five: Abbi

  Chapter Forty-six: Noah

  Chapter Forty-seven: Abbi

  Chapter Forty-eight: Noah

  Chapter Forty-nine: Abbi

  Chapter Fifty: Noah

  Chapter Fifty-one: Abbi

  Chapter Fifty-two: Noah

  Chapter Fifty-three: Abbi

  Chapter Fifty-four: Noah

  Chapter Fifty-five: Abbi

  Chapter Fifty-six: Noah

  Chapter Fifty-seven: Abbi

  Chapter Fifty-eight: Noah

  Chapter Fifty-nine: Abbi

  Chapter Sixty: Noah

  Chapter Sixty-one: Abbi

  Chapter Sixty-two: Noah

  Chapter Sixty-three: Abbi

  Chapter Sixty-four: Noah

  Chapter Sixty-five: Abbi

  Chapter Sixty-six: Noah

  Chapter Sixty-seven: Abbi

  Chapter Sixty-eight: Noah

  Chapter Sixty-nine: Abbi

  After That

  Abbi

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my grandmother Charlotte, who would have freakin' loved to see this

  In its desertion of every basis for comparison, the event asserts its singularity. There is something empty in the sky. The writer tries to give memory, tenderness and meaning to all that howling space.

  —Don DeLillo, Harper’s, December 2001

  All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

  —Richard Avedon

  Now, Andy, did you hear about this one?

  —R.E.M., “Man on the Moon”

  Tuesday, the least descriptive day of the week. Neither beginning nor end, not even the sad, saggy middle.

  A nothing day.

  No. A before.

  Picture a blue sky.

  A beat, to breathe it in. All that blue.

  When you let out your last clean breath, you look up.

  And the world splits itself in two.

  Even back in my fairy-tale days, I never liked those inevitable opening words—once upon a time. Their bookend—happily ever after—at least made sense to me. The main character ended up happy forever. That was a no-brainer and nonnegotiable, the absolute bare minimum we could expect from a good story.

  The once upon a time, though? Let’s just say I had questions. What “time” were they talking about—Today? Yesterday? Tomorrow?—and what did it mean to be upon it? I was uncomfortable with its free-floating slipperiness. It felt like a cheap literary dodge.

  I’ve long outgrown fairy tales, but I still have trouble with the concept of time. Maybe it’s because my own life has always been an exception to the rule: I lived once when I was supposed to die. And so this story, the one I’m telling you now,
has two distinct beginnings.

  There’s the one that starts with, and feel free to groan, a once upon a time. Or at least, it feels that way to me because I don’t remember it happening, and yet, once upon a time, a click of the camera changed the entire trajectory of my life. I know exactly the when: Tuesday, September 11, 2001, approximately 9:59 a.m. The morning of my first birthday. In the photograph, the one that turned me from Abbi Hope Goldstein into The Baby Hope, I’m being whisked away to safety by Connie Kramer, one of the women who worked at the day-care center in the World Trade Center complex. I’m wearing a paper crown and holding a red balloon, and behind me the first tower is collapsing. An AP photographer managed to capture the dust-filled moment, though I have no idea how.

  You’ve probably seen the picture. It’s everywhere. You can find it hanging on living room walls and in dorms and nursing homes and museums and even printed on T-shirts and tote bags. I kid you not, I once saw baby me on a hat at Six Flags.

  Like in an actual fairy tale, there are some sad parts to this story, which are an unfortunate narrative necessity. Let’s get those out of the way as quickly as possible.

  Connie died seventy-five days ago. Her diagnosis was ovarian cancer. Stage IV. Which for reasons I don’t know—maybe because it’s serious—is written with Roman numerals.

  She was only forty-six.

  XLVI.

  Connie was thirty on September 11, 2001.

  In my house we all knew that Connie really died of 9/11 syndrome, the catchall diagnosis for the group of health problems caused by the exposure to toxic chemicals in the air at Ground Zero. For some survivors, it starts with inflammation of the lungs. For others, like Connie, it’s mutations and tumors, the assault of that day being retold on the cellular level.

  On September 11, 2001, twenty-four thousand gallons of jet fuel blew up. Those of us there breathed in a chemical bouquet that included crystalline silica (which = bad), asbestos, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide (or “sewer gas”), and God only knows what else.

  No. We do know what else: human ash and human bone.

  Hair and teeth and nails and dreams.

  Before things get any more morbid, let me share an important bit of happily-ever-after. Not only did I survive on 9/11 (and get almost sixteen bonus years so far), but somehow, defying all statistical odds, so did my parents. My mom and dad both worked in One World Trade (the North Tower), on floors 101 and 105, respectively, when no one survived above the 91st floor. Ninety-five percent of the people in the company they worked for got wiped out. Had they been at their desks like they were supposed to be, I would be an orphan. Instead, when the planes hit, my parents were sipping Frappuccinos three blocks away at a ground-floor Starbucks, which is the best advertisement for dessert disguised as coffee I’ve ever heard.

  In 2001, my parents went to fifty-three funerals in one month. They bought condolence cards in bulk from Costco. And then they went back for more.

  We live in Oakdale, New Jersey, which is the town outside New York City that had the highest number of 9/11 casualties, so the loss was everywhere: colleagues, neighbors, friends. Five kids from my class alone lost a parent on the same day, including my former best friend, Cat. Sixteen years later, Oakdale High is this weird hybrid of those who don’t really care about September 11 and those whose whole lives were shaped by it. For the former, the event is just another chapter in our history books, like Pearl Harbor or the Vietnam War or landlines. For the latter, it’s forever part of our peripheral vision. We may not remember, but we can never forget.

  That’s the first beginning, which I tell you only because otherwise the rest won’t make any sense. To meet Abbi Hope Goldstein is to meet Baby Hope, and to understand that in my town, at least, I get pointed at—people know my name even though we’ve never met—and occasionally, someone will corner me in a supermarket line while my hands are full of deodorant and hummus and tell me where they were that morning, like it’s something I want to know about them.

  The absolute worst is when I make strangers cry.

  But as promised, there’s a second beginning. Right here, right now, in a moment of rare triumph, the first days of summer vacation. Sunday night, nine p.m.: me, age sixteen, rocking out alone in my bedroom. I belt a girl-power ballad into a makeshift microphone, aka a dry shampoo bottle, because I can’t find my brush.

  Shimmy. Shimmy. Hair flip. Shimmy.

  Tomorrow I start as a counselor for four-year-olds at Knight’s Day Camp, two towns away. When I visited for the interview, there were lush green lawns and an old-fashioned red barn and something they called the “plake,” which is a hybrid pool/lake. We’ll have pajama day and a bouncy castle water slide and a Color War. Also arts and crafts and potato-sack races and even a Dance Dance Revolution activity block. Knight’s is a happy place, by far the happiest place I could find in the tri-state area, and believe me, I looked. Even went as far as to Google “happy places in New Jersey.” Now I get to go there eight hours a day five days a week, and for two months, not a single person will look at me and see Baby Hope.

  Time is still confusing and slippery. Based on some unexpected medical developments, there’s a good chance I’m running out of it. But for the next blissful eight weeks, I am going to be just Abbi Goldstein.

  I’ll get to make little kids laugh and not a single stranger cry.

  It’s not like I’m going to burst into tears or drop my coffee or make a big scene or anything. I saw that happen at the Blue Cow Cafe last spring, and it was bananas. Abbi Goldstein, aka Baby Hope, walked in, and this middle-aged dude knocked over a full mug and started weeping right there in front of everyone.

  We all have our wounds, especially in a town like Oakdale. Mine are pretty gruesome. But I wanted to tell that guy to get it together. Find a coping mechanism. I abuse comedy the way other people abuse drugs, and that seems to work pretty well for me. He should try a Chris Rock special.

  She’s a teenage girl, after all. Not the freaking Messiah. It’s not fair for him to put his shit on her.

  At least, that’s what I used to think. Because when I see Abbi Goldstein across the field at Knight’s Day Camp, of all places, I’m not going to lie: I hear an actual click in my brain. As if all the pieces of a plan I’ve been working on for years but haven’t yet figured out how to implement suddenly fall into place. Yes, I fully recognize my own hypocrisy, and I have surprisingly little trouble ignoring it. Not even a twinge of guilt.

  This feels like fate, which to be clear is not a word I’d ordinarily use. That’s the domain of bad poetry and greeting cards and also, idiots.

  But she—well, Baby Hope—is exactly what I need.

  I can tell when someone recognizes me. There’s this double look, a one-two sweep, that I feel as much as see: a tiny tingle at the base of my neck.

  Today, I feel it two hours into camp orientation. A boy across the lawn. Crap.

  “Just so you know, you’ll be in charge of all accidents,” Julia, my new senior counselor and essentially my boss this summer, says to me, and I use this as an excuse to turn around to face her. Now his view is only of my back. Better.

  “No problem. My parents made me take a first-aid class,” I say cheerfully. We’re standing on a grassy field in the blazing sun, and I try to imagine what this place will look like tomorrow when the kids get here. Until my grandfather died a few years ago, I spent my summers at my grandparents’ house in Maine, and after that, Cat, my then–best friend, and I worked at Torn Pages, Oakdale’s used-book store, so this is my first time taking part in camp life.

  I can handle accidents. Some Neosporin and a Band-Aid, preferably adorned with a cartoon character, and the cute little monsters will be good to go.

  I have no idea how to handle that boy, though.

  “I’m not talking about skinned knees. Our campers are four,” Julia reminds me. “Their control over t
heir sphincter muscles is limited at best.”

  “Oh, so there’s a poop element to this job. Gotcha,” I say, thinking it’s funny that people still have to shit even in happy places.

  Julia’s black, probably twentyish, and the kind of beautiful that feels like a trick. It’s a slow build, but once you notice, you can’t stop staring. A small star-shaped stud dots her right nostril, quiet confirmation that she’s also effortlessly cool. She’s short, like me, though built more like a gymnast than a prepubescent boy. I wonder if we were both assigned to the youngest kids so that people wouldn’t mix us up with our campers.

  “Also, my future boyfriend is the four-year-old boys’ counselor, so we’ll be paired up with them a lot. That’s Zach.”

  Julia points across the expanse of grass to a giant with blond hair and a crooked, goofy, I’m game for anything smile. He’s wearing a tie-dyed Knight’s Day Camp T-shirt, slouchy sweatpants cut off into shorts, and a wide-brimmed hat with a Velcroed chin strap. Of course, he’s standing right next to the boy I’m trying to avoid, who is, presumably, his junior counselor.