Chapter Five – The Fifth Night

Stardate 47961.01
Thursday, 17 December 2370 / 28 Kislev 6131
New Haven, CT, Earth

"On the fifth night, we were accepting, for surely this was miracle enough." ~Jadzia Axelrod

My giddy mood from the community party had kept me up too late, and I had to drag myself out of bed on Thursday morning. I had my two toughest finals, with time for an early lunch and a brief nap in between, and I was relieved to finally be finished with schoolwork for several weeks.

I was so tired, though, that after the second final I went back to my room to lie down again and slept hard enough that I would have stayed in bed until morning, except that someone was pounding on my door.

"Coming," I called, twisting my hair into a messy bun. I opened the door to find my friends, Chuni, Margot, and Anjali. "Were we meeting tonight?" The four of us had been suitemates in our freshman year. Now Chuni and I shared a suite, and Margot and Anjali had other roommates, but we were all still in the same college, and we'd remained close.

"We've all had our last final and we know you have too," Anjali said.

"And we noticed you missed dinner…" Margot said.

"And the Hanukkah thing you've been doing," Chuni added.

"So, we decided to drag you out for another Jewish holiday tradition," Anjali concluded.

"I'm not Jewish," I pointed out. "I'm doing Hanukkah because… well… it's kind of a family thing."

"Never mind. You're Jewish-adjacent now. And we're hungry, so get dressed and come with us."

"Come where?"

"Fong Wo's. It's our last night together til next year, Zoe… Chinese food is in order."

I laughed and shut the door. "I'll be ready in ten minutes."

In reality, I was ready in five.

Dinner with my friends was the perfect ending to the semester. We joked and laughed, ate far too much food, and had fun with alternate endings for fortune cookies. First we added "in bed" to them, but then Chuni went to the big bowl at the hostess stand and came back with her hands full of the crispy, sweet cookies.

"An exciting opportunity lies ahead of you," Chuni said, finishing with, "in the morgue."

"The morgue? Really?" Chuni was pre-med, but still. Then again, she also had purple hair and more piercings than a pin cushion.

"The morgue has tons of empty beds and it's super quiet," she said, defending her choice. "Margot?"

"Mine's too nice to do anything bawdy with it," the blonde woman said. "You will always be surrounded by true friends… at Yale."

There was a collective "Aww!" from the rest of us.

"Alright then, Anjali?"

The black-haired woman blushed, but read her slip of paper, "Experience is the best teacher… between the sheets."

"I call technical foul!" I said. "'Between the sheets' and 'in bed' are essentially the same thing."

"But it was so perfect," Anjali protested. "Anyway, can you do better?"

I cracked open my cookie, read the slip, and grinned, "Plan for many pleasures ahead… in zero gravity." I'm not sure how I finished the sentence without laughing.

My friends responded in the only appropriate way they could. They hurled their crumpled napkins at me.

(=A=)

It wasn't until we got back to campus that I realized I'd forgotten to light my menorah at all. "We have to make a stop at the dining hall," I said.

"You can't be hungry again already," Chuni teased.

"No, I'm not. And except for the buttery, there's no kitchen open right now anyway. But I forgot to light my menorah, and apparently, it's okay to light them late, as long as someone is there to see the flame. You're all part of my chosen family, so I need you to see me do it." I added a winsome, "Please?"

The dining hall was essentially empty, save for a few students with Friday finals who were using the quiet space to cram, and a small group of people near the table with all the chanukiahs. I placed five candles in the holders, lit my shamash candle from the pillar candle in the center of the table, and then lit the other candles. "You place them from right to left," I explained, "and you light them from left to right, so the newest candle is always lit first."

"Aren't you supposed to say a prayer?" Anjali asked.

"There's a blessing, yes," I said. "But I'm pretty sure whatever power there is in the Universe knows my intentions, and I'm not actually Jewish, so I'm just going to give thanks for the support of my friends – you three especially – because I don't think I'd have been able to come back to school without your support.

It's a pity there was no one with a camera to capture what happened next, because Anjali put her arm around my waist, and I rested my head against her shoulder. Then Margot and Chuni joined us, and the four of us stood there, watching the flickering flames.

I didn't need to cast out with my telepathic sense to know we were all feeling the same things: peace, hope, friendship, and joy.

Notes:

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Fortune Cookie Source: Best Ever Cookie Collection dot Com.