Free The Mystics of Mile End by Sigal Samuel Page A

I’d invited him over for dinner. They’d obviously already eaten without me because Sammy was rinsing the dishes and Alex was loading them into the dishwasher, which was supposed to be my job. I was about to walk in but stopped when I heard what they were talking about. Me.
    â€œWell, I just don’t get how Lev can think that,” Alex was saying. “Those people he was talking about, the ones who stick messages in the Wailing Wall, they’re praying to something that doesn’t exist! To some magical, all-knowing, unobservable life form that—”
    â€œI don’t see how that’s any different from the messages SETI sends out.” Sammy laughed. “The Arecibo message was also sent out to ‘unobservable life forms’—”
    â€œYeah, but life forms that, if they do communicate with us one day, will be one hundred percent observable and verifiable! Whereas God’s messages are never —”
    â€œWhich, by the way, that’s another thing I don’t get about SETI,” Sammy said. “If there is intelligent life out there, and if it does send us a signal with a pattern, won’t it be drowned out by all the other noise in the universe? It’d be like us listening for one radio stationthat’s broadcasting news when a million other stations are broadcasting rock music.”
    â€œDon’t worry,” Alex said, loading the last dirty dish with a smile. “SETI scientists are experts at listening. They’ve had tons of practice.”
    Sammy turned off the tap and turned on the dishwasher. “What kind of practice?”
    He sat down on the floor in front of the machine. “Come here, I’ll show you!”
    She gave him a funny look, then shrugged and sat down cross-legged next to him.
    â€œOne time,” he said, “I read about these SETI scientists who would spend hours and hours listening to dishwashers and washing machines, searching for patterns in the chaos.”
    â€œDoes that really work? I mean, can you hear the patterns?”
    â€œI’m not very good at it. At least not yet. But—”
    She shushed him and pressed her ear up against the machine. He did the same. She closed her eyes, probably to help her hear the noise better. But he kept his eyes on her.
    After seven gazillion minutes, Sammy started to smile.
    â€œWhat?” Alex whispered. “Can you hear something?”
    â€œEven better,” she whispered back. “I can feel it.” Without opening her eyes, she reached for his hand and placed two of his fingers on her wrist, her pulse. “See?”
    A few seconds passed. Alex’s eyes grew huge. He stared up at her, then squinted, like what he was seeing was so bright it was almost blinding. Sun and moon and stars.
    I walked backward on tiptoes until I reached the front door. I stepped outside and softly closed the door behind me. Then I opened it, stepped inside, and slammed it shut.
    â€œI’m home!”
    L ater that night, after Alex had left, I walked down the hall and stood in front of Sammy’s closed door. She was chanting again, but there was something weird about her voice now.
    It buzzed for half a second, then went quiet for eighteen seconds. It hummed for another half a second, then went quiet for thirty more. Goose bumps rose on my arms and I pressed my ear to the door and then I realized what the weird thing was.
    Most people, when they read, read one word at a time. But my sister was not most people. She was reading one letter at a time. She was letting each vowel or consonant roll around in her mouth for almost a whole minute before releasing it onto the air. In between one letter and the next, I could hear huge stretches of silence. And the silence was strange and layered, and it made me feel happy and sad and lonely all at the same time.
    I walked across the hall and lay on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I didn’t really feel like