She takes a deep breath as Naftali serves himself a plate of pasta and sits down. “I wanted to get your advice on something,” Naftali says.

Are we in sync? Chana wonders for a moment. Will I be let off the hook? And then Naftali says, “There’s a boy on the bus who doesn’t get along with Eliezer.”

Oh. Chana is about to laugh it off, but she sees the telltale signs of distress: Naftali’s eyes darkening, his fingers drumming against the table, breath coming faster. This is really bothering him.

“Some kids are never going to click with their menahel,” she says mildly.

“It’s not just that.” Naftali takes a bite of the pasta, chews contemplatively. “I saw him with some friends earlier this week. I don’t think they’re good for him. And Eliezer is so harsh with him, it’s pushing him away.”

“Maybe they need a reset,” Chana suggests. “Some way to start over before the kid gets in too deep. You think he’s in trouble?” Naftali is good to the boys on the bus, but he isn’t usually this invested in them. Maybe this kid just needs more investment. “What does he need?”

Naftali considers. “I don’t know. A mentor, maybe. A conversation with Eliezer that isn’t about everything he’s done wrong.” He winces. “Some positive experiences in school, because he isn’t getting positivity anywhere right now.”

He’s wasted on a school bus. Rivky’s words from Shabbos ricochet through her mind like a stray bullet, impacting each thought and impression. “Talk to Eliezer,” Chana says. “You can brainstorm about this.”

“If he’d hear me out, maybe.” Naftali smiles at her, though he still looks troubled.

“Thanks for listening,” he adds, and Chana doesn’t have the heart to bring up Rivky’s idea right now. Tomorrow. She’ll talk to him about it tomorrow.

Chana is right. Eliezer might laugh him right out of the office, but Naftali has to give it a try. He doesn’t know exactly what had happened the day before, when Yudi had poked his head into Naftali’s office with his face set in a glower, but he knows that it had been another blow. Another defeat, another chasm between Yudi and the school.

And Eliezer is the school. He isn’t seeing Yudi clearly because of a dozen methods that have worked well on other boys. If he’ll listen, if he’ll take Naftali seriously on this — a lonely boy whom Naftali might understand — then maybe Yudi stands a chance.

Naftali considers an arsenal of long shot suggestions: a walk between menahel and student through the yeshivah grounds, a careful discussion that might ease the tension between them. A call in the evening to check on Yudi when he’s home alone. A relationship, something that makes Yudi eager to go to school in the morning.

Why does Yudi go to school in the morning? Naftali picks him up at six-thirty sharp, and he broaches the question as a compliment. “I don’t think I’d have ever gotten out of bed this early when I was your age.”

Yudi yawns. “You probably lived closer to school.” He’s holding what looks like a chocolate bar, but for its shiny plastic finish, and Naftali pauses at the next stop sign and holds out his hand for it. It’s another lighter.

He sighs with disapproval. “Yudi…”

“I’m not doing anything with it. I just…” Yudi shifts in his seat. “It makes me feel calm when I look at it. My parents don’t care.”

Naftali has yet to see any proof that Yudi’s parents care about anything he does. He holds onto the lighter. It’s an excuse to talk to Eliezer about Yudi, maybe, but it’s also going to start the conversation in a less pleasant place than he’d been hoping. Yudi sulks behind him, silent until they’re out of Meadowbrook.

It’s only when Naftali pulls onto the street of the next stop that Yudi speaks. “I just don’t want you driving all the way out there for nothing.”

Naftali turns, bewildered. Yudi is kicking the back of the seat with a dull thump. “I wouldn’t get up so early otherwise,” the boy says. He looks embarrassed, his ears flaming red, as the brothers at the next stop climb onto the bus. “Whatever.”

“Not whatever,” is all Naftali can think to say. Yudi won’t want him to dwell on it, would be self-conscious and never return to the bus, but this firms his resolve to speak to Eliezer. At his core, Yudi is a good kid, someone who just needs a softer hand, and Naftali can see it clearly.

He finishes his routes and parks the bus in the lot for the day, but he can’t bring himself to talk to Eliezer so early in the morning. Eliezer and Yudi are delicate, and Naftali has to tread carefully. Instead, he focuses on his Amazon business. The chocolate lighter sits in his pocket, the weight of it a reminder of what he still needs to do.

It isn’t until late afternoon — after lunch, with his preschool route looming — that he finally drags himself to Eliezer’s office.

Eliezer is learning at his desk, absorbed in a Gemara, and he looks up in surprise when Naftali appears at his doorway. “Naftali?” They don’t interact more than strictly necessary in school, even in the safety of this office complex. “What can I do for you?”

Naftali leaves the door cracked open, as though he can’t have this conversation without an escape route. “I wanted to talk to you about Yudi Stein,” he says. Immediately, he can sense the tension billowing in the room like an imminent pyroclastic flow, ready to choke them both with smoke.

Eliezer’s jaw works under his skin, irritation blooming from Yudi’s name alone. “Leave Yudi to me.”

Naftali fishes the lighter out of his pocket, lights it. “This wasn’t the first time I’ve taken one of these away from him,” he says. Eliezer’s eyes are hard, the kind of scorching menahel stare that Naftali has heard the boys discuss. “I think… he’s just desperate for some attention. Any attention. But the negative attention that he gets is only making him resentful, and so he tries to get more, and then—”

“Naftali.”

Naftali doesn’t stop. He can’t, not when he hasn’t said what Eliezer needs to know. “He needs someone who cares. Not a tough hand. He needs to… to spend time with you that isn’t about getting in trouble, to connect with someone at school who values him even if he isn’t a standout bochur—”

Naftali hadn’t been a troublemaker like Yudi, quick to act out just to get a reaction. He’d been a blip, easily ignored, and he remembers how dull and empty life had been when he was invisible. “He needs to be seen—”

“Naftali.” Eliezer’s voice is sharp, uncompromising, and Naftali stops at last. Eliezer shakes his head. “I’ve been doing this for a decade,” he says. “There have been dozens of Yudis. I know what they need, even when it isn’t always what they want.” He gets up, claps a hand on Naftali’s shoulder like they’re still kids. “Stop trying to be a hero.”

Stop trying to be a hero. Dismissed, just like that, an errant nuisance. Naftali burns with shame, with a building anger like nothing he’s felt in years. “I talk to him,” he says. “I understand what he needs better than you do.”

“You’re wrapped around his little finger,” Eliezer says scornfully. Naftali stares at him, at a loss for words. Eliezer winces and gentles his voice. “Come on, Naftali. Take it from your big brother. Sometimes, we just have to pick our battles in chinuch.”

Despair and helplessness merge with shame and become a toxic cocktail. “I’m not 14 anymore!” Naftali bursts out, but oh does he feel like he is, standing in a menahel’s office with his words being swallowed up by condescending smiles. “I don’t need a big brother.”

“You do. You always do,” Eliezer says. He doesn’t say I got you this job, didn’t I? but the unspoken words thrum in the air between them, a weight around Naftali’s neck. “And that’s fine. I’m happy to help you. But trust that I know what’s best for these boys, just like I knew what was—”

“Like you knew what was best for me?” Naftali finishes. “You brought me into your school and offered me a job like you were giving tzedakah to some nebach stranger.” It’s always how it feels. On the bus, he has his own space. In the building, he’s swallowed up in Eliezer’s shadow, unable to escape it.

He had thought, once, that he had rounded his edges, grown past the lost and angry boy he’d been in childhood.

But here that boy is again, hurt and angry. “I walk through these offices full of people who don’t know we’re brothers and it’s like… it’s like that’s who I am. A chesed case that you’ve taken under your wing. An embarrassment to the illustrious Hartman family.”

Eliezer passes a hand over his eyes. “I don’t think that,” he says.

“Everyone thinks that,” Naftali says, his fists trembling at his side. “It’s just that no one else is trying to save me.” He thinks of Yudi a few days ago, lip curled in disgust. Rabbi Hartman thinks that he can save me. That’s Eliezer, only happy when he’s the arbiter of someone else’s future. Maybe it makes Naftali ungrateful to resent him over it. Maybe he should be slavishly appreciative, the way that Eliezer must expect him to be.

Eliezer doesn’t deny it.

“This was a mistake,” Naftali says, and Eliezer only watches him, his face tight.

Naftali turns to the door and pushes it open. Pushes, without turning the doorknob, because he’d never quite sealed it. It had been open for their conversation, and the loudest words must have filtered out of the room.

He’s sure of that, and his stomach turns as he steps into the hallway.

A gaggle of boys are standing outside one of the supply closets in the office complex, staring at him with eyes wide and mouths agape. And in the center of them is Yudi, an oak tag from the closet in one hand, his face set in a stony mask of raw betrayal.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 953)