Dad removes his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry that seventh grade drama isn’t quite top of mind right now. There’s so much going on. The Harvest Festival is right around the corner, I have to get our spring festival applications in, and Lincoln Street Blues needs to find a permanent sub on keys since Charlie tore his rotator cuff. Which is, you know, perfect timing while we’re planning a bat mitzvah we can barely afford.”

“Aaron.” Mom’s voice is sharp. “I am finally working on a new book for Anna, one of my classes is filled with pretentious assholes, and I’m planning this bat mitzvah we can barely afford pretty much on my own. We all have a lot going on.”

My parents are fighting. Mom is writing. This scene is impossible to process.

“You’re writing?” Dad asks. “I had no idea. The extra pressure—”

“—is not an excuse to be so detached. Shana Tova.” Mom plucks her oversized maple cardigan off the back of the kitchen chair and retreats to her office.

Leaving me alone with Dad.

I push my chair back and stand. “Every club lost their events… and you’re complaining about how busy the band is.”

Dad’s expression instantly softens. “Natalie—”

“Shana Tova, Dad.”

I exit scene in pursuit of Delia, before he has the chance to disappoint me. Again.

The first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on a Saturday, which is underwhelming for a variety of reasons.

1. I don’t get to skip school in the name of religion.
2. It’s Shabbat, so it’s forbidden to blow the shofar on the first day of services. Seeing how long Eli Sarna, the rabbi’s son, can hold the tekiah gedolah note is easily the best part of the service.
3. Though we are pretty much exclusively High Holidays Jews in this family, my parents enforce a strict no-tech rule on said holidays. As if that makes up for how relatively unobservant we are the rest of the year.

So not only am I spending my Saturday at Reid’s house, I’m also cut off from any and all proposal progress this weekend. In the past week, my friends and fellow collaborators have created a massive group chat, drafted proposal objectives and a mission statement, and came up with the perfect group name:

HAVE A HE(ART): Save Our Art!

Fitz and Henry are ridiculously proud of it.

I am too. So not being up to date with proposal plans is slowly killing me.

The Callahans live twenty minutes across town, but their house feels like another planet with its high ceilings and a kitchen I’m convinced Bobby from Queer Eye designed. Its state-of-the-art appliances and clean white modern aesthetic are the total opposite of our dated wood cabinets, stove with a blown-out burner, and refrigerator with a jammed ice machine.