“Thanks for the support, Milla,” Honey snorts.

“No, it’s just—”

I suddenly realize she’s been thinking about this a long time. This is what’s been bothering her. But now she’s figured out what she wants to do about it. Her chest is pulled up tall and straight, and her hands are on her hips like Wonder Woman. Then she shrugs.

“I think I can do it,” she says simply, and hops back up next to me on the bathroom counter. “And I called Naomi Dayan—she says if my parents say okay she’ll teach me.”

“Well, great,” I say, knowing that my enthusiasm sounds fake. But what I don’t know is why can’t I make it sound—or feel—genuine?

A week later, I catch Honey humming the special tune for chanting the megillah while she is doing dishes from Shabbat lunch.

“Wait, your parents said yes?” I say.

“Yup,” she says without turning around.

“Wow,” I say, swallowing. I am sitting at the island munching potato chips. “Naomi’s started teaching you already?”

“Yup.”

“How’s it going?” I ask.

“Good,” she says.

“Do you know the whole thing already?”

“Hmm,” she says noncommittally.

“I still can’t believe your parents said yes.”

“Well, they did,” she says, turning around to raise her eyebrows at me. As she turns back to the sink, the wet glass she is holding slips from her fingers—in the blink of an eye she is squatting like a baseball catcher and catching the glass just before it hits the kitchen tiles.

“Nice save,” I say, swallowing a chip too quickly, the edge scratching my throat.

I’m not jealous of Honey’s leining. But I think what has also been scratching my throat is that where I see roadblocks, she sees different routes, or that a roadblock might really only be those orange traffic cones that can simply be picked up and moved away.

“Are you nervous to lein?” I ask.

“A bit,” she admits. “But Naomi says to imagine I am a queen wearing a crown. She says it’s a public-speaking trick her dad taught her but that it works well for leining too.”

“You’re going to be great,” I say, and I really do mean it. I have no doubt she’s going to knock it out of the ballpark. Like she always does.

“Thanks, Milla,” she says. Then I tell her about the issue with my mother and which dress to wear to Natalie’s and show her the pictures on my phone. “They’re both really nice,” she says.

“But I’d rather wear the peach one to Natalie’s. If we do the best friend’s speech, everyone will be looking at us—it’s going to be a really fancy party and the peach dress is the fanciest.”

“But your mother chose it as your bat mitzvah dress. You want to wear your bat mitzvah dress to Natalie’s bat mitzvah before you’ve worn it to your own?”

“I don’t want it to be my bat mitzvah dress!” I say. “That’s the thing.” Honey looks at me mildly. “I mean, I really like it, but it’s just not what I had in mind for my bat mitzvah.”