“Mine is unique too,” I say, smiling back.

“Excellent,” he says, his eyes twinkling. “I’m sure you’ll both do great. By the way, Milla, I marked your essay on heroes in myths and legends last night—very incisive—you showed really sophisticated critical and creative thinking.”

I feel my face flush with pleasure. I’d worked hard on that essay.

“That’s my Milla,” Honey says, putting her arm around me. I squirm in an unfamiliar way. Her Milla?

“William!” the barista hollers in the background.

“Coming!” Mr. Sandler calls back. “My Starbucks name,” he says to us with a wink before he ambles toward the counter. “Bye, kids. Good luck. Do yourselves proud. That’s always the best you can hope for.”

After lunch on Shabbat, I call Max into my room and do my speech in front of him. He laughs his head off at all the right times. “You’re funny, Milla,” he says afterward.

“Thanks, Max,” I say, smiling.

On Sunday, my mother knocks on my door. I’ve been in my room all day. “Do you want to do a practice run?” she asks me.

“No, it’s okay.”

“Milla, you don’t want to look unprepared. It’s bad enough you’re doing such a silly topic.”

“I’m prepared” is all I say.

Mr. Sandler is taking one person from the top of the alphabet and one person from the bottom to make the order of speech presentations for our class, so me being “B” and Honey being “W,” we both have to do our speeches on the first day, Monday.

Honey goes first. As she walks up to the front of the room, Noam and Eitan sing this song people have been singing about her lately, “Sugar, na-na, na-na, na-na, ah, honey, honey,” but she ignores them. She turns to us and stands straight, stares right, stares left, stares center, and then says in a loud voice:

“Have you ever noticed how people just don’t know how to peel oranges properly?”

Huh?

“Do you know how to peel an orange?” Honey asks our class, pointing her finger and scanning it across the room.

What?

My shoulders go all funny.

Even though oranges are all I have been thinking about day and night, I didn’t speak to Honey about our speeches. I can’t say why exactly, because even though I did get the idea from Aunty Steph, the speech is all my own imagination. But I still haven’t talked about it.

I tune back in to hear what Honey is saying.

“Did you know that there are certain dos and certain don’ts to peeling an orange? Well, have no fear, because I am here to tell you what they are.”

My heart gallops against my ribs, and my face feels cold.

I am an orange in the bottom of the crate: bright and shiny and bumpy last night, fuzzed with white and green mold this morning.