“I need Milla’s help with the soup!” Honey hollers over the racket, dragging me into the kitchen and then through to the walk-in pantry, firmly shutting the door behind her. The pantry looks like a kosher supermarket and smells like bubble gum and a heady mix of the spices arranged haphazardly in wire baskets.

“Milla!”

“What?” I say.

“I’m coming to your school!” Honey says. “I’m coming to Eden Academy!”

“To visit?”

“No! For good. We got the uniforms today!”

“What?” I say again.

“I wanted to tell you last week in shul, but Ima said we had to wait until we officially got accepted.”

I am so shocked, I am speechless.

“Well, say something!” Honey says.

I don’t know what else to do, so I start shrieking in excitement. She whoops it up with me. I can’t believe that after all this time we are going to go to school together.

“Everything okay?” Mr. Wine calls through the door.

“Yes, Abba!” Honey calls back.

“It’s just Milla, Abba,” we hear Miriam’s muffled voice. “Honey must have told her the big news.” She says “news” like it smells.

Honey and I make faces at each other. “Wait,” I say. “How come you’re switching?”

“Well, Aaron’s going to Tablet,” she says, and I nod in understanding. Aaron is autistic, and Tablet is a program at my school for kids with disabilities. “So we’re all switching—me, Miriam, and Dan-Dan.”

“I can’t believe it. I’m so excited!” I say. It feels almost too good to be true. I make cheering sounds again, and Honey joins in.

This must be what Mrs. Wine was talking about when she wrote about new circumstances and embracing challenges.

“Don’t worry,” I tell Honey. “You’ll be fine.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m not worried.”

I smile. Of course she isn’t. I would be so scared to start a new school. Especially if I’d always gone to an all-girls school and then had to switch to co-ed. Even if it was still an Orthodox school, which mine is, of course. But Honey is Honey. Nothing worries her. I smile again and then sneeze without warning, the spices suddenly tickling my nose.

In my house, the furniture is modern and new. The dining room chairs are white leather, and my mother hired an interior designer so that the pillows in the living room match the blinds. The kitchen has stark white counters and stainless steel appliances. Framed artwork hangs at regularly spaced intervals in the front hallway. Our house is not big, but everything in it is deliberate. Even the fake flowers in the downstairs bathroom are always arranged just so.

“Can I go to Honey’s house now?” I ask, pushing my seat back from the dining room table. It is Saturday, Shabbat lunch, and we have just finished saying the Grace After Meals—my parents and me saying it silently to ourselves, Max pretending to whisper the words even though he doesn’t really know how to read Hebrew (or English) yet. Unless my Aunty Steph is staying with us, my house is so boring on Shabbat afternoons.