As I walk back through the shaded path, a figure enters from the other side, wearing a trench coat and a baseball hat.

“Milla!” my mother calls at the exact moment I clock that it’s her. She runs toward me and I take a few steps toward her until we meet in the middle. Then we stop awkwardly. She moves forward to hug me, but I keep my arms by my sides. “Shmuel Yosef came back,” she says. “Right after you left. He realized he’d made a mistake, and he didn’t want to lose Aunty Steph. So he walked all the way from his apartment. You should see his blisters.”

“Is that why you’re here?” I say incredulously. I’m furious, even though somewhere in the back of my head I’m happy for Aunty Steph. “You came to tell me that Aunty Steph and Shmuel Yosef have made up from their fight?”

“Well, no,” she admits.

I raise my eyebrows, waiting. My heart is thumping again.

“I came to find you because I realized …” She takes a deep breath. “I should not have let you leave like that in your pajamas—”

“Mom!” I shout. “WHO CARES!” My eyes are jumping out of my face, and I want to scream in frustration. That’s what she thinks the problem is here?

“Milla—” She takes my hand in both of hers. “I came because I don’t want to fight with you. If this is how things are now, how bad is it going to get when you’re really a teenager?”

I yank my hand away. “I’m basically already a teenager, and you still want to be in charge of me.”

“I am in charge of you. I’m your mother. When you’re an adult, you’ll be in charge of yourself. Right now you’re still only eleven.”

“I’ll be twelve in six weeks!” I yell, stamping my foot. She’s completely missing the point.

“Okay, twelve,” she says, smiling.

“Mom!” I shout. “STOP LAUGHING AT ME! I may not be Honey, but give me a little credit—I can do things too!”

The smile slides off her face. “I’m not laughing at you—” she starts, but steam is coming out of my ears, and I need to let it out all the way.

“You’re always trying to tell me what to do—assuming I’m going to mess everything up if I don’t do it exactly how you say—”

“But, Milla—” my mother interrupts. “That’s my job—to keep you from making mistakes if I can, things that I learned from myself—”

“Yeah, but sometimes I’m going to make mistakes,” I interrupt her back. I think about Naomi Dayan’s Succot talk. “That’s part of growing up, Mom! And that’s the thing—I’m not you and I’ll never be you. I’ll only be me, even if I don’t know exactly who that is yet. And I wish you could be proud of me for once for something that has to do with me. Because it really feels like you only like it when I do something that reminds you of yourself.” Even my ribs are pounding, and every hair on my arms is standing straight up as everything I’ve been feeling these last months comes up through my body and out into the path, like I’ve vomited a worm that’s been eating my insides.