Somehow, my grandmother, at only four feet eleven inches, casts a long shadow over me even from New York. I can’t deny that little lady anything, and she knows it. A few months ago she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, so when she begged me to have a Bar Mitzvah celebration, even though it basically requires me to be at synagogue all the time, cramming what the other kids have spent the last few years preparing for into less than two, I’ll do it.

Grandma guilt.

Most of the kids at synagogue are cool, and I've made some new friends, but a few of them love finding ways to make me feel like I don’t belong. Some laugh at me when they think I don’t hear them, or maybe they don’t care. When they have parties or go out together, I’m usually not invited. Mom says I imagine it because she doesn’t want to believe anyone at the synagogue would treat me that way. My father says I’m definitely not imagining it, but to ignore it and keep my head down. Dad thinks it’s all stupid anyway and asks at least once a week why I’m doing it. I tell him, and I guess I tell myself, it’s for Bubbe. But there is a part of me that simply wants to understand as much as I possibly can about this part of myself—my Jewish heritage. Neither of my parents really know what it’s like to live here as me. To look around and see no one who looks like you. To live with the stares and questions about “what I am.” To feel like a puzzle, pieces hidden and scattered, and always trying to find and fit all my parts together. To see myself not as half this or bi-that, but whole.

The synagogue is only a couple of blocks from my house, and I’m almost home. Kimba and I don’t go to the playground as much as we used to now that we’re in middle school. She joined the band. Clarinet. She’s good, but between my Hebrew classes and chess and her band practice, we don’t see each other as much outside of school, which sucks. If I’m home before dark, we can get in a bike ride before dinner.

My house is just ahead when someone jerks my arm.

“What the…” When I look up, three boys from Hebrew school stand there, arms crossed, one smirking, one glaring and one frowning.

“We called you like six times,” one of them, the glare-er, says. Robert. His name is Robert and he always sits slumped in the corner and struggles with the basics of the Torah though he’s been studying for years.

“The music,” I say, pointing to my headphones, which I slide down to rest at the back of my neck.  “Sorry. I couldn’t hear you.”