TWENTY

Ari,

We love you so much. We are always here for you. And we’d never leave you out and never Insta without you. We think you’re the best. Of course we get you. The four of us are soul mates. Don’t worry about your bat mitzvah party. We’ll rock whatever it is, whenever it is, and make sure it’s amazing.

We love you!

Alice

Dearest Ari,

I just asked my dad if I could take the train by myself so I could visit you and give you a hug. He said no, but we will be near your town in a few weeks and we are definitely hanging. You’re amazing. Don’t ever forget it! XOXO Zoe

Ari, Zoe and Alice have said all I wanted to say. So I will just add that those girls are totally sucky. You don’t need home friends when you have amazing camp friends like us. You rock! MWAH! Hana

We go back and forth emailing all week, and we FaceTime, too, and it almost feels like we’re back together again. Almost.

I spend the rest of the time practicing for my bat mitzvah and considering what my passion might be so I can eventually pursue it and mostly trying to calm my mom down.

I write a rough draft of my speech but then delete the whole thing because it’s not what I want to say. I don’t know what I want to say. I don’t really know what Judaism or my bat mitzvah mean to me, and I don’t know how it relates to the Life of Sarah.

Sometimes I’ll get a twinkle of an inkling of what I want to say, but then it doesn’t feel completely right and sort of just fades away.