On the Road to Happy
Author: Goldy Moldavsky
Date: 2026-05-05 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Historical
Description: From New York Times bestselling author comes a must-read middle-grade novel for fans of The Vanderbeekers on the Road , The Firefly Summer , and To Night Owl From Dogfish. This big-hearted story follows a girl who might just be in for a life-changing summer. . . if she doesn’t run away first. Gigi and her older sister, Yasmin, are spending the summer at a Jewish bungalow colony in upstate New York, thanks to their dad, who will be the handyman there. Sure, there will be day camp to go to, and the forest to explore, and maybe new friends to make. But Gigi doesn’t feel she fits in. Despite the f
Publisher: HarperCollins

Dedication

For my father, Akiva Moldavsky, z”l

Contents

1. Cover
2. Title Page
3. Dedication
4. Contents

5. Summer 1997

1. 1
2. 2
3. 3
4. 4
5. 5
6. 6
7. 7
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35. 35
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37. 37
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6. Acknowledgments
7. About the Author
8. Books by Goldy Moldavsky
9. Copyright
10. About the Publisher

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Guide

1. Cover
2. Contents
3. Summer 1997

Summer 1997

1

A breeze came through the truck’s open windows, but I couldn’t even feel it. I was too busy trying to ignore the angry voice coming from the radio. When my dad drove, he liked to listen to this station, where the same man always yelled about what a bad job the government was doing. It was loud and boring, but my dad nodded along like this was his favorite song.

At least the radio was beginning to get fuzzy the farther we got from Brooklyn. We were so deep in the middle of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. There were barns on hills and cows behind fences, but it might as well have been a different planet. I’d never seen so many farm animals outside of a petting zoo. Not to mention so much green everywhere.

The front seat of the pickup truck was one long bench, and I sat squished between my dad and my sister. Yasmin was four years older than me, which meant we didn’t have a lot in common. She was sixteen and obsessed with boys and cute actors and fashion and the magazines that talked about those things. She had one of those magazines open on her lap right now and a dreamy look on her face like she couldn’t even hear the radio man screaming. One of the pages from her Big Bopper magazine slipped free from her hand and whipped wildly in the breeze. It was a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio, the page shaking so much it looked like he was dancing. Yasmin caught him quickly, though, and smoothed him down flat, where she could keep him under control beneath her hands.

We reached a street sign that said Happy Road, and my dad pointed to it. “Almost there.”

I couldn’t believe I’d be living on a road named Happy because it was exactly the opposite of how I felt. I didn’t want to spend my summer at a bungalow colony.

I wasn’t even sure what a bungalow colony was, and had to go by how my dad described it. “A community in forest,” he said in his broken English.

The community in the forest was called Shir Gershon and it was upstate, in a part of New York without traffic or skyscrapers. My dad had gotten a job there as a handyman for the summer, which didn’t surprise me—he could fix anything. What I didn’t understand was why I had to go with him. Yes, I was pretty handy with a wrench, but it wasn’t like I’d be helping my dad do any work. He’d be busy sawing wood and patching holes in walls, while I’d have to fend for myself in a place that was totally new to me. I was a city girl through and through. Born in a capital city, and now living in the greatest city in the world. What was I supposed to do out in nature?

“It will be like sleepaway camp,” my mom had told me in Spanish. “But instead of leaving your family at home, you take them with you.”

Which was interesting for her to say because she wasn’t coming with us. My mom was a housekeeper and babysitter for a family in Brooklyn, and she was staying home for the summer because that family wasn’t going to some weird bungalow colony in the middle of nowhere.

But she promised she’d come visit every weekend for Shabbos.

I wanted to stay with her in Brooklyn. It was the summer before seventh grade, before I really had to get serious and grow up, and I had big plans. I was going to go swimming at the public pool in Sunset Park every day. I was going to practice Rollerblading around the block. I’d been saving up to try all the flavors from the ice cream truck that passed by our apartment every afternoon at three o’clock on the dot. I was going to stay up every night and watch the late scary movies on television. And most importantly of all, I was going to do my annual dunk. Not the basketball kind of dunk. The kind where you dunk yourself in the ocean at the start of summer. It was a ritual that I’d done every summer since I was born.

Summer was full of important life-changing rituals. But as we drove through the endless green hills, I suddenly began to wonder if I’d get to do any of the things I was looking forward to. There weren’t any beaches up here. No sidewalks to Rollerblade on. And my dad said there weren’t any TVs at Shir Gershon. That would be two months—an entire summer—without television. I’d never gone that long before without watching a show or movie. It felt like I was emigrating to a new planet. The angry voice on the radio seemed to confirm this. It kept sputtering and stopping, and it was beginning to sound less like a person and more like an alien trying to make contact from a hundred lightyears away. But my dad switched the dial off. We were here.

There was no sign anywhere with the words Shir Gershon, just a waist-high wooden fence that separated the bungalow colony from the rest of the world. My dad got out of the pickup truck to open the creaky gate, then got back in to drive us the rest of the way.

I was right—no sidewalks. No streets. Just grass, dirt, and gravel. The truck inched forward, bumping along the uneven terrain. I looked out the window at my new home for the summer. There were small houses made out of wood, just like the bunkhouses I’d seen in summer camp movies. Plus, there were the trees, shading picnic tables and patio chairs, strung up with clotheslines that carried whole wardrobes. There were more trees in front of me now than there were anywhere back in Brooklyn, sunlight glinting off every leaf.

My father stopped the truck and climbed out, and then my sister did too, leaving me alone in the front seat. A part of me was afraid to get out. Not because there was anything scary out there, but because it was like I was going to be stepping into a new world. One that I didn’t know anything about.

I know that some people find New York City overwhelming. That you can walk down the street and smell something bad and hear something worse and probably see something you shouldn’t. But at least there was order to a city. Straight, flat sidewalks. Rows of apartment buildings that lined up against each other. Traffic lights. Street signs. Brooklyn wasn’t the prettiest place, but it was straightforward. Not like here, where the bungalows seemed to be set down all willy-nilly, like someone had been playing with little Monopoly houses and forgot to clean them up.

The bungalows were made out of white wooden slats like painted Popsicle sticks. They were the kind of houses I had first learned to draw: square, with a triangle roof. Their doors were left wide open, and some of their shutters hung crooked.

No bricks. No locks. No order at all.

“Gigi,” my father called.

Hearing my name was like a wake-up call. I couldn’t stay in the truck forever, so I scooted to the edge of the bench seat and hopped out. The country hit me all at once—the sunlight so bright I had to squint at first, noisy birds squawking high over my head. Even the air here smelled different. Like sweet tree bark.

And there were all the kids.

I heard them before I saw them, the way they hollered at each other from wide distances, yet still shouted gleefully when they stood close together. They had their rubber balls and their bikes, but they also had dirt. They were covered in the stuff. It streaked their elbows and caked up in the hems of their pants, and I could even see it clumped underneath their fingernails.

The few mothers I spotted lounged on patio chairs or called after their children from windows. But the kids all moved like they had places to be. They skipped through snapping screen doors, taking their playthings to who knows where, rushing in hazy blurs. They trudged behind bungalows and through gaps in the trees, where I imagined more bungalows would be. And though I didn’t know any of them, I knew what kind of kids they were, just by the way they dressed.

The girls wore denim skirts or jersey dresses that reached down below their knees. Their sleeves covered their elbows. The boys all had yarmulkas on their heads and short hair, except for the little sideburns before their ears. It was obvious that everyone here was Orthodox. And just as clearly as I could tell that about them, I was afraid of what they’d see when they looked at me. I wore a skirt and a long-sleeved shirt just like the other girls did, but would they be able to see that this style was new to me? Would they look at my clothes and see a costume? I turned away from the kids and decided to focus on something else.

Daddy had parked the pickup truck in front of a home that wasn’t a bungalow. It was a house that was three stories high. I craned my neck back to get a full view of it. It needed a new paint job, but otherwise it looked pretty good.

“Is this where we’ll live?” I asked. I’d only lived in apartments my whole life, but if I got to live in a real house, with multiple floors and a dining room and living room, then maybe I could get used to two months in the wilderness.

But my father only laughed. Well, it was the sound of a laugh, but there was no humor behind it. “We live there.”

He pointed to a small house that sat in the big one’s shadow. Our bungalow seemed smaller than the others, but it had a unique feature: a screened-in porch. On one side, it was attached to another bungalow that was its mirror image. It was a typical house in every sense except that it was balancing on sticks, at least three feet off the ground. If I bent over, I could walk all the way underneath it, front to back.

“Why’s it on sticks?”

“Stilts,” my dad corrected me. “Rain. Mud. Flood.”

My dad didn’t use a lot of words when he talked because English was still pretty new for him. Actually, it was the fifth language that he knew, so it was pretty understandable that he wasn’t the best at it. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t smart. My daddy was the smartest person in the world. Smarter than anybody else here, because he was the only person in this whole bungalow colony who knew how anything in this place worked. He knew how to fix a roof if it leaked, or how to replace the pipes under sinks if they got clogged. He knew how to build a fence and take it back down again.

My dad used to be an engineer when he lived in Russia. I wasn’t sure what an engineer did, but if it meant he used to build engines, well, I believed that too. Basically, my dad knew everything about everything. And when he talked, he always cut out the unnecessary words so that the few words he did say always seemed important, even serious.

“Rain mud flood” suddenly sounded biblical and dangerous, and it got my mind spinning. Were the bungalows here really flimsy? Or was the mud in upstate New York just a monster blob that swallowed houses whole? Could the rain here be a Noah’s Ark situation?

I looked around, half expecting to see boats parked behind bungalows, or at least a stray life jacket, but there were only people on dry land.

A community in the forest. I didn’t know how big this place was, but it seemed endless.

My dad unloaded my bike from the bed of the truck and rolled it under our bungalow. He let it go and it fell on its side, the back wheel sticking up and spinning. “Shouldn’t we tie it to one of the stilts?” I asked.

I glanced at some kids running down the gravel road. If they were running, that meant they probably didn’t have bikes, and if they didn’t have bikes, that meant they might take mine. I’d learned the hard way from growing up in Peru and Brooklyn that if I left one of my things outside our building, I’d never see it again.

“No one takes,” my dad said.

I wasn’t so sure. But I was too curious about the inside of the bungalow to worry about the underside of it. So I walked up the three wooden steps and went inside.

2

My dad had already been at Shir Gershon for three weeks before he drove back to Brooklyn to pick us up today. He’d needed to make sure the colony was ready before families started showing up. And three weeks was clearly enough time for him to make a mess of our bungalow. The screened-in porch was big enough to fit a dining room table that could sit at least six people, but I knew we’d never eat dinner on it. There’d be no room for food or plates, and no way to clean it up. Every inch of the table was covered with tools and greasy pieces of machinery that made it look like my dad had killed and dismembered a robot. My mom, the housekeeper, would get chucaque just looking at this place.

Inside, there was a tiny kitchenette, and beside it there was a nook just big enough to fit my dad’s bed. He’d left the one bedroom in the place for me and Yasmin. The walls were white but dirty in spots where other people who had spent summers here before us had taped things up. There were two twin beds on opposite sides of the room that were already made up with clean sheets and a thin blanket for each. And between the two beds was one dresser for me and Yasmin to share.

We’d only been here two minutes, but Yasmin was already decorating. She ripped Leonardo cleanly out of her magazine and Scotch-taped him to the spot above her pillow, where he’d never dance in the wind again.

The place smelled musty, so I went to open the window by my bed. Plus, I wanted to see if any of the kids outside had stolen my bike yet. A girl stood out there. She looked younger than me, but not by a lot. There wasn’t much more to her other than a long dark blonde braid and two huge brown eyes, which were both staring under my bungalow, in exactly the spot where my bike was.

“She wants my bike,” I said out loud.

“Nobody wants your bike,” Yasmin said, rolling her eyes and tearing another page out of Big Bopper. The bike had been Yasmin’s before it became mine, and she hadn’t taken very good care of it, leaving me a rusted chain and rubber handles that were dry and cracked at the edges. But I’d painted the bike purple and tied a bottle holder to the frame, so despite what Yasmin thought, it was still a good bike. Good enough to get stolen.

“She’s definitely going to take my bike.”

I could practically hear my sister rolling her eyes behind me again.

But it wasn’t her I heard. It was a strange rustling noise coming from the ground. I spun around to find Yasmin frozen, straining to hear the noise too. It was coming from underneath her bed.

“What was that?” she whispered.

It got louder, rowdier, faster, and my mind immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusions. Rats? Snakes? Had the mythical country floods started? Was the mud seeping through the floorboards right now?

Suddenly little hands shot out from underneath the bed, and Yasmin and I both shrieked. I leaped on top of my bed and Yasmin kneeled on hers, face pressed against Leonardo—as if he could possibly do anything to protect her.

Beyond our room, my dad must’ve dropped what he was holding, because something clanged onto the floor. He rushed in with his eyes practically popping out of his head. “What happened?” he asked.

What happened was right there on the floor, squirming out from under my sister’s bed. Two boys who couldn’t have been more than six years old, one blond, one with brown hair, both trouble.

“Ahhhh, got you!” They scrambled to their feet and fled, each boy winding around my dad’s legs, easily slipping out of his reach and leaving only the trill of their giggles behind.

That didn’t stop my father, though. He chased after the boys, and I chased after him.

My dad bounded down the three small steps outside our front door. The wood sagged and groaned beneath his feet, which made him seem even bigger than he was, and he was already pretty big to begin with. He held a rolled-up car magazine over his head and chased after the boys like they were spiders he needed to squash. But there were two of them and only one of him, and they were long gone before he even had a chance.

“Stay out!” my dad roared. His Russian accent only got thicker when he was angry, and it made him sound like a barbarian. His bushy beard didn’t help. It covered half his face and grew out rather than down.

I wished I had a big bushy beard that I could hide my face behind right now. The mothers who were watching their babies on their lawns suddenly looked up to watch us, their eyes like a match that lit my cheeks on fire. Everyone stared at us like we were the ones who hid under beds.

This was not how I wanted to introduce myself to the people of Shir Gershon. It didn’t matter that my dad knew five languages and could build just about anything with his bare hands. All anyone saw was a Big Angry Handyman who chased after little kids. And before they could even get to know me, all anyone would see when they looked at me was Big Angry Handyman’s daughter.

I knew my sister was embarrassed by my dad’s outburst, because I could hear her groan from the window. She quickly and loudly slammed it shut, creating a physical barrier between herself and her family. My dad grunted something in Russian and stomped back to the bungalow.

I stayed outside, alone and growing redder. The girl who’d been staring at my bike was still there, and now she was staring at me.

“Those are the Klein twins,” she said. “They sneak into people’s bungalows when no one’s there. Sometimes they take your things if you don’t catch them. I didn’t see them take any of your stuff, so don’t worry. I’m Masha Zito, by the way. I’m in the bungalow right next door. I can tell you all about the bungalow colony if you want. I’ve been here forever.”

3

Masha Zito had been here for three days.

She came with her grandparents, who worked here just like my dad did. Masha’s grandfather was the bungalow colony’s second handyman, and her grandmother did the laundry for the owner of the bungalow colony and his family. The owners lived in the big, three-story house, right across from our bungalows. Standing on my bungalow’s lawn, I had a perfect vantage point of it, and I looked at the house, wondering why a family would need to hire someone just to do their laundry. But Masha said the Baums were the biggest family she’d ever seen. Lots of kids = lots of dirty clothes.

“What are the owners like?” I asked Masha.

“The Baums?” she said thoughtfully. “I haven’t met the parents yet, only the kids. They’ve got a million kids.”

“Are they nice?”

“Well, every kid is different,” Masha said.

“Are they rich?” I asked.

Masha looked over at the big house with a question in her eyes, and I could tell that she was thinking the same thing I was. That the house may have been really big, but that it was also pretty rundown. If you looked closely, the paint was peeling, the wooden fence around the back was missing plenty of pickets, and overall it kind of looked like it was leaning, as though the house itself was tired from having to hold such a large family inside it.

“I don’t think so?” Masha said. “I know they’ve owned the bungalow colony for decades, but who really knows if it’s a good business?”

“Are they from New York?”

“They’re from Far Rockaway,” Masha said.

“Is that New York?” I asked.

“Could be. I think it’s in Queens.”

Masha shrugged and started walking toward the dirt road that ran between the rows of bungalows. I walked beside her, but I kept glancing back at the Baum house, my mind filling with so many questions. You never saw houses that big in Brooklyn. In Boro Park, where I lived, families lived in cramped apartments, all lined up like standing shoeboxes, so you were only separated from your neighbors by a wall. Having only one sister, and cousins who lived on the other side of the world, I wondered what it would be like to be part of a family as big as the Baums. But for now, the mythical Baums remained shrouded in mystery.

“That’s one of the Baum kids,” Masha said. She pointed to a little girl who couldn’t have been more than two years old, trying to mount a tricycle. My first thought was that it was a good thing her little feet couldn’t reach the pedals because she wasn’t wearing any shoes and it was never a good idea to ride your bike without shoes. Also, she was totally naked except for a diaper, and riding your bike with just a diaper probably wasn’t a good idea either.

Bikes seemed to be the big commodity around here, because Masha said she would show me around if I let her borrow my bicycle. But before I could turn down her offer (I didn’t need to be shown around and I didn’t want anyone touching my bike), Masha took it back and said she’d show me around free of charge.

My mom always said you should never look a gift horse in the mouth. In this situation Masha was the horse, and if she wanted to show me around this place, who was I to stop her?

But Masha was telling me more facts about herself than Shir Gershon. She was ten—two years younger than me. She was an only child and always spent her summers with her grandparents. This was her first time coming to the bungalow colony. Her favorite color was neon yellow, the same color as the wristband she wore. It had a little money pouch that jiggled with coins anytime she swung her arm. She believed in aliens and ghosts but not vampires. (She wasn’t sure about angels yet.) But it was pirates and their buried treasure that seemed to always be on her mind. “There’s buried treasure everywhere,” she told me. “That’s a very well-known fact. There’s probably buried treasure under our bungalows!”

I tried to point out that we weren’t anywhere near an ocean, which was kind of a big deal for pirates, but she ignored that minor detail.

While Masha and I may have seemed very different, we did have two big things in common: We both lived in Brooklyn, and we were both immigrants. She was born in Ukraine and had come to America four years ago. And I was born in Peru, and had come here seven years ago.

Still, being a Russian-speaking Jewish kid who lived in Brooklyn was way different from being a Spanish-speaking Jewish kid who lived in Brooklyn. I didn’t know any other Jews who spoke Spanish, while Masha lived in a neighborhood full of Russian-speaking Jews. She told me she went to a school where pretty much all her classmates were Russian-speaking immigrants like her.

“Everyone in your school speaks Russian?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Masha said like it was obvious. “Everyone.”

I couldn’t believe it. Technically, I was half Russian. But I didn’t consider myself very Russian at all. I didn’t know the language, I’d never visited the country—I had never even met my father’s side of the family, who all still lived in that part of the world.

But Masha was so lucky. I wondered what that was like, to be new in this country but to still have a community around you that knew all about your culture’s customs and food and language. Unless my mom was around to make my favorite dish (papa a la huancaína) or to speak Spanish, everything Peruvian about me had stayed back home in Peru, right where I’d left it.

“That’s another one of the Baum kids,” Masha said. She pointed to a boy. Unlike his sister, he was fully dressed. He was huffing and pouting and he was probably only four, but he had enough anger in him for somebody twice his age. He was so angry that he pulled down on his little payos like he wanted to rip them clean off his head. The rest of his hair stuck up in thick tufts, but these two tendrils of straight blond hair dangled like droopy dog ears.

“Are the Baums Chasidic?” I asked Masha. The only boys I ever saw with payos that long were Chasidic.

“Nobody here is Chasidic,” Masha said. Which meant the boys didn’t wear black and white all day long and the girls didn’t wear stockings, and Yiddish wasn’t the only language anyone spoke. But just by looking around, I could tell that everyone here was religious. More religious than my family, anyway.

Yasmin and I wore skirts back in Brooklyn because that was the custom in our Jewish community. We went to a Jewish private girls’ school, and though we were the charity cases there, we were able to blend in because everyone wore the same uniform. Whenever we took trips with just our family, we’d be in shorts and pants. I could tell that the girls here wore skirts all the time, no matter where they traveled. And the boys all wore yarmulkas on their heads. My dad didn’t even own a yarmulka.

“Does anybody here watch TV?” I asked Masha. “Or go to the movies? Or know all the songs from Beauty and the Beast?”

Masha laughed. “No way.”

I knew kids like this back in Brooklyn, and I always wondered what they did after they came home from school. I’d sit in front of the TV until dinnertime, but I guess they just played with their millions of siblings and toys. Two things I didn’t have too much of.

It was starting to sink in just how different I was from the people here. Just how different my family was. We were Jewish, but we’d only really become religious when we moved to America. Everyone here had been born religious and had big religious families who’d been religious for generations. Everyone here knew all the rules that me and my family were still learning. Well, except for my dad, who wasn’t religious at all, and who didn’t want to be.

Suddenly, the Saved by the Bell shirt I was wearing felt totally wrong in a place like this. It made me feel like I was wearing a big blaring sign that told everyone I wasn’t like them.

“That’s one of the Baum kids too,” Masha said.

The guy she was pointing at now wasn’t even a kid—he was old enough to be married with children of his own. He wore jeans, a polo shirt, and a baseball cap, and he didn’t have payos like his little brother did.

“How many Baum kids are there?”

“There’s a Baum kid for every age you can think of,” Masha said. “He’s one of the older ones. Hi, Jake!” she called after him. Jake didn’t answer, but Masha didn’t seem to care. She was more interested in something else anyway.

We stopped in front of a wooden pole with a pay phone attached to it, and Masha spread her arms wide like she was showing off something that belonged in a museum. Come to think of it, a phone booth definitely did belong in a museum. “This is the phone booth. If you’ve got a quarter, you can use it to call anywhere you want.”

“Wait, aren’t there telephones in the bungalows?” I asked.

“Of course not!”

I thought back to my bungalow, trying to remember if I’d seen a phone anywhere in the place. I was sure I had. In fact, I’d seen more than a few cordless phones strewn about on my dad’s worktable. But now that I thought about it, they were probably old broken phones that my dad was collecting so he could use their spare parts. He collected all sorts of broken things, so long as they had wires inside. Maybe I could convince him to fix one of the phones for us. But Masha seemed to read my mind.

“The bungalows don’t have phone lines,” she said.

“What?”

“The bungalows don’t have phone lines.”

She’d repeated it clearly and with the exact same inflection as the first time, and yet my mind still couldn’t wrap itself around what she was saying. Because how could anyone here not have a phone? No TV was hard enough to deal with, but no phone? That was reckless. Dangerous. It was downright preposterous! What if something happened? What if there was an emergency? What if the famous rains and mudslides of upstate New York swept the entire bungalow colony away in an enormous goopy blob?

“Well, how do we call anyone if we need help?”

“We go to Sara’s dad, Mr. Tisch,” Masha said. “He lives in that bungalow over there. He’s a Hatzalah man.”

Hatzalah was a volunteer ambulance service, and there was no way one Hatzalah man was enough to take care of a whole bungalow colony. But even worse than that, I thought about what it meant to not have a phone nearby. “How am I supposed to call my mom?”

I said it more to myself, but Masha obviously heard me ’cause her whole face lit up.

“Let me show you!”

4

The phone booth—which was more of a phone pole—stood on the side of the dirt road, as though it were a streetlight or something. Masha looked at me and grinned, then began a whole demonstration.

“You just come out here and make a call.” There was a red milk crate at the base of the phone booth, and Masha stood on it and plucked the receiver off its hook. “The trick is you have to remember the number you want to call. It’s fun to come out here and call people from time to time. If you’re bored and you don’t know who to call, I could give you a number where they’ll always answer.”

“What do you mean? Who are we going to call now?”

Masha smiled and unzipped her neon yellow wrist pouch. It was so small she could only fit two fingers in there, but that was all she needed to fish out a quarter. She slipped it into the slot at the top of the phone box and motioned for me to come closer. She scooted over, and I stepped onto the crate with her. Our heads touched as she held the handset between our ears so we could both hear. There were two rings, and then a woman’s voice came on the line.

“Thank you for calling the Coca-Cola company, how can I help you?”

“Hi! My name is Masha Zito—Z-I-T-O—and I really like drinking Coke.”

“We’re so glad to hear that,” the lady replied.

Masha scanned the white sticker label on top of the phone box, where the address to the bungalow colony was written out in fading purple marker. “I live at 1691 Happy Road, Bungalow One, Kauneonga Lake, New York 12749, United States of America.”

“Great,” the lady said.

“Okay, bye!” Masha hung up the phone. When she turned to look at me, it was with the widest open-mouthed grin, like she’d just performed the greatest magic trick ever. And just like with a magic trick, I wasn’t sure what I’d just witnessed.

“Uh, why did we call Coca-Cola?”

Masha launched into an explanation. “Someone told me you could call the Coca-Cola company and they’ll just send you stuff if you tell them how much you love Coke.”

“Stuff? What do you mean?”

She jumped off the milk crate. “You could get stickers or maybe even pins that you could put on your shirt. Or maybe even a shirt itself. All for free! I’m not even joking!”

Someone had clearly lied to Masha. Free gifts? For doing nothing but saying how much you liked something? My mom always said nothing in life was free. But I wasn’t going to be the one to break Masha’s heart. Anyway, I was still stuck on the fact that this place only had one phone. If I understood correctly, the only way to make contact with another human being outside of this bungalow colony was through this telephone, and the only human being Masha wanted to call was the lady who worked for the Coca-Cola company.

“Isn’t that something?” Masha said.

I stepped off the crate. “It’s something, all right.”

“If you don’t have a quarter, you could just call collect, but that doesn’t always work.”

My mom said I should only call collect in case of an emergency, because calling collect meant that the person you were calling was the one who had to pay for the phone call. My mom said you should never spend someone else’s money.

“Oh no, that’s one of the Baum kids,” Masha said.

I turned to see a boy who looked like he was Masha’s age, and he was coming right toward us. I was beginning to wonder if every kid in this bungalow colony was part of the Baum family. He was kind of in between his little brother and his older brother in the payos department. He had them, but they were tucked behind his ears, short enough that if you weren’t looking for them, you probably wouldn’t know they were there.

“We better go,” Masha whispered. “Don’t ever talk to Morry Baum if you don’t have to.”

“What do you mean? Why not—”

“Who told you you could use the phone?” Morry said, interrupting me.

“I don’t need permission to use the phone,” Masha said, but she said it to the gravel at her feet, avoiding Morry’s eyes.

“My father owns everything in this bungalow colony, so yes, you do need permission.”

I snorted. “Are you kidding?”

The boy stopped looking at Masha so he could snap his attention to me. I wasn’t just going to stand back and let him talk to Masha that way. Not that Masha and I were even friends, but I already liked her a lot more than I liked him.

Morry Baum scanned me up and down, but his gaze stopped at my Saved by the Bell shirt. His eyes narrowed, and there was something in his stare that I couldn’t really understand. Was it confusion? Jealousy? Of my shirt? Either way, I folded my arms in front of my chest, wrinkling the Bayside high schoolers. I hoped crossing my arms made me look tough and not how I was really feeling, which was embarrassed.

“Who are you?” Morry Baum asked me.

“She’s no one!” Masha blurted out, and pulled on my arm. I let her take me. If my mom were here, she wouldn’t want me to get into a fight. Especially in my first half hour in this place.

When we were far enough away, Masha turned to me and said, “Morry Baum is the meanest boy in the world.”

I believed her.

We turned off the main dirt and gravel road and ventured to the back half of the colony. The bungalows out here were spread even farther apart than by the front of the colony.

Masha showed me the shul, which the boys of the colony used for their day camp headquarters on weekdays. There was the yellow bunkhouse for the girls’ day camp. There was the pool behind a wooden fence, where separate swim times for boys and girls were posted. There were the handball and basketball courts, the only places with a level floor for bike riding. And next to the courts was a big open field where Masha said kids played baseball or tag. I’d never seen a field this big. And it was surrounded, almost all the way around, by thick woods.

“That’s the end of the tour,” Masha said. “Now you’ve seen the whole bungalow colony.”

“What’s beyond the woods?” I asked.

“What do you mean? More woods.”

We were at the part of the woods that started right behind the basketball court. There was nothing but trees, and when I tried to look through them to see if there were houses on the other side, I just saw an abyss of green and brown. So many tree trunks so close together, most upright, but plenty on their side, on the ground. The canopy of leaves was enough to blot out the sky. I thought there’d be a fence around the bungalow colony to mark off the territory. But there was only forest.

Even though Masha was the one guiding me on this tour, she stepped three paces back. “I don’t like the woods.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re scary.” But as soon as she said it, she seemed to think better of it, like she’d chosen the wrong adjective. “Not scary, just . . . they go really deep. You could get lost in the woods for a long time. I’m not allowed to go in there.”

“You don’t think you’d be able to find your way out?”

“Oh, I definitely would,” Masha said. “I have a very good sense of direction. Plus, I’ve been here forever.”

“Three days.”

“It’s just that my grandfather says there’s bears in there,” Masha said. “And hitchhikers.”

“Hitchhikers?” For a girl who claimed to have a good sense of direction, Masha sure liked to place her pirates far from the ocean and her hitchhikers far from the roads. “Wouldn’t they be on the highway, trying to hitch a ride with someone?”

Masha shrugged. “I don’t know how hitchhikers work. Maybe they stand by the roads but then come into the woods to sleep. Anyway, I’m not allowed to go in the woods and I don’t want my grandfather to worry. He’s really old and I’m supposed to help my babushka look after him this summer, so we’d better get back.”

It may have looked like the forest stretched on for miles, but I knew it had to end eventually. And that on the other side of the woods was the rest of the world. The real world, where things weren’t so strange and old and disorderly. Out there was Brooklyn and television and phones in every home.

Out there was my mom.

5

My family left Peru when I was five years old. And I’ve lived in Brooklyn now for seven years. That meant I’d spent over half my life in Brooklyn. My parents couldn’t say the same thing. Neither could my sister, actually. The rest of my family had spent most of their lives living in other parts of the world. But I’d spent most of my life here in America.

I once heard that the great thing about New York was that it didn’t matter if you lived there for a month or for ten years—just living there at all automatically made you a New Yorker. And that was how I felt about Brooklyn. It had all my favorite things.

Brooklyn had pizza night Thursdays, and Friday afternoons at the library that was only two blocks from our apartment. And it had Lacy’s—the stationery store that stocked the biggest collection of Beanie Babies ever. When I had saved up enough money, I’d stare at the colorful shelves of little stuffies, carefully deciding which one I wanted to take home. Brooklyn had my neighbors who lived in my building, both above and below me, but who I always saw outside, riding bikes, Rollerblading, bouncing rubber balls, and playing Chinese jump rope—the perfect sidewalk games.

Brooklyn had my friends from school—all girls—and all of them from different types of Modern Orthodox Jewish families. Rachel Leah and Rivkie lived a few blocks away from me, and the three of us would walk home together every day. We’d talk about school and the other girls in our class, and which teachers were being totally unfair. And we made sure that our stories never lasted longer than eight blocks, at which point we’d reach the corner of Forty-third Street and Twelfth Avenue and go our separate ways.

Sometimes, if we had any loose change that we hadn’t given to tzedakah that day, the three of us would dip into Yossi’s Candy Shop, one block from my house. Yossi didn’t like us. The candy in his store—stacked in clear bins across a whole wall with every kind of colorful confection—was meant to be bought in bulk, by the pound. But me and my friends would only buy as much as our pennies and nickels could afford. Rachel Leah liked the gummy worms. Rivkie always picked the hard candies shaped like gemstones. And my favorites were the chalky cloudlike mints that looked like mini pastel marshmallows but melted in your mouth.

Brooklyn had my best friend, Chaya. She lived on the second floor of a two-family house. The place was cramped, but she always invited me over, and I loved going to her house because her family was so different from mine. Both her parents were public school teachers, which meant their English was perfect and they were good at talking to their kids. They always bought ridiculous food that only Americans would buy, like non-dairy ice cream made out of soy. Chaya’s mom would ask my opinion on the mayor while she set up a game of mahjong on her dining room table. I didn’t know anything about politics, and I always thought it was so funny that she even asked me stuff like that. Grown-up, adult stuff. My parents never asked me about politics. And they never played games with me either. They always had to work.

My family was still different from every other family in our community, but at least in Brooklyn it wasn’t the first thing anyone thought about when they saw me. In school, I wore a uniform. I looked just like everyone else. I was similar to my friends in the ways that mattered, like how we had our inside jokes at recess, or talked about our favorite shows the day after they aired on TV. I had my own life, friends, routines. In Brooklyn, everything that made me feel different belonged to the background of my life.

Now I missed Brooklyn. This summer, Chaya, Rivkie, and Rachel Leah were all going to the same day camp back home. And while I’d be starting day camp here too, I would be doing it without my best friends. They were going to have a whole new experience that I wouldn’t be a part of.

On our first night in the bungalow colony, as my dad stood by the stove making dinner, I asked him how many more days it would be till we went back to Brooklyn.

“Brooklyn?” he said thoughtfully, stirring meatballs in a pan. “We never go back.”

I gasped. He looked at me and smiled. But this was no smiling matter.

“Daddy!” I said. It was a whine and a plea all at once. Because I knew he must be joking. At least, I needed him to admit he was joking.

But all he did was motion to the table behind him. “Pon la mesa.”

I followed his instructions and set the table for dinner, still thinking what it would be like to never go back to Brooklyn.

“Duh, he was joking,” Yasmin said later that night. We were in our bedroom, getting ready for bed. “Why do you keep asking about Brooklyn, anyway?”

“Because I want to go home.”

“We’ll go home when the summer’s over,” Yasmin said.

“But you heard what he said. We’re staying here forever!”

“He only said that because he knew you’d take him seriously.” Yasmin rolled her eyes. “He thinks he’s funny.”

“But what if he wasn’t joking?” I said. “What if we’re going to live up here, in the woods?” (I didn’t say, “In these Popsicle-stick houses that could wash away in a biblical flood,” but I was definitely thinking it.) What if my dad got hired to look after the bungalow colony for the winter too?

Yasmin shook her head as she climbed into bed. “We have a whole life in Brooklyn,” she said. “We’re obviously going to go back there.”

“But we had a whole life in Peru too. Family and friends and school. And we still left there. And never went back.”

Yasmin pulled her thin blanket all the way up to her chin, even though it wasn’t cold in the room. “That’s different,” she said.

“How?”

“It just is,” Yasmin said.

I was born in Lima. We lived in my grandparents’ house. We saw my aunts and cousins every day. Peru was the place I first learned how to speak, write, play. It was where I came from, and it was where I learned how to be. It was home. But even though I’d spent a good chunk of my life in Peru, the memories I had were already starting to fade. I remembered my grandparents’ house, with its four bedrooms and bright blue kitchen. I remember watching soccer with my whole family and nearly falling off my grandfather’s lap when he shouted “GOL!” when Peru scored.

Memories like that—of the place and the people—were strongest. But the smaller details of my life there . . . those only came in flickering glimpses. Sugar cubes in a green bowl on the breakfast table. The brass menorah on the credenza in the living room. Spent fireworks littering the sidewalk after Independence Day, which was different from America’s Independence Day. My memories were fading so fast, I was worried that one day they would all be gone.

Peru was my home, but we left and never went back. And then Brooklyn became my home, but now we’d left again. What if we never went back? What if everything I knew would become a memory? Something that faded away, until it was totally forgotten?

On the second day at the bungalow colony, I stood at the telephone booth by the side of the dirt road and checked the time on my watch. My mom had given it to me before I came up here. It was digital and doubled as a mini calculator, with rows of tiny buttons underneath the gray-green screen. I loved it, but I’d give it back if it meant my mother could come up here and stay with us.

The 5:59 suddenly switched to the smoother-looking 6:00. My mother’s instructions were clear: I could only call her at work if there was an emergency, otherwise I should wait till six o’clock, which was usually when she got home after riding the city bus.

I wasn’t sure if this was an emergency or if I just wanted to talk. It felt like both. I picked up the phone and dialed. It rang one, two, three times, and by the fourth, I wondered if the B11 bus was running late today. But by the fifth ring she picked up.

“Hello?”

Just the sound of her voice was like the Thimolina she rubbed on my belly to make my stomachaches go away. I sighed deep. “Hola, Mami.”

“Hola, Gigi!” She launched into a series of questions, all in quick Spanish. “How are you? How’s the bungalow colony? Have you met a lot of people? Are you listening to your father?”

I answered all her questions just as quickly as she asked them. The truth was, I wasn’t sure how much time the phone booth would give me, and I needed to cut to the chase. “Mami,” I said. “Por qué nunca volvimos a Perú?”

Why didn’t we ever go back to Peru?

In the long moment it took my mother to answer my question, all I heard was the distance in the phone line. The distance from here to Brooklyn. From me to my mom. Maybe also the distance between my question and the truth.

“Now, why are you asking questions like that?” my mom finally said in Spanish. “We’ll go back one day.”

My mom was acting just like Yasmin had the last time we talked about Peru. Dismissive. Like that part of our life belonged to the past.

And after I hung up with my mom, I was left feeling more than ever that I needed to take matters into my own hands. But first I needed to get back to Brooklyn.

6

My mother had made me and Yasmin pack a stack of notebooks with us. She probably thought we’d need to bone up on our penmanship or something. But I had a better idea for what to do with them. I picked the best one from the bunch, its pink cover shiny and its pages untouched. It was simple except for a green leaf pattern it had around the borders of every page. I decided it would be my journal this summer. But it definitely wasn’t a diary, because diaries—like the one Yasmin hid underneath her mattress—were overdramatic and emotional. My journal wouldn’t have any declarations of love or a list of the best shades of lipstick, like Yasmin’s diary. I’d use my journal to write down my observations about the bungalow colony. And so far, my biggest observation was about the people here.

I haven’t counted all the bungalows yet, but there must be close to fifty. And all the families in them are pretty much the same. They all dress the same and already know each other from all the other summers they’ve been coming here. None of them have TVs back home, so life here in the country isn’t strange to them. I don’t know what they talk about with each other. Probably all the things they have in common, like:

- The food they eat. (Kugel! Gefilte fish! Cholent! Lots of elbow noodles with nothing but ketchup!)

- Their big families. As far as I can tell, none of the families have less than three kids!

- Being American. None of them are immigrants.

- Being super religious all the time. (No secular entertainment—not even the radio! Tznius!)

My family is exactly the opposite:

- We eat other things. We’ve only been here a few days and my dad has already made stuffed grape leaves (yuck) and ceviche (yum!).

- My family is small. (My mom isn’t here and it’s only me and my sister, which people around here think is really weird!)

- We are immigrants.

- We’re only kind of religious most of the time.

Back home in Brooklyn I think it’s easier to blend in because when I’m at school I wear the same clothes as everyone else and nobody sees how not-religious my family is, or that in my downtime I like to obsess over my favorite television shows. But here, there’s no way to blend in. There’s no hiding that my dad will probably be playing his angry talk radio really loud on Shabbos. And without the structure of school and homework, it’s just me and my interests, which aren’t anything like anyone else’s interests.

I don’t know how to blend in when I stick out so much. I don’t know how I’ll make any friends when I don’t have any hobbies in common with these people.

I don’t know how this summer is going to work.

I shut my notebook. That was enough for today’s journal entry. Plus, it was the first morning of day camp, and I was going to be late.

Day camp at Shir Gershon started on my third day here. All the girls in the bungalow colony ages five to twelve met up outside the yellow camp house at eight in the morning. The air filled with the smell of freshly applied sunscreen and mosquito repellent, but there was something else too. Excitement.

There was chatter and laughter and the head counselor’s whistle, which she blew so much even though no one seemed to hear it. We were divided into groups according to our age and I was put into Group Five, for girls who had just completed sixth grade. Everyone seemed to know each other already after spending the summers together for years. Even Yasmin seemed to know people. She’d had camp counselor orientation the night before, and just like that she was instant friends with the other teens.

The only person I knew was Masha, but as much as she looked over and waved while we lined up into rows, she was in Group Three, so we were apart.

We started the day with calisthenics to get our muscles loose. And then there were cheers.

“Group Five, start us off!” Mimi, the head counselor, said.

My counselor, whose name was Naomi, started the cheer, which was a call-and-response sort of chant that everyone in my group knew. Everyone but me.

“I was down by the river!” Naomi shouted.

“YEAH MAN!” Group Five responded.

“And I started to drown!”

“YEAH MAN!”

“But when I saw Group Five!”

“YEAH MAN!”

“I just couldn’t go down!”

“YEAH MAN!”

A song about drowning? And it was supposed to cheer us up? I’d never heard something so strange before, but it seemed to be very popular because it was met with even more cheers.

After all the cheers were chanted, the groups split off to do their own activities. One group went to play on the basketball court, another went to the pool, and Group Five went into the camp house for arts and crafts. It was when we all sat around the craft table that I noticed there was a Baum kid in my midst.

I’d asked Masha more questions about the twelve Baum kids, and she’d told me every piece of info she had on them. I wasn’t sure why I cared so much. Maybe it was because I never knew families could get that big. I imagined what it was like to be part of a family like that. To always have people around to play with or talk to. To never be left alone. It seemed nice.

Even though I hadn’t met half of them, I still kept track of all their names and what order they were in. There were the three oldest brothers: Moshe, Pesach, and Jake. Moshe and Pesach were so old already that they had their own young families and lived in a different state. Then there was the oldest girl, Molly, who was the lifeguard at the pool. Then came Izzy, a boy Yasmin’s age, and her latest crush. After that there were Rosie and Shmuel, twin teenagers who were spending the summer at sleepaway camp. Then came Baily and Morry, who were closest to me in age. And finally, there were the three youngest kids, Asa, Nasson, and the baby, who everyone just called Teeny.

Baily Baum was in Group Five with me. She was practically a mirror image of her brother Morry, but with a ponytail, which automatically set off alarm bells in my head. She caught me staring at her, so I quickly looked back down at my project. Naomi had dumped a bunch of materials on the table (markers, mini pompoms, Elmer’s glue, pipe cleaners) that we could use to decorate the cream-colored canvas tote bags we were given. I squirted a bit of glue on a googly eye and stuck it on my bag. When I looked back up, Baily was whispering with Sara, the head counselor’s daughter, who was also in our group.

I was sure they were whispering about me.

Or the girl sitting next to me.

Her name was Liat, but I’d heard Baily call her Junk Girl. Liat was trying to make an American flag and was cutting stars out of white felt, but she hadn’t drawn them out first, so all her cutouts looked less like stars and more like shards of jagged fuzzy glass. She didn’t appear bothered by it, though. She happily sang a song under her breath as she snipped, which wouldn’t have been that bad except the song just wouldn’t end. Literally.

“This is the song that doesn’t end.

Yes it goes on and on, my friend.”

“The Song That Doesn’t End” had to be the most annoying song in existence, but Liat didn’t seem to care one lick if other people thought so. And yet, even with the never-ending song, I was pretty sure Baily and Sara were whispering only about me.

I tried squirting another bit of glue on a second googly eye, but there was nothing left. The only other glue on the table was next to Baily. I could’ve asked her to pass it, but that meant speaking to her.

It wasn’t that I was afraid to talk to Baily, it was just . . . Okay, maybe I was afraid to talk to her. What if she didn’t just look like her brother—what if she acted like him too? Maybe she’d try to tell me she owned the glue and that I couldn’t have it.

I looked down at my tote, wondering if I should even bother with a second eye or just turn the girl I’d drawn into a googly-eyed Cyclops. But that weird image would probably give Baily and Sara even more to whisper about. So I walked around the table to get the glue. I reached over Baily’s shoulder, trying to make myself as invisible as possible, but she turned toward me anyway. “You’re Akiva’s daughter, right?”

My mom always taught me never to call an adult by their first name. But since my dad fixed the Baums’ toilets—which probably clogged up a lot because of all the kids—Baily seemed to think it was okay to use his first name.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Baily. This is Sara.”

Out of everything she could’ve said, I wasn’t expecting an introduction. Was she being nice?

“So it’s just you and your sister and your father here this summer?” Sara asked. “Where’s your mother?”

“She works in Brooklyn.”

“She’s a cleaning lady,” Baily said to Sara.

“She’s actually a babysitter,” I said quickly. I don’t know why I corrected Baily, since she was technically right. But babysitter sounded better than cleaning lady, and it was always what I told people whenever anyone asked what my mom did for a living. Babysitter was better than housekeeper, and housekeeper was a million times better than cleaning lady. But it was all the same thing. She took care of other people’s families and homes. “She’s coming to meet us soon.”

“Really?” Baily said. “My mom said your mom wasn’t going to be here at all this summer.”

My fingers, clasped over the smooth plastic of the glue bottle, froze. The other girls at the table continued their work, and Liat kept singing the longest song in the world, but Baily and Sara both stared back at me, waiting for a reaction.

Baily hadn’t said anything that was directly mean, not really, and I didn’t know her at all, and yet her words stung. It was enough to make me feel like a slug: stuck to the ground, barely moving, and not particularly welcome at a picnic. Like I was small enough to be squashed under her foot.

“I don’t think you or your mom have all the facts,” I said.

I grabbed the glue and went back to my seat, my face growing hot. Baily and Sara went back to their whispering. But I couldn’t concentrate on my Cyclops girl tote bag anymore.

7

My dad being the handyman meant he didn’t have an office. He could be anywhere in the whole bungalow colony, working on someone’s plumbing or mending a hole in a roof. But we needed to talk, and I needed to find him.

As soon as day camp was over, I set out to look for him. But the moment I stepped out of the camp house, Masha was suddenly standing in front of me. “Whatchadoing?” she asked.

The surprise of her rattled me for a moment, but I quickly recovered and trudged forward. “I’m looking for my father.”

“Oh, what for?” Masha asked.

“Did anybody ever tell you you’re very nosy?” I asked.

Masha beamed like it was a compliment. “All the time,” she said. “I can help you look for him.”

“Thank you, but don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Nope!” Masha exclaimed.

It seemed like I had no choice but to let her help. We combed the colony but stopped short of knocking on people’s doors, asking if my dad was in there. The whole time, Masha kept asking me questions, but she obviously didn’t care to hear my answers because she just kept talking. So far, I’d learned the following: that Masha had a theory there was buried treasure somewhere in the bungalow colony but nobody knew exactly where; that Masha’s grandmother had been married two other times before she married Masha’s grandfather, but she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone; and that a girl in Group Three had told Masha she was a European princess in disguise.

“Can you believe it?” Masha said, her voice dripping with awe. “A princess at the bungalow colony!”

“Masha,” I said. “You can’t believe everything you hear. It’s just like when you thought the Coca-Cola company was going to send you stuff.”

“They are going to send me stuff,” Masha said. “And Chanie could be a princess. You never know.”

We ended up back at the camp house, no sight of my father anywhere. It was time for the next best thing.

Yasmin was at the basketball court. She wasn’t actually on the court (Yasmin didn’t do sports), but she was sitting on the sidelines with a few of her counselor friends. Masha and I bounded down the hill that led to the court and stopped at her side. “Hey,” I said.

It took her a minute to pull her eyes away from the group of guys playing ball. Among them was Izzy Baum. He was only the latest in a long line of boys my sister had instantly fallen in love with, but I didn’t know what she saw in the guy. He wore glasses but still squinted a lot, so either his prescription was wrong or he was always confused about something. Either way, I couldn’t tell if he had remarkable eyes, and “remarkable eyes” was Yasmin’s most preferred feature on a guy.

Apparently, Yasmin could see through the power squint, though, because according to the latest entry in her diary, Izzy had “brown eyes the color of Snapple iced tea.”

I know I shouldn’t have been reading Yasmin’s diary, but there wasn’t a library around here so I really had no choice. Anyway, I was the little sister. Reading my big sister’s diary was practically in my job description.

“Have you seen my dad?” I asked.

Yasmin readjusted the sparkly flower barrette clipping her hair over the side of her forehead. “Nope,” she said.

“Your dad?” Masha asked. “Don’t you two have the same father?”

“It’s a Spanish thing,” Yasmin explained. “In Spanish you say ‘my dad’ or ‘my mom’ even when you’re speaking to a sibling. We’re used to talking like that when we speak Spanish, so we just carried it over to English.”

One of Yasmin’s friends overheard and asked, “You speak Spanish? I thought your dad was Russian.”

“He is, but our mom is South American,” Yasmin explained. I was surprised she’d waited this long to reveal that part of our history to her friends. The fact that she could speak Spanish fluently was probably the most interesting thing about Yasmin. And she was always desperate to show people how interesting she was.

“I speak Russian!” Masha announced. But Yasmin’s friend was less interested in that.

“Say something in Spanish,” the friend said.

“I don’t know. . . .” Yasmin shrugged. She was playing modest, but I knew this was Yasmin’s plan all along. It was extremely rare to find a Spanish-speaking Jew outside of Miami, and Yasmin knew that. It always impressed people that someone who looked like Yasmin (blonde, blue-eyed, skin as white as a glass of milk) could speak a Romance language. People were less impressed when I did it. I was tan with brown eyes and thick brown hair, like my mother. When I spoke Spanish, it was almost expected.

“Come on, say something,” the friend insisted.

“Okay, okay.” Yasmin cleared her throat. “Hola, me llamo Yasmin y voy a tener el mejor verano de mi vida.”

The words tumbled out in one smooth rush. Her friends oohed and aahed, but I knew they weren’t Yasmin’s true target audience. She’d spoken loud enough for her voice to carry onto the court, and it worked. Izzy Baum looked over, slowed to a stop, and didn’t see when the basketball zoomed across the court and hit him smack on the side of his head.

Yasmin gasped like a truck had run him over, even though Izzy’s glasses didn’t even fully fall off his face. They just skidded down the bridge of his nose so that he looked like a grandma who’d fallen asleep while reading. I honestly didn’t know what Yasmin saw in him.

But the whole spectacle was just her thing. There was high drama and action and a mild injury. Like the telenovelas we liked to watch as a family.

“Siempre mostrando,” I said. She was always showing off.

Yasmin rolled her eyes. “What are you doing here again?”

“Nothing. Enjoy your Snapple eyes.”

Yasmin looked around on the ground, confused. “I’m not drinking Snapp—” But then my meaning dawned on her and her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to kill you!”

She was starting to get up so I took off, leaving Masha behind and cutting through the basketball game, ignoring the complaints from the boys on the court. Yasmin would change her diary’s hiding spot for sure, but it’d been worth it just to see the look on her face. Anyway, I’d find her diary again. The good thing about our bungalow being so small was that there were only so many places for Yasmin to hide things.

I was almost at our bungalow when I looked back to see how close she was, but there was no one running after me. I guess ending my life wasn’t as important as watching Izzy miss every single basket. I should’ve been happy that I wasn’t being chased, but I was kind of disappointed. At least I caught my dad just in time. He was on our porch, rummaging through his mess of scraps on the table.

“Daddy, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Busy day,” he grunted.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Have work.”

Even though my dad didn’t have a regular office job, he was still always working. In Brooklyn, he fixed things up in people’s homes, but aside from all that he also drove. He drove a taxi for strangers, a black town car for a lawyer, and a van to take me and a few other kids in my neighborhood to and from a Sunday program.

When he was home, my dad was usually in drill sergeant mode, checking my homework to make sure it was done right. And even then, if it wasn’t neat, he’d make me do it all over again. I thought this summer would be different. I thought that since I didn’t have any homework and since my dad would be the only one here taking care of us, he’d be different. I thought he wouldn’t be so strict. I thought he’d have more free time. Because the truth was, even though I didn’t want to come to this bungalow colony in the first place, a part of me was happy that I’d at least get to spend more time with my dad. But he seemed to be as busy as ever, only coming back to the bungalow to collect more tools before leaving again.

My shoulders drooped as I saw him scavenging his things until he found the wrench he was looking for. He was already halfway out the door. If I wanted him to answer my question, I’d have to get it out quick. “When’s my mom coming?”

It was hard to read my father’s face, and not just because most of it was obscured by his beard and bushy eyebrows.

“Soon.”

“Soon” was just the type of thing my father would say. Short, vague, and not really an answer at all. “What do you mean by ‘soon’? You mean Shabbos, right?”

“Busy, Gigi.”

“But—”

“Ask tu mamá,” my dad finally said before leaving, the porch door squealing open and closing again with a loud snap.

8

It was getting late, and the sun made everything look yellow and pink, like my favorite sorbet. Sunset didn’t look like this in Brooklyn. In fact, there were so many buildings blotting out the sky back in the city that I never gave much thought to the sunset at all. But here in the country, seeing the lemon-strawberry color of the sky, I could understand why people in poems and movies always talked about watching the sun go down.

I walked down the main dirt-and-gravel road and watched as everything around me seemed to transform in this in-between time. In the no-longer-daytime but not-yet-night, every surface I looked at seemed to shine with new light. The fading sun glinted off the trees, making the leaves sparkle in the breeze. It washed the bungalows in a soft glow, turning their dirty white into a pastel pink. The green grass seemed darker but richer at the same time.

But it wasn’t just the look of everything that was different. It was a feeling too. There was constant movement in the bungalow colony during the day. But now everyone was either inside, or heading inside. Even the birds went off to their nests to rest. And though it should’ve been quiet in the absence of people and animals, voices and birdsong were replaced with the loud chirp of crickets, the sound coming from every hidden corner of the bungalow colony.

In this in-between time, everything felt softer. Calmer. Almost sleepier—like the whole bungalow colony was getting tucked in for the night.

When I reached the telephone pole, I called home. My mom picked up on the first ring, and I was relieved to hear her voice. “Gigi!” she said, so clearly happy to hear from me. “Tell me about your first day of camp. Are the girls nice? Do you like it?”

I told her that I was fine, that camp was nice, that I’d made friends, and that I was being a good girl. “It’s great here.”

I don’t know why I lied. I didn’t like it here. It was different and I hadn’t made any friends. (Masha following me around all the time didn’t really count.) But for some reason I didn’t want my mother to know any of that. I didn’t want to disappoint or worry her. I didn’t want her to feel bad for me. And I especially didn’t want to make her sad.

Even though that was exactly how I felt.

“I just wanted to know when you’re coming.”

“Pronto,” my mom said.

There was that word again. “Soon” could be a minute or a year, for all I knew. “But you’re coming for Shabbos, right?”

She paused before saying, “I’m going to try, Gigi.”

“Try?” I whispered. Now she was just going to try? Another small word that meant nothing. I would never be allowed to get away with these kinds of answers. I could just imagine my dad asking me to throw out the garbage and me answering with “Soon.” Or my mom telling me to do my homework and me responding with “I’ll try.” It would never fly. “I thought you said—”

“You know I don’t have a car,” my mom said, the tone in her voice making the statement sound like an apology. “I’m going to do everything I can to find a ride, okay?”

“Can’t my daddy just pick you up?”

“It’s six hours there and back. He can’t leave work for that long.”

“He did it to pick me and Yasmin up.”

“That was a one-time thing. He can’t do it every week.”

“Someone here said you weren’t coming at all this summer.”

There was silence on the line. The longer it stretched, the more I could feel it, like it was tickling my cheeks or scratching the back of my throat. It was making the corners of my eyes itch. I needed to get rid of the quiet. “I told them they were wrong.”

“I will come, Gigi,” my mom said. “Maybe not this Shabbos, but hopefully by the next one.”

Hot tears suddenly sprang to my eyes. I wasn’t going to see her at all this week? And what if she couldn’t find a ride next week? This was turning into the longest I’d ever gone without seeing my mother.

I hated this place for what it was and for all the things it kept me away from. And right now, I especially hated this stupid phone on the side of this gravelly road, where anyone could look out their screened windows and see how hard I was trying not to cry.

By the time I went back to my bungalow, all the pretty colors of sunset had been replaced by a shadowy darkness that matched my mood. I grabbed my notebook, a brand-new idea taking shape in my mind. I decided that the notebook wouldn’t just be a journal, it would also be my instruction manual. My blueprint. My biggest secret. And unlike Yasmin and her diary, I’d hide my notebook where no one would be able to find it.

I wrote out the title of my how-to list in block letters at the top of the page and underlined it twice.

How to Run Away Through the Woods

9

It was the day after I’d spoken to my mom, and I floated through the camp activities, ignoring the stares and whispers from Baily and Sara. After camp let out, I stood alone at the edge of the big field beside the basketball court. I faced the trees, my feet close together on a spot where the grass was still smooth and mowed, probably by my dad. But just a step ahead, the blades were long and messy like unbrushed hair, sticking out between dirt mounds of ant kingdoms. And after that, the trees became the woods. And beyond the woods? The rest of my summer was there waiting for me.

It was a long way through the forest—so dense I could only see from tree to tree. But if I broke it down, it was really just a series of steps that would lead me home. And it started right here, where I stood.

The gate at the front of the bungalow colony that separated us from Happy Road was always closed, unless my dad opened it when he needed to take the truck out or let in the fathers who worked in the city during the week. The gate was not an option for me and my escape. But the rest of the colony wasn’t gated. It was just the woods that acted like an enclosure, and I could walk through them and out the other side, where I’d find a town or houses—real civilization. There had to be a bus station in town, and from there, it’d be easy to find my way back home.

I inhaled the sticky air and took my first step toward the trees. All I’d brought with me was my notebook and a pencil. This was just a fact-finding mission. If I was going to run away, I would need to find out as much about the woods as I could. When we studied science last year in school, Mrs. Miller had taught us about doing experiments and documenting our findings. The experiment started with variables, a hypothesis, and data collection. My experiment was to see whether I’d be able to walk through the woods and make my way to the other side without anyone noticing. My hypothesis was that I could do it. It might take a few hours, but that was partly what I was here for. I needed to see just how many hours, which direction to go in, and how many snacks I’d need.

I’d already gathered some data, like the fact that if I wanted this to work without anyone seeing me, I’d need to get to the farthest corner of Shir Gershon. Even though it was daytime, it was still darker on this side of the bungalow colony for some reason. I think it was because there were so many trees here. They weren’t part of the woods, and although they were spread out, they were still too close together to build any bungalows between them. Here, the leaves were like umbrellas, blocking out the sun.

I had to admit that the darkness was kind of scary. But I was determined. I took a step forward, one after the other, until I was five feet into the woods. It’d rained in the morning, making all the dead leaves and twigs on the ground slick and slippery. It was only a few steps, but it even smelled different here. The wood gave off a wet, mildewy scent. It wasn’t a bad smell, though. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs up with nature, and when I exhaled, any nerves I had went with it.

And then I heard a noise. I stopped moving immediately, on high alert. In scary movies, whenever there was somebody following you, they always accidentally snapped a twig under their foot. Was there someone here with me? One of those hitchhikers that Masha was talking about? What if it was an animal? Did bears live in the woods? What was I thinking—of course they lived in the woods. But were they native to this part of North America? Maybe every bear lived here—grizzly, black, brown, teddy, gummy. I breathed some more, faster and faster to get back that calm feeling I’d had a second ago.

The noise again. A rustling. But it wasn’t something hiding in the trees. This was close and moving below the leaves that carpeted the ground. The pencil in my hand felt slippery, and I realized I was gripping it so hard that my hand was beginning to sweat. I opened my notebook and started to write just because it was something to do, something to distract me from the noise.

Hypothesis: If I run away through the woods, will I be attacked by a monster or a bear?

The noise came again, but this time it was accompanied by a flurry of color. A tiny orange thing scurried over my sneaker, and I jumped so far back it was as though someone had pushed me. But when I caught my breath again, I bent to get a better look at it.

A lizard.

At least I thought it was a lizard. I’d never seen a lizard that was so bright orange it looked like it was made by Tropicana. It was the length of my index finger from head to tail and had two rows of white dots down its back. I reached for it slowly, hoping not to scare it.

In Peru, when I was little, my abuelo used to catch birds and keep them in cages on our flat roof. There were other things on that roof—it was where we did our laundry and hung it out to dry. We hung fish there too, and I remember how delicious it was, even if the dried fish was super hard to bite into. But the thing I remember most were the birdcages. I never knew how my grandfather managed to catch so many birds, but the secret seemed to be in the way he approached them, which was very slowly, carefully, thoughtfully. It was like a magic trick. One second the birds were set to take flight, and the next, they were my grandfather’s new pets, in large cages where he’d feed them and take care of them.

My abuelo always got the birds. Which was why I never understood how he wasn’t able to hold on to my family and keep us from flying away. From Peru. From him. Maybe he wasn’t careful enough, or thoughtful enough. Because one day we were living with him and my abuela, and the next we were gone.

I watched the little lizard in front of me now, though, and decided I didn’t want to keep it in a cage. But I did want to touch it, just so I could see what it felt like and document my findings in my notebook.

I thought it would run away if I got too close, but it actually did the opposite. It carefully climbed onto the palm of my hand like I was just another fallen branch. The little thing walked over my fingers, and I turned my hand slowly to give it a bigger surface area. He was so fragile and smooth and didn’t weigh a thing, but he tickled. I couldn’t help myself. I broke out into a grin. Maybe my first real smile since I’d gotten to Shir Gershon.

I carried the lizard with me as I continued to walk a few more steps. But there was a new noise. It didn’t scare me this time, because I immediately recognized the sound. Singing. I followed the voice, if only because the song was so strange.

“Indicate the way to my habitual abode

I am fatigued and desire to retire

I had a carbonated beverage sixty minutes ago

And it traveled straight to my cerebellum.”

I followed the sounds until I was out of the woods and back in the colony. I didn’t realize there were any bungalows around here, but there was one. Behind the bungalow lay a big pile of junk. I spotted a broken lawn chair, one side of a baby’s crib, a plastic tricycle missing its wheels, and other broken parts of things I couldn’t identify. But I should’ve known who’d been singing.

It was Liat, the girl from my group who liked weird songs. She was dragging a cabinet door behind her, and added it to the pile of junk. No wonder Baily and Sara called her Junk Girl. There was stuff all over the place. And the whole time she was piling it up, she never stopped singing.

“No matter where I perambulate

On terrain or sea or atmospheric vapor

You’ll perpetually hear me crooning this melody

Indicate the way to my habitual abode.”

She went around the bungalow to collect more junk, and I just watched her, equal parts curious and fascinated. I was the best English speaker in my house, but I still did not understand a word of her song.

“Now in English!

Show me the way to go home

I’m tired and I wanna go to bed

I had a soda drink about an hour ago

And it went straight to my head

No matter where I roam

On land or sea or foam

You’ll always hear me sing this little song

Show me the way to go home.”

The laugh bubbled out of me before I could stop. The song was funny, and I got such a kick out of the “Now in English!” part that I repeated it under my breath, storing it away for another time where I could bark those words out to my parents.

Liat turned toward me, squinting through her glasses. I stepped out from behind my tree and waved. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Just like at the camp house, Liat didn’t seem embarrassed to be caught singing to herself. “What’s that?”

I looked down at my palm, my new forest friend still on it. “A lizard, I think.”

Liat walked up to me and let out a short gust of a laugh. It didn’t take her more than two seconds to properly identify the little guy. “That’s not a lizard, that’s a salamander.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Lizards live in Florida. They’re all over the streets in Miami, where my aunt lives. They’re like pigeons over there. Salamanders live in New York, in the woods. They like to come out after the rain.”

“Oh.” Now it was my turn to ask a question. “What’s that?” I pointed to the junk pile.

Liat looked at it, propped up against what I assumed was her bungalow. “Material,” she said.

She walked past me, and I followed her to a tree not too far from where we’d been standing. It was one of the biggest trees I’d seen yet, with a bunch of thick branches that twisted out a few feet above our heads, perfect for climbing.

“I’m building a tree house,” Liat said.

“A tree house?” There weren’t any tree houses in Brooklyn, but I knew of them from books and movies, and I’d always wanted to have one. Or at least to be invited to one.

“You could help me build it, if you want,” Liat said.

My eyes widened and immediately my heart said yes. A tree house was so cool, and I’d never get the chance to build one at home. Yes, yes, yes! But before the word could leave my lips, I remembered my plan. I couldn’t help Liat build a tree house if I was going to run away. And anyway, just because she had a big tree picked out and a pile of junk, it didn’t mean she had everything you needed for a good tree house.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”

I put the salamander down and held my notebook against my chest. Then I turned and headed back toward my bungalow.

10

One thing was certain after my first outing in the woods: I needed a map. Thankfully, my dad had every kind of map you could possibly want, and after leaving Liat and her junk pile, I ventured over to my dad’s own junk pile at the top of his dresser. He kept a bunch of odds and ends there, and I wasn’t sure what made this junk more special than the junk he left out on the porch table, but I could barely understand anything about my dad. I wasn’t going to try to understand his things.

I looked through the papers, magazines, and books until I found just the map I was looking for.

I spread the map out on top of my bed. It showed the bungalow colony, which felt so big from the inside but looked so small from this bird’s-eye view. It showed that Happy Road led to an intersection. On one side of it was Kauneonga Lake, and on the other side was a bait shop and a fire station. But farther, all the way on the other end of the map, was the town, where there were tons of different stores and the big ShopRite where everyone here got their groceries on account of the good kosher selection.

And in the upper right-hand corner of the map was the treasure I was looking for: the bus station.

If I could get to the bus station, then I could get home. And although it was all the way at the edge of the map, it was just on the other side of the woods behind the basketball court. My dad always told me that the quickest way to a place was always a straight line. The map showed that Happy Road twisted and wound way too much. But I could walk through the woods in a straight shot, no problem, and end up at the bus station.

I ran my index finger along the crisscrossed lines on the map and counted the squares between the basketball court and the bus station. Five squares. According to the map legend, that meant three point five miles.

“Gonna do some exploring?” Yasmin asked.

I didn’t realize she was hovering so close, but apparently she needed something from the dresser and was now standing beside my bed, looking at my map.

“Not exactly,” I muttered. I flipped the map over and quickly grabbed my notebook, which I’d left open beside me.

But it looked like I didn’t have to be worried about Yasmin discovering my plans, because she only rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to read your diary,” she said, plucking a bottle of bubble-gum pink nail polish from the top of the dresser. “I don’t do that sort of thing—unlike some people.”

“It’s not a diary,” I protested.

Yasmin plopped down onto the floor and wiggled her bare toes, readying them for a new coat of polish. “You write your thoughts and feelings in it? It’s a diary.”

“I write my observations.”

“Whatever,” Yasmin said. “It’s not like your life is even interesting enough to fill up a diary.” She leaned over to reach the silver boom box beside her bed and clicked the play button. Ace of Base started to blare from its speakers.

I bit down hard. “If you really wanna know, I’m planning my escape.”

Yasmin groaned and wiped at a smudge of polish on her toe. “Do you mind? I’m trying to do something here.”

I decided to ignore Yasmin and flip open my notebook again to write down my findings.

- The quickest way to the bus station is through the woods.

- 3.5 miles.

A noise from the other room meant my dad was home.

“Daddy?” I called. I folded up the map and stuck it between the pages of my notebook before running into the kitchen. My dad had popped in to change from his sneakers into his work boots, which meant I only had a few minutes before he was out the door again. “How long does it take to walk three point five miles?”

“¿Qué?” my dad asked, distracted with his shoelaces.

I realized I had to think of a better way to ask the question.

The thing about my dad and me was that we didn’t really speak the same language. My mom and me had Spanish. It was my first language, and my mom’s first language too, and it was what we spoke to each other. My dad and I had Spanish and English, but neither of those were his first languages. So it made speaking to each other kind of hard sometimes. And right now, I had no idea how to say “miles” in Spanish.

“Miles,” I said again uselessly. “You know, como kilómetros?”

“Ah, millas,” my dad said, nodding.

“Yeah, so how long does it take? Para una persona to walk three point five millas?”

“Me walk or you walk?” my dad asked, tying his shoelaces.

“Me walk, Daddy.”

“You walk?” He tilted his head, giving it some thought as he slid his heel down his shoehorn and into his other boot. “All day.”

This was obviously his idea of cracking a joke, but I didn’t laugh. “I’m serious.”

“Okay,” he sighed. Both boots were tied now. Whatever he said next would be the end of the conversation. “Maybe three and half hour.”

Three and a half hours through the woods. I’d never walked three and a half hours anywhere. And yet it was a small number. I knew in my bones I could do it.

My dad lingered at the door for a moment, and I wondered if he was going to ask me why I was interested in walking three point five miles.

But my dad didn’t ask any follow-up questions. He only said, “Have good day,” and then left.

My plans to run away would have to wait because my time at the bungalow colony kept getting filled up. I’d only been here for five days, but they’d been chock-full of activity. There was day camp, which took up most of my time, and there was swimming, which was the only thing I’d been looking forward to since finding out I’d be spending the summer at the bungalow colony.

In Brooklyn, my family went swimming at the public pool in Sunset Park. It was massive, but it was also always full with what seemed like every kid in Brooklyn. But in a Jewish bungalow colony, pool times were divided between the boys and girls so that they could swim at separate times. It was done for modesty reasons, so we could swim freely without worrying about boys seeing us in our bathing suits.

I, for one, was happy I didn’t have to swim with boys. In my experience, all boys were rowdy boys the moment they were in a body of water. They were all about pushing each other into the pool, splashing fights, and diving for footballs with zero awareness of personal space. Swimming with girls was a much more relaxing experience.

The pool was divided into three parts: the baby section, where the water went just below my knees; the middle of the pool, which went between two feet and four feet deep; and beyond that, the pool floor gave way suddenly and dipped all the way to nine feet. The deep end was separated from the rest of the pool by a buoyed rope that cut across the surface, and in order to be allowed in that section, you needed to pass the swim test.

The swim test was hard. You needed to do ten laps across the width of the pool; plus three more laps swimming on your back. You needed to be able to hold your breath underwater for at least twenty seconds. And hardest of all: You needed to tread water. I hadn’t even heard about treading water until this summer, but Masha showed me what it was. You had to use your arms and legs to stay afloat without actually moving forward. It meant a lot of kicking and splashing in place, like climbing an invisible ladder or trying to get out of quicksand. Even as she was showing me how to do it, Masha still couldn’t do it, and her head kept dipping below the water until she had to reach for the edge of the pool and catch her breath.

“This is why I can’t go in the deep end!” she’d gasped.

But you know who could go into the deep end? Baily Baum and Sara Tisch. And yet they spent all their time lying on lounge chairs by the side of the pool and passing judgment on the people inside it. Right now, Baily’s eyes were squinting against the sun and laser focused on me.

“Nice doggy paddling!” she shouted at me.

I stopped and swam to the edge of the pool to get my bearings. Baily and Sara snickered so hard they almost slid off their lounges.

The lifeguard blew her whistle and shook her head at them, but the lifeguard was part of the problem. Because the lifeguard was Molly Baum—Baily’s nineteen-year-old sister. She probably let Sara and Baily pass the swim test without even making them take it.

Molly had long jet-black hair that she kept in a high ponytail, and she was pretty, in a natural, sun-kissed way. Though her face was always serious. Maybe it was because she was constantly blowing her whistle whenever one of the little kids got too close to the deep-end rope, or if someone ran around the pool, where they could’ve slipped. If I was being honest, Molly Baum kind of scared me. But I had to face her if I ever wanted to pass the swim test.

Not that I planned on staying at this bungalow colony too much longer. But until I ran away, I’d still be using the pool. And if I was going to use the pool, I wanted to be able to use all of it. Plus, it’d be really great to show Baily and Sara that they weren’t the only people our age with deep-end privileges.

I was three feet deep, the water lapping up against my shoulders, as I watched Baily and Sara stand at the same time and walk over to the deep end.

“What kind of jump should we do?” Sara asked loudly.

Then Baily started rattling off the different kinds of jumps. “Pencil dive? Swan dive? Cannonball?”

“Cannonball,” Masha and I whispered at the same time.

I imagined myself up there, Baily on one side, Sara on the other, and me in the middle—the three of us counting down from five slowly but excitedly, our voices rising the closer we got to one. And then we’d launch off the tile, shrieking, holding our noses, and folding ourselves into tight balls. Between the three of us we’d probably splash enough water to soak everyone tanning on the lounge chairs.

Baily and Sara seemed to silently come to an agreement about their jump, and they started their countdown.

“Five, four, three, two, one!”

Two perfect cannonballs, with splashes so big Masha and I felt the aftershock.

I whipped water off my hair, and Masha grabbed hold of the edge of the pool like it was a life preserver. “Think we’ll ever get to cannonball into the deep end?” I asked.

Masha shook her head. “I can’t make it to six laps without stopping,” she said. “And sinking. And you’ve got your doggy-paddle problem.”

“It isn’t a problem,” I said, even though she was right. I was doggy paddling and not treading, and I had no idea how to stop doing one and start doing the other.

“Seems like a problem to me,” Masha said.

Just then, her grandmother waved and called her over in Russian, and Masha said goodbye and waded to the pool steps to get out.

I readjusted my goggles over my eyes, determined to keep practicing treading water. I kicked and splashed in place, trying to stay above water as best I could. Around me, kids were swimming together, playing Marco Polo, diving under the water in search of weighted pool rings and tossing them over each other’s heads when they found them. And even though I was in the middle of all the action, I couldn’t have felt more alone. I was treading water all by myself, and no matter how hard I worked beneath the surface, I could barely stay afloat.

11

When I wasn’t swimming or at day camp or exploring the woods, I was dealing with my family. Yasmin pretty much ignored me and only hung out with her counselor friends, but I still knew everything that was going on in her life because she was terrible at hiding her diary. She’d gone from an under-the-mattress hiding place to the top shelf in the closet (that we shared!), as if that wasn’t the first place I’d look. According to her latest entry, she still hadn’t spoken to Izzy, but she’d come really close when he dropped his glasses and she picked them up for him.

(But she hadn’t returned his ball cap, which he had “lost” and which Yasmin had “found” and which had definitely not been “stolen” when Izzy wasn’t looking. It was safely in Yasmin’s top dresser drawer, where it would live for the rest of the summer, or whenever Yasmin wasn’t secretly wearing it to bed.)

I called my mom from the pay phone every night after dinner and reported what the bungalow colony was like so she’d know what to expect when she got here. I told her about the two ladies who exercised every morning by brisk walking around the perimeter of the bungalow colony, schmoozing the whole while. And about Mrs. Finklestein, the old woman who did nothing but sit in front of her bungalow every day. My mom would listen to me and say all the usual things, like “Ten cuidado,” or “Pórtate bien,” but it would’ve been better to hear her say it in person.

My dad never really paid attention to me, either. He never told me to “Be careful!” or even “Behave!” He didn’t ask me where I went or who I went with. I wasn’t even sure he knew I was in day camp most of the day. I tried getting him to notice me more. In the mornings, when we were both still home and getting ready for our days, I’d walk around the bungalow with my sneakers undone, just waiting for him to tell me to tie my shoelaces, but he never did. Not even when I tripped and almost hit the corner of the kitchen table. He would just get dressed, riffle through his junk on the table, pulling out bits of parts and pieces of things, and then go to work, sometimes without even saying goodbye.

I always made sure to have my shoes tied when I rode my bike, though. The basketball court was the best place to ride it, because it had the smoothest surface in the whole colony. Masha sat and watched from the sidelines. “When do I get a turn?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure I had ever promised her a turn. I wasn’t even sure I’d invited her to come to the basketball court with me, and yet there she sat, resting her chin on her knees. She wasn’t so much watching as waiting.

“I just started,” I said.

“But I get a turn soon, right?”

This wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d had my Rollerblades with me. Then Masha and I could take turns trading my bike and Rollerblades. But my father had told me not to even pack my blades because there weren’t any sidewalks here. I was really missing them right about now.

“Do you even know how to ride a bike?” I asked Masha as I stood on the pedals.

“Of course I know how to ride a bike.”

“How did you learn if you don’t have one?”

“I learned on my cousin’s bike,” Masha said. “And anyway, my mother promised to buy me a bike soon because I got really good grades in school this year. The only reason she didn’t get me one for the summer was because she said there was too much grass here and everybody knows riding a bike on grass is impossible. You know it too, ’cause you’re riding on the court. So can I ride it now?”

“Fine.” I pedaled backward and the bike automatically locked up and came to a stop. I hopped off. “Don’t try to stand-up ride. And don’t do any tricks like riding with no hands. I don’t need you crashing my bike.”

But Masha looked like she barely heard me. She came running at me with a smile so big it could crack her face in half. She mounted the bike and waited for me to let go of the handlebars. After a moment I finally did. Masha pushed off.

“Woo-hoo!”

“Slow down!” I yelled, but Masha didn’t hear me. She was too busy cheering herself on as she circled around the court.

“Hey, Gigi?” Masha called, circling the court for the second time.

“Yeah?”

“What are Peruvian Jews like?”

“What?” I was confused, not only by the randomness of the question, but also by what it even meant. I knew that most of the people here had never been anywhere outside of the US and had never met a South American person before, let alone a South American Jew, but since Masha was an immigrant too, I thought she’d get it, that there were Jews who spoke different languages and came from other countries. But then I remembered that everyone Masha knew was a Russian Jew. And I’d never met any Jews in the US who came from Peru. I guess I could understand that Masha hadn’t either.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged and watched Masha make another full loop around the court. “I mean, Peruvian Jews are just like any other Jews, I guess?”

Masha watched me, clearly unsatisfied with my answer, and it was making me anxious. Not only because of the topic, but also because if she was looking at me, it meant she wasn’t looking where she was going. “Watch out for the basketball pole!”

Masha made a sharp turn, nearly falling off the bike, but she recovered quickly. “You guys don’t seem like any other Jews,” she said.

“Why?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Your family’s from all different places,” she said. “Like, you’re Peruvian, but your dad isn’t. And you don’t speak Russian even though he does. And you’re religious, but he isn’t . . . right?”

I could feel my cheeks going red. My dad not being religious was something I never really talked to anyone about. It was easy enough to avoid the topic back in Brooklyn, where I could keep my family life and my school life separate. None of my Brooklyn friends had met my parents. But here I couldn’t separate who I was from my family. We were wrapped up in each other. A unit. Even though we hardly spent any time together.

I gave Masha the most precise answer I could think of, without getting into the whole religious thing. “My mom is a Sephardi Jew, and my dad is Ashkenazi.”

“So what are you?” Masha asked.

Why were her questions getting harder and harder to answer? I didn’t know what I was. Technically, we didn’t follow any Sephardic customs. But my dad didn’t follow any customs at all—Ashkenazi or not.

“I’m just a Jew,” I said finally. “I’m a Jew who speaks Spanish. Just like you’re a Jew who speaks Russian.”

Masha formed a little O shape with her mouth, like I’d just cleared up a big mystery for her.

“So we’re basically the same,” she said.

I nodded.

Masha slowed down, something in the distance getting her attention. I turned and looked to see Morry Baum. He and three of his friends came sauntering onto the court, bouncing a basketball between them. By that point, Masha had already gotten off the bike and was walking it back to me. And I realized she was doing it because of Morry.

“What are you doing?” I asked her. I couldn’t believe I was saying this, but I actually wanted her to get back on and keep riding my bike to spite Morry. “You’re not done yet.”

I turned to Morry. I wasn’t going to let him intimidate us. “We had the court first.”

“Yeah, but we’re playing basketball.”

“So?”

“So you can only use the basketball court to play basketball.” Morry dribbled his ball really quickly and ran close to the hoop to do a layup and throw it in, but it barely arced high enough to graze the net.

“You know, you don’t make all the rules around here,” I said.

“Yeah, but those are the rules,” Morry said. “You don’t believe me? Go ask my father.”

“I will go ask your father. And then I’ll tell him that you’re not letting us use the court.”

“So go tell him. You think he’s going to punish me or something? My father would fire your father before he ever punished me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. It didn’t sound true, but what if it was? I didn’t want my father to lose his job just because the owner’s obnoxious son didn’t like me.

“Hey, is Akiva even Jewish?” Morry asked, lazily dribbling the ball where he stood.

“Yes,” I said. “My dad is Jewish.”

“You sure?” Morry went on. “He doesn’t wear a yarmulka.”

In Morry’s world, any man or boy who didn’t wear a yarmulka wasn’t Jewish, but I knew that wasn’t true. There were tons of different kinds of Jewish people, ones that Morry couldn’t even imagine.

“And isn’t your mom Spanish?”

“She’s Peruvian.”

“What’s the difference?” Morry said. “Are Spanish people even Jewish? Are you even Jewish?”

I gritted my teeth because there was so much Morry didn’t understand. And even though I’d just been talking about this with Masha, I knew it was no use having the same conversation with Morry. Masha had asked me a pretty simple question, and I’d barely been able to get my point across. If I couldn’t explain who I was to Masha, asking an innocent question, then I’d never be able to do it with Morry, who was basically asking the same thing but with much crueler intentions. He just wanted to show that he was better than me.

So I ignored him and turned to Masha.

“Come on, Masha. We can ride on the handball court.”

Masha and I walked my bike up the grassy hill, and the whole way she talked about how much she hated Morry Baum and wished he’d get what was coming to him. For once I agreed with her.

12

It was Friday, and tonight would be my first Shabbos at Shir Gershon. Even though my mom had told me she couldn’t come, I still held out hope that she would find a way. That I’d look up and see her walking down the gravel drive. Even as she told me over the phone how much she wished she could be here with us. Even as I watched the cars coming through the front gate in the late afternoon, all the dads leaving behind their city work lives, hoping they were bringing my mom along in their passenger seats.

But she wasn’t coming, and now it was time to get ready for Shabbos. Friday afternoon was always the most hectic time of the week. Last-minute supermarket trips, moms in kitchens all day, cooking three meals at a time, kids going in baths, one after the other, washing away all the grime and dirt they’d been too comfortable in for days. And with all the chaos of Shabbos preparation, nobody noticed as I slipped into the woods for my next data-seeking mission.

It was only half a day at camp on Fridays, so I had plenty of time to walk as far as one hour into the woods. I took one of Yasmin’s red lipsticks, hoping she wouldn’t notice, and marked the trees along the way as I went, drawing a big red X on the bark so I would find my way back. Thanks to my digital wristwatch, I was able to keep track of the time. One hour on a straight path through the trees, and one hour back.

I wrote down my findings in my notebook.

- Half of one water bottle is enough to last me one hour.

- Two hours in total is easy. Three hours should be no problem.

- If I start in the morning, I should be able to make it to the bus station way before the sun goes down.

- Bring more snacks. But not something that makes too many crumbs, because that might attract animals. And not something sweet. (Brought a lollipop today and attracted flies.) Maybe something salty for next time.

I was back at the bungalow in time to take a shower and get dressed in my nicest clothes. As soon as the sun went down and Shabbos came, everything slowed down. Skirts were swapped for dresses, and baseball caps were put aside for black velvet yarmulkas. Moms set tables for dinner and all the men walked to shul.

All except my dad, who didn’t go to shul. I wasn’t sure if he’d ever been to a synagogue in his life, except to marry my mom. It was my mom who always welcomed Shabbos into our home. She lit the candles, bought flowers to put in the vase at the center of the table, and went to shul during the day. She was also the one who made the kiddush while my dad usually stayed at his workstation, fiddling with his broken electronics.

But tonight, my dad actually tried.

The table was set and the food was hot, but before we could eat, my dad had to make the blessings on the grape juice and challah. Yasmin and I stood by our chairs, watching as he stared at the words in the siddur like they were written in a language he didn’t understand, even though Hebrew was one of the five languages he spoke fluently. And yet he grimaced at the blessings, rubbing his thumbnail along his eyebrow.

“Baruch ata—”

“You have to hold the kiddush cup,” I said. My dad looked at me blankly, then seemed to remember the goblet in front of him. He picked it up and started again.

“. . . b’mitzvosav b’tzivanu—this too long.”

“You can’t talk during the bracha,” I said.

I was serious—brachos were serious—but Yasmin rolled her eyes as if I were the one doing everything wrong.

“Just say ‘borei pri ha’gafen,’ ” she said.

I didn’t understand why my dad couldn’t say a bracha that Yasmin and I knew by heart. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t be like any of the other dads here, who just went to shul, came back, and led the Shabbos meals with prayers and singing afterward. But there was never any singing for us after the meal.

Dinner went by quick. Yasmin took over the conversation, telling us every detail of an argument she was currently having with her best friend, who she’d met exactly five days ago. We finished eating just as Yasmin finished telling her story. She escaped to the bedroom with one of her Christopher Pike paperbacks that she’d brought from home, and it was just me and my dad left at the table. This was the moment—the one I’d been waiting the whole summer for. Bonding time with my dad. It was basically a rule according to every TV show and movie I’d ever watched: When a family sat down at a dinner table with no distractions, that meant they had to talk. My dad would have to get to know me, and he would have to ask questions about my life.

I’d tell him that I’d been here forever already and I hadn’t made any friends. And then he would point out Masha, that she seemed like she really wanted to be my friend, and I would say she’s younger than me and just because she follows me around all the time doesn’t mean she and I are friends. And then he’d give me advice on how to become real friends with her. I don’t know what he would say, exactly, because that was what advice was—it was information you never knew and then you got it and it made your life better.

So I waited for my dad’s advice. I would listen, even if it was only three words in Russian-accented Spanish. He looked over at me across the table expectantly. I was ready to tell him everything I was thinking, just as soon as he asked.

“No te olvides tu plato,” he said.

I nodded. Right. Couldn’t forget my plate. I took my dish over to the sink, but when I turned back to the table, ready to talk, I saw that my dad had left it. He went over to his nightstand and flipped on the radio.

I watched him awkwardly, and a new disappointment flooded through me, making me feel like I was sinking slowly into the floor. I didn’t listen to the radio on Shabbos. That was another way my dad and I were different. I followed the rules of Shabbos and he didn’t. I didn’t write, draw, watch TV, listen to music, or use the phone. Which meant I would have to wait a full twenty-five hours before I could call my mom.

If I really tried, I could explain away the reasons my father didn’t follow the Jewish laws like I did. He never went to a Jewish school, and I don’t think he grew up with Jewish friends. For my dad, being Jewish was just something you were, but for me, it was something you did, every day.

I wondered if it was the whole religious thing that made it feel like there was an entire ocean between me and my dad. Maybe it was the immigrant thing. Or the language thing. Maybe it was all of it. And just when I thought that all the elements were perfect for him to throw me a life preserver and pull me closer to him, it was like a riptide had come in, and I was floating farther and farther away.

I could live with the disappointment of another unhad conversation, but Shabbos was supposed to be calm and relaxing, and the racket coming from my dad’s radio was ruining all that.

“Can I go outside?” I asked.

My dad made a sort of grunting sound, too busy taking the gears out of the back of a watch to notice me. I slipped out through the screened-in porch and trekked down the lawn when I heard a voice behind me.

“Where you going?”

I turned to find Masha sitting on the front steps of her bungalow. Our two bungalows were attached, and I should’ve noticed her on the way out, but I was too distracted and eager to get outside. Plus, it was pretty dark out.

“For a walk,” I said.

“Can I come?”

“Don’t you have a meal to go to?”

“My grandparents have very early meals. We finished an hour ago.” She jumped off the steps.

I sighed, about to tell her I wanted to be alone, but then she said, “So, where are we going?”

And just like that, I was hanging out with Masha.

13

Since our bungalows were connected, Masha and I shared a yard, and as we walked down to the edge of it we came across Sara and Baily, heading in the direction of the Baum house. The two girls stopped to talk, but instead of “hello,” Baily said, “So, did your mom come for Shabbos?”

I glanced at the grass at my feet and shook my head. When I looked back up, Baily was whispering something to Sara. I didn’t know what she was saying, but it couldn’t have been very nice if she had to whisper it. Masha must’ve thought the same thing, because she was immediately on the defensive.

“Yeah, well, Gigi’s mom is gonna come next week, and the week after that, and then she’s gonna bring a huge care package with her—all the best toys and games that Gigi didn’t have any room to pack. And boxes of candy too. Twizzlers and Lemonheads and Bamba and all the good stuff you can’t even find upstate, right, Gigi?”

All eyes were on me, but I was too frazzled by Masha’s jabbering to do anything but stammer a weak “Uh-huh.”

Baily and Sara shared a look that cut almost as deep as their whispering did. “Come on, Sara, my mom’s probably serving dessert now.”

Masha and I watched them skip off toward the Baum house. When I turned to Masha, she shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, I talk a lot when I get nervous,” she said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “But it isn’t true. What you said. I don’t know when my mom is coming here. And I doubt she’ll bring any candy if she does.”

And the promise of candy being taken away was enough to put a damper on the evening.

Masha and I walked down Shir Gershon’s gravelly dirt road together in silence. Neither of us said it, but we didn’t want to stray too far from the road when it was this dark out. But anyway, the night was lit up by the bungalow windows, sparkling with candlelight and alive with the sound of chatter and singing.

The families here were all similar, and yet so different from my own. I always liked Shabbos, but without my mom, and seeing how everyone else was celebrating together, I felt lonely. Even with Masha standing right next to me. Maybe she read my mind, because she said, “Should we go talk to Mrs. Finklestein?”

The old lady sat in her lawn chair like she always did, but even she wasn’t alone. Her son and his wife had come up from the city for Shabbos so she’d have someone to spend it with. It looked like she still preferred the company of her lawn, though.

“Why?” I asked.

Masha shrugged. “She always has good stories.”

Maybe it was because she lived with her grandparents, but Masha seemed to gravitate toward older people. Even when it came to me. She could’ve found another ten-year-old to hang out with, but I had never seen her with anyone her own age.

“I don’t want to.”

But Masha completely ignored me and started bounding up to Mrs. Finklestein. I reluctantly followed her.

“Good Shabbos, Mrs. Finklestein!” Masha said.

“Good Shabbos,” the lady said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Masha Zito, remember? We met on the first day of summer. You told me about your cat, Hildy, who hates the country, so you left her with your sister in New Jersey even though you really wanted to leave her with your son but your daughter-in-law hates cats but you didn’t want to fight her on it because you’ve already fought with her about almost everything she does but now you wish you would’ve brought Hildy to the bungalow colony and kept her on a leash because she’s a lot more entertaining and loyal than your daughter-in-law, Cherry. I remember her name ’cause cherries are my favorite fruit.”

There were many creases on Mrs. Finklestein’s face, but as she listened to Masha, the lines on her forehead formed deep valleys of confusion. “What did you say your name was?”

“Masha Zito.”

Mrs. Finklestein turned to me. “Have we met as well?”

“No. I’m Gigi.”

“Akiva’s daughter,” Masha added helpfully.

“Oh,” Mrs. Finklestein said, the vowel taking a long time to leave her pursed lips. “What a good worker, that Akiva. He fixed this chair for me. The armrest was coming loose.” She knocked on it with knobby knuckles. “Such a nice man, always with a smile on his face. And he laughs at all my jokes.”

I nodded. Her description of my dad sounded totally wrong yet absolutely right. My dad was typically stony-faced and grumpy. But any time he had to talk to another adult, he plastered a smile on his face and laughed at all their jokes, even if he didn’t understand them. For him, smiling and laughing was easier than trying to have whole conversations with people.

“So, what are you girls doing out at this time of night?”

Masha shrugged. “Our meals are over and we’re bored.”

“Well, you better go find someplace indoors to be bored. Nighttime’s no place for little girls.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because of the sheydim,” Mrs. Finklestein whispered.

“What’s that?” Masha asked.

“You’ve never heard of sheydim?”

Masha and I looked at each other, then shook our heads. Mrs. Finklestein searched both our faces, the thick lenses of her glasses catching the moonlight and making her eyes disappear behind the glare. “Well, they’re demons, of course.”

“What?” I whispered, taking a breath in.

But Masha had no reaction. “What are demons?” she asked.

“They’re like monsters or ghosts,” I whispered, like if I said the words too loudly I’d conjure them up. I’d seen enough scary movies to know what demons were. And I also knew the most important thing about them: “They aren’t real.”

“Better not let a sheyd hear you say that,” Mrs. Finklestein warned. “Sheydim are Jewish demons. And the fact that they’re Jewish is the very thing that makes them real.”

“No way,” Masha said. But this was coming from the girl who believed in aliens and ghosts and everything else. I could already tell Masha would believe in demons too, no questions asked.

“Ask a rabbi if you think I’m lying,” Mrs. Finklestein said. “Sheydim like to come out at night. They’re invisible to our human eyes, but at night you can sometimes see their shadow. Don’t worry, they’re easy enough to avoid. You just have to make sure not to whistle.”

“Whistle?” I repeated.

Mrs. Finklestein nodded. “Everyone knows that if you whistle at night, a sheyd will show up to scare you. And then there’ll be nothing you can do.”

Masha shook her head. “I don’t know how to whistle.” She sounded equal parts relieved and deeply afraid.

“It’s easy enough, dear,” Mrs. Finklestein said. “As the great Jewish actress Lauren Bacall once told Humphrey Bogart, you just have to put your lips together and blow.”

I had no idea who these Lauren and Humphrey people were, and Mrs. Finklestein didn’t care to explain. Instead she began to show us how to whistle. She actually sat there in her chair and mustered up enough air in her lungs to give the loudest, strongest, most ear-piercing whistle I’d ever heard.

I didn’t know if sheydim were real, but there was no way I was sticking around to find out. I didn’t say goodbye to Mrs. Finklestein—I didn’t even tell Masha to come with me. I just turned and ran off Mrs. Finklestein’s lawn, back down the road as fast as I could.

Masha’s high-pitched shriek followed a second later, and I heard the gravel crunching under her feet behind me.

“Good Shabbos!” Mrs. Finklestein’s fading voice called after us.

But this Shabbos was not good at all.

14

The Yellow Pages was a ginormous book that listed the name, address, and phone number of all the businesses in the area. It was a good thing to have when you needed to look up a phone number. And it was a good thing that Shir Gershon’s phone booth had the Yellow Pages, dangling from a thick wire cord connected to the bottom of the phone box.

The book’s thin yellow pages were wrinkled and bloated from water damage, and the pages were so warped that they snapped when I turned them, but I found an ad for the bus station there. It was a full-page spread, with a list of destinations the buses would take you to, along with their “Incredible Prices!” According to the ad, a trip to New York City would cost me twenty dollars. Which was seventeen dollars and twenty-seven cents more than I had.

If I wanted to take a bus back home, I’d need to find a way to make money. And I had no idea how to do that.

Well, I did have one idea. It wasn’t very good, but it was worth a shot.

I found Liat at her junk pile on Monday, where I knew she went every day after camp was over.

That huge smile of hers broke out on her face, so big it stretched her cheeks and made her eyes small. “I knew you’d be back,” she said as I walked up to her.

“I just thought that maybe you’d want this.” I held up a rusted old bike chain. My dad had it in his own junk pile, and I was pretty sure he wouldn’t miss it. “You could do a lot with a bike chain. You could create a pulley system by attaching a bucket to it to pull heavy stuff up to your tree house.”

Behind her glasses, Liat’s eyes sparkled. “I’ll take it!”

It was hard to say the next thing I needed to say, but it was why I was here. “Awesome. I’ll give it to you for five bucks.”

Liat tilted her head, looking at me funny, and I could feel my cheeks get hot the longer she stared. I had just made a ridiculous request, and she was going to call me out on it. I had to fix it.

“Okay, I’ll give it to you for two dollars,” I said.

Liat threw her head back and laughed. “You’re hilarious, Gigi!”

I sighed. On the one hand, I was glad she didn’t just blow me off like I probably deserved. But on the other hand, I was kind of frustrated now that I realized this would never work. I handed her the chain, free of charge. A pulley would be really cool for her tree house. Liat tossed the chain on her pile, which had only grown bigger since the first time I’d seen it a week before.

“Are you almost done collecting material?”

“Well,” Liat said, taking a deep breath. “I’m in the design stages right now. Gotta figure out how the tree house will look. I want a window in every wall, but I’m still not sure if I want, like, a balcony, you know? That’d be cool, but I dunno if I have the space for that.”

“You could use the crib wall you’ve got there,” I said.

She glanced at the big tree beside the pile, like she could already see the balcony forming in her mind’s eye. “Yeah, good idea!”

And when I looked at the tree, I could see what she saw. I imagined all the pieces coming together, no longer junk but a beautiful patchwork house.

“So when are you gonna start building?”

“Can’t,” Liat said. “Don’t have any tools.”

It was such a basic thing, the most important component of building anything, let alone a tree house. But Liat only shrugged like it was just a tiny detail that would work itself out eventually.

And I guess that was where I came in.

I forgot all about going into the woods for my afternoon of research. Suddenly there was something much more important to do.

“Whoa,” Liat said as we walked onto my screened-in porch.

It was pretty much the same reaction I’d had the first time I saw my dad’s worktable. There was just so much stuff on it. Sometimes when my dad worked at his workstation, he looked like a surgeon operating on a machine’s guts. Sometimes the kids in the bungalow colony would stand outside and watch him through the window screens.

They watched him the same way I watched movies—totally captivated. But I didn’t like that they stared. My dad wasn’t a movie; he was a person. My mom always said never to stare at people because when you did it meant that you thought they were unusual or strange. When the kids here stared at my dad, it meant their fathers didn’t do things like this. Whenever their fathers sat at a table, it was usually to study Torah.

It was just another thing that reminded me how different my dad was from everyone else’s fathers.

But he wasn’t here right now, so there was nothing for Liat to stare at except a table full of machine parts and tools.

“I’m sure we can find everything you need here,” I told Liat. I grabbed one of the many toolboxes my dad had on the shelf against the wall and dumped the contents out on the table, creating an even bigger mess. But the good thing about having a messy father was that once there was already a mess, you couldn’t even notice a new mess on top of it. You could make as much mess as you wanted and he’d never know the difference.

I spotted a hammer right away and put it in the toolbox. Then I added a small box of nails.

“Won’t your father mind if we take this stuff?”

“We’ll bring everything back,” I said. “Well, except for the nails, but there’s a million of them. And you see how many tools he has. He’s got, like, five different hammers.”

“And only two hands!” Liat said, nodding. “He can’t possibly use all of them.”

“Right. My dad won’t notice anything’s gone. He doesn’t notice anything I do, anyway.”

But someone else did notice.

“What are you guys doing?”

Liat and I turned around to see Masha. She was standing outside the screen door, her forehead pressed against the mesh, morphing her face into a dark, angry mask.

“Nothing,” I said. Even though I’d told Liat I wasn’t interested in helping her with her tree house, I kept getting pulled toward her and the project. Liat was weird. But she was a good-funny-happy type of weird. And while I felt different from everyone else at this bungalow colony, Liat definitely was different. Just by the things she was interested in and the way she acted, like she didn’t care what anybody else thought about her. I didn’t know Liat that well yet, but I could already tell that she wouldn’t judge me for who I was . . . or wasn’t. Like she didn’t care where my family came from, or that I was only at this bungalow colony because my father was an employee here.

I hadn’t officially even agreed to work on the tree house yet, but I guess providing the tools for the project technically meant I was a part of it. It kind of felt like a secret. And if this tree house was going to be a secret clubhouse, off in a part of the bungalow colony that nobody went to anyway, then we had to keep all this under wraps. Which meant not telling Masha about it. Because if there was one thing Masha was good at, it was blabbing.

“Can I help?” Masha asked.

“You don’t even know what we’re doing,” I said.

Masha’s eyes went wide with a new shiny thought. “Are you searching for buried treasure?”

“No,” I said.

“Well, I could still help,” Masha said. “I’m good at a lot of things.”

“This involves heavy lifting,” Liat said. “And design. And math, probably. And fine motor skills. Are you good at any of that?”

“No,” Masha blurted, but then shook her head quickly. “I mean, yes.”

I wanted to go, but there was just one more tool I was looking for. I rummaged through the metal scraps and tools on the table. My dad had an all-purpose multitool. It was cool because on the outside it just looked like a hard metal rectangle that could fit in the palm of your hand. But when you started to twist it apart, it was like a Transformer—it became something else. Inside it were pliers that doubled as a wrench, Phillips head and flathead screwdrivers, a ruler, and even a knife. “Found it!”

I plunked it into the toolbox and walked out of the porch, Liat following close behind.

“Can I come with you guys?” Masha asked. “You won’t even know I’m there!”

But Liat and I were already jogging a few paces ahead of her.

“Sorry, Masha,” Liat said. “This is a top secret project!”

15

I have been slightly sidetracked by Liat’s tree house, but G-d knows she needs all the help she can get, so I’m going to do my best to help her while also staying on track with my mission to run away. Both projects are top secret, and both have been keeping me busy. But I finally think I have all the details ironed out for my running-away plan. And I know one thing for sure: It’s definitely going to work.

It goes like this—

1. Walk through woods.

2. Use my dad’s map to find bus station and buy ticket.

3. Get on bus back to NYC.

4. Take the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

5. Walk home.

6. See my mom again.

If you really think about it, the walking through the woods part is going to be the hardest step in the process. But once I get that done, then it’s just a matter of enjoying a three-hour bus ride. I guess it might be kind of hard navigating the subway in New York City, since I’ve never done it alone. But I’ve been on the F train plenty of times, taking it to Thirty-Fourth Street on Sundays to go shopping with my mom and Yasmin. And once I get to our apartment, my mom will be there, and she’ll be so happy to see me. Sure, she’ll be surprised at first, but she won’t be able to believe that I managed to get all the way home by myself. She’ll see that I’m mature. That I’m capable of staying home while she’s at work the rest of the summer. That I can take care of myself.

It’s a perfect plan. And it has to work. There’s really just one problem. A bus ticket back to New York City is going to cost twenty dollars. I don’t have that much money yet, and I have no idea how to get it. I could ask my dad for an allowance, like the kids in TV shows get. But I think he’d just laugh at me. I tried selling some junk to Liat, but she did actually laugh at me. So my plan to run away will have to wait until I collect enough money. In the meantime, there’s the tree house. This is probably going to be the only chance I ever get to build a tree house, so I might as well give it a shot.

And I know I can work on the secret tree house and my secret plan to run away at the same time. I think I am becoming an expert at top secret stuff, and I like it that way.

Liat and I split up our work duties according to who was best at doing what. In my notebook, I sketched out different design ideas for what I thought the tree house should look like. Liat organized her junk pile into categories for what the materials could potentially become.

The ruler on my dad’s multitool was only four inches long—way too small to make most measurements—so we used the length of our arms to determine how long things needed to be. Our first joint design agreement was that the floor of the tree house would be a rectangle that was two arms wide by four arms long, armpit to fingertips.

But the first time we used any of my dad’s tools was to nail boards to the tree trunk (separated from each other by half an arm’s length, from elbow to wrist) to create stairs. It was just as I was nailing the final board that I heard a rumble of giggles zipping by, like air being let out of a balloon. I looked around, and for once it wasn’t Liat who was laughing. The Klein twins—the same boys who had hidden under Yasmin’s bed on our first day here—ran right into our workspace.

“Hey!” I shouted. But they ignored me, skipping through the junk littering the ground. Just as soon as they’d appeared they were gone again, ducking behind trees until they went so far that I couldn’t see them anymore. I don’t think I’d ever seen them standing still. Did they ever slow down? Stop to tie their shoes? Sleep?

“Did they take anything?” I asked.

“Nah, my brothers know not to touch my stuff.”

I put my arm down, letting the hammer thud softly against my skirt. “The Klein boys are your brothers?”

“Liat Klein, nice to meet ya.”

I stared at her, not sure what to say. I was surprised that Liat and the Kleins were related, but I was also shocked at myself that I hadn’t ever bothered to ask Liat what her last name was. What else didn’t I know about her? “How come you never mentioned them?”

Liat shrugged. “Everybody knows who my brothers are. And you never asked.” She went back to the pile and picked out a broken blade from a ceiling fan, placing it on the ground perpendicular to a piece of wood she’d been measuring. “And also, most people think my brothers are weirdo troublemaking twins who sneak around and steal everything in sight, but that’s not true.”

I looked at her sideways. “It’s not?”

Liat shook her head. “No! They’re six and seven. Not twins.”

“Oh,” I said. “So the rest is true?”

“Well, they are weirdos,” Liat said. “And they do sneak around. And I dunno why, but they love stealing stuff. My mom says they have kleptomania. It’s a condition people have where they steal the most random things—stuff they don’t even want—for absolutely no good reason! Don’t worry, though—I’m nothing like them. I’m totally normal,” she said, grinning.

I looked around at all the stuff on the ground, suddenly wondering where Liat had managed to find all this material. But she caught me staring and seemed to read my mind.

“I didn’t steal any of this!” she said in her big laughing voice. “People threw all this stuff out. They don’t realize the treasures they’ve got right under their noses.”

My mom always told me never to take anything that didn’t belong to me. She said that if anything ever went missing at her work, the first person they would suspect would be the cleaning lady. Or the foreigner. And being suspected of something was the worst feeling.

I knew what that was like. In fourth grade, I found a pencil on the floor. It was pink, purple, and shiny, and just about the coolest pencil I’d ever seen. But about two minutes later, Esty—the original owner of the pencil—saw me holding it, snatched it out of my hands, and called me a klepto.

It sounded like a dirty word, but Liat had just used it, so maybe it wasn’t too bad?

“So your brothers are the Klepto Kleins of Shir Gershon.”

I didn’t mean to say it out loud. It sounded kind of funny in my head, but as soon as I said it, I realized Liat might not find it so funny. And for a moment, she didn’t react. But then she doubled over, laughing so hard she could hardly get any words out. “The Klepto Kleins!” she hollered. “That’s the best nickname for them ever!”

Her laughter was infectious and I couldn’t help it—I busted out laughing too.

When our laughs eventually quieted down and we went back to work, I decided to ask Liat something I’d been meaning to ask her for a while now. “Hey, Liat?”

“Yeah?”

“Why is your family’s bungalow all the way out here? It’s so far away from the rest of the bungalows. And so close to the woods.”

“It’s the only bungalow we can afford,” Liat said. “My dad says it’s cheaper because it doesn’t get a lot of sunlight with all the trees around here. Plus, nobody wants to stay so far away from everyone else. But we don’t mind it. Nobody bothers us out here.”

“Oh.” It was just another thing that made Liat different from the other people at Shir Gershon. She didn’t fit in with any of the other girls in our group. Living all the way out here, her family literally didn’t fit in with the rest of the families in the colony. And with the way her brothers stole anything they could get their hands on, I doubted they fit in too well either.

“I actually like being all the way out here,” Liat said. “If we were too close to other bungalows, then our neighbors would probably have a problem with all my loud singing.”

I smiled. “You do sing a lot.”

“Well, I have a beautiful voice.” Liat batted her eyelashes at me, and we both cracked up again. “Plus if we had neighbors, they’d definitely have a problem with all the junk I’ve been collecting.”

Not to mention all the junk on the front lawn of the bungalow too. There were a bunch of toys littering the lawn, which I now just assumed was stuff her brothers had found. They were like puppies who collected bones and brought them back to their property to bury.

“I sorta wish I lived far from everyone too,” I said. “Not that it matters much. I’ll be out of here soon enough.”

“You’re leaving?” Liat asked. “Why?”

“Because I hate it here.”

“Really?” She seemed surprised. “I love it.”

Liat, who sang songs to herself and didn’t seem to have any other friends but me, loved it here? “Why?”

“There’s so many awesome things to do! I mean, I’m building a tree house! I can’t do that back home.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Queens,” Liat answered.

I didn’t know too much about that borough, but I knew it was part of New York City. It was probably a lot like Brooklyn.

“Don’t you miss it?” I asked. “We’re in the middle of the wilderness with nowhere to go.”

Liat shrugged. “You could just leave out the front gate whenever you want.”

“What?” For the second time today, I stared at Liat like she was speaking a different language. “You can open the gate? I thought only my dad could open the gate.”

“Anyone can open it; it’s not locked!” Liat said, giggling. “Have you not ridden your bike down to the lake yet? Oh man, you gotta do it, Gigi.”

The more Liat talked, the more confused I became. We were twelve years old—in what world would we be allowed to ride our bikes outside of the bungalow colony all the way down to a lake? “I can’t just . . . go.”

“Why not? Your mom’s not here, and you said your dad doesn’t notice anything you do.”

This whole time I’d been planning to sneak off through the farthest corner of the bungalow colony and through the woods. But Liat had just opened up a whole new world for me. Was it true? Could I just leave through the front gate?

16

I had only two things with me: my bike and my lavender Velcro wallet with a white My Little Pony design. It contained all the money I had, which was only three dollars and fifty cents, but Liat said it would be enough. She didn’t say what the money would be for, just that I’d be happy I brought it. It wasn’t like I was planning to spend it—all the money I had was going to my bus-ticket fund—but my mom always said it was a good idea to leave the house with a little bit of cash, in case of emergencies. Except I wasn’t just leaving the house, I was leaving the whole bungalow colony.

It had been surprisingly easy. Even though I’d only be gone for a couple of hours at the most, I still didn’t feel right going without asking for my dad’s permission. Which was funny when you thought about it, ’cause I planned on running away through the woods without my dad’s permission. But that was different. When I ran away, I wouldn’t have to face my dad and see how angry he’d get. But here I knew I was definitely coming back later. And I didn’t want to come back and have him ground me in the bungalow for the rest of the summer.

So after day camp on Tuesday, I found my dad and asked if I could ride my bike down Happy Road. I was expecting him to say no, but it turned out he didn’t care if I took my bike down Happy Road. All he wanted to know was who I was going with and when I’d be back.

“See? Easy-peasy,” Liat said at the entrance to Shir Gershon. She demonstrated just how simple it was to swing open the big front gate. The two of us walked our bikes onto the side of the road. Liat closed the gate and mounted her bike. She fastened her helmet, ready to go. But I hesitated.

“There are cars on this road,” I said. Well, there weren’t any now. And there hadn’t been any for the few minutes that we’d been standing here. But that didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be any cars soon. What if one showed up? There weren’t any sidewalks we could ride on, just grass and bushes along the side of the road. We’d be sharing the street with the cars. I’d never done that before. Suddenly this whole idea of biking out of the bungalow colony on our own with no grown-ups in sight seemed really dangerous. If my mother knew what I was doing right now, she’d freak out and shout all the Spanish words I didn’t know and make me march right back to the bungalow.

“Just stay as close to the grass as possible,” Liat instructed. “I’ll ride in front of you so I’ll alert you if a car is coming.”

I looked down the road. We were at the top of a hill, which meant a steep decline. I didn’t even know how I’d react if I saw a car coming. “How will you warn me?” I asked. “Will there be, like, a code word?”

“Even better,” Liat said. “I’ll sing a song.”

I gulped down a deep breath. “This is no time for jokes, Liat.”

“It’s always a good time for jokes,” Liat said. “But who said I was joking?”

She winked at me, and then she pedaled off, laughing as she sped up. “Come on, Gigi! Don’t fall behind!”

She was speeding away, her giggles mixing with the breeze. And if there was one thing scarier than riding my bike down a steep road where cars could come flying at me any minute, it was doing it alone. I tapped my helmet to make sure it was on securely, and then I mounted my bike, pedaling fast to catch up to Liat, whose skirt whipped like a flag over her back wheel.

A minute later, when the bungalow colony was far behind us, small as an afterthought, I stopped pedaling because gravity was doing the job for me. I was going faster then I’d ever gone before, my bicycle suddenly feeling more like a motorcycle. My knuckles were turning white from holding the handlebars so tightly, and I locked my elbows just to ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally let go. I felt the wind like it was a banner at the end of a marathon and I was constantly breaking through it.

It was nerve-racking and wild and my heart was pounding out of my chest, but it wasn’t exactly . . . scary. And I couldn’t help but grin.

Liat, who’d clearly done this a million times before, knew this feeling already. She ignored her own advice of staying close to the grass and rode her bike straight down the middle of the road. She even rode one-handed, turning her head back to make sure I was behind her. She talked about the places we were passing, even though it was mostly fields and cornstalks, with a few houses in between.

She pointed to a vague spot to her left and shouted, “Great place for firefly viewing!”

I glanced to the left, then back to Liat and said, “Right now?”

“Of course not!” she shouted over her shoulder. “Everyone knows the best time to see fireflies is in early summer around sunset!”

I nodded stiffly, the strap of my helmet scratching beneath my chin. We were zooming down the road, and I found it hard to concentrate. But Liat just kept talking.

“Over there there’s a bunch of shameplants!”

I looked at where she pointed while trying to make sense of what she’d just said. “Shame . . . what?”

“Plants!” said Liat.

“Why are they called—”

“Duh, because they’re ashamed of themselves!” Liat giggled.

I tried to laugh too, but I didn’t get the joke. And also I was afraid if I laughed, I might veer off Happy Road. Wind up on . . . Sad Road.

“There isn’t a Sad Road around here, is there?” I asked.

Liat laughed even more. “You’re hilarious!”

But her voice was drowned out by the roar of an engine. Then I saw the car in the distance. It was coming straight up the road, directly where we were. Directly where Liat was.

“Uh, Liat?” I said nervously.

She already knew what to do. That was when her song came into play.

“A car! A car! A C-A-R, if you wanna get hit, just stay where you are!”

The song was more of a cheer, but it got the point across. Liat swerved to the left, riding directly in front of me. The car was still coming. It didn’t even bother slowing down. I pressed the soles of my sneakers down into the pedals, the backs of my fingers into the grips on my handlebars, and I bit down even though I had nothing to bite into. The car was just a few feet away. A few seconds. And I screamed.

I kept screaming even as it sped past us, and Liat let her head roll back and laughed and laughed.

My scream started out as a reaction to being afraid, but after a while, when it was just us two on Happy Road and a blur of green around us, I screamed without any fear. For that one moment, I forgot all about being stuck in the country for the summer, because it didn’t feel like I was stuck anymore. Speeding down Happy Road, I screamed like I’d been set free.

17

“Here we are,” Liat said.

She hopped off her bike and let it fall to the ground. I did the same thing. Before us was the biggest body of water I’d ever seen that wasn’t an ocean. I’d grown up around oceans my whole life. In Brooklyn, there was the Atlantic. It was easy to get to by the F train straight to Coney Island on hot summer Sundays. In Peru, we lived in Lima, the capital city right on the coast of the Pacific, where surfers took their longboards out on the pebble beaches. I’d always loved the ocean.

My tía Bécki in Peru would say that if you made sure to dunk yourself all the way in natural water during the summer, you’d have a good, lucky year. It was my favorite summer ritual. In Coney Island, my mom, Yasmin, and I would go into the water at the start of the summer, stopping when the water reached our knees because it was so cold. But my mom would remind us of Tía Bécki’s advice. She’d hold her nose and plunge into the water and pop back out again, yelping but laughing. I didn’t think I’d be able to dunk myself in any natural water this summer, because I knew there wouldn’t be any beaches in upstate New York. But as I stared out at this lake, excitement and a new hope rose up in me.

The lake reached so far out that it looked like it lapped up on the shores of different counties. I’d never seen anything like it. Liat headed for one of its docks.

“Kauneonga Lake, oh baby!” she sang.

It was a short song—four words repeated over and over again—but the way Liat sang it, lingering on the long vowels, it was pretty catchy. I found myself repeating the words under my breath. “Kauneonga Lake, oh baby!”

“Do you have a song for everything?” I asked.

“Yep!” Liat said. “I made this one up myself.”

“Are those the only words?”

“Uh-huh. Simple but effective. Kauneonga Lake.” Liat spread her arms wide, gesturing to the massive lake.

“Oh baby,” I finished for her. The song made perfect sense to me.

“There are the shameplants I was telling you about,” Liat said. She gestured to a crop of leaves just before the dock. I squinted at the plant. It bore little grasslike leaves that sprouted in two neat rows along the stem. But I didn’t see what made them special. Or shameful, for that matter.

“They look like any other plant,” I said.

“Try touching it,” Liat said.

I crouched down next to the plant and slowly held out my index finger, not knowing what to expect. It felt like a prank. Like at any minute Liat would try to spook me, or burst out laughing about how she made me touch a plant. But I was willing to take the risk. Finally, my fingertip reached the shameplant, and I swiped down along the length of the stem.

A second later, the two rows of leaves folded in on themselves and drooped. I couldn’t help the gasp that left my lips. The plant closed up, like it had all the characteristics of a shy human. Like it was . . . ashamed.

I looked up at Liat, stunned.

“Told ya,” she said. Then she walked away like it was no big deal that a plant acted like it was too embarrassed to be touched. She bounded down the wooden dock, taking off her sneakers, rolling her socks off next.

I wanted to keep tickling the shameplant—I’d never seen anything like it—but Liat was clearly on to our next adventure and I wanted to keep up. “Is this your dock?”

She looked at me, confused, then cracked up, and I realized how dumb the question was. If her family couldn’t even afford one of the nicer bungalows, how could they afford a whole dock, or a boat to be parked next to it, for that matter? “What I meant was, is this a public dock? Like, can anybody just come here and stand on it?”

There were other docks around us, but those had small rowboats next to them. This one had nothing next to it. It just stuck out over the lake like a plank off a pirate ship.

“Beats me,” Liat said. “This is the one I’ve been using for years. Nobody’s ever told me not to, so I figure we’re not gonna get in trouble.”

I looked around. The lake was quiet, peaceful, even though part of it was right next to Happy Road. A little farther down, I could see a plain brown building with a red crest over its big red garage doors. The fire station. At least we were close to rescue if we needed it. And across the street from that was a bait and tackle shop. This was the closest I’d been to civilization since I’d gotten here over a week ago.

Now that she was barefoot, Liat clutched her skirt around her thighs and dipped into the water. It was shallow here and lapped up around her knees. “Bet you never saw a fish with a mustache before.”

“What are you talking about? Fish don’t have mustaches.”

“Not true! Catfish do,” Liat said. “They’re small here—small as your fingers!—and they’re funny looking. Black and oily. And there’s the matter of their mustaches, of course.”

“You’re kidding.”

She stopped searching the water and looked me straight in the eye. “I would never joke about fish with mustaches, Gigi.”

My first instinct was not to believe her. But Liat had just shown me a plant that didn’t like to be touched. Anything was possible. I took off my sneakers as quick as I could. If there were fish with mustaches, I needed to see them.

The water wasn’t cold, like I thought it was going to be. But it wasn’t like beach water, either, which was always rough with waves and foam and little bits of sand that scratched against your legs. Lake water was different. The bottom of the lake was covered with stones so smooth and round I had to be careful not to slip on them. But the water itself? That was the best part. It felt like silk on my skin. It moved over my hands and feet like the smoothest bedsheet you could imagine. And the water was so clear that I could see my feet, every detail of them.

But I still didn’t see any catfish.

Liat seemed to forget about the fish altogether. She was wading farther out, and she didn’t care about holding her skirt up anymore. It dragged down with the weight of the water. I didn’t want to do that. When I got back to the bungalow, my dad would ask me why I was all wet, and then I’d have to explain and then he might get mad that I went in the lake without any adult supervision.

I was determined to hold my skirt up no matter what.

Suddenly something darted by my foot.

“AH!” I screamed, immediately dropping my skirt.

“What?” Liat hurried over to me.

“I think I see one!” I pointed at the little black fish squirming around my leg. It looked like a tiny eel.

“That’s it!” Liat said. “That’s a catfish!”

I bent over, trying to see his little face. And there they were—two tendrils floated out over the sides of its upper lip. A mustache. Just like Liat had said.

“That fish really does have a mustache!” I gasped.

My excitement made Liat crack up. “You bet it does, ol’ buddy ol’ pal!”

Ol’ buddy ol’ pal? I didn’t know what Liat was talking about, but that was the funniest phrase I ever heard. So funny I had to repeat it myself.

“Ol’ buddy ol’ pal.” I laughed. “That fish looks like Cantinflas!”

“Kahn-teen-flahs?” Liat asked.

“My mom’s favorite funny actor. He’s Mexican.” It occurred to me that Liat would have no idea who a Mexican comedy actor was. She probably didn’t even know any American actors. And I tried to think of the best way to explain who Cantinflas was—an icon half the world knew about, just not Liat’s half. He had a distinctive mustache: two small tufts of hair above the corners of his mouth. But as I tried to think of the best way to explain who Cantinflas was, I realized I didn’t have to. Liat didn’t need an explanation; she was tickled by the sound of his name alone.

“Kahn-teen-flahs,” she repeated, wheezing herself silly. “We’ll name this fish Kahn-teen-flahs.”

Liat and I laughed so hard we didn’t care that our clothes were sopping wet. And now that I was soaked, I figured this was as good a time as any. I started walking into the lake even more.

“You’re going in kind of deep,” Liat said.

I turned to her and nodded, the water reaching my waist.

“Whatcha doin’?” Liat asked.

I took a deep breath and puffed my cheeks out to show Liat that I was planning to hold it for a long time.

“You’re going under?” Liat asked. “Really?”

I smiled, squeezed my eyes shut, and dove beneath the water. I dunked so low I made sure even the tips of my hair were submerged in the silky-smooth waters of Kauneonga Lake. I could start to feel the luck already.

18

It was late afternoon when we rode our bikes back, which was harder this time around because we had to go uphill. And because we were soaked. For some of the way we even got off our bikes and pushed them up the hill because it was too hard to pedal. But that was okay, because Liat said we were coming up on our ice cream break.

“Come on. This way.” Liat turned to what I thought was a group of trees. But she walked a few paces, and the trees opened up to a whole other bungalow colony. There was a sign above the gate that said Klosenburg, but Liat read it with an exaggerated Brooklyn accent so it sounded like kloy-sen-boyg.

As soon as we walked through the gate, I realized this bungalow colony was different from Shir Gershon. For one thing, it was Chasidic. Chasidic Jews were ultra-Orthodox, and the way they were different was right there in the name. They weren’t just religious—they were ultra religious. All the girls wore white tights, even in the summer heat, and the boys had long curly payos on the sides of their faces. A lot of them only spoke Yiddish. And unlike the kids at Shir Gershon, who didn’t go to the movies, the Chasidic kids here probably didn’t even know what movies were. Their life here in Klosenburg, hidden among the trees, was a lot like their life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: closed off from the rest of the world.

And because of that, whenever they saw someone new, they tended to just stop and stare. Which was what they did now as Liat and I walked our bikes into their midst. Boys stopped bouncing their balls, girls watched us and whispered to each other. I wondered what they thought of us, two strange girls in wet clothes. But Liat didn’t pay any attention to the stares. When they stood back to let us pass, we walked right through like the Jews walking through the Red Sea in the Passover story.

Liat walked her bike straight up to a little shed. It didn’t look like much, but inside there was a huge horizontal freezer chest and a man behind a counter with a money box open.

“Best ice cream in all of upstate New York,” Liat whispered to me. “Also, technically, the only ice cream we can get around here without needing an adult to drive us.”

She bent over the open freezer and came back out with an orange Creamsicle.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Liat gawked at me, her eyes going wide behind her glasses. “You’ve never had a Creamsicle before?”

I shook my head.

“Oh man, it’s the best!” Liat said. “It’s orange icy on the outside, and then vanilla ice cream on the inside. Textures, flavors, colors—it’s got it all!”

I licked my lips at the thought of trying it. A sign taped to the side of the freezer said all the ice pops were fifty cents. It wasn’t too much, and I had brought my cash with me. Watching Liat tear open her Creamsicle wrapper made my stomach rumble. But I was saving my money. I needed it for my bus ticket home. No matter how much fun I’d had today, I couldn’t blow my mission to get out of here just for an ice cream.

“None for me, thanks.”

Liat shook her head like I was being silly. She dropped two quarters into the open cash box and then turned to me, her Creamsicle in between us. It had two Popsicle sticks, and Liat carefully bent them apart until the ice cream bar broke down the middle with a satisfying pop. “Here,” she said. “We didn’t come all this way for you not to have the best ice cream in upstate New York.”

I held the Popsicle in my hand. My mouth hanged open, weighed down by a “thank you” that just wouldn’t come out. I guess I was too shocked by Liat’s kindness. And by the fact that it was no big deal to her. She was already slurping up the orange drops that were melting down her stick. With her free hand she pulled up her bike’s handlebar.

“Thank you,” I eventually said.

“My pleasure, ol’ buddy ol’ pal.”

We got back on the road to Shir Gershon. Even though the road had evened out by now and we could’ve been riding, we thought it best not to chance it. Ice cream should be enjoyed, not rushed. We walked our bikes and slurped the melty orange-icy-and-vanilla-ice-cream Popsicle in silence. Liat was right: It was mind-blowingly good.

“So, did you like the lake?” Liat asked after a few minutes.

I nodded. “I loved the lake,” I said.

Liat nodded, too. “I knew you would. See, this place isn’t so bad.”

No, I guess it wasn’t too bad. When I first got here, I thought life in the country would be old-fashioned. No TV, no movie theater, and none of the other things that came with city life, like getting a slice of pizza or visiting the library whenever I wanted. But there were other things—things I definitely couldn’t find back in Brooklyn—that made it kind of worthwhile.

Still, it didn’t mean I loved it all. I’d already finished the orange part of my Creamsicle and was down to the creamy center. “Yeah, the place isn’t too bad,” I said. “But the people . . .”

Liat licked her own Creamsicle silently, waiting for me to continue.

“The other girls in camp.” I didn’t think I needed to say much else. Liat knew just as well as I did that the other girls in camp weren’t the greatest. But she kept watching me, waiting for me to go on. “You know they call you Junk Girl, right?”

“I know,” Liat said simply.

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Liat shrugged. “Not really.” She tilted the Popsicle sideways so it was parallel to her lips, and took a big hungry bite of the last remaining clump of vanilla.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I’ve been coming to Shir Gershon for years,” Liat said, but she had to mumble it because of the clump of vanilla in her mouth that was still too cold to swallow. “I’ve been around those girls every summer since I was six. They don’t bother me.” She finally swallowed, but winced, pressing her palm into her temple. “Brain freeze!” she roared.

We walked, and I waited for Liat’s brain freeze to cool down. When it finally did, she continued. “People back home in Queens think I’m weird too. And if people on two different sides of New York think I’m weird, then I really must be an odd duck.”

That was an Americanism I’d never heard of before. Odd duck.

“But what’s so wrong about being an odd duck?” Liat went on. “That’s just who I am. And if people think that about me, well, what am I supposed to do about it? Change?”

Liat made a face, both shocked and flabbergasted. She made the idea of changing sound absolutely preposterous.

“And then what?” Liat continued. “Stop singing my awesome songs that make me really happy? Stop trying to build the best tree house that this bungalow colony has ever seen? No way José. That seems like a most awful way to live. And no one can make me do it. Nuh-uh. Never ever.”

“So you’d rather be the Junk Girl?” I asked.

“Better the Junk Girl than the Boring Girl, like Baily Baum and Sara Tisch,” Liat said.

I snorted. “They are boring, aren’t they?”

Liat nodded emphatically, her round wire glasses slipping down her nose. She pushed them back up and bit on her damp wooden Popsicle stick. “You know they don’t ride bikes because they don’t want their skirts to drag along the back wheel and get all dirty?”

I glanced at Liat’s skirt. There was a dirt stripe along the back of it. And when I glanced at the back of my own skirt, I saw an identical stripe.

“And they don’t ever sing ’cause they’re afraid people will find out they don’t have good voices.”

“That never stopped you,” I said.

Liat snorted. “Damn straight, ol’ buddy ol’ pal! Those two girls have been coming to the bungalow colony since they were babies, and they never once even held a salamander in their hands. I mean, that’s a rite of passage in the country!”

The realization hit me like a lightning bolt. “They are so boring,” I said.

Liat laughed her nasally laugh.

“As I was saying,” she continued. “Did you know there are some people who don’t like Creamsicles?”

“Impossible,” I said. “And also, you weren’t saying that, actually.”

“What I mean is, I may not be everyone’s favorite flavor. And that’s okay by me. Only very cool geniuses like orange Creamsicles.”

I smiled and finished the last bit of my Popsicle. I’d been wrong about Liat. She wasn’t weird at all. She was awesome.

When I got back to my bungalow, I hoped my dad wouldn’t be there so I could quickly change out of my wet clothes, even though they had already started to dry. But he was home. He sat at his messy tool table on the porch, hunched over his welding stuff. The smell of melting metal filled the small space. I was ready to explain why I was all wet, and say how sorry I was so that he’d let me go out bike riding to the lake again.

But all my dad did was look at me and then turn back to his welding.

He didn’t even notice my wet clothes. And although it would’ve probably gotten me in trouble, I sort of wish he had.

19

The next day, I headed to the basketball court after day camp. There were usually a few basketballs on the court that people had forgotten. Sometimes the balls would be out there so long that the sun would bake them and make their rubber blister and bust. I was hoping to find a ball that was still good enough to play with. But when I got to the court, there weren’t any balls. Instead, there was a mattress laid out and a whole crew of boys standing around it. It looked like they were waiting to take turns jumping on it, because they all watched as one of the boys did just that.

“What’s this?” I said it out loud. None of the boys turned to answer me. But Masha was there, of course, suddenly next to me. I’m not sure where she came from. But like always, she knew everything that was going on.

“It’s the boys’ camp flipping showcase,” she said. “They’re practicing.”

“The what?”

“The boys’ camp flipping showcase,” Masha repeated. “Every summer they take a bunch of mattresses and line them up in a runway from one end of the basketball court to the other, and all the boys run on it and do as many flips as they can. It’s just like gymnastics at the Olympics except no uniforms and no judges and no medals. But they still pretend it’s a real sport.”

I turned to watch them.

Izzy Baum was pretending extra hard. And then I remembered Yasmin’s diary entry.

Izzy had begun training every day on an old mattress in his backyard. And I only knew that because my sister knew that and wrote about it in detail. Later that day I caught her spying on Izzy, peeking through a hole in the wooden fence around the Baums’ backyard.

“What are you doing?” I asked. The fence was both a blessing and a curse for my sister. The Baum’s house was the only one in the whole colony that even had a fence, which made it harder for my sister to spy on her crush. But it also made it easier for her to hide while she spied on him.

“Nothing,” Yasmin said. “Go away.”

But I didn’t go away. Instead, I found another spot in the fence where the wooden posts were far enough apart for me to peek through. Izzy wore a button-down short-sleeve shirt, and every time he jumped, it rode up and he had to tuck it into his pants. It definitely wasn’t the right clothing for jumping, but it was the right clothing for Yasmin’s viewing pleasure. Izzy jumped once, twice, three times, and then he flipped.

Or tried to. He held on to his yarmulka with one hand and his glasses with the other, but he forgot to hold on to his pants, which were baggy, and slid down his butt, exposing his light blue boxers.

“No wonder you’re watching this!” I couldn’t hold in my laughter. Seeing Izzy Baum desperately try to pick up his pants while upside down in midair was better than anything I could’ve seen on my favorite sitcom.

Yasmin shoved my shoulder. “What’s so funny? Do you know how hard it is to do a flip?”

“Judging by Izzy Baum, I’m guessing really hard?”

“Yeah, it is,” she hissed. “That’s why it’s called practicing.”

“He doesn’t need to practice.” I said through my giggles. “He needs to quit.”

But Yasmin was not at all amused. “You quit it or he’ll hear you!”

It looked like Yasmin was going to be enduring his practices as long as he was.

“The boys have been doing their flipping showcase for years,” Liat explained. We were at the tree house site, sorting through our junk pile in the evening. Liat had found another broken dresser by the dumpsters—a great find because it was made out of sturdy wood. The dresser could be recycled into flooring, walls, or a roof. “But I’m sure they’ll put an end to it the second someone breaks an arm.”

“Why don’t the girls get to do the flipping showcase?” I asked. I was using a hammer to pry apart one of the drawers.

“Because there would be a lot of broken arms,” Liat said.

“Why?” I tossed a piece of wood on the ground. “Do girls break their arms more than boys?”

Liat shrugged. “Girls aren’t as rough as boys. Boys do things that break their bones all the time. This is just a way to get their sillies out.”

I thought about it. Liat was wrong, us girls wouldn’t all break our arms, but it was only because we didn’t do dumb things to put ourselves in danger. We should still be allowed to flip on mattresses if we wanted to. “I just don’t think it’s fair,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Liat said. “But can you even imagine Baily or Sara doing a flip?” She giggled to herself at the mere thought of it.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Liat and I turned around to find Morry Baum watching us.

Since Liat and I had started working on our tree house, this spot had felt like it belonged to us. It was so far on the outskirts of the bungalow colony that no one ever came here. No one knew about it. No one bothered us. And now here was Morry invading our sacred space. He was like an ant who crawled out of some dark corner, here to ruin our picnic.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Liat’s shoulders drooping. “Rats,” she grumbled under her breath.

But I wasn’t going to give in to Morry. “It’s none of your business,” I said.

Morry looked up at the tree, and at the rungs we’d already attached to the trunk. And I know we must have been doing good work, because it didn’t take him long to recognize what it was he was looking at.

“Don’t tell me you’re building a tree house,” he said.

“Okay, we won’t tell you,” Liat muttered.

“What do you guys know about building tree houses?” Morry spat.

“Everything,” I said, even though, actually, me and Liat didn’t know the first thing about it.

“Girls can’t build tree houses,” Morry said.

Liat’s gaze swung over to me, as if she was hoping I had a good answer for Morry’s claim. She may have thought girls couldn’t do flips, but she knew just as well as I did that we could build a tree house. Still, I could see how Morry’s words were getting to her, planting seeds of doubt. I needed to remind Liat—and Morry—that girls could do anything.

“Yes, we can build a tree house,” I said. “My dad taught me how to build things. And he gave me all these tools to work with.” A tiny lie never hurt anyone. “I bet you don’t even know what this is.” I held up the multitool. It was closed, so there was really no way to tell what it was unless you opened it up. And judging by the questioning look on Morry’s face, he definitely had no idea what I was showing him.

“A Swiss Army knife?” he guessed.

I smiled, triumphant. It was a small victory, catching Morry off guard, but it felt like winning a battle. “Nope,” I said.

“Whatever, I don’t care what it is,” Morry said. “It looks dumb anyway.” Then he walked over to the dresser I was in middle of taking apart. “And this is my sister’s dresser,” he said.

“It was by the dumpster,” Liat said.

“So what?” Morry said. “You can’t have it.” He picked up one end of it and started dragging it away.

Liat and I watched him go. “Well, there goes our floor. Or wall. Or roof,” she said.

“For now,” I mumbled. I may have won the battle, but somehow Morry still made it feel like he’d won the war.

20

While the boys had their flipping showcase, the girls’ camp had their own special event.

“A mock wedding!” the head counselor announced the next day.

Baily and Sara turned to each other and squealed, bouncing on the balls of their feet and clutching each other’s hands. We were all outside, lined up in our groups, and had just finished our calisthenics and cheers. But it seemed we’d be staying out here in the sun a little longer so that head counselor Mimi could explain more about this event.

Mimi said that a mock wedding was an activity where everyone got assigned roles of people in a wedding party. We’d all pretend like we were having a wedding, with food and music and dancing.

“Why do we get a fake wedding when the boys get to jump around on mattresses?” I whispered to Liat, who stood in front of me. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I know,” Liat whispered back. “They’re gonna risk breaking their necks while we get to play dress-up. Poor boys.”

Liat totally didn’t get my meaning. I didn’t want to play dress-up. Weddings sounded boring, especially fake ones. But everyone around me was buzzing with anticipation. Even the girls from the younger groups seemed excited to get the chance to put on fancy dresses and wear their mothers’ jewelry for the day.

But I didn’t have any of my mothers’ jewelry to borrow. And I wasn’t about to ask Yasmin if I could have her choker. Chokers didn’t seem like proper wedding attire. I glanced at Yasmin, wondering if she had known about this mock wedding ahead of time. She stood at the front of her line of campers, but she seemed just as surprised as the rest of the camp. And just as excited too.

Head counselor Mimi announced everyone’s roles. “Okay, girls. Settle down.”

The littlest groups would be wedding guests, except for their most outstanding two campers, who got assigned to be flower girls. Group Four got divided up into aunts, uncles, and waiters. Group Three were musicians. Masha took the assignment like she’d been waiting for it her whole life, punching two fists into the sky. Finally it was time for Mimi to announce the roles for the oldest group at camp. My group. A hushed, excited quiet filled the air. Baily and Sara looked at each other knowingly.

“And now for our very special wedding party!” Mimi said.

“Grandmother of the bride will be Liat Klein!”

Everyone clapped and Liat grinned and did a little bow.

“Mother of the bride is Ita Scholer!”

More clapping.

“The groom—the chosson—is Talia Aaroni!”

The anticipation was getting to me. There were only a few roles left, and my name still hadn’t been called. I went through the list of people I could possibly be, and who I would choose if I could. The one role everyone wanted was obviously the bride, but I definitely didn’t want to be her. That’d be too much pressure. Plus, a big white dress in the summer heat? No thank you. But I’d settle for bridesmaid. Or even sister of the bride. I had lots of experience being a sister. You could say I was born for the role.

“Father of the bride is Gigi Petrosian!”

Me?

Father of the bride?

Liat clapped me on the back and let out a big whoop in my ear. “Father of the bride! Not too shabby, ol’ buddy ol’ pal.”

I didn’t have any nice dresses from my mom to borrow for the wedding, but even worse, I didn’t have a suit to borrow from my dad. He didn’t wear suits in Brooklyn, let alone in the bungalow colony. I didn’t even have an older brother I could’ve borrowed a suit from. As far as jokes went, this seemed like an especially crummy one.

“Does this mean I’m . . . your son?” I whispered to Liat.

She howled with laughter so loud it got the attention of the girls around her. “You’re my son!”

Mimi cleared her throat and Liat quieted down. She continued announcing the roles. “Maid of honor is Sara Tisch!”

Of course Mimi’s daughter got a good role. Though I wondered why she didn’t give her the bride herself. But that just meant one thing, because there was only one girl left.

“And the kallah is Baily Baum!”

This was going to be one interesting fake wedding.

Once the mock wedding and the flipping showcase were announced, it felt like the entire bungalow colony was wrapped up in the excitement of putting on two big events.

The boys had officially taken over the basketball court, using all their time off from camp to get their flips down perfectly. But it looked like they were going to need a lot more time, because most of the boys I saw practicing were a lot better at falling off the mattresses than they were at landing on them. Some of the boys had even started wearing bike helmets while performing their stunts. Probably something their mothers insisted on.

“Helmets aren’t enough!” my mom said over the phone. “Who’s in charge over there? Where are all the adults?”

It was a funny question coming from her, an adult who wasn’t here. Her overblown reaction may have had something to do with the fact that I didn’t know how to say “flip” in Spanish, so I just did my best to describe that the boys were jumping upside down and trying not to land on their heads.

It was Friday afternoon. Shabbos would be here by nightfall, and though I should’ve been greeting my mom in person, she told me she wouldn’t be able to make it to the bungalow colony for this Shabbos either. It was two whole weeks since I’d last seen her. “Next week, Gigi,” she promised. “Next week for sure.”

I rubbed the sole of my sneaker against the edge of the milk crate I was standing on. “But by next week it’ll be three weeks since I saw you.” Three weeks was basically a whole month, which was basically a lifetime. But my mom said I was exaggerating.

“Think of all the kids your age who are at sleepaway camp, away from their families,” my mom said. “But you’ve got it even better than those kids, because you’ve got your dad there.”

“Yeah, a dad who really isn’t spending any time with me,” I mumbled. But my mom changed the subject. She wanted to keep me happy by talking about something exciting. She wanted to hear more about the mock wedding. Except the mock wedding was the opposite of exciting.

“You’ll get to dress up and party,” my mom said. “Sounds fun!”

“I’m the father of the bride,” I groaned. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Your father doesn’t have a full suit, but he has a suit jacket,” my mother said. “Ponte eso.”

“My daddy is humongous,” I said. “It’ll look huge on me.”

“Just roll up the sleeves. You’ll look great.”

We went back and forth for a bit, with me arguing about how not fun it would be and my mom trying to convince me that it would be a blast. But eventually I ran out of ways to say “miserable” in Spanish. And anyway, we both had to get off the phone to prepare for Shabbos. My mom made me promise to call her after the mock wedding so I could tell her every detail of how it went.

Personally, the whole costume thing (and how I didn’t have one) made me want to push the mock wedding to the back of my mind for as long as I could. But that was pretty hard to do when everybody in the bungalow colony had wedding fever. That was all Yasmin could talk about during Shabbos dinner. And over the whole weekend, actually. Even Liat had wedding fever. She had it bad.

“Like my granny hair?” she asked when I went to look for her at her bungalow on Sunday. I thought we could work on the tree house, but Liat was much more interested in her hair, which was gathered up in a loose bun on top of her head. And it was white. White and . . . smoky?

Plumes of white dust floated off the top of her hair like she was a steamed dumpling. “Is that . . . baby powder?”

“Yup!” Liat said.

She’d put on so much of it that fluffs of the stuff kept sprinkling off her head with every step she took. There was basically a cloud of powder hovering all around her head. And except for the occasional coughing fit, Liat didn’t seem to mind.

“I think you went a little overboard, ol’ buddy ol’ pal.”

“I’m just testing it out,” Liat said. “If I could dye it purple I would. My great-aunt Linda in Florida has purple hair. All her old lady friends do too. But we don’t have hair dye here, and my mom won’t take me to town to buy any.”

“Well, you look like a grandma to me.”

“Thank ya kindly!” Liat said. “How’s your costume coming along?”

“It isn’t. I don’t have anything to wear.”

“Why don’t you ask your sister to help you out. She has cool clothes that she makes, right?”

“Well, she’s got a choker that she made, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think fathers of the bride wear chokers.”

Liat shrugged. “Maybe she could do your makeup to look like a guy. Or maybe she has a blazer you could borrow. I bet she could whip something up for you.”

“Maybe . . .” But did I actually want Yasmin’s help? She could be helpful from time to time, but her help came with a whole bunch of other stuff, like bossiness and control, and getting snippy if I didn’t do exactly what she said. “But probably not.”

“It looks like she’s your only hope.”

I sighed. I hated to admit it, but Liat was right.

21

There is a lot I don’t understand about my sister. I don’t understand how we can both be into music and movies but how it only makes her cooler and me a total dweeb. All her counselor friends love looking through her magazines and sharing the headphones on her Discman and hearing about celebrity gossip. But the one time I tried to tell Liat the plot of my favorite episode of Full House, she couldn’t get past the idea of three men trying to raise three girls. And once, when I spilled a cup full of markers on the arts and crafts table and said a nasally “Did I do that?” like Steve Urkel would, everyone stared at me like I’d just stepped off a UFO.

I don’t know how my sister makes the secular world seem like a secret place only she has the keys to, but I wish I could figure it out. I don’t think I’ll ever understand my sister.

I went looking for Yasmin in the camp house. She and the rest of the counselors were spending their free Sunday evening there to work on decorations. They hadn’t hung anything up yet because they wanted to keep it all a surprise until the big day, but when I walked inside, I got a glimpse of what they were working on. One counselor was making origami paper flowers. Another was cutting strips of colorful paper for streamers. And someone else was artfully tying lace around bouquets of something that looked like wheat. I guessed it was for table centerpieces.

It was all really nice, and I was about to tell them that when Razel, the counselor with the wheat, saw me and froze. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh,” I said quickly. All the counselors suddenly stopped working to look at me. They couldn’t seem to decide between hiding their work or running me out of the camp house before I saw too much. “I’m looking for Yasmin.”

“She’s behind the camp house,” Batsheva, the one with the paper flowers, said.

“Okay, thanks.” I started to go.

“Don’t tell anyone what you saw here!”

“I won’t!”

Yasmin sat in the grass, leaning over an oaktag the size of a poster. There was a bandanna wrapped around the bottom half of her face, covering her nose and mouth, and I wondered if this was a new look she’d created for herself—something she’d seen in one of her fashion magazines. But it turned out she was just using it as a mask because she was spray-painting and she didn’t want to inhale any of it.

“Hey,” I said.

Yasmin pulled down her bandanna. “What are you doing here?” she asked, clearly annoyed.

“People need to find a new way to greet me.”

Yasmin, impatient as ever, sat back, waiting for me to answer her question.

“I wanted to ask for your help with something.” But I was too distracted to remember exactly what that was. I looked at Yasmin’s project, not sure what I was supposed to be seeing yet, but Yasmin had made a dazzling design over the paper using stencils and gold spray paint.

“Help with what?”

“I don’t have anything to wear for the wedding,” I said.

“Oh, I know that.” She snorted.

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know, figure it out,” Yasmin said.

“Figure it out? You’re my big sister. You’re supposed to help me.”

“I’m busy with the decorations.”

“Can’t you do both?” I asked.

Yasmin blew a stray strand of Sun In blonde hair off her forehead and rolled her eyes at the same time, which was just more proof that she was great at multitasking. “Fine,” she said. “But it will have to wait. I have a lot to finish here.”

I gazed at her artwork again. It looked great, whatever it was supposed to be. But the thing that had caught my eye was what she was using as paperweights to keep the corners of the oaktag from curling up.

She’d put rocks on all four corners, and because of the spray paint, they’d each gotten a coat of fresh gold paint. They didn’t look like rocks anymore—they looked like actual gold nuggets.

“That’s so cool,” I said, picking up one of the rocks. “Can I have these?”

“Are you collecting rocks now? Why can’t you just be normal and collect stickers or Lisa Frank stationery or something?”

I frowned. “Can I have them or not?”

“Okay, okay.” Yasmin was getting just as tired of this conversation as I was. “Don’t know what you’d want rocks for.”

But I could already think of a few things.

It was the Monday morning before camp. Yasmin had let me take four golden rocks, and two of them sat nestled in the palm of my hand. I treated them like they were as precious as eggs in a bird’s nest, and held them out to Masha so she could see.

“Is that . . . gold?” she asked.

“Yeah. I found them underneath my bungalow.” It was a teeny, tiny little white lie, but it was too good not to tell. If there was anyone in this whole bungalow colony who would care about golden rocks that looked like they came from a pirate’s treasure chest, it’d be Masha. And if she was gullible enough to believe in ghosts and pirates and that the Coca-Cola company was going to send her free gifts, she’d definitely believe that I’d struck gold underneath our bungalows. The trick practically played itself.

“Just lying around?” Masha asked. She couldn’t close her mouth for how shocked she was.

“No, I had to dig for them. But they were there.”

“Can I have them?”

I closed my fingers over the rocks and snatched my hand back. “No way, these are mine. But I bet there’s more gold if you just look.”

Masha stood there, staring at the soil in the shadow of my bungalow with a look of wonder on her face. This was going to be good.

For the next few days, Group Five was in full-on practice mode for the mock wedding. While the other groups got to do their regularly scheduled activities, we got the run of the camp house because our group comprised everyone in the wedding party and we actually had to learn our places and stuff.

We weren’t doing dress rehearsals yet, but Baily still got into costume every time we practiced. Not in a full wedding gown (Would she get a real gown for the big day? Where could a twelve-year-old get a wedding dress in upstate New York, anyway?), but she’d brought along a petticoat. I had one of those at home in Brooklyn. It was a white, frilly slip that you wore under big Shabbos dresses to make them puff out. I liked to wear mine, but I didn’t think I’d need it in the country. Baily obviously thought she did. Instead of wearing it under a skirt, though, she put it over her denim skirt. Before we started the rehearsal, she’d been twirling around in the middle of the room, the petticoat puffing out so much it created a wide buffer between Baily and her admiring friends.

I’d never been to a wedding before, so I didn’t know what the father of the bride was supposed to do. I assumed I’d just sit at the family table and eat, which is what I imagined my dad would do at a wedding. Or maybe I’d carry a bunch of checks and pay the caterer and the band at the end of the night. But apparently it wasn’t any of that.

“So, this will be where the kallah walks down the aisle,” Mimi said.

Baily jumped up off the floor with a kick in her step and stood at the end of the room, ready to walk down all the way to the other end, where there was a tiny stage. Ita, who was playing the mother of the bride, went to stand next to her. And then nothing happened for a minute.

And another minute.

I watched Baily, just like everyone else did, but she was only looking at me. And the longer she stared, the more her face morphed into something mean, her lips twisting like she had something sour in her mouth. She was holding a bouquet of Magic Markers, but soon they left their place in front of her stomach and she began to slowly tap them against her hip.

After another minute of nothing happening, everyone else in the room started looking at me too.

“Gigi?” Mimi said. “Everything okay?”

My eyebrows shot up, my index finger pointed to my chest. I was supposed to be up there too? “Oh, uh, yeah.” I quickly scurried off the floor and went to join Baily.

“What are you playing at?” she whispered fiercely.

“I didn’t realize both parents walk you down the aisle.”

“Yeah, right.” She flipped her veil over her face—a white paper napkin pinned to the top of her head—and let out a frustrated hmph. Her breath made the napkin blow like an angry sail.

“Now the music will play,” said Mimi, “and then the kallah and her parents will walk down the aisle. Gigi, link your arm with Baily’s.”

I did as I was told. Baily’s arm felt rigid, like she was allowing me to hold on to her because it was the only way she was getting down that aisle.

Ita and Baily started walking and it took me a moment to realize that, so I was catching up again. “I’m not trying to ruin this for you,” I whispered to Baily.

“What, have you never been to a wedding before?” she asked.

“No.”

Baily was so shocked she stopped walking down her own aisle. But she quickly gathered herself again and moved along.

“I don’t believe you,” Baily whispered.

“Why would I lie?”

“Because everyone’s been to a wedding before!” she said, her napkin veil puffing out in little shocked bursts. “Haven’t any of your cousins gotten married?”

None of my cousins lived in America, but even if they did, none of them were old enough to get married. And none of them were religious enough for a proper Jewish wedding, either.

“You know, not everyone is exactly like you,” I whispered. I tried to match her tone so she could see that she wasn’t the only one allowed to get upset. “Not everyone has a million older brothers who probably get married every year.”

“All I know is you better not ruin this wedding for me, Gigi Petrosian.”

We reached the other end of the room. Baily let go of me, and she and Ita hopped onto the stage. She turned around and whipped off her napkin, looking for Mimi. “Time for the chuppah!” she said, without even waiting for Mimi to say it first. “Gigi, you can go now.”

22

As if the mock wedding rehearsal wasn’t bad enough, things took a turn for the worse the next day.

I woke up to loud noises coming from the screened-in porch. The clattering of tools and machine parts being shuffled around. Yasmin walked into the bedroom, fresh from a morning shower, and when she opened the door I snuck a peek past her. Just as I thought, the noises coming from the porch were from my dad, rummaging through his mess looking for something.

“What’s my dad doing?” I asked Yasmin.

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I would avoid him if I were you. He is not in a good mood.”

I could feel a pit forming in my stomach because somehow I knew that this had something to do with me. But before I could even start to think about it, my dad’s voice boomed from the porch. “Girls!”

When my dad called from the other room, we couldn’t just answer, “What?” We had to stop whatever we were doing and go meet him wherever he was. Answering “What?” was a sign of disrespect in our household, and while respecting your parents was just one of the big rules in the Ten Commandments, it was probably the most important rule in my family.

Yasmin and I appeared in the porch doorway at the same time, standing up straight like we were boot-camp soldiers and my dad was our sergeant, about to bark out orders. The mess that was usually contained to the table now extended to the floor, tools and odds and ends laid out all over the place.

“¿Sí?” Yasmin and I said at the same time.

“Where is the multitool? Was here. Now missing.”

“I don’t even know what a multitool is,” Yasmin said.

But I did. It was the nifty tool with the Phillips head, flathead, plier, ruler, and knife all rolled into one. And I’d taken it to work on the tree house. The pit in my stomach was starting to grow. Why did my dad need the multitool? I could see at least seven screwdrivers and two different tape measures on the table that he could use instead. But I just stood there silent and straight, afraid that if I moved even one hair on my head my dad would know it was my fault that the multitool wasn’t here.

And I couldn’t let him know that. If he found out I took it without asking, I would be in a lot of trouble. My dad was always so busy that I was usually happy anytime I could get a morsel of his attention. But I definitely didn’t want his attention like this, because he could be strict. And if he knew I’d taken his multitool without permission, he’d probably ground me for the rest of the summer.

“I—I don’t know where it is,” I said. Lying was my only option. Plus, it would give me enough time to go to the tree house site, get the multitool, bring it back to the bungalow, and return it to his junk collection, like it’d been here all along.

My dad sighed and pulled down his baseball cap. “I have work. Búsca lo.”

My dad’s Spanish was tinged with his Russian accent, and not always grammatically correct, but it was the language he used whenever he was really serious about something. In this case, the message was clear. We had to find that multitool.

Yasmin turned to me as soon as my dad left. “You heard him. Better find that thing.”

“It’s not here,” I said.

Yasmin’s eyes narrowed, and she looked down at me with her hands on her hips. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

I had to tell her. I couldn’t let her turn the whole bungalow upside down looking for something I knew wasn’t even here. I would feel worse than I already did. “Because I took it.”

“Are you nuts?” Yasmin knew just as well as I did that taking my dad’s things was a capital offense. Especially when it was something he used for work.

“I was going to bring it back. I didn’t think he’d notice.”

“Of course he was going to notice,” Yasmin said. “It’s a tool. Even when he’s not working, he’s at home using his tools. It’s, like, all he does!”

The pit was the size of my whole stomach now. “I know,” I said, my voice small.

“Why’d you even take it in the first place?” my sister asked. “Are you trying to fix something?” Then she frowned. “Did you break something?”

I shook my head quickly. “I didn’t break anything,” I assured her. “I’m trying to build something.”

Yasmin never usually took an interest in anything I was up to, but now she looked at me through narrowed eyes, tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for me to go on.

“I’m building a tree house,” I explained. Even though this wasn’t the right moment for it, I couldn’t help but smile. Yasmin’s reaction wiped the pride right off my face, though.

“This is not going to end well,” she said. “When my dad finds out, he’s—” She stopped herself and sighed, maybe thinking that I was already in big trouble for taking the tool, she didn’t need to make me feel even worse about the tree house too. So she changed course.

“Well, what are you waiting for, Gigi? Go get it!”

I ran. I was on a mission.

Get the tool.

Bring it back.

Easy peasy.

When I got to the tree house, Liat was already there. I knew she would be. She always did some work on the tree house before day camp. Today she was braiding a doormat out of strips of an old T-shirt. She insisted on the tree house having a doormat, even though there was no tree house yet to speak of, let alone a door for it.

“Hey, ol’ buddy ol’ pal. How are ya?”

I was too out of breath to stop and chat. “Where’s the toolbox?”

“Next to the broomsticks. Why?”

I ran over to the brooms, which we were planning to use as extra floor support beams. The toolbox was there, and I breathed a little easier. I quickly opened it, and when I looked inside, I saw the hammer, the box of nails, the screwdriver, and . . . nothing else.

The pit in my stomach was officially growing so big I could feel it tickle the back of my throat. “Where’s the multitool?”

Liat peered into the box and moved the tools around. They clattered against the metal uselessly. “Dunno. To be completely honest, I didn’t even know how to use that thing in the first place.”

But I did. I used it all the time here. I was the only one who used it.

I racked my brain, trying to remember the last time I’d had it in my hands. Had I forgotten to put it back in the toolbox? It could be anywhere.

“We need to look for it or my dad’s going to kill me.”

“Al tiftach peh l’satan!” Liat said, which was a Hebrew phrase that basically meant “Don’t say something out loud or it might come true.” Then she added, “Don’t worry. We’ll find it.”

23

I would’ve spent all day at the tree house looking for the multitool, but I still had day camp to go to. Between our regular activities, Group Five was still practicing for the mock wedding, and as the father of the bride, I couldn’t skip out on the rehearsals. But I spent the entire day worrying about the missing multitool. It was all I could think about.

At the pool, I tried perfecting my treading-water technique, but I kept sinking, thinking of how mad my dad was going to be if I never found the tool. During basketball, I threw nothing but air balls. And at the wedding rehearsal, Baily Baum kept snapping her fingers in front of my face trying to get me to pay attention. But I couldn’t pay attention. I kept glancing at the big clock in the camp house, willing the hands to get to three o’clock so I could dash out of there and get back to what was important: finding the multitool.

And then it occurred to me.

There was only one person in this bungalow colony who had it out for me. One person besides Liat who even knew about the multitool.

Morry Baum.

He was jealous of the tree house. And he was mad that I showed him I knew more about tools than he did. This was just the type of thing for him to do. He’d stolen my multitool to get back at me. And now it was up to me to get it back.

Finally the clock struck three, and I went running. The boys’ camp let out at the same time that the girls’ camp did, and I knew just where Morry would go first. The same place he went every day after camp.

“Morry Baum!” I shouted, running down the hill, toward the basketball court. He was already there with a group of friends, dribbling a basketball. But he got distracted when he heard me call his name, and the ball bounced on his shoe and rolled away. It came to a stop at the pile of mattresses that had been put aside.

“What do you want?” he asked.

I didn’t stop until I was practically nose to nose with him, out of breath from running all the way here. “I want my multitool back.”

“Multitool?” he repeated, like I was speaking an alien language. “Now you’re just making up words.”

“The multitool!” I said. “That thing I showed you when you found our tree house. I know you took it.”

“Right, your tree house.” He said it using a nasally voice. He turned to his friends and rolled his eyes. “You mean that pile of junk by that tree?”

“I want my multitool back,” I said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now get off the court, we’re in middle of a game.” He shoved my shoulder, pushing me back.

I was too stunned to speak, but that was okay, because someone was suddenly at my side speaking for me.

“What did you just do?” Yasmin said. She was talking to Morry, her blue eyes narrowed and piercing. I guess I didn’t realize she was at the basketball court. Maybe she’d just arrived. But I should’ve known she’d be close by, because Izzy Baum was on the other side of the court, playing his own game of basketball, and wherever Izzy went, so did Yasmin.

“What?” Morry said dumbly.

Yasmin didn’t hesitate. She grabbed Morry’s wrist and twisted his arm behind his back. He let out a yelp, but Yasmin didn’t back down. I was shocked. Not that Yasmin was sticking up for me—Yasmin loved a fight. She didn’t take crap from anybody. And because I was her sister, it was almost like someone had started a fight with her. No, I was shocked because she was doing this in front of Izzy. Pinning his little brother’s arm behind his back could totally turn Yasmin’s crush into one huge crash. I always thought boys came before family for Yasmin. But I guess maybe I was wrong.

“Let go of me!” Morry said, squirming.

But Yasmin’s rage made her strong. “Apologize to my sister.”

“I’m sorry!” Morry squealed.

“And give her back the multitool!” Yasmin added.

“I don’t know what a multitool is!” Morry said. “Now let go!”

“Pendejo,” Yasmin muttered before finally letting him go. She glanced at Izzy, who was holding his ball, watching the whole thing. Yasmin didn’t back down for anybody, and she didn’t apologize either. As if to explain her case, she yelled, “Your little brother’s a jerk.”

It seemed Izzy already knew this. He nodded dumbly and started dribbling again.

Morry grabbed his wrist. “I’m going to tell my father!” he shouted. “You’re all gonna get kicked out of here!”

He took off running, and Yasmin turned to me. I thought now that Morry was gone her anger would go with him, but instead she just redirected it toward me. “Why are you getting into fights with the Baums?” she said, flicking my shoulder. The same shoulder that Morry had shoved.

“You’re the one who got into the fight!” I shot back.

“You made me look bad in front of Izzy,” she hissed. “And now we’re gonna get kicked out of here. And my dad’s gonna get fired. Great going.”

I grunted, all my frustration balled up in my fists. This multitool situation was spiraling out of control. And even worse, I believed Morry when he said he didn’t know where it was. The only way for me to solve this would be to find the multitool myself.

24

When I got to the tree house, Liat was already there, picking through our materials. She stopped when she saw me.

“Anything?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We’ll find it. Don’t worry,” she said.

We worked together, looking through every inch of our worksite. There was no singing, and hardly any talking. We had one singular mission, and there couldn’t be any distractions.

By the time we finished looking for the multitool, I had my own version of a mess table, but on a much larger scale. Every piece of building material we’d collected was spewed over the ground, under the shade of the tree. It looked like a tornado had come through this patch of land and spit out the bungalow colony’s garbage at our feet.

We looked under every board, between every cable, we even turned over every rock. But there was nothing. The pit in my stomach had taken over my whole body.

I was the pit.

“How could I lose it?” I asked.

“You didn’t,” Masha said.

Her voice came from above, and Liat and I looked up to find her sitting in a nearby tree. She was so small that she was mostly obscured by leaves, but I could still see her legs wrapped around a thick branch. She untangled herself to expertly climb down the trunk. Like she’d been climbing trees her whole life.

I had so many questions, like what was she doing up there? And how did she learn to climb? But most importantly I wanted her to repeat what she’d just said. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“You didn’t lose the multitool,” Masha said. “It was stolen. Liat’s brothers took it.”

I turned to Liat, suddenly hopeful. “You gotta check your bungalow.”

But Liat shook her head. “No can do. My brothers hide all their stolen treasure. I’m still looking for my favorite hairbrush. Sorry, G.”

This was not good. This was not good at all. But Masha seemed like the only one with any answers, so I kept asking her questions. “How do you know the Kleins took it?”

“I’ve been in that tree watching you guys work on the tree house since the first day you took the tools from your dad,” Masha said.

“What?” A part of me couldn’t believe her—how could she possibly have been so quiet this whole time? All Masha ever did was talk. “Why?”

“Because you guys had a secret and I wanted to know what it was,” she said simply.

“Well, if you knew Liat’s brothers took it, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because of the gold,” Masha said. She folded her arms over her chest and stepped closer to me. Usually she liked to bounce around and ask a million questions, talking a mile a minute about things I didn’t care about. But right now Masha was serious and still.

“I spent all day yesterday digging under your bungalow and most of the day today digging under mine. And guess what?”

I sighed, knowing what she was about to say. “You didn’t find any gold.”

“No,” Masha said. “I found the gold that you planted there. I was so excited that I took it to my grandma and guess what she said?”

“Mazel tov?”

“No!” Masha said. “She started laughing and said that it wasn’t gold, that it was just a rock painted gold and that someone was playing a mean trick on me.”

I bit my lip and tried to keep my cheeks from going red, even though I could already feel them growing warm. I instantly felt bad.

“Why’d you do it?” Masha asked.

“The gold looked so real,” I said. “I thought it’d be funny.”

I wasn’t trying to be mean. All I knew was, I had rocks that looked like gold. Was I just supposed to keep that to myself? We were out in nature—I wanted to pretend I’d found buried treasure. And Masha seemed like the perfect person to pretend with. Not only because she believed in everything, but also because she was literally one of the only people in this bungalow colony that I could play this game with.

I looked over at Liat. She definitely would’ve thought it was hilarious if I did it to her. But even she looked like I’d just stepped in something nasty and she didn’t want anything to do with it. And now I realized that maybe the trick was kind of mean. Maybe especially because Masha always believed everything anyone said.

“You’re always mean to me,” Masha said.

My eyes went wide. “No, I’m not!”

“You never want to hang out,” Masha continued. “You never want to include me in anything.”

I shook my head fiercely and took a step closer to her. “But this was me including you.”

Couldn’t Masha see that? I hadn’t shown anyone else the fake gold nuggets because I didn’t think they’d get it, but I knew Masha would see the fun in it. Or . . . I thought she would. “It was a game,” I said quickly. “A game I was playing with you.”

“A game you were playing on me,” Masha said.

I didn’t say anything to that, because there was nothing for me to say. Masha felt tricked, and she didn’t think the whole golden nuggets thing was funny at all. Maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn’t funny, and I was wrong.

“You know, everybody treats me different ’cause my grandparents work here,” Masha said. “And I thought you’d be the only other person here who understood what that was like. But now on top of everything, you treat me like I’m different too.”

If I hadn’t already felt bad, I definitely did by now. If my mom was here, she’d make me apologize. If my mom was here, she’d tell me that what I did wasn’t very funny and that I needed to make things right. “If my mom was here—”

“My mom and my dad aren’t here,” Masha said, interrupting me. “And I don’t even have a big sister that I get to annoy like you do. I’m spending my whole summer with my grandparents and they go to bed at eight o’clock! So I’m sorry you feel bad about your summer, but did you ever stop to think that maybe someone else has it worse than you do? And that it isn’t very nice to play tricks on that someone else and make her summer terrible too?”

I just stood there and watched as Masha gulped in a huge breath and waited for me to say something. The truth was, Masha was right. I’d never stopped to think about how she was all alone here. And how I was probably her only friend. And how since I was older than her, she probably looked up to me. Masha looked like she was about to cry. But before I could say anything to make her feel better, she turned and ran through the trees.

Liat and I watched her go.

Now I hadn’t only lost my dad’s multitool . . . I’d lost a friend too.

25

When I got back to the bungalow, I found my dad there, still searching every inch of the porch for his missing tool. And Yasmin was there too, helping him look. She focused on one corner of the table, moving junk around with all the gusto of someone who knew perfectly well that there was nothing to find. She caught my eyes with a glare so menacing it made me gulp. I knew I’d be in trouble with my dad, but I hadn’t realized I was going to be in trouble with Yasmin too. But at least she hadn’t told on me—yet. I owed her one for that.

“Where were you?” my dad asked me. “I told you, look for tool.”

Yasmin lazily picked up a wrench and put it back down in a bad effort to pretend she was still looking. She widened her eyes in a question. Did you find it?

I answered her back telepathically, and shook my head. No.

Yasmin clamped down her jaw and not‑so‑subtly nudged her head toward my dad. Her message was clear. Come clean.

“I have to tell you something.” I tried to keep my words steady, but the weight of what I was about to confess made my voice go low and shaky. I couldn’t even look at my dad. I looked at the ground instead. My sneakers were dirtier than usual, the tips scuffed with dirt after I spent the afternoon searching at the tree house site. “I took your multitool . . . and I lost it.”

Yasmin let go of a case full of drill bits, and they rattled as they hit the table. She did the smart thing and slipped past me and out the screen door. It snapped shut with a squeaky whine and a thwack. Yasmin turned back to shoot me a sorry look through the screen. “Good luck,” she mouthed before bounding down the steps. I don’t even think my dad noticed her leaving. His eyes were laser focused on me.

“What you mean, lost?”

“I took it without permission,” I confessed. “I needed it to build something, and I left it there, and when I went to look for it, it was gone. I’m sorry.”

My dad took in a deep breath and let it out through his nose. The air was so forceful it ruffled his mustache. “What you build?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled. Losing the multitool was one thing; I could take my punishment for that, whatever it may be. But telling my dad about the tree house felt like an even bigger no-no. I was building a house and it was top secret, and it was a huge project, which made it a much bigger deal than just a small missing tool. The kind of big deal that I probably should’ve asked his permission to build in the first place. Not only his permission—maybe even the permission of the owners of Shir Gershon. What if it was against the rules to nail anything into the trees? What if we weren’t allowed to collect all those old broken things for our building materials? What if my dad could lose his job over it?

I hadn’t thought about any of that until just this minute, and suddenly the missing multitool was the least of my worries.

And it didn’t look like my dad was going to let this go. “You show me what you build,” he said. “Ahora mismo.”

My dad and I stood in front of the tree behind the Klein bungalow. We were both quiet, me being too scared to say anything and my dad probably gearing himself up to use more words than he’d ever used in his life.

I wished Liat was out here. If she was, then my dad probably wouldn’t get angry in front of her. But Liat was tucked away safely inside her bungalow. I could see her through the window, where she gave me a sneaky thumbs-up like everything was going to be okay. But I knew she didn’t believe that. If she did, she wouldn’t have been hiding from my dad.

He walked around the tree slowly, looking at what we’d already built and also at all the material laid out on the ground. Suddenly the cabinet doors and crib walls and broken tricycle parts didn’t look like things you could build anything with, let alone a tree house. I looked at it now through my dad’s eyes and saw what he saw: a bunch of garbage.

My dad reached up above his head and grabbed on to a corner of the tree house’s foundation. It was all that Liat and I had built so far, made out of the largest and flattest pieces of wood we’d found.

“You build this?” my dad asked.

I nodded.

I thought the worst thing my dad could do was yell at me, use all the words in his arsenal, in all the languages he knew, to really let me have it. But he didn’t even have to say anything to make me feel crummy. He could do that just fine without a single word.

My dad began to move his arm up and down, and with it, the foundation began to move up and down too. He shook it until the nails got loose, until the wood started to rain down like dominos, until what Liat and I thought were our sturdiest pieces of wood came completely free of the tree. My dad easily used both hands to grab it and bring it down to the ground.

I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t had a chance to reinforce the floor with the broomsticks yet! That I had a whole floor plan and he was ruining it! But I couldn’t talk because there was suddenly a huge invisible rock lodged in the back of my throat. It made my eyes water.

My dad muttered words I didn’t understand, in a language I didn’t speak. So I tried to get through to him in every language I could think of. “Stop!” I said in English. “¡Basta!” I said in Spanish. Russian was out of the question. I racked my brain for the Hebrew word. “Maspik!” I cried, but shook my head, sure I’d said it wrong. “Hapsik?”

My dad ignored me. It wasn’t any use anyway. We didn’t speak the same language. Not with our words; not with our actions. I couldn’t understand how my father could do this. And he obviously couldn’t understand how him destroying my tree house was destroying me.

What we’d worked so hard to drag up to the tree branches was now lying on the ground. With one hand, my dad grabbed onto the rungs we’d nailed to the tree trunks and pried them clean off. He wrenched every step of our ladder until there was nothing left. Until the tree house was back to being just a tree. Liat, at her bedroom window, stared with her mouth hanging open. My own bottom lip stayed put, but only because my quivering chin was working hard to keep it up.

“You see?” my dad said. “How bad you build? How dangerous? What happen if you or friend go up? You fall! You get hurt! You get in trouble. I get in trouble!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice as low and raspy as his was loud and clear. “Perdón. Slicha.”

“I don’t know what you thinking. You don’t know to build anything. Fue una mala idea. Terrible idea.”

I couldn’t listen to this anymore. My chin wasn’t strong enough to hold my lip up, to keep a wail from getting out. I turned and started running. Even when my dad called after me and told me to stop in English and in Spanish. I didn’t stop. I wanted to get as far away from him as possible.

I slammed through our bungalow and went to the bedroom, locking the door behind me. I blinked away tears so I could find my notebook, buried under my mattress. I opened it to a new blank page and grabbed a pen off the top of my dresser. More tears came, blurring my vision, but I scrawled anyway, not bothering with neat penmanship or even writing in a straight line.

REASONS TO RUN AWAY THROUGH THE WOODS

- Because the tree house was a stupid idea.

- Because I hate it here.

- Because I hate my father.

26

I stayed in my room all night. I didn’t even come out for dinner. My dad hadn’t officially punished me for the multitool (and everything else), but we were the sort of family where punishments weren’t given, they were understood. And I understood my dad well enough to know he didn’t want me around, and I didn’t want to be around him either. Plus, I wouldn’t go through the humiliation of getting punished, and I wouldn’t give my dad the satisfaction of punishing me either.

So, my dad and I weren’t talking. But that wasn’t any different from normal, anyway. Now, I just missed my mom extra hard. The worst part was, I couldn’t even call her to tell her so. Not only because I couldn’t leave my room without my father seeing me, but also because if I did speak to my mom, she’d figure out too quickly that me and my dad were fighting, and I didn’t want her to get mad too. I was stuck with my feelings.

And I’d stay that way, in bed, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

The next morning, Yasmin stood over my bed. “Get up,” she said flatly.

I responded by pulling my blanket over my head. “Leave me alone,” I mumbled through the thin fabric.

Yasmin pinched it between her fingers and flung it back. “Come on. It’s your daughter’s wedding day!”

Ugh. The mock wedding. In all the other drama, I’d completely forgotten about the wedding I never wanted to go to in the first place. At least that explained the outfit Yasmin was wearing. All the counselors were playing the roles of wedding planners. Yasmin wore her favorite outfit: a navy-blue slip dress with a daisy flower print. It went down to her ankles and had spaghetti straps, but she wore a tight, long-sleeve white shirt underneath. Her bottle-blonde hair was wavy, loose, and scrunched stiff with gel, on top of which was her bucket hat. The front of it was pinned back with an extra-large fake daisy. Her shoes—chunky platform loafers with gold buckles across the tops—were straight out of a dELiA*s catalog. She completed the look with her velvet ribbon choker.

My sister looked like one of the girls in her magazines. Impossibly cool. Meanwhile, I had nothing to wear to this wedding.

“My daddy will never give me his blazer,” I said. “And I can’t ask him for it. I’m not going.”

But Yasmin already had that covered. I hadn’t even noticed the gray blazer laid out at the foot of my bed, but she picked it up with a flourish.

I sat straight up with a start. “You asked him for it first, right?” The last thing I wanted was to get in trouble again for taking something without permission.

Yasmin rolled her eyes. “Duh. I’m not you. Now come on, you can’t let your group down. You can’t let the camp down. And I’m not going to let you embarrass me by not dressing for the occasion.”

Yasmin held my chin and squinted as she carefully drew dashes on my cheeks using one of her eyeliner pencils. “Hold still.”

“I am,” I said, angling my face away. The smudgy pencil tickled. But Yasmin said I needed a beard, so I sat on my bed and let her work.

“Thank you for sticking up for me,” I said. “With Morry Baum.”

“That baboso had it coming,” she said.

“Do you think he’ll get my daddy fired?”

Yasmin rolled her eyes. “No. He’s, like, two years old. He doesn’t have any power over my daddy. Or over you. Stop being afraid of him.”

Just because it was easy for her to say didn’t mean it was easy for me to feel that way.

“And you can’t be sad all day, either,” Yasmin said matter-of-factly. “It’s your daughter’s wedding day—you’re gonna have to smile.”

I’d go to the wedding, but no one could force me to smile. To prove my point, I frowned even deeper. Yasmin just snorted. “I know you’re in a bad mood ’cause my daddy’s mad or whatever. But he’ll get over it,” she said. “He may be upset now, but he’ll come around. Just think of all the times I made him angry.”

Yasmin did have a point. If you had to put us into two categories, you could say that I was the good daughter who listened to our parents and Yasmin was the troublemaker who always disobeyed them. Back in Brooklyn, Yasmin broke a lot of rules. She usually stayed out too late, and when she did, she wouldn’t call home to tell our parents what time to expect her back. And even worse, she was almost always in places she shouldn’t be, with people she shouldn’t be with . . . aka boys.

As a result, Yasmin was used to getting into trouble with my parents. And especially with my dad. He was almost always angry at her for something, which meant Yasmin had learned to avoid him. She didn’t ask for forgiveness, and she never asked for permission. Yasmin just did what she wanted and stayed out of my dad’s way.

“You’ll learn to deal with him when he gets like this,” Yasmin said.

But I didn’t want that kind of relationship with my dad. I wanted the kind of father-daughter bond that you see on TV. Where he teaches you things, and you talk about stuff, and you solve your problems by hugging them out.

“You want to be a daddy’s girl,” Yasmin said. “But you need a certain type of dad for that. And they only exist in those after-school specials.”

She was talking about those TV movies where something really dramatic happens to kids, and their families have to deal with it as a single unit. In the end, they all learn their lessons and get closer. “Those types of dads exist in real life,” I said.

Yasmin tilted my head so she could color in the underside of my chin. “Uh, not really,” she said. “Your problem is that you watch too much TV. You think that’s how the world really is. But the dads in those TV specials aren’t like our dad. They’re not immigrants who work all the time and can barely communicate with their kids. Those TV dads are a fantasy, Gigi. You have to deal with the dad you got, which is an angry Russian guy who doesn’t know how to properly express himself.”

I tried to listen to her, but Yasmin didn’t get it. She loved that my mom wasn’t here watching over her every second of the day. And she loved that my dad was too busy to ask her a single question. For Yasmin, having a mom far away and a dad that was too busy was the perfect recipe for the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world: independence. Yasmin loved independence even more than she loved boys. Which was saying a lot.

But I still needed my mom and dad.

“I know you’re sad now,” Yasmin said. “But just give him a few days to get over it. Then he’ll be back to normal.”

“Normal,” I muttered. Normal meant grumpy and absent, and I still wanted more than that.

“Okay, you’re all set!” Yasmin said. She pulled me up by the hand and marched me in front of the full-length mirror in our room.

I looked at my reflection, checking out my makeover. Though, it was more of a makeunder. I wore a shirt that belonged to Yasmin. It was white and silky and flowed far below my waist, meant to be worn with a tiny sweater vest, like Alicia Silverstone wore in Clueless. It didn’t exactly scream “father,” but it was the only white collared shirt we had, so it would have to do. Then there were two more items of clothing from my dad: a pair of black pants, and the only hat he had that wasn’t a workman’s cap—a funky fedora.

My pants were rolled up because they were way too long. And they didn’t match the suit jacket, which was gray and wool and scratchy. The sleeves were so long that I couldn’t see my hands. Plus, there was the eyeliner. The beard looked more like I’d fallen face-first into a mound of dirt.

“I look ridiculous!”

This was the point where Yasmin should’ve said something reassuring or encouraging or at the very least not mean. But instead she laughed behind her hand and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Hey!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, still giggling. “But I didn’t have a lot to work with.”

We both looked in the mirror, me looking bad and sad, while Yasmin looked glamorous and delighted.

“I look like one of those sad clowns from those paintings of sad clowns.”

“Yeah!” Yasmin said, snapping her fingers. “That’s it exactly.”

I sighed, flapping my long sleeves in the mirror. “It’s ironic that we’re both going to the same place and yet you get to wear your best clothes and I have to wear the worst outfit ever,” I said.

“Isn’t it ironic,” Yasmin sang, doing her best Alanis Morissette impression. “Don’t you think?”

“Come on,” I grumbled.

“It’s like raaaaaaain on your wedding day!” Yasmin belted.

I elbowed her in the stomach, but all it did was get her to laugh. “I’m not going.”

She was still laughing but composed herself eventually. “Look, it’s a costume party, everyone’s going to look a little funny. You told me yourself that Liat was going to show up with baby powder all over her hair. Come on, you need to get out of the bungalow. Have a little fun. And you gotta see how we decorated the place. It’s gonna be the best day ever.”

I sighed as I looked over my outfit again. I wasn’t sure I could trust my sister.

“A little toooo ironic,” she said. “Yeah, I really do think.”

27

Yasmin was wrong. Nothing and nobody looked funny.

The camp house had been transformed from a ramshackle common area to a beautiful wedding hall for the day. The counselors had done an amazing job of taking whatever materials they had on hand and decking out the place to make it sparkle. White balloons floated to the ceiling like clouds, with what looked like hundreds of origami cranes hanging below them with nearly invisible fishing line. Round tables were covered in lacy tablecloths and set with tall centerpieces of plants in decorated vases. And I spotted Yasmin’s handiwork, her golden poster signs hanging on the walls.

All the other kids were dressed as their assigned roles, and they looked good. The little flower girls were adorable in their nicest pastel-colored dresses, carrying baskets of tissue paper flowers they’d made in arts and crafts. The girls playing older women were excited to show off all the fancy accessories they’d always been told they were too young for, like their mothers’ droopy earrings, pearl necklaces, and leather handbags. A lot of them had even painted their nails. And the girls playing boys wore the black pants and suit jackets of their older brothers—which actually fit.

I’d always felt like I didn’t belong at Shir Gershon, but now I actually looked like I didn’t belong. I could sense people’s eyes on me as I walked through the clusters of campers gathered on the lawn. I kept my face down, trying to hide the blush I could feel blooming underneath my eyeliner beard. Why couldn’t my dad own normal, nice clothes?

Though I tried not to look at anybody, Masha caught my eye. She was one of the musicians, and she wore a short-sleeved button-down yellow shirt tucked into black shorts that went down to her knees. Her long hair was wrapped around the top of her head in a crown of two braids. And in her hands was a genuine brass saxophone. Her grandfather’s, I knew, and much cooler than the plastic flutes the rest of her bunkmates had been given by the head counselor. Masha let the saxophone hang off a strap around her neck so that she could fold her arms over her chest and fix me with the angriest glare.

But then I got distracted by a clap on my back. I turned to find a grandma standing behind me with powdery hair, wearing a big, shapeless muumuu. “Hey, ol’ buddy ol’ pal!”

“Hey, Liat.”

Our tones did not match at all—hers high and joyful, mine scraping the floor. “You look awesome!” Liat said.

But I shook my head. “You don’t have to say that.”

“What?”

“Compliment me just to be nice.”

“First of all, complimenting people just to be nice is actually a really great way to live your life. And second of all, I wasn’t doing that. I mean it—you look great!”

“I look stupid.”

“I won’t have you talking about my son that way.” She snorted at her own joke. “And anyway, you’re the only man here wearing something that isn’t black, which is a daring fashion choice, if I do say so myself.”

I looked down at my gray suit jacket. I didn’t one hundred percent agree with her, but Liat’s words did give me a little bit of confidence back. I felt better about how I looked. Plus, if I looked a little funny, then I wasn’t totally alone because Liat looked a lot funny. Her muumuu was so roomy that she couldn’t help but shimmy in it, the fabric dancing around her body. And her hair smelled like a newborn baby. I could feel myself starting to laugh and lighten up.

But then Baily appeared.

Baily Baum was in a full real-life wedding gown. I wondered if Masha’s grandmother also tailored the Baums’ clothes, along with washing them, because Baily’s wedding dress fit like it was made for her. It was white satin, with lace and little pearls and beads sewn into the neckline and the cuffs of her sleeves.

“Whoa,” Liat whispered next to me.

I had to agree. Whoa.

I only wore dresses on Shabbos, but suddenly, watching Baily, I got jealous. I wanted to wear a dress and look pretty like most everyone else did. I wanted to borrow my mom’s makeup and shoes and have her help me with my hair. Instead, I got Yasmin drawing streak marks on my face.

Baily came close enough to notice me. Her eyes roved from my pink-and-white sneakers to my jazzy fedora, and I could see exactly what she was thinking through her narrowed eyes. That there was no way I was going to walk her down the aisle to the chuppah looking like this.

But it wasn’t going to get to that point. Because even before the mock wedding had a chance to start, there was a disturbance.

I heard one of the flower girls scream first. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a slew of boys zip by, Morry Baum leading the pack. Cradled in their arms were bunches of colorful things. Flowers? The boys were moving too fast for me to actually get a good look, but something round and pink tumbled out of one of the boys’ hands and landed on the ground with a splash.

Head counselor Mimi’s whistle was going off like a police siren, but none of the boys paid any attention to it. By the time they had surrounded Baily, it was clear the colorful objects weren’t flowers. They were water balloons.

“KILL THE KALLAH!” Morry Baum commanded.

On cue, all the boys hurled their balloons at Baily. And just like that, her pristine and sparkling white gown was darkened with angry wet splotches.

“Oh my gosh!” she shrieked, and she held her arms up to protect herself—but it was useless. The boys kept up the assault until they had thrown every last balloon. As much as she tried to shield herself, the attack was too fast and sudden, and Baily stood dripping. The details of her dress, with the lace and the pearls, now included brightly colored bits of rubber balloon shreds.

And just as soon as the boys had come, they were gone.

All of us were left frozen in shock. I looked at Liat, and her expression mirrored mine: Our eyes and mouths formed big Os, and without having to speak, I knew we were thinking the same thing.

What just happened?

To her credit, Baily didn’t cry. She just gulped in one deep breath after another. And then, at the top of her lungs, she screamed, “I HATE YOU, MORRY BAUM!”

Despite the disruption, the mock wedding still went on. A mood fell over everyone at camp that we weren’t going to let a few boys ruin our big day, and everyone tried extra hard to have an especially good time. Head counselor Mimi did everything she could to lift Baily’s spirits, calling the whole water balloon attack a minor hiccup. But even though we all danced and noshed and acted out our roles, everyone knew it was more of a belch.

Baily Baum was not a happy bride. And there was no way she could blame her ruined wedding on me. But even though we weren’t friends, I still felt bad for her. I hadn’t realized Baily was capable of being humiliated.

And I especially didn’t realize she could hate her own brother just as much as the rest of us did.

28

It was Friday, and since day camp ended early on Fridays, I had a lot of time on my hands. I didn’t want to go swimming like everyone else. And there was no work to be done on the tree house anymore, thanks to my dad.

So I went to the woods. It had been awhile since I’d gone. I’d gotten distracted by other things. But since my fight with my dad, I now was more determined than ever to leave the bungalow colony. Which meant I needed to get to know the woods better.

I went farther than I ever had before. I followed the red markings I’d already left on the trees, which were, surprisingly, still there. And once there weren’t any more of those, I walked for another hour, scrawling new lipstick Xs into the barest bark.

There was freedom in coming out this far. The invisible leash around my neck felt looser, until eventually I couldn’t feel it at all. I was somewhere between Shir Gershon and the real world, away from my angry father who never paid attention to me unless it was to yell at me. And away from the bungalow colony full of big families who had moms to look after them.

I could’ve kept walking forward. I had enough snacks and water in my backpack to keep me full and satisfied. And if there was ever a time for me to run away from the bungalow colony, it was right now. But I still didn’t have enough money for a bus ticket to Brooklyn. Plus, it was erev Shabbos. It would be starting soon, and I couldn’t spend Shabbos in the woods.

It was time to head back.

By the time I returned to Shir Gershon, the sun was already starting to set. I would barely have time to shower and get dressed before Shabbos started, but it wasn’t like anyone would care if I cleaned myself up or not.

Except someone did care. Yasmin rushed into the porch as soon as the screen door snapped shut behind me. “Where were you? Shabbos is starting.”

I shrugged. “Around.”

“Well, you better get in here.” Yasmin had gone from hurried to having a smirk sneakily spreading across her face. Something was up, and I followed Yasmin out of curiosity alone. And then I understood her smile.

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. When she saw me she stood up and spread her arms out. “¡Sorpresa!”

I didn’t hesitate for a minute. I ran straight to her.

“Oye,” she said. “Tie your shoes.”

I laughed. All the bad feelings I had about the world and the summer and the bungalow colony dissolved the moment she wrapped her arms around me.

It was the first time that summer we were together again as a family, and it was just what I needed. My mom made the blessings over the grape juice and challah. We ate arroz con pollo y lentejas. Yasmin told my mom all the bungalow colony gossip, though it was mostly just stories about her friends. And neither I nor my dad mentioned the whole tree house business. I guess he’d already forgotten all about it, and I was happy to put it behind us if it kept my mom happy and laughing and singing Shabbos zmiros after we were done eating.

When the dishes were cleared from the table, Yasmin went off to find her friends and my dad sat down to look through his car magazine. I decided to show my mom around the bungalow colony. But really I just wanted to show her off.

I made sure to pass by the Baum house, where Baily and Sara sat on the front steps. I wouldn’t need to say anything to them—my mom’s mere presence here in the bungalow colony was enough to prove to them that they’d been wrong. They thought my mom would never show up, but she was here. Neither of them said anything when they saw me, but I could see the way they were looking at my mom. Like she was a unicorn.

If my mom was here, she’d say it isn’t very nice to stare, I thought. And then I laughed to myself, remembering that my mom was right next to me and I no longer had to imagine what she’d say about anything.

“Good Shabbos,” my mom said to Baily and Sara.

The girls mumbled a “Good Shabbos” back.

“They really like to stare,” my mom whispered to me. I squeezed her hand and bit back a smile.

We passed by Mrs. Finklestein, sitting in her patio chair in front of her bungalow. My mom waved to her, even though she’d never met her, and Mrs. Finklestein waved back, a wide smile spreading over her face.

My mom was beautiful, but if you asked anyone to describe what she looked like, they’d all probably just talk about her smile. It was the biggest smile in the world, and when it popped up on her face, it was the only thing you looked at. I wished I could say that I looked like her, but everyone always said Yasmin was her spitting image, that it just looked like Yasmin was dipped in milk while my mom was dipped in coffee. (My mom always said I took after my father, but since his bushy beard covered most of his face I could never tell if that was true or not.)

Just as we were heading back to our bungalow, Masha popped out of hers. Her grandparents were definitely asleep by now, and she was probably heading to Mrs. Finklestein’s bungalow to hear the old woman tell one of her stories.

My mom waited for us to say something to each other, but when neither of us did, she spoke instead.

“Gigi, who’s this?”

“Masha,” I said. Then I turned to Masha. “This is my mom.”

“Hi,” Masha said.

“Hello,” my mom responded.

Masha just kept standing there, not saying another word, but I could see how hard she was working to keep from bursting with questions. It made me kind of sad that she was still angry with me, because I was bursting with answers to give her. I wanted to tell her all about my mom. I wanted to invite her over so that she could eat and talk with us all night. But Masha just went on her way.

Once my mom and I were inside our bungalow she asked, “¿Ella es tu amiga?”

“Yeah, she is my friend,” I said. But then I shrugged, thinking better of it. “Actually, I don’t know anymore.”

I sat down at the kitchen table, and my mom went to grab the pitcher of limonada that she had made specially for the meal. My dad was already asleep in bed, the open magazine he was reading rising and falling on his chest like a boat at sea.

“¿Por qué?” my mom asked, pouring me a glass.

“Because I played a joke on her and she didn’t think it was very funny.”

“Well, if you’re the only one laughing at your joke, then maybe it isn’t as funny as you thought.”

And just like that, without me even having to tell her the details of the golden nugget prank, my mom had gotten down to the root of why it was never a good joke to begin with.

“My daddy tells jokes that nobody thinks are funny,” I said.

This made my mom laugh, though she still managed to do it quietly so as not to wake my father. “That’s different.”

I sipped my lemonade, wondering if that was something my dad and I had in common: Our bad jokes. “Did he tell you about the tree house?”

My mom put her glass down and quirked an eyebrow. “Qué tree house?”

I guess he hadn’t told her.

There was so much that had happened this summer already. A part of me wanted to drop my head on my mom’s lap and tell her everything. About the tree house, about Masha being mad at me, about the Baum kids being mean in different ways, and about my plan to run away because I wasn’t having a good summer at all.

But another part of me didn’t want to tell her any of that. We were having a perfect Shabbos together, and I knew I’d only make her sad by telling her that I was sad. I didn’t want to ruin it.

But she was my mom, and she could tell that something was bothering me. I didn’t even have to say it. She put her fingers under my chin and lifted it up, and already her touch was like the balm she used on her temples for headaches. It brought instant relief.

“You know, you should consider yourself lucky to be here. Not everybody gets to spend the summer in the country.”

“But how could it be a good place if you’re not here?” I asked.

My mom smiled sadly, but her tan skin caught the light of the lamp and made her look like she was glowing with all the wonder and hopefulness that I was sorely missing.

“You’re so busy thinking about everything you don’t have here, you don’t even realize all the good things around you. You don’t need me as much as you think you do, Gigi. You’re a big girl, and the best summer of your life is right here waiting for you. It’s all in how you look at it.”

I stared at my mom as she smiled at me. Maybe she had a point.

29

My mom stayed for all of Sunday. We tidied up the bungalow, except my dad’s worktable, because even my mom knew not to mess with his mess. My dad spent the day working around the colony, but Liat and her mom took me, Yasmin, and my mom into town to check out the shops. Most of the things were too expensive, but we still had fun looking at dresses, and it was enough to push that awful father-of-the-bride outfit I’d worn all the way out of my mind forever.

Best of all, Liat and I went in a photo booth, and when the picture came out it was the size of a birthday card and looked like a wanted poster from an old Western movie. In it, Liat and I posed like criminals, with REWARD, $5,000 below our faces. It was the best picture I’d ever taken.

I was glad that my mom had come. Just her being here made everything feel like it was okay. Like it had never even been bad at all. Which was why I didn’t want it to end. It was about to get dark, and my mom’s ride was ready to head back to Brooklyn. But I held on to my mom. Standing on the grass in front of our bungalow, I wrapped my arms around her waist and didn’t let go.

“Oye, todo va a estar bien,” my mom said as she smoothed back my hair. I could hear the smile in her voice even though I couldn’t see it because my face was buried in her shirt. But she put her hands on both my cheeks and tilted my head up so that we could see each other. “Ya eres una niña grande.” Everything will be fine—you’re a big girl.

She said it like me being a big girl was the answer to all my problems. But I guess I wasn’t big enough, because I felt so sad I could cry. I finally let go of my mom and watched as she got into the passenger seat of the car that would take her away. We had more than a month left at the bungalow colony, and I didn’t know if I’d see her again before the summer was up.

The car drove through the open gate, and there was nothing I could do but stand there. I must’ve looked sad too, because Liat tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I know just the thing that’ll cheer you up.”

Liat had spoken to her brothers and tried to get my dad’s missing multitool back. When she told me that, my whole mood was lifted, and I was so full of hope I felt like a helium balloon. But then Liat said her brothers hadn’t given her the multitool, and I deflated again.

“But!” she added quickly, “They have agreed to a trade.”

“A trade?”

Liat nodded. “You give them something even more valuable than the multitool, and they’ll hand the thing right over.”

More valuable than the multitool? I racked my brains trying to think of what I had that was valuable. The only thing I could come up with was my bike, but that was out of the question. There was no way I was giving up my bike, and anyway, my dad would be just as mad that I’d traded my bike as he was about the missing tool.

But then I thought of the next best thing. I turned to Liat. “Take me to your brothers.”

It turned out the Klein boys had their very own lair in the woods. That was really the only word to describe it. Out behind the field, far enough where no one from the bungalow colony ever ventured, the brothers had created a cave for themselves out of a large black tarp. It camouflaged well with the surrounding trees, so it was no wonder nobody had found it yet. The tarp was tied to low branches, looking almost like a pitched tent. When Liat and I got there, I didn’t think the boys would let us inside their secret dwelling, but it seemed like they wanted to show off their treasures, because they pulled back the tarp flaps and motioned for us to enter.

We slouched and went through the opening. There was hardly enough room for all of us because the lair was full of so much stuff. Things littered the floor: caps and baseballs, comic books, Matchbox cars, and toy airplanes. I could understand why two little kids would consider stuff like this treasures. But there were other things in the lair that totally boggled the mind. Like, why would they have a single yellow rubber glove? Or a coloring book with all the pages scribbled on? Or a wooden duck with its head broken off?

But I guess I didn’t have to understand what a six- and seven-year-old considered to be treasure. I just had to accept that they collected all the junk that nobody else wanted. And some things that people definitely wanted back—like my multitool.

The Klein brother with the blond hair cleared his throat, directing my attention back to him. The brother with the brown hair stuck out his hand. “Show us what you got.”

“I want to see the multitool first.”

Blondie expertly skipped to a corner of the lair, careful not to step on any treasure. He plucked something off the ground and came back to stand in front of me. The clean lines of the metal multitool gleamed as the boy dangled it before me.

“You know, that tool is rightfully mine. I shouldn’t have to trade you anything for it.”

I knew it was the wrong thing to say when Liat groaned beside me and Blondie immediately snatched his hand back and hid the multitool behind his back.

“No backsies!” Brunet Klein shouted, and he started pulling back the tarp flap to escort me off the premises.

“Okay, okay!” I said quickly. “I’ll make the trade!” Then I presented them with what I believed was my next most valuable possession, after my bike.

Both boys came forward to examine the thing in my hands, looking skeptical, but hopefully still open-minded. They touched the flat surface, then opened it and flipped through its pages. “A notebook?” Blondie asked.

“Not just any notebook,” I explained. “This is my journal. I write all my thoughts in here. All my observations. It’s basically my instruction manual . . . for life.”

“A diary?” Brunet asked.

I didn’t like to call it a diary. This was nothing like the diary Yasmin had with all her desperate thoughts of the cutest boys she’d ever seen in her life (aka all the boys she’d ever seen in her life). My journal was a more serious document than that. But if calling it a diary would make the thing more valuable to the Klein brothers, then I was more than happy to do it.

“Sure,” I said. “It’s my diary.”

The brothers looked at each other, then at my notebook once more, and I could tell they were looking at it in a brand-new way. I sneaked a peek at Liat, to see if she thought I’d said the right thing, and she flashed me a quick thumbs-up.

30

When no one was around—not Yasmin, and especially not my dad—I snuck the multitool back into his toolbox.

The Klein boys had accepted my trade, and this moment, as I closed the toolbox back up, was the happiest I’d been since my mom showed up. Because the multitool was about to fix something. It was about to fix things between me and my dad.

I waited until the next day, after day camp was over, to show my dad the multitool. I wanted to do it when I knew he’d be home, and he was always home for dinnertime. So after Yasmin and I had put the dishes in the sink and cleared the table, and after Yasmin had gone out to go find her friends, and after my dad had sat down with his newspaper, I went to the porch and cleared my throat.

My dad came to stand on the porch with me. “Yes?” he said.

I jutted my chin out, motioning to the toolbox in the middle of his worktable. “Have you looked inside there recently?” I asked.

“¿Por qué?” my dad asked.

“Can you just please look inside it?” I asked.

So my dad walked over to the table and unfasted the clasp that connected the two halves of the toolbox. He popped it open and looked inside. I stood back, trying to keep my grin from taking over my entire face.

I waited for my dad’s face to break out in a grin too. For his eyes to go wide as he noticed his trusty multitool gleaming back up at him. But there was just that same blank look on his face. No surprise. No elation.

“What I suppose to see?” he asked.

I bent over the table, looking inside the toolbox. Hammer, pencils, wrenches.

No multitool.

My jaw dropped so low it was practically on the floor. It felt like my stomach dropped to the floor too. I didn’t know what to say. The multitool had been there in the morning. It was supposed to be there now.

I looked up at my dad, at a loss for words.

But he had something to say. “You come with me.” He sounded like a cop, like he’d just caught a criminal and was about to collect his five-thousand-dollar reward. There was nothing I could do but follow behind him as he led the way.

We trudged between bungalows in silence, as the sun began to tuck itself in for the night. My dad still hadn’t told me where we were going, but eventually he spoke.

“We need to talk. About tree house.”

I was so surprised I almost stopped in my tracks. I didn’t think he’d ever bring up the tree house again. And then I realized where he was taking me. We were walking in the direction of the crime scene itself, probably so I could clean up the mess. But before we got there, I needed to say something too.

“I’m sorry about losing the multitool.” Because it really was lost now. And it felt like there was no way to undo the damage of that. “I’m sorry I took it without permission.”

That one seemed to do the trick, because even though my dad didn’t respond, or stop walking, he still nodded. Which I took to mean, “Apology accepted.”

And then I waited, because I knew it was his turn to apologize for ruining my tree house. But he did one better.

We stopped walking because we were here. And instead of there being a mess of broken tree house pieces scattered all over the ground, there was the start of a tree house up in the tree. It looked like the skeleton of a house—no walls, no windows, just a wooden frame and a floor holding it all together. But all the same, it gleamed in the sunset, shiny as a promise. I could already picture the house that it would become. It just needed to be completed.

I didn’t know when he’d done all this. Yesterday, maybe, when Yasmin, my mom, and I were in town shopping. I spied Liat in her bedroom window, and her shocked face matched mine.

“I sorry I say tree house was terrible idea,” my dad said. “And I sorry I break it.”

I wanted to tell him it was okay now. I wanted to tell him this was so much better than anything Liat and I could’ve built on our own. But I was still too shocked to say anything at all.

“I impress that you build such big project,” he went on. “But it was dangerous because all pieces were loose. Now . . .” Here, he grabbed hold of a corner of the frame and tried to shake it, but it stayed put like it had grown out of the tree itself. “I make better for you.”

I didn’t know what to say. Instead of words filling up my mouth, a lump formed in the back of my throat. It felt, almost, like I could’ve cried just then. Which didn’t make any sense, because there was no reason to cry right now. This moment called for the opposite of crying. I was shocked and happy and . . . touched. I couldn’t believe my dad—always so grumpy, so busy—would do this. For me.

And above all else, I felt surprised by my father. Yasmin had said that he wasn’t capable of creating the Very Special Moments regular dads on TV did. But he was. Maybe my dad wasn’t good at communicating—at expressing himself in the way that I imagined a dad should—but he’d done this. Silently, secretly, he’d done something to make me happy. To say he was sorry. To ask for forgiveness. To get closer to me. All without saying a word.

When my words finally came, they were breathless. “Thank you.”

My dad nodded, and I took it as “You’re welcome.”

“You used all the things we collected for it.”

“Yes,” my dad said. “Why use new things when I can fix old things? Anything broken can be fix.”

I nodded. Of course he was right. And it suddenly made sense, why he kept all those broken pieces of machine parts on his messy worktable. All the other dads here had regular jobs and might know all the Shabbos prayers by heart, and they knew all the songs you sing after Friday night meals, but my dad could do something that nobody else’s dad knew how to do. He could make new things out of old broken things. He could make them useful and beautiful. It was one of the most amazing skills to have, and I wanted to have it too.

Like he said, anything broken could be fixed. I think that went for us too.

“I not finish.” My dad pointed to all the material on the ground, piled and organized neatly off to the side. “We have some time before sun go. We build house together. You help me. Friend too.” He pointed at Liat’s window and I waved her over, motioning for her to come outside quick.

I would still get to build the tree house, but it would be better than I could’ve ever imagined now that I was doing it with my dad’s help. I went over to the roll of bed slats on the ground.

“I wanted to use this for a rope ladder. It could hang off the porch and we could unfurl it—I mean, lower it down—if someone wants to come up. And roll it back up if we want to keep someone out.”

My dad smiled. “I have same idea.”

He took something out of his pocket and handed it to me, and I gasped when I saw it.

“The multitool,” I said, my eyes going wide. I looked up at my dad, and there was a twinkle in his eye.

“Strange thing, I found in toolbox this morning,” he said, a smile in his voice.

I couldn’t believe it. He’d stood there and opened the toolbox in front of me, pretending he had no idea I’d found it and put it back. I tried to keep a laugh from escaping my lips, but I couldn’t. My dad and his bad jokes.

“This for you keep,” he said. “Don’t lose.”

I nodded and took it from him. It was the same old multitool as before, and although it was old, it somehow still felt brand-new. Like a family heirloom that became a treasure with every new owner who it had.

It was my new most valuable possession.

“Thank you, Daddy.”

He nodded, and then, unexpectedly, he patted my head. It made me laugh.

Pretty soon, Liat joined us, grinning from ear to ear, and the three of us got to work.

31

After that, I didn’t think about running away in the woods anymore. I practically forgot all about my plan. All I wanted to do was spend every minute in my new tree house. My dad, Liat, and I worked on it every day after camp. Sometimes we had to cut work short because my dad had his handyman duties. One day, as we were hammering nails into one of the walls, Morry Baum appeared.

He strolled up to our worksite just like he had the first time—with a bad attitude. But now, I was high in the tree, with my dad beside me. For some reason, looking down at Morry from above gave me the best feeling ever. And I could see the opposite effect all over Morry’s face. Shock pulled his eyebrows up and his jaw down. But I was pretty sure it was jealousy that colored his whole face a deep red.

“A tree house,” Morry mumbled.

“Yes!” Liat said. She was down on the ground, sewing a curtain onto a rod that used to be a chair leg. “It is a tree house. Very good.”

“Yeah, but . . . ,” Morry said, clearly searching for an insult that just wasn’t coming to him. “You didn’t build it. Akiva did.”

“No,” my dad said. I’m sure he didn’t mean for his voice to come out booming, but that was just how things sounded with his Russian accent. “Gigi and Liat build. Show him.”

I smiled down at Morry before hammering a new nail into the wall support. “And call my dad Mr. Petrosian.”

“Whatever,” Morry muttered. He bent down to reach for one of our materials, just like the time he’d taken the dresser from us. But my dad’s booming voice stopped him.

“No,” my dad said again. “It belong to us. No take.”

“But—” Morry began.

“Go way,” my father said.

With a grunt, Morry turned around and stomped back from where he’d come, and Liat and I giggled as we watched him go. I heard my father mutter under his breath, “Pendejo.”

It took some time, but we completed the tree house in about a week.

But before I could officially enjoy the tree house, there was something more important I had to take care of.

The hinges of Masha’s screen door squeaked with every knock. Finally her grandmother came to the door but didn’t open it. She seemed suspicious of me, and I wondered what awful things Masha had told her about me. Probably just the truth.

“Hi,” I said. “Is Masha home?”

Masha’s grandmother stared at me skeptically for a moment before she nodded and went to get her granddaughter. Masha showed up in less than a minute, but she still didn’t open the door. We looked at each other, separated by the see-through screen that felt more like a thick sheet of metal. But I was able to see the shirt Masha was wearing. It was bright red, tucked into her long jean skirt, and judging by the short sleeves that came down past her elbows, it was about five sizes too big. And right across the front, from armpit to armpit, were the words “Coca-Cola,” in white swirly script.

“Whoa,” I whispered. “They actually sent you something from the Coca-Cola company?”

Masha folded her arms over her chest, crushing the Coke logo like she wanted to keep her prize to herself. “I told you they would,” she said.

I nodded. She’d been right about the Coca-Cola company. And she was right about a lot of things. It’d been wrong of me to think her opinions and feelings didn’t matter that much just because she was younger than me. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about the trick with the gold rocks. You were right. It was mean.”

I didn’t know what I expected Masha to say, but I thought she’d say something. Instead she just continued standing there, arms crossed, and now she was also tapping her foot. If her foot could talk, Masha’s would be saying, “Isn’t there something else you want to apologize for?”

“Also, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the tree house.”

“You know, I’m really good at climbing trees,” Masha said. “I could’ve been a big help if you had just asked.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway,” I said. “My dad took the tree house apart.”

Masha’s face fell.

“But he put it back together again,” I added quickly. “We built the tree house together. Do you want to come see it?”

Masha’s face lit up with a smile I hadn’t seen in days.

32

“It’s the most amazing tree house I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Masha said, her voice full of awe. And I beamed up at the house along with her because I knew she was right.

We’d used all the materials Liat and I had collected, like the headboard, the dresser, the broken yellow patio chair. And with my dad’s help, we’d put it together like a patchwork quilt. There were two cabinet doors, one on top of the other, for the front door, and it looked like one of those farmhouse doors that split in the middle. The roof had real shingles, and it was slanted so that when it rained the water would just roll right off. There was a large golden picture frame for a window, and it had blue shutters on the sides.

“Let’s go in!” Masha exclaimed.

It was already dark by the time Masha, Liat, and I all sat in the tree house for the first time. Too dark to really explore all the details and hard work my dad had put into it, but none of us wanted to wait until morning to have our first meeting in our new tree house.

I had to say there were certain benefits to having a dad who didn’t care if I stayed out after dark. Masha’s grandparents were already asleep, so they weren’t worrying about her, and Liat’s bungalow was just a few yards away, so her parents weren’t worried either. We could pretty much be here all night if we wanted to. And there was nothing like being in our own tree house, where we made the rules, and nobody could tell us what to do.

It was the best feeling in the world.

The three of us sat cross-legged on the floor, and Liat set a heavy-duty flashlight in the middle. It was big enough to stand upright on its own, and it cast a wide beam of light on the tilted ceiling above us.

“So, what should our first meeting be about?” she asked.

“Well, first we have to welcome each other in,” Masha said. “Welcome to the first meeting of the Tree House Club!”

“Did we all agree on that name?” I asked. “Because I don’t remember agreeing to that name.”

“I kinda like it,” Liat said. “It gets the point across.”

“If you think of something better, we can have a vote on it,” Masha said. “That could be our first order of business.”

Masha may have been the newest member of the Tree House Club, but she was already taking the reins. That was fine by me, though, because I didn’t know anything about tree house clubs, and she seemed to have a bunch of ideas already. “No, the name is fine,” I said.

“Great,” Masha continued. “Now we’ll do roll call. That’s where all of us announce ourselves and, like, take attendance. Then we’ll talk about our mission. Do we have one? And what should it be? And should we have open membership? ’Cause I think three is a good number of members, though we do have room for a couple more people, if we want to invite them. Ooo, we could have a cool initiation ceremony that would be top secret. And a handshake!”

Masha was talking so fast that I felt like I needed to take notes. So it was a good thing I had my new notebook with me. Just because I had given the Klein brothers my other notebook didn’t mean I had to stop writing. I scribbled away quickly, flipping through pages as I wrote down Masha’s ideas.

Secret handshake! I wrote. Who knew that all this time Masha was full of good ideas?

“What about a song?” Liat asked. “We should have a membership song.”

“I like that idea,” Masha said, beaming.

Liat got up. The tree house wasn’t tall enough for us to stand straight in, so she hunched over. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and cleared her throat.

“O Tree House Club, O Tree House Club, I pledge my loyalty forever more

You smell like wood and also groceries, from all the food you used to store

Because you used to be cabinets.

And all the butts you used to hold

Because you used to be chairs.

And all the—”

“Maybe let’s hold off on a song for now,” I said.

“What, you don’t like that I talk about butts in the song?”

“No,” I said honestly.

Liat shrugged and sat back down. “Fair enough.”

“Can we focus?” Masha said. “It’s time for us to take minutes. Minute one—”

“I have a better idea,” Liat said. She snatched the flashlight and shone the beam up her chin. The light made most of her face white as a sheet, but also formed long, dark shadows on some of her features. “Let’s tell scary stories!”

“Hey, I don’t remember anyone saying anything about scary stories,” Masha said.

“What’s the matter, too chicken?” Liat asked. She made her eyebrows wiggle and dance, and the shadows seemed to wiggle and dance on her face too. Masha inched closer to me.

“Okay, rule number one of the Tree House Club: No calling anyone chicken,” I said. “Or any other name for that matter. We’re a club. We’re on the same team, right?”

Masha nodded and Liat did too, putting the flashlight back down.

“But I do like the scary story idea,” I said, letting a smile spread across my face. “Just one small story. Is that okay with you, Masha?”

Masha sat up straighter, as if she hadn’t just been shrinking in fear a second ago. She tossed her braid over her shoulder. “Sure. I’m not scared.”

Liat shone the flashlight under her face again. She had a magical way of turning her wide smile into something kind of spooky and hard to look at. “Have you ever heard about the woman with the golden arm?”

Liat told her story in a quiet, whispered voice. So quiet that Masha and I had to lean in to really hear. It was about a lady who had a golden arm and when she died, she was buried with it. Except someone dug it up and stole it from her grave. As she told the story, Liat dragged out the words, so now they weren’t just whispered, they were long too, as though they were being said across a vast distance.

“Wheeeeeere’s my golllllden arrrrrm?” Liat whispered. She kept whispering it, over and over, until finally, in one spontaneous burst, she shouted it at the top of her lungs. “WHERE’S MY GOLDEN ARM!”

Masha and I both jumped back and screamed, but then we immediately started giggling along with Liat. I didn’t mind getting scared, because the release of laughter afterward was the best part.

“Do you guys know any good stories?” Liat asked after she’d finished catching her breath.

Masha shook her head. “No way.”

I didn’t know any either. “All I know about are the Jewish demons that Mrs. Finklestein was telling us about.”

“Jewish demons?” Liat repeated. She used the flashlight like a microphone, lighting up her own chin and then passing it over to me to light up mine.

“I forgot what they’re called,” I said.

“That’s not a scary story,” Masha said in a low voice, like she didn’t want anyone—especially Jewish demons—to hear. “That’s real.”

“I think they’re called shems?” I said. “Shades?”

“Don’t say their name. That’ll call them!” Masha hissed.

“Do you mean sheydim?” Liat said, eyes going wide.

“Yeah, those!” I said. “Mrs. Finklestein said they come if you whistle at night.”

“Don’t do it,” Masha said quickly. But Liat already had her lips pursed and ready to go. “Don’t you dare!” Masha said.

Liat let out one long, hollow whistle.

We all waited.

But nothing happened.

Until—

Masha sat so straight it was like her spine was a broomstick. “What was that?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” I said.

“There was a noise outside,” she said. “I heard it, I swear.”

“You’re not allowed to swear,” I said. We were always taught in school that swearing was a really serious thing and we should say “promise” instead. And even when we said that we had to add “bli neder,” which meant the promise wasn’t binding, because if we made a promise and then had to go back on it, well . . . that was bad news. For some reason. And the last thing this moment needed was bad news.

“Well, I said no whistling, but nobody listened!” Masha whisper yelled.

“Wait, I hear something too,” Liat said.

“No you don’t, now you’re just trying to scare us,” Masha whimpered.

“No, I swe—I mean, I promise!”

But then I heard it this time too. A rustling outside the window. “It’s just the trees.”

“Trees don’t whistle,” Masha said slowly.

Liat buried her face in her knees and covered her ears with her hands. “Okay, now even I’m scared!” she squawked, squeezing her eyes shut behind her glasses.

“Come on, there’s nothing out there, it’s just the wind,” I said.

That was when a howl broke through the air, loud enough to turn all our spines into broomsticks. The three of us stared at each other, frozen with fright, and then, after a moment, we all jumped up at the same time and started screaming.

We pulled open the door and climbed down as quickly as we could, shrieking all the way to our bungalows.

33

It didn’t matter if we were at day camp, the pool, the basketball court, or anywhere, really. For the next day, all Masha, Liat, and I wanted to talk about was the tree house. We were dreaming up ideas for what to do with it and what our mission should be, now that we officially had a club.

So it was no wonder that news about our tree house spread around fast.

We were sitting in the tree house after day camp when we heard a cough down below.

“Um, excuse me?” someone called.

Masha, Liat, and I all looked at each other, then quickly scrambled to the porch to see who was there. Down below the tree house were none other than Baily Baum and Sara Tisch.

I was more than a little suspicious when I saw them, and I didn’t try to hide it. “Can we help you?”

“Can we come up?” Baily asked.

I looked at Liat and Masha, trying to see if we should let new people into our tree house. But they both only shrugged.

“We have a mission that I think you could help us with,” Baily added.

Having a mission was one of the things Liat and Masha and I had been talking about. Specifically, that we didn’t have one, and now that we were a club, it felt important that we did. Hearing the word “mission” seemed to make up Liat and Masha’s minds. They nodded at me. And although I was still suspicious about what Baily and Sara were really doing here, I thought this was a great opportunity to finally lower our rope ladder.

So that was what I did.

But Baily and Sara took one look at it, and then at each other, and decided not to touch the rope ladder. It seemed like they were the type of friends who could communicate without words too. They climbed up the rungs on the tree trunk instead.

When Baily and Sara came inside the tree house, they didn’t sit down right away. They looked around without saying anything.

“Welcome to our humble abode, ladies,” Liat said, and we all sat down, scooting to make room.

“This is so cool,” Sara said, her mouth hanging open as she took everything in.

“Gigi’s dad built it,” Liat said. “And me and Gigi helped too.”

“Really?” Baily asked.

Why did she sound so surprised? “My dad’s a very good builder.”

“No duh,” Sara said. “This is awesome! Wish my dad could build me something, but he can’t even fix a leaky faucet.”

I smiled but tried to do it without anyone noticing. My dad could fix a leaky faucet in his sleep. This whole summer I had thought Baily and Sara were the cool popular girls. And I had to admit, I was kind of jealous of them and their friendship. But now it seemed they were jealous of us. Me, Masha, and Liat. And our tree house.

Well, there was no need to be jealous. They were welcome to it.

“How did you find out about our tree house?” Masha asked.

“You’ve only been telling the whole world about it,” Baily answered.

I didn’t like her tone. “We have rules in this tree house,” I said. “And one of them is that we aren’t mean to each other. Ever.”

“I wasn’t being mean,” Baily said. “I was just stating a fact.” But that tone that she had before was gone, replaced by a quieter, shier voice.

“Also, you should apologize to Liat for calling her Junk Girl,” I said. “All that junk she was collecting was used to build the tree house you’re sitting in.”

Baily looked around once more, like she was seeing the tree house for the first time again, noticing the different pieces of the walls and windows and floors. Then she looked down. “Technically, that was also a fact,” she said in a low voice. “But, yeah, sorry.”

Liat shrugged. “Apology accepted, friend. Didn’t bother me much anyhoo.” She cleared her throat. “Now, you said you had a mission. Why don’t you tell us about it, so we may choose to accept it?”

“I don’t know if you’re aware,” Baily said, sitting up straight and flipping her dark hair over her shoulder, “but I hate my brother.”

“Which one?” I asked. “Don’t you have, like, seven of them?”

“Morry,” she said, as if it was obvious. Which I guess it kind of was. “He’s a pest and a menace and the worst thing that ever happened to me. He ruined my wedding day.”

It was only a mock wedding, but it was clearly still a sore subject for Baily, so I didn’t bring that up.

“Well, Baily, I can’t say I blame you,” Masha said. “That little booger is the meanest boy I ever met in my whole life.”

I nodded. “He thinks he owns this place.”

“He calls me Sara Tush even though he knows my name is Sara Tisch.” Sara’s cheeks turned as red as a tomato as she spoke.

We all turned to Liat, waiting for her reason to not like Morry Baum. But she only shrugged and pushed her glasses up. “I barely know the kid, but if you guys say so, then yeah, sure, blech.” She stuck her tongue out and gagged.

“I want to get him back for what he did to me and my wedding dress,” Baily said. “And I need your help.”

I glanced over at Liat and Masha and grinned. It looked like we had our first official Tree House Club mission.

34

The flipping competition was the boys’ day camp’s version of a mock wedding. Not that they were all going to pretend to marry each other, but this was their biggest event of the summer. And after weeks of them practicing for it, it was finally here.

Even I was surprised by how excited I was. Not just because the boys would finally have to get their dirty old mattresses off the basketball court, but also because this was going to be the setting for our mission. Our top secret Tree House Club mission to get Morry Baum back.

The boys were off on the side of the court, getting themselves ready by doing some stretches. I thought maybe they’d wear something special, or at least shirts in the same colors, like Team USA in the Olympics, but they just wore their usual T-shirts and polos.

Spectators sat three rows deep on the grass along the edge of the court. Yasmin had come early to get one of the best spots. She had a front-row view right at the end of the long line of mattresses. It was the spot where all the boys would stick their landings, but more importantly, it was the spot where Izzy Baum could come tumbling (or stumbling) right into her arms. At the very least, I knew she was planning on tossing a hand-painted origami rose at Izzy’s feet. I knew that because I’d read her diary. And while I usually would’ve given her a hard time about something like that, this time I wouldn’t, because she wasn’t the only one here about to do something outrageous.

Baily, Sara, Liat, Masha, and I had our own front-row seats for Operation Get Morry Baum. And though there was a lot of commotion and excitement in the air as the flipping presentation got ready to start, the five of us only had eyes for Morry.

I didn’t think Morry Baum could ever be serious about anything, but today he was proving me wrong. His mouth was almost always turned up in a sneer, but right now it was set in a straight line. His eyes were squinty and focused, and he wasn’t joking around with any of his friends. Actually, the only thing about him that didn’t seem serious at all was the bathrobe he was wearing.

“Uh, Baily?” Liat whispered. “Why does your bro look like he’s ready for a bath?”

“He’s pretending it’s one of those shiny robes boxers wear before their big fights,” Baily answered with a roll of her eyes. “I don’t know anything about boxing, but Morry couldn’t stop yammering about it at breakfast this morning.”

I tried to picture breakfast at the Baum house, where twelve kids of all different ages sat around a table. I imagined cereal flying and a lot of nonstop chatter about a lot of different things.

“Don’t worry,” Baily went on. “He’s wearing the shirt underneath.”

Our entire mission revolved around The Shirt. It was a white Space Jam basketball jersey, and it was Morry’s favorite. The Baums were the type of Jewish people who didn’t watch movies, but the shirt was Looney Tunes and Michael Jordan. You didn’t have to watch TV or movies to know who they were.

Masha nodded. “Good,” she whispered.

The thing about the mission was that all five of us girls played an important role in it.

When it was time to think of an idea, I had brought my movie and TV knowledge. And if movies and TV had taught me anything, it was that the best way to get back at a pesky bully who didn’t know what was coming to him was with itching powder. Obviously.

But it wasn’t like we could just go to a store and get some. That was when Liat’s outdoorsy knowledge came in. She was the one who suggested poison ivy. Rubbing just a little bit on his clothes would do the trick.

And that was where Masha came in. Since her grandmother did the Baums’ laundry, Masha could just go through the clean, folded shirts and look for Morry’s favorite Space Jam jersey, which he’d already told Baily he’d be wearing for the flipping presentation.

It was Sara’s turn to contribute next. Her dad was the bungalow colony’s Hatzalah man—an EMT—which meant he had all sorts of medical supplies in their bungalow. Sara took a couple of pairs of latex gloves from his stash when he wasn’t looking.

And, finally, Baily was the one to complete the task. Wearing the gloves, she carefully rubbed the poison ivy all over the inside of the Space Jam jersey. After that, she folded it back up and placed it at the top of his T-shirt drawer, so he wouldn’t even have to dig for it. Which was nice of her, if you really think about it.

As soon as Morry started running and flipping on those mattresses, his skin would rub up against the jersey and he’d start itching something awful.

Forget about the mock wedding or the mattress competition. This was going to be the event of the summer.

And yet a part of me felt kind of . . . slightly . . . doubtful. I’d already played one prank this summer, and I didn’t feel good about it afterward. “Hey, Masha,” I whispered, “isn’t this kind of like the prank that I pulled on you? With the gold rocks?”

She whipped her head around so fast her long braid hit me on the nose. “No way. This is different. This is payback.”

I nodded, even though it still felt kind of wrong. “Isn’t nekamah wrong, though?” It was something I’d learned at school. That no matter how big of an enemy you had, revenge wasn’t the answer. We were supposed to face the people who did something wrong to us with a “full heart.”

“Well, maybe today we’re not good Jewish girls who follow the rules,” Masha said. “Maybe we’re Jewish girls with girl power!”

When she said it like that, I could practically hear the Spice Girls cheering us on.

One of the counselors set a boom box on the ground and then positioned a microphone in front of its speakers. Upbeat music started blaring throughout the basketball court, and everyone in the audience started to clap.

“Welcome to the boys’ camp’s flipping showcase!” Gabriel, the boys’ head counselor, announced.

The boys started to line up at the front of the long mattress pathway, with the littlest boys going first. All the mothers held their breath, but the little boys weren’t flipping. They all tumbled, head over feet, to the end of the mattress line, and I had to admit, it was kind of cute seeing a bunch of four-year-olds pretending they were just like the big kids.

Next it was the slightly older boys. Among them were the Klein brothers, who held on to the tops of their yarmulkas and twirled down the catwalk like they were ballerinas. In the distance, Morry Baum rolled his eyes, but everyone in the audience thought it was hilarious. I grinned as Liat cheered the loudest.

It was finally time for Morry’s group to start lining up. He got in at the end of the line, but before he did, he made sure to pass by us first. Slowly Morry untied the belt of his robe, then shouldered off the rest of it. Underneath was a striped red T-shirt.

Not the Space Jam jersey.

We were all too shocked to say anything.

“Do you girls think I’m really that dumb?” Morry said, bending over and glaring at Baily and the rest of us. “I know you messed with my shirt.” He pinched Baily’s arm and cackled like the awful hyena that he was. “Better luck next time, losers!”

Baily held in a scream, but we could see how angry she was. Her face was turning as red as the mark her brother had left on her arm.

He was up at the first mattress. It was his turn, and he took off running. But just then, Baily bolted up and screamed, “PLAN B!”

The rest of us bolted up too, and with us came the full-to-bursting water balloons we’d been hiding beneath our skirts.

The first balloon hit Morry just as he started doing his first flip. It burst open right in his stomach. The rest of the balloons hit him all over his body, and Sara “Don’t Ever Call Me Tush Again” Tisch even got one right in his face.

Morry belly flopped on the middle mattress like a used paper towel. And the five of us? We tried to keep from laughing as we cut through the basketball court to run away. The whole time, my stomach had a funny tickle in it, like I was scared but excited at the same time. I knew we’d done something bad, but I also knew that we were all laughing and jittery at the same time. And I knew that the five of us were really friends now.

35

A lot of things changed after the flipping presentation. One of those things was Morry Baum. Anytime Masha and I saw him, he ignored us. And that was no small feat, ’cause usually he’d say at least one mean thing to us each.

We saw him again the day after the flipping presentation, when we were on the basketball court and I was letting Masha ride my bike. He came with his buddies and a basketball in his hand, and I was sure he was going to tell us to get off the court so he could play. But all he did was shoot us a dirty look and walk a little faster to get away from us. We weren’t hiding balloons behind our backs, but it felt good to know that he looked at us like maybe we were.

Baily and Sara changed too. They didn’t sneak off to whisper with each other about the rest of us anymore. At day camp we picked one another to be on the same team when there was a sports activity. And at the pool, they helped me practice treading water. After two days of feeling like I finally had it down, I asked the lifeguard to let me take the deep-end swim test.

I did my ten laps from one side of the pool to the other, three laps on my back, and the part where I had to hold my breath under water. Then I proved I could jump into the deep end and rise back up to the surface. And finally it was down to treading water. Molly Baum stood there, imposing with her whistle ready in her clamped lips. The safety of everyone in the pool area depended on her, and she took her job very seriously. I probably would’ve avoided looking directly at her, but that was pretty much all I could do as I treaded water. I had to keep my head above the surface, and Molly stood directly over me, looking as big as the Statue of Liberty, her stern gaze never leaving my desperate one. Finally she checked her wristwatch and blew her whistle. I reached for the wall, planted my elbows over the edge, and gulped in as much air as I could.

“Congratulations, Gigi,” Molly said. “You passed the swim test.”

I looked up at her, mouth hanging open as I caught my breath. I couldn’t believe it—not just that I’d passed my swim test, but also because Molly Baum was smiling. That was all it took for me to no longer be scared of the oldest Baum sister. From a pair of lounge chairs, Sara and Baily clapped and cheered, having watched me do all the tasks of my swim test.

Being able to swim in the deep end of the pool was cool, but the best part about it was being able to do any kind of jump I wanted. And the first thing Sara, Baily, and I did was line up at the nine-foot side of the pool, our big toes just sticking out over the water, and then hold hands as we did a pencil dive at the same time.

The sound of Molly Baum’s whistle was the first thing we heard when we broke through the surface, and I knew it was because jumpers were not allowed to hold hands. But Baily just giggled and stuck her tongue out at Molly.

My mom had been right. Summer was what I decided to make of it. Nothing about Shir Gershon had actually changed, but suddenly everything felt different. And it definitely had something to do with the fact that I had a group of friends to hang out with now. We rode our bikes, and held meetings at the tree house, and played cards and board games together on Shabbos.

My dad even took the five of us to Kauneonga Lake in his truck so we could go fishing. I was worried my friends would look at my dad and just see Akiva, the big, bearded handyman who was maybe a little scary because he didn’t look or act or talk like the dads they were used to. But I guess they didn’t find him as scary as I thought, because they were all happy to learn how to fish from him.

Even though my dad didn’t use so many words to talk, he could still teach by showing us what to do. He demonstrated the right way to hold a fishing rod, how to cast out a line, how to roll it back up if we felt a bite, and most importantly, to never touch a hook by its pointy end.

Actually, he handled the hooks himself, because some people didn’t want to even think about the bait part.

“What’s that?” Baily asked cautiously when my dad took out a plastic container full of dirt. My dad didn’t say anything, he just pried open the lid of the container and stuck it out so she could look inside. The horrified squeal she let out made a few birds scatter from the nearby trees. Baily ran to the end of the dock, but Liat leaned over the container, and her eyes went big as baseballs behind her glasses.

“WORMS!” She said it like my dad had just showed her a big bucket of ice cream. And then she made a song about it, naturally.

“Worms worms woorms WORMS! Worms worms woorms WORMS!”

Me and my ol’ buddy ol’ pal were the only ones who hooked our own worms, while my dad did everyone else’s.

The girls were fascinated by the bait-and-hook process. I guess none of their dads had taken them fishing before, even though they’d been coming to the country for years.

We spent most of that day at the lake, enough for the sun to turn us pink, before turning the sky pink next. I caught three fish—more than anyone else.

My dad put all our fish in a bucket and we gathered around to examine them. None of us wanted to touch the slimy things, but my dad held one in his hand as securely as though it were a pipe under somebody’s sink.

“Scale,” he said, sweeping his finger over the side of the fish’s body. It made the scales spike up like sequins on a dress. “Fin,” he said, pointing to the little fins on either side of the fish. Finally he said, “Kosher.” It was just like we’d learned in school, about why some fish were kosher and some (like the mustachioed catfish) weren’t.

My dad dropped the fish in the bucket and motioned for us all to follow him back to the truck. “I cook them.”

We were happy, sunbaked, and smelled of fresh lake water by the time we got back to Shir Gershon. And though the sun had started to set, the day wasn’t over yet. My dad was going to barbeque our fish right on a grill in front of our eyes. But even though it was a good day, things changed once we were inside the bungalow colony gate. There was a feeling in the air, like the strangeness before a storm comes. But this wasn’t a storm. It was more like a murmur. A sign that something was wrong.

Masha’s grandpa came out of his bungalow and went up to my dad. He spoke to him in Russian, and though I didn’t understand them, I could hear the tension in their voices. Their words were hushed and quick.

Masha spoke Russian—I looked at her to see if she could hear what they were saying. And it seemed like she could, because her whole expression changed. She turned to Liat. “Your brothers,” Masha said.

“What about my brothers?” Liat asked.

“They’re missing.”

“What do you mean, they’re missing?” Liat asked.

“They ran away in the woods,” Masha whispered.

The woods? The words hit me like a lightning bolt.

Because running away through the woods had always been my plan.

At least, it had been before. Why did the Klein boys do that? And how did anyone know that was where they were?

Just then, I saw Morry Baum running and waving a sheet of paper over his head like a flag. A bunch of other boys were chasing after him, trying to snatch the paper. When he spotted us, he ran right to us and showed us the paper, vibrating with the urgency of the situation. “Did you see?” he said to Liat. “Your brothers left this note.”

I looked at the sheet he was holding. I recognized it right away. This wasn’t a note from the Klein boys, it was a torn page from a notebook.

My notebook.

We all looked at the “note” to see what it said.

How to Run Away Through the Woods

36

The only word I could think of to describe the bungalow colony right then was “laberinto.”

It was a word my mom used any time there was too much chaos. And that’s how it had been since the news broke that the Klein boys were missing. The men were collecting flashlights and forming search parties, the children were huddling together and whispering in their lowest voices, and the mothers were trying to grab their kids and hold them tight, like they might end up lost in the woods too.

Nobody seemed to know how it had happened. Only that Mrs. Klein first noticed that the boys hadn’t come home for lunch, and when they still hadn’t come home by dinner, she knew something was wrong.

Everyone saw the Klein boys as kids who were always sneaking into people’s bungalows and taking their things, but that stuff wasn’t important anymore. All that mattered was they were alone and lost. And it hit me just how little they were. They were only six and seven years old.

Way too young to be in the woods alone. Especially at this time of night, when it was growing darker every minute.

My mind was racing and my heart was too, but I was frozen, watching all the commotion through the porch screen. In the kitchen, Yasmin was fixing a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My dad was supposed to be cooking our fish, but now he was out there, with everyone else. He’d taken all the flashlights he had and given them out to men who didn’t have any. Together, they’d all gone into the woods.

A part of me wondered if this was exactly how my dad would’ve reacted if it was me who’d gone missing in the woods. And the thought of it—that it’d been so close to being me out there at night, leaving my family to panic—made me so ashamed I knew it was part of the reason I couldn’t move.

Yasmin handed me my peanut butter sandwich while she put on her rain jacket.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I’m going to join the search.”

The only people who did not belong alone in the woods were the Klein brothers and my sister.

“You’ll get lost yourself!” I said.

“No I won’t. I’m going with my friends,” she said. “Now stay put.”

The screen door snapped behind her, and I watched her go.

That settled it. If my own sister—who had never even set foot in the woods once this whole summer—could go on this search, then so could I.

I needed to help find the Klein boys.

I needed to because it was my fault they were missing in the first place.

Yasmin had given me an idea. Going with friends was better than going alone.

I ran next door to Masha’s bungalow and knocked on the screen door. She appeared in an instant.

“Emergency Tree House Club meeting,” I said. “Can you come?”

“My grandmother’s asleep,” Masha whispered. She opened the screen door and met me on the steps. “Of course I can come.”

We went to get Baily next. The door to the Baum house was always wide open, because there were Baum children constantly walking through it at all hours of the day. So Masha and I didn’t even bother knocking. We just went straight up the stairs and looked through all the bedroom doors until we found Baily’s room. She was sitting cross-legged in a bottom bunk bed, flipping through a paperback book without really reading it.

“Emergency club meeting,” Masha and I said at the same time.

Baily tossed her book and swung her feet off the bed. “Let’s go,” she said.

We were sure Sara would be the hardest one to get to come with us because of her mom. As the head counselor, Mimi Tisch was all about order and rules and blowing her whistle whenever she saw anyone doing the slightest thing wrong. But when we got to the Tisch bungalow, Sara was the only one there.

“My mom and dad and brothers went to join the search party,” she said. She grabbed a flashlight and came with us.

I wasn’t sure if Liat would be up for an emergency club meeting. It was her brothers who were missing, and she was probably too worried to do anything. But when we got to her bungalow, her parents had gone on the search too, and she didn’t know what to do with her nervous energy. “I already checked their lair. They’re not there,” Liat said. “And I can’t just sit at home twiddling my thumbs.”

So we all gathered inside our tree house and sat down, staring at each other quietly. This meeting had been my idea, and I needed to speak first. “We have to find Liat’s bothers.”

They’d all been quick to come to this meeting, but the idea of stepping beyond the safety of the tree house suddenly made everyone a little apprehensive.

“We can’t just go into the woods,” Sara said. “We could get in trouble.”

“We could get lost,” Masha said.

“We could get dirty,” Baily said.

“Yes, but we have to do it because . . .” I stopped myself. I didn’t know how much I should say. If I should keep this part a secret to protect myself. But I knew that protecting myself meant possibly causing more harm to the Klein boys. And I’d already done enough damage. “Because this is all my fault.”

“What do you mean?” Liat asked. “How is this your fault?” She didn’t sound suspicious of me, just totally disbelieving. Like the idea that I had anything to do with this was totally preposterous. But she had to know the truth. All of them did.

“That note Morry showed us? Your brothers didn’t leave it,” I said. “They tore it out of my notebook. I was planning on running away through the woods.”

“What?” everyone whispered. The tree house filled up with a shocked silence, as deep as the darkness outside the windows. The looks on their faces only made my guilt feel bigger. When I gave the Kleins my notebook, how could I have forgotten that I’d written down my plan? Maybe I had thought they were too little to really understand it. I never would’ve guessed that they’d actually read the notebook, let alone follow the steps to run away.

All I was certain of now was that two little boys were missing, and it was all my fault.

“Why?” Masha asked. “Why did you want to run away?”

This was hard to talk about. But they were my friends, and they deserved the truth. I took a deep breath. “Because when the summer first started, I didn’t feel like I belonged here. I felt different and weird and . . . lonely. I just wanted to go back home. To be with my mom and my Brooklyn friends.”

The girls watched me and I could hardly look at them, but when I did, all I saw was confusion. Which only made me confused too.

“You felt lonely?” Liat asked.

“And different?” Sara asked.

“Well, yeah,” I said, shrugging. “I feel like I come from a totally different world from you guys.”

“I was so jealous of that,” Baily said. She whispered it so low I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly.

“Jealous?” I echoed.

“Yeah,” she said. “You have cool clothes and you know stuff about movies and television and music and all that cool stuff.”

Hearing this was shocking. “I was jealous of you,” I told Baily. “You have a big family, and I’ve always wanted that.”

“Trust me, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “Nobody pays any attention to you when there’s a million kids around.”

I guess we were both feeling the same way this summer, but for totally different reasons. “I thought you guys didn’t like me because my family’s different,” I said.

The girls looked at me blankly, making me feel like I needed to explain further. “Because my mom has been away this whole summer, and my dad works here. And he’s not . . . well, he’s not like the other dads. We’re not the typical Jewish family.”

“Who cares about all that?” Liat asked. “Your dad built this tree house! None of our dads can do that.”

“And I love my mom and everything, but having her be around all the time is not fun,” Sara said. “She’s so strict. And everyone always comes to complain to me just because she’s head counselor.”

“And every time somebody doesn’t like something about the bungalow colony, I have to hear about it,” Baily said, rolling her eyes. “As if it’s my fault.”

“Nobody’s family is exactly the same,” Masha said. “It doesn’t make anyone better or worse than anyone else.”

“Yeah, we’re all the same in the important ways,” Liat said. “Like, we all cared about getting back at Baily’s brother. And we all care about finding my brothers.”

I nodded, because she was right. That was what we were here to do, and we needed to get back on track. “Liat’s brothers had my notebook and they read my plans and all the stuff I’d written about how to run away through the woods,” I said. “They’re following my instructions . . . and my trail. Don’t you see? I’m the one who basically taught them how to run away. I’m the only one who can get them back.”

Another silence, but this one wasn’t so shocked. It was packed with stuff. Loaded with a heaviness of what this meant. Because it was big. Because it was right.

“I have to go find them,” I said finally. “But I can’t do it alone.”

The girls all looked at each other. It was dark and it was the woods and it was scary. But my friends were brave.

Liat was the first one to get up. “Lead the way, ol’ buddy ol’ pal.”

37

We couldn’t just run into the woods all willy-nilly. We had to be smart about this. If we went straight to a grown-up and told them we knew which way to go, they wouldn’t take us seriously because we were just kids. They’d also probably make us turn right back around and go home. So we needed to be sneaky about this.

We walked together without making a sound, and without turning on our flashlights. Only three of us had flashlights anyway, and they were little ones with tiny beams of light because all the big flashlights had gone to the search parties.

Everyone had started the search by the woods next to the Klein bungalow ’cause they figured that was where the Klein brothers had started. But if the boys were following my directions, they would have started by the woods at the outer edge of the wide-open field next to the basketball court. So that was where we went.

The five of us stood in the dirt-lined area before the field became the woods. From this point of view, the trees all sort of blended together into different shades of black, and for some reason my mind went to the plague of darkness, from the Passover story. I wondered if this was what the Egyptians felt like, when they were so surrounded by the dark that they couldn’t even move. ’Cause right now, none of us could move either, and we hadn’t even stepped into the woods yet.

Five minutes ago, I had been certain that we had to go into the woods to find the Klein brothers, but now all I wanted to do was run back home and let the grown-ups handle it. I wondered if my friends felt the same way. None of them were saying anything, but in the silence, they sounded exactly as scared as I felt.

But then Sara and Baily held hands and turned on their flashlight. And Liat and Masha held hands and turned on their flashlight too. I turned on my own flashlight and saw that together we shone enough light into the forest to see a few feet in front of us. If we could see a few feet in front of us the whole way through, then that was all we needed.

This was going to be scary. But if it was going to work, then one of us had to not be scared. Or to pretend not to be. And that person was going to be me. I took a deep breath and swallowed all the fear that was drying up the back of my throat.

“Okay,” I said. “Remember, look for trees that have a red X drawn on the trunk. Whenever you find one, just call out, and we’ll follow that trail.”

So off we went.

The forest didn’t look at all the way it usually did in the daylight. Earlier in the summer, when I had been getting familiar with it so I could map my path out of the bungalow colony, I had gotten to know it. The forest went as far as my eyes could see, but I knew my place in it. I knew how to navigate between the trees. I knew that if I saw a leaf twitching on the ground there was probably a salamander struggling to get out from under it. I knew to hop over the trunks that had fallen and to avoid the bundles of twigs that could get tangled up in my sneakers.

But in the darkness I didn’t know anything except what shone in front of my flashlight beam. I thought it’d be easy to find the first tree with the red lipstick X, but I didn’t see it at all. And a feeling that was even bigger than fear started to sneak up on me. It was the feeling that I was supposed to be leading my friends, but I didn’t know how to.

Just then, Liat called out. “Hey! I think I found something.” We followed her voice as quickly as we could without running, because running in these dark woods was too dangerous. I came to stand beside her with the rest of my friends and looked up at the round spotlight of yellow she cast on a tree trunk.

“A red X!” Sara said.

I began to breathe a little easier. “The next one should be about twenty feet in front of us,” I said. “Let’s keep going.”

And that was what we did. We marched together in a straight line. Twenty paces straight ahead, walking over logs and between trees, until we found another X, and then another one after that.

We must’ve found at least twelve of the Xs that way. After a while, I clicked the side of my digital watch, which made the time glow green. We’d been here an hour. The problem was, we’d walked another twenty steps from the last tree and we still couldn’t find the next X.

“How many Xs did you mark?” Baily asked.

I racked my brain trying to remember. I wasn’t sure. It could’ve been a dozen. It could’ve been two dozen. The last time I’d been in the woods, I’d walked two hours, which meant I should’ve had another hour’s worth of Xs left to spot, but what if we were just walking slower now, throwing off the count?

“Which way, Gigi?” Liat asked.

“Are we lost?” Masha asked. The worry in her voice was so thick it was like it had become part of the darkness itself.

“We can’t be lost,” Sara said, but her voice sounded just as worried as Masha’s. “If we’re lost, no one will come find us because they’re all looking for the Kleins.”

Baily’s flashlight beam started swinging from side to side, making the trees look like they were moving fast. “Oh no, is my flashlight running out of batteries?”

“We can’t stop now,” Liat said, answering a question nobody had asked yet but that everybody was thinking. “These are my brothers we’re talking about!” Her voice, which was always on the loud side, sounded even louder in the dark, especially compared to everyone’s whispering. “They’ve been gone for hours. It’s dark now. They’re scared. And Gigi’s the only one who knows where they are. Right, G?”

I nodded, even though I didn’t know if that was true anymore. The woods were so big. Liat’s brothers could be anywhere.

“But if we keep going, we’ll lose the trail,” Sara said.

“I don’t even know where the last X tree was,” Masha said. “Does anyone know which tree had the last X?”

My stomach started to twist up like a giant knot. Why had I ever thought this was a good idea? I’d brought my friends into the woods after dark and now we were lost and it was all my fault. They would hate me and no one would find us and if they ever did it would be too late.

More flashlights started swinging, and it was making everything swim around me. I took a step back, but I stumbled and fell on my butt. I let out a yelp, which made the girls yelp, and pretty soon everyone was screaming.

But within all our screaming, there was another sound. “Hello?”

It wasn’t a girl’s voice at all.

It was a man’s.

38

We screamed even louder. Who was that? Was it a hitchhiker in the woods, like Masha had mentioned all the way at the start of the summer? Was it sheydim, like Mrs. Finklestein talked about? I needed to get my head straight. I shushed everybody. “Turn off your flashlights!” I hissed. “Turn off the lights and he won’t see us!”

One by one the flashlights blinked off as we huddled together, and all that was left was the sound of our whimpering as we strained our ears to listen. In the dark, the trees were black, straight lines. But between them, there was a moving shadow.

And that shadow was shaped like a person.

But there was also one lone light—another flashlight beam that didn’t belong to us. It was stronger than all our beams combined. The light was coming closer, along with footsteps. They crunched the dead leaves and snapped the twigs.

Masha was shivering so much I could hear the coins in her wrist purse jingling. Why did it have to have so many jingling coins? And why did it need to be so neon yellow? It was like she was wearing a giant blaring sign that said WE’RE OVER HERE!

I grabbed her hand and squeezed to let her know that I was here and everything was going to be all right. One of the other girls took my other hand. I didn’t know who the hand belonged to, but I squeezed it back anyway. So long as my friends were with me, I wouldn’t be scared. I would be brave. We all would.

“Who’s there?” came the voice again. He was so close it felt like he was right above us. And his light was so strong that I couldn’t see who was behind it.

What if it wasn’t a hitchhiker? It didn’t makes sense for a hitchhiker to be all the way out here in the woods. It never did.

What if it was the worst possible thing it could be—a sheyd?

I knew what I had to do. The bravest thing of all. I turned my flashlight back on and shone the beam straight up at the source of the voice.

It lit up a man’s face.

All us girls started to scream at the exact same time. And then Baily said, “Izzy?”

As soon as she said that, the rest of us stopped screaming. Except for Masha, who kept yelling until Liat gently jabbed her arm with her elbow. When it was quiet, we took a good look at the guy who was standing in front of us. Baily’s brother. We were so relieved that our sighs practically lifted us off the ground like rockets.

“Baily?” Izzy said. He shined his light on her, and she squinted. “What are you doing out here?”

“We’re searching for the Klein boys, duh.”

“Well, you can go back home now,” Izzy said. “They’ve been found.”

Liat let out a loud “Woo-hoo!” Then she asked, “Are they okay?”

“They’re fine. Just hungry. They had a notebook with them.” Izzy searched our faces, and I shrank among my friends because I knew who he was looking for. His eyes settled on me just like I thought they would. After all, on the inside cover of my notebook, I’d clearly written “Property of Gigi Petrosian, Bungalow Two.”

“Your father has your notebook,” Izzy said to me. “He’s going to want to talk to you.”

It suddenly felt like I was being sent to the principal’s office.

39

Izzy guided the way back to the bungalow colony. It had taken us an hour to get lost in the woods, but for some reason the trip back felt too quick. I needed time to prepare to face my father. I needed to stall. But I was suddenly standing in front of my bungalow. We’d dropped Liat back home first, and her brothers bounded down the porch steps to smother her in a hug. Sara was next. Her mom didn’t have her whistle hanging down her neck, but she still looked every bit the head counselor with her hands on her hips. I watched Masha go up the three steps to her porch and wave goodbye before dipping inside. And Izzy and Baily were already walking back to the Baum house.

“Good luck,” Baily whispered to me. She might have spent the day finding out that my dad could be a nice guy who could teach anyone how to fish. But even she couldn’t forget that he could still be a scary guy.

Pretty soon, I was the only one standing outside, and I couldn’t stall any longer.

I went inside.

I could see that Yasmin was already in bed and I tried to head straight to our bedroom, but there was no way to avoid my dad. He was sitting at the kitchen table. He cleared his throat, which stopped me in my tracks. My notebook was in his hands. “Siéntate,” he said.

I did what he said and went to sit next to him.

“¿Qué es esto?” he asked.

“Mi notebook,” I whispered.

“I look,” he said. What he meant was that he’d looked inside the notebook, but I still didn’t know if that meant he’d read it. My dad was always too busy to read books. But my mom told me that he’d learned to speak Spanish by reading the newspaper every day while they lived in Peru. I wondered if my dad could learn about me by reading the words I had written. A part of me wanted him to. But another part of me was scared that he’d learn too much.

I never considered my notebook to be a diary, but I realized that’s exactly what it was. It was full of my observations, but it was also full of my feelings. And as Yasmin knew all too well—the wrong person could find it and read it.

“You wanted run away?” my father asked.

I looked down at my hands because I was too afraid to look at his face. “Yes,” I said in the smallest voice I could muster.

I expected my dad to be angry, to yell at me for wanting to run away and for going to search for the Klein boys without permission. But he wasn’t yelling. He was obviously storing up his anger for what he’d read in the notebook.

“I not know you hate me,” he said.

Hearing those words felt like someone had just thrown a rubber ball right into my gut during a game of Elimination. I was so focused on all the things I’d written about running away, I’d forgotten that I had written I hated my dad. In block letters. Plain as day.

The way my dad was looking at me now . . . I’d never seen him so sad. His eyes were shadowed beneath his dusty ballcap, and behind his big bushy mustache, his mouth sagged at the corners. I started to say something, but my dad shook his head.

“I’m sorry you have such bad time here. I know you want go home, be with mami. But I happy you here.”

He was saying something good—something I’d been wanting to hear from him for a long time—but for some reason, it made my throat tighten up. That feeling you get right before you’re about to cry. My dad was happy I was here. I never would’ve believed him if he hadn’t just told me so.

This whole summer, I’d thought he hadn’t even noticed me. But it turned out he wanted me here. Maybe I got it all wrong. Everything about this summer and me and my dad.

I thought I wouldn’t fit in here, that I’d be lonely. But I’d made friends. I discovered that I wasn’t just a city girl—I could be happy in the country in a community in the forest. Now that I thought about it, maybe it was my dad who was really the lonely one here. He couldn’t really communicate with the other grown-ups because of the language barrier. He didn’t have my mom here. Really, he only had me and Yasmin. I never thought how he’d feel if I weren’t here spending the summer with him.

And when I thought about my bungalow colony summer with my dad, I thought about us fishing with my friends, about us building the tree house—I even thought about everything he did for Yasmin and me, like making us dinner every night.

I was convinced he didn’t care what I did with myself this summer, but if I took my mom’s advice and changed my perspective a little bit, I could see things in a different way. I could see that maybe my dad had been giving me the freedom to do what I wanted to this summer. To find the people who would become my friends, and to discover the adventures that would make me love it here. Maybe he just didn’t want to get in the way.

But I liked to spend time with him. That was one of the things I had discovered this summer too.

“I drive you home tomorrow,” my dad said. “If you want go.”

I could feel tears springing to my eyes. I shook my head quickly. “When I wrote all that stuff, I felt differently from how I feel now.”

My dad looked at me sideways like he didn’t understand. “¿Qué?”

“I love it here,” I said. It burst out of me, and I think it shocked me and him both. “I like my friends. My tree house. I loved learning how to fish. And I love spending time with you. I want to stay.”

My dad let out a breath that ruffled his mustache, and I didn’t wait for him to say anything else. I jumped up and wrapped my arms around him. I buried my face in his neck. He smelled like welding smoke and metal and wood. His beard tickled my cheek, and then, a moment later, tickled it even more, which was how I knew he was smiling.

My dad hugged me back, and I heard him laugh. It wasn’t the laugh he used for people when he didn’t know how else to fill the gap in a conversation. It was a real laugh, the kind he saved just for me.

“Good,” he said finally.

We stayed like that for a long time.

40

The next night, in the big field between the basketball court and the woods, the bungalow colony made a bonfire. It was in celebration of the Klein brothers being found safe.

The Klein brothers were close by under the watchful eyes of their parents. It was the biggest fire I’d ever seen. My dad was in charge of it, making sure the fire was under control and that nobody got too close to it. People poked beef hot dogs and kosher marshmallows through sticks and wrapped potatoes in silver foil, and everyone was having a good time waiting for their food to cook.

Yasmin sat next to Izzy. And for once, it looked like he actually knew she was there. They weren’t holding hands or anything, weren’t even looking at each other, really, but this was the closest, physically, that I’d ever seen them together. And I knew Yasmin was buzzing. This was definitely going to be an exciting entry in her diary. But I wasn’t going to read it this time.

I looked around at my friends. We all sat with marshmallows at the ends of our twigs. My dad had wrapped five potatoes in silver foil for us and put them at the edges of the fire for them to roast.

The thing about the fire was that as big as it was now, I knew that it had to die down eventually. Before the night was over, it’d be nothing more than ashes. And it made me think about the summer and how there were only two and a half weeks left of it. My time at Shir Gershon was almost over.

But sitting at the bonfire now, I thought about everything I’d discovered this summer, like fishes with mustaches, and plants that felt shame, and strange songs that I couldn’t get out of my head. I discovered that broken lawn chairs could make great tree house walls. That you weren’t really lost if you were together with your friends. That you could still learn so much about your own dad.

At the start of this summer, the only thing I could focus on was everything I was going to miss back home. But now I didn’t know why I’d worried about it so much. Brooklyn would always be there waiting for me. And, distantly, I knew Peru would be there too. But something about this place—this community in the forest—felt like it would only happen now. There was no guarantee that my dad would work here next summer. But suddenly I hoped he would. That we could be one of the families who came here for two months out of the year. I looked at my friends around me and hoped that I’d see them every summer, again and again, for as long as I could. I would be sad when the bonfire was out, but I was going to enjoy it while it was still here. I felt warm, but I knew it wasn’t just from the flames.

The bonfire raged on. It spit out sparks that went flying up until they disappeared into the sky. Above us, the night twinkled with a million stars. More than you could ever see in Brooklyn. And I knew that I was close to home, and at the same time far away. And that was okay.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my agent, Jenny Bent, for finding the perfect home for this novel. Thank you to my editor, Karen Chaplin, for loving this story and championing it. Thank you to Svetla Radevio for creating a cover so stunning that I can’t stop staring at it. And a big thanks to the team at HarperCollins and Quill Tree Books: production editor Jessica Berg, publicist Abby Dommert, Nicole Wills in marketing, and Laura Mock for the cover design.

A secret: There isn’t a Happy Road in upstate New York, but there is a Happy Avenue. It’s right next to Lollipop Lane, if you can believe it.

The bungalow colony where I spent three summers as a kid sits empty now, but it’s still there, in a hamlet close to Woodstock. I don’t know the address, but whenever I want to revisit it, I look for Kauneonga Lake on Google maps. I zoom in until I find Happy Avenue. And then I follow that road—the one I rode my bike down with my friends—until I spot the clearing in the woods with the white bungalows and their red roofs. From my bird’s-eye view I see the pool, the handball and basketball courts. And I’m taken back to those days of fresh blueberries, sun-showers, and tadpoles.

This book goes out to the people of my childhood summers, who still loom so large in my mind. To Yaffa/Yvgenia, Bohdie, Yael, Leah, Mordechai, and everyone else I met in the bungalow colony. I only have the best memories of you and of that place. Some of the characters in this book are unkind because it was necessary for the story. But none of the kids I met in upstate New York when I was a kid were ever anything other than awesome. I cherish every single one of my memories with you all. If you ever read this book, I hope it conjures up the magic of the country, and I hope I captured it well. And Yaffa/Yvgenia, I am still really (really!) sorry about the trick with the golden rocks.

To Yasmin, my effortlessly cool and once boy-obsessed older sister: Thank you for letting me write about you honestly, and I am so glad I got to share the experience of the country alongside you.

To my mother: Thank you for working so hard. And thank you for always finding a ride to come to the country for Shabbos. I know that must have been difficult, but you always made it happen.

To my father: Thank you for the lessons. Thank you for showing me how to fix things. Thank you for showing me the country. Thank you for the multitool.

About the Author

GOLDY MOLDAVSKY was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives. Her novels include the New York Times bestseller Kill the Boy Band, the Publishers Weekly bestseller The Mary Shelley Club, and Of Earthly Delights. Her books have appeared on numerous best-book lists and have been published in a dozen languages. She can be found at goldymoldavsky.com.

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Books by Goldy Moldavsky

- Bubblegum Shoes: The Case of the Contraband Closet

- Kill the Boy Band
- No Good Deed
- The Mary Shelley Club
- Lord of the Fly Fest
- Just Say Yes
- Of Earthly Delights

Copyright

Quill Tree Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

On the Road to Happy. Copyright © 2026 by Goldy Moldavsky. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Without limiting the exclusive rights of any author, contributor or the publisher of this publication, any unauthorized use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. HarperCollins also exercise their rights under Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 and expressly reserve this publication from the text and data mining exception.

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First Edition

Cover art © 2026 by Svetla Radivoeva

Cover design by Laura Mock

Library of Congress Control Number: 2025044147

Digital Edition MAY 2026 ISBN: 978-0-06-337227-6

Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-06-337225-2

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