ZeeZee reached out to touch the stone in front of her. “But I am normal, right? I’m normal me!”

T

he night air was refreshingly cool after an unseasonably hot Shabbos, and the Kosel was packed. ZeeZee managed to wrangle her way through the crowd to get a spot next to the Wall. She was still dressed in Shabbos clothes; she’d left her sister’s friend’s house in Maalot Dafna the second Havdalah was over.

ZeeZee scanned the area to see if anyone she knew was here. Even though it was Motzaei Shabbos, she’d hoped that by hurrying, she’d beat the seminary crowd. A quick glance revealed a group of girls who, judging from the way they were dressed, were most definitely not in any seminary, and, relieved, she opened her siddur. Tonight, she was in the mood to be alone.

Ever since her talk with Mrs. Edelman, she’d been feeling vaguely depressed. She’d had such grand dreams for this year — dreams of doing big, exciting things, of striking out her own path and coming home with a year’s worth of adventures that would set the stage for her life. Her own unique individual life.

“Am I really supposed to just force myself to be happy working at Shleimut?” she whispered into her siddur. “Or wash dishes for some family like everyone else?”

She closed her eyes. All her life, she’d received the message that different was bad. Being on the right side of fun and quirky was fine, but she’d learned not to cross that line. She still remembered her disastrous birthday, back in ninth grade. All the girls in her crowd would go out to a restaurant to celebrate one of the chevreh’s birthday. She’d decided, instead, to spend the day with her friends volunteering at a homeless shelter in the city, and had proudly made the arrangements completely on her own.

The experience had been totally awesome; the reaction from her friends’ parents when they found out, much less so. She could still hear the endless mussar schmoozes she’d gotten from her parents, her principal, and her sisters. And she’d learned: it was okay to be different, as long as different was still within the range of normal. Good, Bais-Yaakov-girl normal. Since a good girl was what she was and what she wanted to be, she spent the rest of high school carefully toeing the line.