Shlomo, the rosh yeshivah wrote back so quickly that Shlomo was still holding the phone, hatzlachah. Enjoy your guests

Reb Zalman and Mommy had gone off to sleep, and it was very quiet for a moment.

“Okay, guys, come let me show you around,” Shlomo said, feeling awkward, like a real estate agent showing his first house. Shlomo Bass had never had friends come for a sleepover, and he’d never been invited to one either. He remembered that he’d almost made the cut at Bauer’s bar mitzvah.

Lanky Elchanan Bauer had spent the first six months of the year in seventh grade making and remaking the list, actually using a pen and paper and crossing out names before adding them again. Five boys, his parents had told him, he could invite five boys to the mountains for Shabbos. At times, Shlomo Bass was on the list, depending on who was knocked off. In the end, the weeks before the bar mitzvah were socially successful ones for Bauer; he was invited to play baseball on Friday and the Greenberg boy learned with him during night seder and Gutstein was his math partner, so Shlomo Bass was knocked down to number six.

Once, he’d gone on holiday with his cousins in Europe, spending a week at a mansion near the sea, which had been sort of nice, but that wasn’t a sleepover either. He’d shared a room with his father — his parents were still married then, but they said Mommy couldn’t come because she was busy with Savta’s surgery — and most of the day had been spent going for walks or learning. Shlomo imagined that sleepovers involved pillow fights and popcorn, and there had been none of that. There had been singing, though; the British people weren’t like Americans, all silly and lighthearted during songs. They weren’t shy about harmonizing either, and Shlomo had enjoyed that part.

Now, as Lorb and Wagner followed him down the stairs into the basement, he had a moment of total panic as he wondered if he was meant to be sleeping in the same room as them. This hadn’t been discussed, and he was expected to know the right answer. This wasn’t a sleepover, and they weren’t friends, but they were in his house and for tonight, at least, they were being super-friendly. They had told him Zalman was chill and that he was clutch for having them, but he found himself wishing he’d had time to prepare the house a little better. It was clean and presentable — Wagner thought it was massive — but Shlomo was a bit embarrassed by the huge poster of Zalman and his daughters in Disney World wearing Mickey Mouse ears and making weird faces.

“Are those your sisters?” Lorb asked, and Wagner kicked him in a jokey way.

But Shlomo appreciated the question and said, “No, they’re Reb Zalman’s daughters, I guess maybe stepsisters. Not sure.”

The guest room had two high-risers, but as soon as they came in, Shlomo knew he wasn’t staying there with them. No one said anything, but the way both boys possessively swung their little bags onto the beds at once made it clear that this was their room.

Shlomo felt a pang of jealousy but also relief, and he went to bring them towels.