Penina makes a split-second decision. “I’m coming over. Are you at the cemetery?”

IN

her second week of college, Penina had walked into the wrong classroom and sat down next to the only frum girl in the room. There had been no shortage of frum people in the school, but frum girls had been a little harder to find. The other girl had looked wary, but Penina had plunged forward anyway, and they’d spoken for long enough for Penina to extract three facts from her.

First and second, the girl was named Rivi Cohen, and she already had her entire undergraduate and law school career planned out. And third, this was a World History class, not the Ethics in Technology class that Penina was going to be late for.

She’d bumped into Rivi a few more times over the next months: in the kosher area of the cafeteria, in busy hallways, on the train they both took to their respective towns. Penina prides herself in being personable, and slowly, she had worn down Rivi until Rivi had begun to smile back. By the end of the semester, they had coordinated required intro courses and become inseparable.

It’s part of why Penina had moved with Daniel to Lenape Falls after everything had fallen apart — Rivi might be busy, but she’s still the closest thing Penina has to a local sister. (Her actual sisters live in a cluster in distant Ramat Eshkol and are bemused at her cybersecurity career.) They’ve shared all of themselves and know each other better than anyone else.