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  Early that morning, when we woke up, I asked it a question: “Magic 8 Ball, am I going to become a famous comedian?”

  REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.

  I asked again.

  REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.

  And again. REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.

  “This stupid thing is stuck,” I told Dash.

  “Let me see it,” he said, and I tossed it to him. “Magic 8 Ball, is Noah going to bomb as a comedian?” He gave it a shake, looked, then laughed out loud.

  WITHOUT A DOUBT.

  “Give me that!” I said, grabbing it out of his hands. While he wasn’t looking, I repeated my question, silently.

  REPLY HAZY, TRY AGAIN.

  “Stupid ball,” I said, then rolled it across the room, and we went upstairs for breakfast. I forgot all about that Magic 8 Ball until the next day. And I didn’t think much about it even then, because I just figured the next time I was over, I’d try again.

  That’s because I didn’t know there wouldn’t be a next time.

  The following Tuesday afternoon, at three-thirty, I was clinging to a pole on the number 31 bus, trying to stay vertical as it hit every single pothole on Wisconsin Avenue. I waved my free arm wildly like you might do if you were, say, a person who actually wanted a teacher to call on you.

  “So get this,” I said when I finally had everyone’s attention. I love having everyone’s attention. Everyone being Deena Leon, Jared Rosenfeld, Adam Metz-Peterson, Eli Webb, Sarah Patel, Noa Cohen, and all the other kids who go to my school and ride the bus to Hebrew school with me every Tuesday afternoon. I feel bad for the kids like Dash who go to middle school in Bethesda. They carpool instead of riding the bus, so they miss my weekly stand-up routines.

  Noa shot Deena a look and groaned before I even started the joke. Undaunted, I launched into the setup. “Two old ladies are at a fancy hotel,” I said, ignoring both Noa and an old lady who turned around to glare at me. “And one of them says, ‘The food here is really terrible.’ And the other one goes, ‘Yeah, I know. And such small portions!’ ”

  I’m guessing that with all the bus noise, no one could hear the punch line. Which explains why I didn’t get a big laugh. I let go of the pole to do a rim shot for emphasis, but the bus lurched over another pothole and I almost fell over. I decided to switch to bus jokes. Always good to cater to your audience’s interests.

  “The number thirty-one is so slow,” I tried, “a cop pulled it over to give it a parking ticket!”

  “I wish it went slower,” said Adam, missing my joke completely.

  “Yeah,” agreed Jared. “The longer it takes, the less time we have to spend at Hebrew school.”

  Everyone laughed, which was stupid because it wasn’t even a joke! I laughed, too, because I didn’t want everyone to know that, unlike them, I actually look forward to Hebrew school.

  Don’t get me wrong—I don’t love it. But since Dash and I don’t go to the same school anymore, Tuesday afternoons are the only time I get to hang out with him during the week. Plus, the teachers are kind of okay, and then there’s Rabbi Fred. In addition to being a rabbi, he’s the education director at our temple, which means he’s like the principal of Hebrew school. His name fits him perfectly because he looks a lot like an older Fred Flintstone. He has white hair and a big nose and twinkly eyes like he’s in a good mood all the time, which he mostly is.

  One of my moms, Karen, says Rabbi Fred is a mensch. The first time she said it, I was confused because it’s also what she calls the guy at the garage who works on Frau Blue Car (that’s our Volkswagen’s name—it’s a Young Frankenstein joke). It sounded so much like “wrench” that I thought maybe she meant Rabbi Fred was some kind of Jewish mechanic. I soon learned that “mensch” and “wrench” have nothing to do with each other. (I don’t think Rabbi Fred has any idea how to fix a car—he rides his bike, mostly.) The closest synonym for “mensch” is probably “a good guy,” but Rabbi Fred is more than that. He’s a deeply good person through and through. And in case you’re wondering, “mensch”—even though it has the word “men” in it—is not a gender-specific term. Girls can be mensches, too.

  But not all of them are. Take Noa Cohen. Please!

  Noa Cohen has a big head with a big mouth and big teeth and big hair—long, curly red hair. She’s kind of a Hermione type, except no wand, and Jewish. But that’s not the reason she’s my nemesis. This is: her name sounds exactly like my name, although I hasten to point out to you that she does not have my exact same name. She’s Noa Cohen, and I’m Noah Cohen.

  Cohen is one of the most common Jewish last names on the planet. It’s mine because it’s Karen’s last name. My other mom is Jenny Haus. My sister, Enid, is a Haus because Jenny used to be married to a guy named Howard Haus, who is Enid’s dad. Then they got divorced, and Jenny and Karen fell in love and had me and the rest is history. When my moms got married, they talked about hyphenating, but they couldn’t stop laughing over Cohen-Haus sounding like “co-hen-house,” so they ended up just leaving everything as it was. Though for the wedding invitations, they did use a picture I drew of a chicken coop, with four smiling chickens in it to represent the four of us: me, Enid, Karen, and Jenny.

  For reasons that make exactly no sense to me, the fact that Noa and I have similar names makes people think we are brother and sister. Which is nuts, because who would do that to their kids? Plus, Noa Cohen and I are not alike in any way. For example:

  1. Noa always hands in her homework on time. It’s kind of her thing. As for me, I almost always do my homework. I just sometimes find it at the bottom of my backpack when I’m standing on the stairs of the number 31 bus looking for my DC One Card so the driver will let me on.

  2. Teachers love Noa. The same cannot always be said about me. (It has been pointed out to me by my moms that this may have something to do with the whole not-handing-in-my-homework thing.)

  3. We’re both Jewish, but technically I am only 50 percent Jewish, same as Dash. For him, it’s his dad, and for me, it’s my mom Karen. Guess who’s 100 percent Jewish and likes to make sure everyone knows it?

  4. Noa is not funny. I, on the other hand, am hilarious.

  Just to be clear, I can think of tons of girls that are funny. Like Tina Fey, who is one of the funniest people on the planet. She wrote all that stuff for SNL before she was even on the show, and then she made tons of funny shows and movies and wrote hilarious sketches for herself and other people. And she wrote the book Bossypants, which is a riot. I got the audiobook for Chanukah last year, and I listened to it so many times I could pretty much recite the whole thing. Here’s the point: Noa is no Tina Fey. She’s like the anti-Fey.

  I knew this from the moment I first met Noa, a million years ago, at our neighborhood playground. I was minding my own business, stomping around the sandpit with my dinosaurs—I was really into dinosaurs at the time—and someone’s fairy princess whatever-it-was got in my way. The next thing I knew, three moms were running at me, yelling my name.

  Two-thirds of those moms were mine, and getting yelled at by them was nothing new. But the third mom was a total stranger, so that part was confusing. It turned out she wasn’t yelling at me. She was yelling my name at this little girl with a big, open mouth who was screaming louder than all three moms put together.

  To the best of my recollection, here’s what happened next:

  Other mom: Noa! Sweetie! Are you okay? Did the mean, terrible boy ruin your bee-yoo-tee-ful creation?

  Noa: Wahhhhh­hhhhh­hhh!!! [She was a drama queen, even then.]

  Karen: Wait a second, her name is Noah? He’s Noah, too.

  Other mom: Yes, but it’s N-o-a, no h. Noa Cohen.

  Jenny: Did you say Cohen?

  Karen: That’s his last name, too!

  Other mom: No way.

  My moms: Way! [They actually say this, like in Wayne’s World. I think it’s old-people slang.]

  For a couple of happy years following that day at the playground, I didn’t see Noa. Th
en she showed up in my kindergarten class to steal my cubby (she denies this, but who do you think would remember it better, me or her?). And she’s been in my class every year ever since. Every year! It’s like some sort of bad, evil, twisted joke in the main office. “Hey, let’s put Noah Cohen and Noa Cohen in the same class again!”

  On the first day of fifth grade, I called Dash to tell him to guess who was in my class again, surprise, surprise.

  “George Foreman,” said Dash. “You know, the grill guy.”

  Dash’s mom had just moved out, and Dash’s dad had just bought the first in a series of G-Forces. According to Gil, it was fine that Dash’s mom took most of the kitchen equipment with her—with his G-Force, he was all set. George Foreman made me think of George from Seinfeld, which is one of my favorite shows of all time.

  “Ha-ha. Very funny,” I said flatly, thinking about the episode where George tells Jerry how his gym teacher used to call him Can’t-stand-ya instead of Costanza. Even though I wish it were the other way around, Dash is more the Jerry type and I’m more the George. Fifth grade didn’t get off to a great start. Dash’s mom had made Dash transfer to a school near her apartment in Bethesda. And it felt like everyone had grown over the summer—except me. Noa Cohen was suddenly a whole head taller than me.

  “That wasn’t a guess,” said Dash. “I just thought it might make you feel better to know that George Foreman has five sons named George.”

  “What’s your point?” I asked. I wondered if his dad’s new grill had come with a George Foreman Fun Facts brochure.

  “I dunno. Things could be worse?” said Dash.

  “This is my sixth year in the same class with Noa,” I informed him. “There’s no way things could be worse.”

  Guess what? I was wrong. I found this out a few weeks later, at Hebrew school, when we received our dates-and-deets sheets. That’s a form you get when you’re ten that tells you stuff about your future bar or bat mitzvah, like the date and your bar mitzvah partner—that’s the kid you’ll share your bar mitzvah with if there aren’t enough dates to go around. My sheet said:

  Noah Cohen

  Torah portion: Acharei Mot

  Tutor: Rabbi Fred Klein

  Bar mitzvah date: April 30 (7th-grade school year)

  Bar mitzvah partner: Noa Cohen

  Noa Cohen? Seriously?! As my bar mitzvah partner?

  What had I done to deserve this fate?

  There was only one person who could possibly help. And that person was Rabbi Fred. So I took my sheet to his office. I gave a quick knock and waited for him to answer.

  Rabbi Fred’s office is one of those places where everywhere you look, there’s something cool. He has masks hanging on his walls and a framed baseball jersey and a huge shofar horn with three curls in it. But my favorite thing in his office is something he calls his water feature.

  It sits on a bookcase next to Rabbi Fred’s desk and looks like a faucet you’d see on the side of a house for a hose to be hooked up to, only the back part isn’t connected to a house or anything. It just hangs in the air. Yet there’s water, real water, coming out of the faucet and pouring into a metal bucket of rocks sitting below it to catch the water. The water is always on, which used to make me have to pee. With practice, I’ve gotten better at tuning it out. But when I saw it the first time, I thought it was the coolest thing ever because the faucet isn’t connected to anything. The water just flows and flows, but it’s like magic because the faucet isn’t hooked up and is just, like, suspended there in midair. It looks perfectly balanced, like you could reach over and turn off the water and then the faucet would just fall on the floor. Also, the water never overflows the metal bucket, which makes no sense, either.

  Dash was the one who figured out how it worked. The next time I got a chance, I stuck a finger into the stream and confirmed that his theory was right: there was a little tube hidden inside the stream to carry the water right back to where it started.

  Rabbi Fred loved to ask people what they thought the magic faucet symbolized. He kept a list on his bulletin board, and when he heard a new interpretation, he’d add it to his list. And he’d give whoever thought of the idea a Tootsie Pop, too! So the day I saw Dash with a Tootsie Pop, I ran in to see what his reason was. There it was, seventh on the list:

  What Meanings Can We Derive from This Water Feature?

  1. Inspiration can come from anywhere or nowhere.

  2. Faith has no beginning and no end.

  3. Love flows like water.

  4. People need G-d, like water, to live.

  5. Torah connects people in an endless cycle.

  6. Judaism rocks! [Apparently, this was Noa Cohen’s contribution. She bragged to everyone about it later, pulling out her Tootsie Pop to say, “Get it? Because there are rocks?” Rabbi Fred liked this so much he underlined the word “rocks” and doled out an exclamation point, which is the kind of thing teachers do for Noa all the time.]

  7. Stay hydrated!

  Like Noa, Dash got an exclamation point. I was actually more jealous of that than the Tootsie Pop.

  The door opened.

  “You rang?” said Rabbi Fred dramatically. He always says that, even though there’s no bell to ring.

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “I was wondering if it’s possible to, uh, change something?” I handed him my sheet.

  “This wouldn’t happen to be about your bar mitzvah partner?” asked Rabbi Fred, smiling.

  “Possibly,” I admitted.

  Rabbi Fred gave me a sympathetic smile and handed the sheet back to me. “I’m sorry, Noah. Our policy is that after the dates are assigned, we leave any necessary schedule swaps to the families,” he said. “But please know that it wasn’t purposeful. If it were, don’t you think we would have given you Noach as a Torah portion?”

  He laughed. I didn’t.

  “Sorry, just a little biblical humor. All kidding aside,” Rabbi Fred continued, “every year, we look at the calendar, line up the class in birth order, and assign the available service spots in the order the kids were born.”

  He went to his bookcase, scrutinized the shelves, selected a slim book, and handed it to me. Parashat Acharei Mot, it read on the front.

  “Here,” he said. “Check it out: it’s your parsha.”

  A parsha is a Torah portion. There’s one for each week, all year long. Some parshas are pretty well known, like Yitro, which is the one where Moses receives the Ten Commandments. I listened patiently while Rabbi Fred told me that my parsha, Acharei Mot, was from Leviticus. In it, God tells Aaron all the things he (Aaron, that is) has to do to help the community make things right after something bad happens. One of the things is taking a goat and sending it out into the wilderness. “You’ve heard of a scapegoat?” asked Rabbi Fred. “You know, someone who gets blamed for something he didn’t do? People think this is where that expression originated.”

  “Cool,” I said. What I was actually thinking was, There’s no point in starting to learn this particular parsha quite yet. If I switch dates, it’ll be a different portion.

  Unfortunately, I soon found out that in our whole b’nei mitzvah class, no one was willing to switch with me. So then I got the brilliant idea that maybe I could talk Noa into switching her date with Dash and he could be my partner instead of her.

  “His date isn’t until the following fall,” I pointed out to her. “So you’d have tons more time to get ready!”

  “For your information, Noah, my mom has known my date for over a year,” said Noa. “We needed to get it early to make sure it didn’t conflict with my cousin Luke’s. It’s his bar mitzvah year, too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “I knew it was my date. I didn’t know it was your date,” she said, like I was the one being stupid. She turned to go, flipping her curly red hair in my face.

  “Wait, Noa—” I tried to run after her, but I slipped and fell and landed in a big pile of underwear.

  Yes, underwear. Every ye
ar at our temple, the sixth graders do an underwear drive for the homeless. That year, the theme was “Winter UNDERland,” so the sixth graders had built a display involving a giant snowman constructed out of bags of donated socks and underwear. After they did this, more people continued to drop off plastic bags of donated socks and undies. They were all over the floor by where the snowman’s feet would be if snowmen had feet. So now the poor snowman—or underwear-man, I guess I should say—was sort of melting into a gigantic puddle of undies. And when I slid on a plastic bag, I landed in the underwear pond myself.

  Noa could have reached out and helped me up. But instead, she used her hands to cover her mouth because she had started giggling. And then Deena and Sadie and Sarah and Elena and all the other girls came up the stairs and they started laughing, too. And when I tried to stand up, I slipped and fell down again, which made them laugh harder. Just then, Rabbi Jake came in. To his credit, he did fish me out of the underwear pond. I started to thank him, but he cut me off, smiling.

  “Whatever you have to say, Noah, keep it brief,” he said, setting everyone off again.

  Great, I thought. Everyone’s a comedian now.

  Except me, apparently. Because there was nothing funny about being stuck with Noa Cohen for all eternity.

  The thing about the dates-and-deets sheet is that you get it in fifth grade, but then everyone forgets all about it. Until the beginning of seventh grade, that is, when the mitzvah project meeting takes place.

  “Why do we need a meeting?” I whispered to Dash. The way mitzvah projects usually work at our temple is that each kid does his or her own project, like volunteering. Dash shrugged and looked longingly out the open window. It was a warm September afternoon and we were in the temple library. I could hear the fifth and sixth graders outside, allegedly decorating the sukkah. I could tell that Dash and I were thinking the same thing—that maybe if there weren’t many questions, the meeting would end early and we could go outside, too.