Free Next Year in Israel by Sarah Bridgeton

at the airport—talking and laughing like the quintessentially cool mom. She even gave Jordyn a bag of cookies for the plane. “What kind of rules?”
    “She wants me to dress like a dweeb, and she makes me go to Naomi’s cheerleading competitions. The competitions are sooo boring. I have to sit there and pretend I’m having fun.”
    I understood. Mom expected me to go to school with a peachy-keen love-my-school attitude.
    “Mother thinks I’m too young to date. I don’t crumble to her demands.”
    “They’d probably hate Caleb,” Mia said as we moved up in line, closer to the entrance.
    “You should tell them Israeli boys are ugly,” I said.
    “Then go make out with Caleb.” Mia finished my thought.
    “ Shalom, ” a soldier said. We had moved up to the front of the entrance. “Empty your pockets.”
    I put my shekels on the table. Would he ask my age? The legal drinking age was eighteen. Mia had told me how to say eighteen and twenty-one in Hebrew because I was still struggling in my language class.
    “Purse,” he said.
    “I didn’t bring one.” Ugh. I sounded like a foreigner, using English, not even trying to answer in Hebrew.
    His gaze focused on the line of people behind me. “Okay.”
    I was underage and inside a nightclub! The two long bars on opposite sides of the room swarmed with people waiting for drinks. Drunks crowded on three elevated stages, dancing to a Rihanna song.
    “Wait here,” Jordyn ordered. “I’ll get us drinks.”
    “What do you usually drink?” Mia asked me.
    “Whatever.” I thought of Dad, who said alcohol wrecked his relationship with Mom. I didn’t remember anything about him being a drunk because I was a baby. After he got sober, he dedicated himself to the program. His new friends had such sad stories. Everything bad happened to them—nasty divorces, horrible car accidents, families who hated them.
    At the bar, Jordyn was talking to Israelis, who were smiling at her. One drink wouldn’t turn me into an alcoholic. I was in a nightclub, after all, and a little cocktail was to be expected. If I didn’t drink then, it was bound to come up again. The only way to get out of it would be to use another lie, and that would add more stress to the weave of lies I had told.
    Jordyn returned with three large plastic cups. “Strawberry daiquiris. Compliments of our admirers.” She waved toward two guys by the DJ stand.
    I took a sip. It tasted like a strawberry dessert. There was hardly a bitter aftertaste.
    Mia swallowed a mouthful, twice the amount I did. “These are strong,” she said, as if she were a daiquiri connoisseur.
    Jordyn lifted her cup. “The bartender made them a double. Here’s to no parents.”
    I clicked her cup. “Hear. Hear.” And to upward mobility. I was moving forward, and the differences were big. Pugly didn’t wear tight clothes or sneak out to a nightclub. She wore oversized pajamas and watched TV alone in her bedroom.
    Mia tapped my cup. “We’re at a nightclub.”
    Jordyn waved to our admirers.
    “What about Caleb?” Mia asked.
    “Let’s dance,” Jordyn answered.
    That was the last thing I wanted to do. I’d rather become roaring drunk and throw up on Jordyn than dance. Me dancing would look like a robot having a seizure, and I wouldn’t embarrass myself like that if I didn’t have to.
    “After I finish my drink,” Mia said.
    Jordyn pranced over to the stage. Mia waved to the guys who bought us drinks.
    I took a bigger sip out of my cup. If only I could loosen up. “I don’t dance.”
    “Yes, you do,” Mia said.
    “No. I don’t,” I corrected. “Not to this song.” I actually liked the song, but I had to do something to get Mia off her tangent.
    “Ask the DJ to play something else,” she suggested.
    “All right.” Maybe by the time we made our request, she’d forget about dancing. Better yet, what if we happened to meet my future boyfriend on the way to the DJ booth? He’d be tall, good-looking, and fluent in