July 14, 2025, 3:41 PM: Newark International Airport

I said goodbye to my friends as each of their flights got closer and closer. We had the bus ride to the airport sharing pictures and already reminiscing about the last 19 days we spent together at ILTC. To go back to each of our homes was to redefine normal. 

This image was familiar to my friend Gabriela and me. Just a year before, we had to say goodbye after CLTC. 

July 1, 2024, 1:03 PM: The Hammocks of CLTC

Cosmic brownies. Dr. Pepper. Brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts. Sour punch straws, if you had another punch left in your canteen card. We swung in hammocks. There was always room for one more—we could fit two, even three. At that moment, the red bunks and lush greenery of CLTC seemed like a given, not a fleeting gift. 

July 2, 2024, 10:11 AM: Bus to Kalahari

Gabby and I sat together on the bus to Kalahari waterpark for our field trip. As 15-year-olds, we talked about one of the most momentous things in our lives at the time: obtaining a driver’s license. She listed the endless guidelines and requirements it took to pass in Texas, while I mentioned that, in Arizona, all you had to do was get a specific number of hours practicing and then show up to take the test. This conversation seemed like any of the hundreds of other ones we’d had, but we had no idea how it would come back to us later. 

July 11, 2025, 10:55 PM: Outside the ILTC Dining Hall

The third and final Shabbat dinner: grape juice sipped, challah shared, prayers sung. But this was our last Shabbat all together. Soon, we would break our routines, our normalcy. No more getting up in the morning and getting ready in unison. No more walking over to Gabby’s cabin to go to breakfast together. No more trekking across the basketball court and trying not to get hit. No more Shabbats all together.

We looked out the slim windows of the dining hall. The sky painted itself orange and red. We went outside to take a few more pictures. These ones weren’t as posed and rushed as the ones we took under the Perlman tree. They captured us jumping in front of the camera, dancing and laughing.

October 18, 2026, 12:26 PM: A Starbucks in Scottsdale, Arizona

A woman walks past where we’re sitting over and over and finally asks if we’re long-time best friends, up to no good. Scottsdale wears a rare outfit: rain and overcast skies. Everything takes on a grey hue, but no matter. I meet with Gabby in between shifts, still in my bright red lifeguarding hoodie and shorts. She’s in town for college visits, and seeing each other wasn’t optional.  

We catch up, starting with our stories of driving and the wide roads of Arizona. 

I couldn’t attend IC last year, so I haven't seen her for almost 15 months. It almost feels foreign to see her outside of Perlman or CLTC. Why aren’t we going to our bunks? Why aren’t our snacks and drinks from the canteen? What will we wear for the next Shabbat? But it also feels familiar, like no time has passed since we said goodbye at the airport. I’m not wearing my rotation of ILTC clothes; she doesn’t have her latest string bracelet taking shape on a water bottle, but underneath it’s still the same. 

“Yes!” we say.