A/N- Sidney Goldblatt is my real-life little brother's fictional rival, created by my father. Yes. That's how weird my family is.
I wrote this prologue over the summer, and felt like coming back to it. Lemme know what you guys think!
When Rachel was seven-years-old, her Dad came home one night with an eager look in his eye: one he only wore when he had news.
"Did you guys hear?" Hiram asked excitedly, hanging up his coat and kissing her other dad on the cheek. "Mrs. Goldblatt had the baby! It's a little boy!"
"And let the planning begin!" Leroy said with a smirk.
Her dad's were sure of it since the day the boy was born: Sidney Goldblatt's Bar Mitzvah was going to be the party of the century.
Nobody really knew how the Goldblatt's had made their fortune. Sidney's grandfather had purchased the estate in Lima in the late 1940s and the family had been there ever since. Nobody worked with Howard Goldblatt, Sidney's father, so nobody had any idea what he did. And no one ever inquired about his occupation, because it was more fun to make up stories in their heads about how the first American Goldblatt's had patented something like the gas-powered wood-chipper or stroller breaks or the Lazy Susan and the family still got paid royalties every time a sale was made. Rachel had never believed any of those stories, though. She'd always imagined Mr. Goldblatt working at some sort of law firm: Goldblatt and Partners. But she knew that if that was the case there'd be an office in Lima, so the mystery remained unsolved.
Her dads got along well with Mrs. and Mr. Goldblatt. Then again, the Goldblatts were extremely friendly, and were on speaking terms with everyone at their temple. As a matter of fact, the family was actually the reason that the temple was standing, having paid to have it built in the 1950s. Mrs. Goldblatt hosted massive Seders in the Goldblatt mansion every Passover; followed parties so extravagant that they had to be sacrilegious. Rachel remembered attending as a little girl and feeling like Cinderella at the prince's ball; like she wasn't worthy of such glamour and probably didn't deserve to be invited in the first place. But the Goldblatts had invited everyone, simply because they could afford to.
The dress Rachel had bought for the Goldblatt Bar Mitzvah was a Vera Wang, and the most expensive dress she had ever owned. She'd carried it onto the plane home from New York because the idea of checking it made her nervous. Even now, with it folded in a garment back in the over-head compartment, she was worried about it. For the amount she'd paid, she wanted to look perfect.
"This whole thing is bogus," Noah had told her over the phone before she left. "The amount of money the Lima Jewish community is collectively spending on this day could feed a third-world country. If it weren't for the open bar, I'd boycott this crap."
"Quite frankly I feel that the presence of alcohol at these pre-teen-oriented events is inappropriate."
"Are you kidding? It's part of the right of passage. The first and only time I threw up from booze was the night of my Bar Mitzvah."
"But that's the thing, Puckerman," Rachel rolled her eyes. "Most of the kids at these things are responsible enough to avoid the dangerous temptations of alcohol. They end up miserably fending for themselves in a mob of drunken relatives."
"You know what the presence of drunken relatives was for me when I was thirteen? A Tuesday…"
"Oh right," Rachel sighed dryly. "Sometimes I forget how…unique your childhood was."
But there were other times when she thought about it deeply. As her plane touched down on Ohio soil, for instance, and she gripped her armrests uneasily, her mind was inadvertently dancing with thoughts of Noah Puckerman as a boy. She'd known him back then: they'd gone to Hebrew school together and occasionally shared a class, but she'd never paid much attention to him; not until the day sophomore year of high school when he showed up at her locker with a Grape slushy, beginning their short-lived relationship, and slightly unstable friendship. She wondered how things might've been different if they'd been friends; real friends; growing up. Maybe they would've talked more since high school if that had been the case. As it was, her phone call to him asking if he was attending the Goldblatt event was the first time they'd spoken in years.
When the Plane had fully landed, and the seatbelt light had flickered off, Rachel tried not to admit to herself that she was looking forward to seeing him. Even if she was, it was only because he was the only one of her old friends who was going to be at this thing. But it didn't matter. He wasn't what she'd come back for. She'd come back for the party of the century.