Passover Prep

 Five minutes later, Anne walked up and made a similar request (well, superficially similar: "Can I invite a whole bunch of crazies over for a loud and annoying shamanistic ritual?" The form is the same to Ava's request, but the substance is quite different.)

I assume you know what Rachel said. Just to give any possible new readers a hint, Rachel is a devout Christian who happens to enjoy being able to sleep at night without a whole bunch of Dark Siders yodeling on the front lawn. Plus she doesn't like Anne and thinks of Anne's religion as a terrorist manifesto (which it is).

On the other hand, no such problems with Ava. . .

 The correct answer is actually "I don't have a personal vendetta with you and don't see any reason to get in the way of your practicing your religion," but if Rachel says that, Ava's going to bring up the fact that Rachel frequently threatens to call the cops if Anne "practices her religion" and wonder out loud why she's the special one, not Anne. Or to put that better, Ava doesn't see herself as much better than Anne anymore. (Anne is a wonderful con artist.)

So Rachel is just trying to avoid the "Ava, I prefer you to Anne by several miles, and here's why" conversation. Especially seeing as how Ava knows it by heart now.

See, Ava, not all of your friends secretly hate you. . .

Yeah, bad follow up joke. Esther isn't Ava's friend. She's her family. . . although Ava keeps saying that she finds it hard to believe that she and Esther actually share parents. . . and then only by blood. There could not be a deeper rift between Esther and Ava. (Or Esther and Anne! Anne doesn't like Esther either. Esther is just 100% unlikable by anyone who doesn't enjoy abuse, because that's all Esther is, a gleeful bully with serious IQ deficiency, and there is nothing else to her.)