Chapter Three

Jamie

“Knock knock,” Grandma says, instead of just knocking, which I used to think was a funny Grandma quirk. Now I know it’s because she always has her hands full of food or dog or both.

I sit up in bed, yawning. “Morning.”

But she doesn’t come in—she just cracks the door. “Now, take your time, lovey, but just so you know, there’s breakfast in the kitchen.”

“Um. Thanks.” I rub my eyes. “Are you—”

The door clicks shut, and she’s gone. I yawn again, tugging my phone out of the charger. Per usual, I’ve missed a mile of texts on last night’s group chat. I peek at the most recent one, from Felipe. Nine o’clock tomorrow it is. I cannot emphasize enough how much you owe me for this. I scroll back to find a whole series of negotiations—namely, Drew explaining the absolute exquisite hotness of a long-distance runner named Beth and making a hard pitch for early morning wingman backup at our school’s track.

I glance at the time—8:15. Normally I’m kind of weird about texting back this early. Not because I’m worried about waking anyone—Drew and Felipe sleep through texts, thunderstorms, sirens, pretty much anything. But there’s something fundamentally uncool about being the first texter in the group chat. Which I am. Every single morning. I’m like that guy who shows up to keg parties at the exact time listed on the evite. Or I would be, if I got invited to keg parties.

But there’s no point trying to convince Drew and Felipe I’m suddenly a rage-all-night-sleep-till-noon kind of party animal. I text back a thumbs-up. And then I run through the full repertoire: shower, teeth, mouthwash, deodorant, fresh clothes, everything. I don’t know if I’m a good wingman, but I’m a hygienic wingman.

By the time I reach the kitchen, Mom and Grandma are camped out in their usual chairs, nursing coffee. Boomer jumps up from his spot near Grandma’s feet as soon as he sees me.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Grandma hits me with the shoulder-squeeze, cheek-kiss combo. “Look at you, all dressed. Let me get your breakfast out of the warming drawer. Where are you off to?”

“I’m supposed to help Drew flirt with some runner girl.”

“Isn’t he dating that girl from Steak ’n Shake?” Mom looks up from her news app.

“They were just hooking up. It wasn’t really . . .” I trail off, watching Grandma bustle over to the oven, Boomer zipping along beside her. I narrow my eyes. “Okay, why am I getting a special home-cooked breakfast? What happened?”

“Well.” Grandma turns around, smiling warmly. She’s holding a plate stacked high with challah toast. “You were so upset yesterday about having to give the pre-challah toast, I thought . . .” She peers down at the plate, eyes glinting behind her red-framed glasses. I follow her gaze, and then groan.

“It’s challah toast!” she says. “Get it?”

“Oh, I get it.”

“Too soon?”

“Way too soon.” I take a giant bite—it’s slightly crispy, with no raisins, and it’s perfectly buttered. “Okay, food toast is good,” I admit. “Speech toast is not good.”

“You’ll be great, bubalah. I have no doubt.”

“I have doubt. Doubts. Plural. Lots of doubts.”

“Jamie, you have to stop doing that.” Mom looks up again. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’re so convinced you’re going to screw up, you end up sabotaging yourself with that negative self-talk.”

“It’s not negative self-talk if it’s true.”

“It’s not—”

“Mom. I’m a catastrophically terrible speaker. That is an objective fact.”

Grandma pats my shoulder.

Mom frowns. “Sweetie, is this about the interview? You have to let that go. I know it sucked. No one’s pretending it didn’t. But you’re still getting to work in politics. It’s just a different side of the experience.”

“You’re missing the point.”

I think she thinks I’m bitter. Or that I resent having to make spreadsheets and run errands for my cousin all summer, rather than marching up and down marble staircases in the state capitol. But it’s not the lack of marble staircases that depresses me. And I don’t mind the errands. I mean, that’s what I’d have been doing for Senator Mathews anyway.

It’s more the I-suck factor. The I-couldn’t-even-make-nepotism-work-for-me factor. The a-sitting-state-senator-created-an-internship-just-for-me-and-I-totally-choked factor.

I mean, I literally choked. I don’t know how to explain this without being gross, but a lump of phlegm lodged in my throat, and I panicked, which made me start gagging, and then that turned to puking, and I spent about an hour in the bathroom, and needless to say, I did not get the job.

Which doesn’t exactly bode well for my half-baked dream of running for office one day. Let’s face it. Some people are meant to change history. And some people are meant to change out of their vomity interview clothes.

“You just have to keep practicing,” Mom continues. “Speaking to strangers is a skill. It’s like a muscle, you know? You keep exercising it, and you’ll see. One day it’s going to be second nature. It’ll feel just like talking to Drew and Felipe.”

I scratch Boomer’s ears. “Right.”

“You can even work on it tonight at the Rossum event. What if you made it your goal to chat with five people? Just casual everyday stuff, quick and painless. Or even just one good conversation. It would be such a great step for you.”

“Does Siri count as people?”

“No, Siri doesn’t count.” She smiles wryly. “You have a clean button-down shirt, right?”

“I was gonna wear a dirty one. With no buttons.”

“Very funny.”

What’s actually funny is that Mom thinks I don’t know by now what to wear to these things. I’ve been to more than two dozen Rossum events. Which she should know—she’s the one who forces me to go to every single one of them, even when she can’t make it.

Grandma ruffles my hair. “It won’t be so bad. I’ll pop in for the first bit. We’ll hang out. We’ll mingle.”

I hate that word. Mingle. I mean, the word itself is fine; I just hate the concept. When has anyone in the history of earth ever made a meaningful connection while mingling? It’s like, hey, let’s have only the worst parts of a conversation—the approach, the small talk, the trying-to-figure-out-when-and-how-to-disengage part. It’s not that I dislike being around people. I just wish we could skip to the sitting-in-comfortable-silence part, or the inside-jokes part, or even the we-both-love-The-Office-so-let’s-overanalyze-it part.

“You should invite Felipe and Drew,” Grandma suggests.

“Highly doubt they’d come to a campaign event.”

“Never hurts to ask,” Grandma says. “Which reminds me . . .” She stands and crosses over to the counter, and Boomer leaps up, ready to follow her to the end of the earth. But all she does is pluck her phone out of her purse, setting it before me on the table. “What do you know about adding links to Instagram Stories?”

“I’ve never done it,” I say, taking her phone. “I’m sure I can figure it out.”

“Can you? Thank you so much, lovey. I swear, being verified is a whole new world.”

I tap into the app, biting back a smile. Grandma’s blue check mark arrived two weeks ago, and she humblebrags about it at every opportunity. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Sophie visibly impressed by a family accomplishment.

I mean, the last thing any of us expected was for Grandma’s Instagram to go viral. She started it after Grandpa died, mostly to take pictures of her and Boomer visiting Grandpa’s favorite local spots. But then Creative Loafing did a feature on her, which led to a few YouTuber shout-outs. I wouldn’t say she’s famous or anything, but lots of local people know about her, at least in Brookhaven and the northern suburbs. Of course, Gabe just has to milk every bit of Grandma’s notoriety to get attention for the campaign. I don’t think Grandma minds too much—she’s a big-time Democrat—but still. When Gabe named our seventy-five-year-old grandma as an official campaign social media surrogate, he pretty much sealed my fate as unofficial campaign tech support.

There’s a Story sitting in Grandma’s drafts—just a still-frame shot of Boomer wearing a custom Jordan Rossum bandanna, with a caption about tonight’s event. “Are you trying to attach the event page or the donation link?”

“Ooh.” Grandma leans forward. “The event page, but then let’s do another one with the donation link.” She sits up straight, cocking her finger at me. “I like the way you think.”

I figure out the link stuff pretty easily, and hand it back to her. “This is one hundred percent the real reason you made me breakfast, isn’t it?”

“Not a hundred percent,” she says. “Fifty percent? Sure. Seventy-five percent? Probably.”

I shake my head, smiling.

“You’ll see,” Grandma says. “When you’re my age on Instagram—”

“I don’t even have Instagram now.”

“I didn’t either when I was your age,” she says, shrugging.

Naturally, I beat Drew and Felipe to the track, so I hang back near the bleachers, trying to look like I belong there. It’s so strange being at school in the middle of the summer. I know some of the sports teams practice here all year round, but that’s never been my scene. Nothing about this is my scene. There’s a group of cheerleaders warming up on the football field, and at least a dozen runners circling the track at all different speeds. I sneak a glance at them, trying to guess which one’s Beth. I don’t recognize a single person here. Which probably tells you everything you need to know about my own athleticism.

Drew and Felipe finally show up around 9:15, looking puffy-eyed and half asleep. Felipe greets me with a half-hearted fist bump, but Drew scans the track and turns back to us, crestfallen. “She’s not here.”

“Beth?”

“I can’t believe it.” Drew shakes his head.

Felipe yawns. “Maybe she’s running late.”

I snicker, which earns me curious looks from both of them. “Running late,” I say. “Get it? Because she’s a runner?”

Felipe shoots me finger guns. “Goldberg, bringing the dad jokes.”

“Uh, no.” I scoff. “That’s a grandma joke.”

“I don’t know if that’s something to brag about.”

Drew ignores us. “Their practice started at seven. How is she not here?”

I follow his gaze to the runners, a couple of whom have stopped for water near the far goalpost. I don’t blame them. It’s eighty degrees out already, maybe more. I mean, I’m breaking a sweat, and I’m barely even moving.

“I think . . . I’m going back to bed,” Felipe announces.

“Oh hell no.” Drew’s blue eyes narrow. “We’ve got to investigate. Come on.”

He takes off at a sprint, and Felipe and I shrug and jog after him. But I’m panting before we’re even fully past the bleachers, and Felipe’s an even bigger disaster. “Nope,” he says breathlessly. “We’re not doing this.”

“Literally . . . can’t . . . ,” I huff, stopping short. Felipe stops too, gripping his thighs and breathing heavily.

Drew circles back around to meet us. “Wow. You guys are terrible wingmen.”

“No, we’re terrible runners,” says Felipe. “That is a completely unrelated skill set to wingman ability. No wingman should have to wing in these conditions.”

“A true wingman must wing in all conditions.” Drew runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in places. “Snow, hail, hurricanes . . .”

“You’re thinking of the postal service,” I say.

Drew shoots us one last disdainful look before jetting off toward the goalpost to catch up with the track girls. I follow Felipe onto the edge of the football field, sinking cross-legged onto the grass beside him. “So.” I lean back on my hands. “Do we think Drew’s going to hold out for Beth, or end up with a different girl’s number?”

Felipe snorts. “It’s fifty-fifty.”

I uncross my legs and let myself fall backward on the grass. Closing my eyes makes it feel like we’re in some big, empty field, miles away from every other human on earth. The noise fades in my brain. No bat mitzvah speeches, no failed interviews, no tumbling produce displays.

But a sudden burst of laughter from the cheerleaders knocks me back to earth. I sit up hastily, cheeks burning.

Felipe eyes me. “You think they’re laughing at you?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Man. Your brain.” He shakes his head. “Why would they be laughing at you? What are you doing that they could possibly be making fun of right now?”

I stare at my feet and don’t answer.

“No, seriously. Walk me through it. Why are these cheerleaders making fun of you?”

“Because.” I shrug. “I don’t know.”

Because I didn’t even finish a lap around the track before I had to lie down. Because I’m sweating. Because my shirt’s riding up. Because I’m too awkward to function.

“Because I’m this.” I gesture vaguely to my entire self.

“You are straight-up paranoid about girls, I swear.”

“I’m just . . . rightfully cautious.”

“Why? Because of what happened at the Snow Ball?” Felipe raises his eyebrows. “Dude, that was four years ago.”

“Three and a half.” And it’s not like anyone’s forgotten.

In retrospect, it was a terrible idea. I mean, eighth-grade dances are a terrible idea in general, but asking Brianne Henke to dance was next-level terrible. And of course I have this awful, almost photographically detailed memory of the moment itself—everything from the paper snowflakes dangling over the dance floor to the tight little smiles flicking across Brianne’s friends’ faces. Brianne looked at me and said, “Hi, Jamie,” without the slightest shred of enthusiasm. Without any inflection at all, really. But I took a deep breath anyway, and forced myself to go through with it.

I asked her to slow dance. Except my mouth didn’t say slow dance. It said slowmance.

“It wasn’t even that bad.” Felipe laughs. “It was iconic.”

I roll my eyes. “Right. Iconic.”

So iconic that the concept of slowmance became a Thing. Among the jock bros, mostly. They morphed it into every part of speech too, like slowmantic and slowmantify. Once I heard someone’s mom say it. People literally petitioned for A Night of Slowmance to be our homecoming theme last year, and were pissed when the seniors overruled it.

“Listen,” Felipe says, “if that’s your most embarrassing moment—”

“It’s not.”

That would be the fifth-grade presidential reception, when I called former president Carter a penis farmer.

I grasp desperately for a subject change.

“Hey,” I blurt. “Any chance you’re up for an insanely boring campaign dinner tonight?”

Felipe grins. “Wow. That is a compelling pitch. Insanely boring—”

“Did I say insanely boring? I meant amazing. Insanely amazing and fun and . . . amazingly insanely fun.”

“No way. Nolan and I both have tonight off, so we’re watching the Christmas Prince sequel.”

I look at him. “It’s June.”

“It’s always Christmas in Aldovia.”

I mean, I get it. Felipe’s been working all summer, ringing up self-serve frozen yogurt at Menchie’s. It’s for college money. He qualifies for the HOPE Scholarship, but the thought of books and housing expenses has him scrambling to take as many hours as possible. And his boyfriend, Nolan, works a lot too, which means their hangout time this summer is vanishingly rare. I know there’s no way I’d be going to this campaign event if the alternative was spending time with my girlfriend. I guess it’s pretty lucky for Gabe that girlfriends are so far from my reality, it’s laughable.

Felipe shrugs. “Maybe Drew will be down?”

“Ehh. I’m not expecting much.” I glance back at the goalposts, where Drew’s talking animatedly to a red-cheeked girl with a messy blond bun. “It’s for Rossum, so.”

“Ah.” Felipe nods. “Got it.”

Rossum campaign stuff is kind of a tough sell for Drew. Not because he’s conservative. But his parents are—Newton sign in the yard and everything. Drew’s already on thin ice from the time I dragged him to the campaign office and Gabe sent him off with a stack of Vote for Rossum postcards. His parents found them tucked into the side pocket of his car door, and they . . . weren’t exactly cool about it.

“I don’t even know if I should ask him,” I say.

I watch Drew smile at the girl, high-five her, and start jogging back to us.

A moment later, he plops down beside Felipe. “So. I’m an idiot.”

Felipe pats his arm. “We know.”

“No, seriously. Just talked to Beth’s friend Annabel, and she says Beth works at Catch Air on Thursdays, which opens at ten, so Beth has to be there by nine, so, like, she was here, but only until eight. She left early.”

“I am literally not following this at all, even a little bit.” Felipe yawns.

“And I don’t think they’ll let you into Catch Air without a kid. So, my lads, we are firmly SOL today.”

“Catch Air . . . ,” I say slowly.

And it clicks. Catch Air. That’s why the girl from Target looked so familiar. It isn’t just that I’ve met her before. I spent half my childhood with her.

Maya Rehman. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve seen her.

But her face hasn’t changed at all. Same wavy hair, same giant eyes, and I bet she still has that dimple in her cheek when she talks. She’s always looked kind of like a less pale, darker-haired Belle from Beauty and the Beast. But personality-wise, she was a total Mulan. Super badass, completely self-assured. She would climb anything, ride anything, stand up to anyone. I swear, running around Catch Air or the park with her made me braver. I mean, yeah, she was the Disney princess and I was basically the animal sidekick, but I kind of liked that. It’s not like I ever wanted to be the prince.

I can’t believe I actually saw Maya Rehman yesterday. Like, grown-up, real-life Maya Rehman. She’s not even a month younger than me, so of course she’d be seventeen. But my brain doesn’t know what to make of the time jump. It’s like catching a glimpse of the future.

I should have talked to her.

Except—right. I was too busy exploding tangelos all over the produce section.

In front of her.

Because I’m me. And wow, do the hits keep coming.