Maya:
I put the phone away.
“Was that Sara?” My mother nods to the phone.
“No, it was Shelby, something about a movie.”
“That sounds fun. You should go.”
“I hate sitting through a movie at the theater,” I tell her. “I get so antsy.”
“But it’d be nice to meet up with her, wouldn’t it? You haven’t seen her since the end of school. Maybe you could join them for a bite to eat after you open your fast?”
I shrug. Yes, Shelby is a friend. We grab lunch together during the school year and discuss the pros and cons of our favorite celebrity crushes of the moment (mine’s been Jim Halpert from The Office for a solid year and counting). But she’s a School Friend. Our relationship doesn’t extend beyond campus boundaries. I’m not saying I’m antisocial or anything. I’ve got a bunch of acquaintances, like Kevin. It’s just that I’m a quality over quantity kind of person. And my quantity has mostly always been Sara.
My phone buzzes.
It’s Jamie. We exchanged numbers before we left the campaign offices.
Jamie: I had to share this.
I open the text. It’s a GIF of a screaming gingerbread man from the Shrek movie, going into an oven.
“Oh my God. No.” I cover my mouth and laugh.
“What’s so funny?” my mother asks.
“Jamie sent me a GIF,” I tell her. “At canvassing yesterday, there was this lady who offered us cookies à la Hansel and Gretel. I mean, she was actually pretty sweet, but we were a little creeped out at first.”
“Sounds like canvassing wasn’t too bad then?”
“It wasn’t the worst thing on the planet.”
“Think you’ll go again?”
“Um, ‘worst thing on the planet’ is a very broad standard,” I tell her. “Once was enough.”
I look back down at the GIF and click my phone to find one to send back to him, when my mother clears her throat.
“I’ve been thinking about the car you’ve been wanting.”
Say what? I slam the phone down on the table.
“I know with Sara leaving for school soon, and my work schedule picking up, it’ll be trickier for you to get around than it was before . . .”
“Exactly,” I tell her quickly. “And that way I can get myself to school this fall instead of needing you or Dad to drop me off. It’ll save you time in the long run. And it doesn’t have to be fancy or anything. I don’t even care if the air-conditioning works.”
“We’ll have to see what we can afford. Between our student loans, mortgage, and your grandmother’s health costs, we were pretty stretched as is—and with the double housing—for now, at least—it’s just not as simple as you’d think.”
She talked about the separate housing and said “for now.”
Not forever. For. Now.
I cling to those two words like a life raft.
“So I was thinking,” she continues. “Since you and Jamie had a good time canvassing yesterday, why not keep it up?”
“We need to have a serious conversation about what ‘not the worst thing on the planet’ means, Mom. It was okay, but not exactly the most exciting way to spend my summer.”
“Well, be that as it may, here’s my proposal: you keep up the canvassing and we’ll think about getting you that car.”
“After the election?”
“Yep,” she says. “It’s a win-win. You get your volunteer hours in for school, and you’re not sitting around all summer waiting for Sara to call. And in exchange, you—”
“Get a car! I’ll pay you back for it. Once I have the car, I can start working and—”
“You don’t have to pay it back. The canvassing is the work.”
“Then insurance and gas. You guys won’t have to worry about a thing. And I promise I’ll be super responsible.”
“Of course you will, honey.” My mother smiles. “Do we have a deal?”
“Yes!” I delete the GIF I was about to send. Instead I type: Think we could go canvassing for a few hours today?
A word bubble pops up instantly. And then—There’s a four to six time slot. Want me to sign us up?
Meet you at the headquarters, I tell him.
I’ll get Hansel and Gretel’d every day if I can finally have my own car.
The packet Gabe gave us this time sends us to a completely different type of neighborhood from the last one. The homes here are even more enormous, and the sprawling lawns mean each house is almost its own city block. We’ve been canvassing for a full thirty minutes but we’ve only made it to five houses. So far only two people opened their doors and took our flyers.
“Next one is about eight houses down that way.” He squints and points up the road.
“That far?” I groan. Eight houses means we’ll have to trudge at least one whole street over. “There’s no Democrats or Independents in any of these houses close to us?”
“This looks like a pretty red neighborhood. Not sure we’ll get Jewish ladies feeding us cookies here.” He double-checks the paperwork before we continue on our way.
“How was that cookie yesterday?” I ask him. It was pretty brave of Jamie to take one for the team like that. Ill-advised, but brave. “No side effects?”
“It wasn’t too bad. My grandma makes those cookies all the time. The thing with them is, if you don’t seal them right away, they get stale within the hour. My grandma’s taste way better than Barbara’s, but hers were definitely edible.” He puts his phone in his back pocket and glances at me. “You met her, actually. My grandmother. At the campaign headquarters . . .” His voice trails off and he looks away.
“Your grandmother?” I flush. “That was your grandmother? Oh, wow. O-Okay.” I stammer. “I didn’t mean to . . .” My voice trails off. Did he notice me side-eyeing her?
“She’s a social media surrogate for Rossum’s campaign, but she has her own really popular Instagram account too. She’s got a great eye for photos and captions and she can hashtag like a boss, but she has a hard time getting the filters and Stories features just right. I run tech support for her.”
“Your grandmother has an account on there?”
“Yeah.” He looks over at me. “It’s called InstaGramm.”
“I know what Instagram is,” I tell him, trying to hide my irritation. This, after mansplaining Goldfish crackers to me yesterday?
“No, no,” he says quickly. “I mean, that’s not her handle, but that’s how everyone knows her on Instagram. She’s Insta. Gramm. Like Gramma.”
“Oh, wow.” I pause. “That’s clever.”
“She’s a pretty big deal.” He smiles. He’s so clearly proud of her, it’s kind of cute. “I don’t know how she does it, but somehow her stuff always goes viral. She’s got like ten thousand followers last time I checked.” He pulls out his phone, clicks around on the screen, and holds it out to me. “She takes photos with her dog, Boomer. People are seriously obsessed with her. She’s a local sensation.”