“Mom literally made us.”
“Okay, well I’m the one who didn’t knock over a display, so.”
Hannah walks back over and settles into her desk. “Hey, y’all are coming tomorrow night, right?”
“Oh, believe me,” Sophie says. “We’ll be there.”
Mom never lets us miss Rossum campaign events these days. Lucky us. They’re all the same: people milling around with plastic cups, making overly familiar eye contact. Me forgetting everyone’s names the moment I hear them. And then everyone gets super extra when Rossum arrives. People laugh louder, angle toward him, sidle nearer to ask for selfies. Rossum always seems a little startled by the whole thing. Not in a bad way. More like in a who me kind of way. It’s his first time running for office, so I guess he’s not used to all that attention.
But the thing about Rossum is that he’s amazing with people. I mean, his platform’s great too—he’s super progressive, and he’s always talking about raising the minimum wage. But a lot of it’s just the way he speaks. He can give you goose bumps, or make you laugh, or make you feel purposeful and clear. I always think about the people who shake the world with their words. Patrick Henry, Sojourner Truth, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King. I know Rossum’s just a guy running for state senate. But he makes it all feel huge. He makes this race feel like a moment, a brand-new dot on Georgia’s timeline. He makes you feel like you’re watching history change.
I can’t imagine being able to do that.
Tomorrow’s event is an interfaith outreach dinner at a local mosque, which means Mom’s extra excited. We aren’t the most observant Jews in the world, but she lives for this kind of religious community-building stuff.
“Should be fun,” says Hannah, opening her laptop. But then she stops short, glancing back up at us. “Oh, right, you need snack reimbursement, don’t you? Gabe’s in the VIP room. I’ll grab him.”
The VIP room? A supply closet.
Hannah emerges moments later, followed by Gabe, who’s wearing a crisp blue button-down shirt, with a picture of Jordan Rossum’s face stickered onto his chest. People sometimes say Sophie and I look like Gabe, since he’s tall and has brown hair and hazel-green eyes. But he’s got bigger lips and archier eyebrows and a weird sprouting pseudo-beard he’s always working on. And he’s twenty-three, which is a solid six years older than me. So I don’t really see it.
Gabe clasps his hands and grins. “I was wondering when I’d see your faces around here.”
“We were here on Monday,” Sophie says.
“And Sunday,” I add.
He’s unfazed. “You’ve been missing out on some sweet canvassing action. You should sign up for a slot. Or maybe you could swing by for phone banking tonight? It’s gonna be lit.” He pitches his voice high when he says it, tilting his palms up like he’s about to raise the roof. I sneak a glance at Sophie, who seems caught between laughing and choking.
“So are you in?” Gabe asks. “Rossum needs you.”
This time, I glance down at my feet. I want to help Gabe, but I’m not a phone-banking kind of person. Envelope stuffing? Absolutely. Postcards? Even better. I’ve even sent out what Gabe calls “peer to peer” text messages, though anyone old enough to vote is, by definition, not my peer.
Of course, the thing that throws me the most is canvassing. I’m not exactly great at talking to strangers. And I don’t just mean cute girl strangers. It’s everyone. I get really in my head about it. And thoughts never seem to travel smoothly between my brain and my mouth. I’m not like Sophie, who can walk into any room, befriend anyone, join any conversation. It’s not even something she tries to do. Sophie’s just fundamentally not self-conscious. Like, she farted on the school bus once in fifth grade, and was downright giddy about it afterward. Being embarrassed didn’t even occur to her. If it were me, I’d have shriveled up on the spot.
Maybe some people are just destined to always say the wrong thing. Or no thing, because half the time, I just stammer and blush and can barely form words. But hey, better that than the alternative . . . which, as I now know, involves phlegm, a touch of vomit, and State Senator Mathews’s black oxford shoes.
Let’s just say I’m not the master of persuasion you want on the front lines of your political campaign. I’m not a history changer.
“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “I’m just—”
“It’s super easy,” Gabe says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Just follow the script. Why don’t I put you down for phone banking tonight, and we’ll find you a canvassing slot while you’re here.”
“Um—”
“We have Hebrew school,” Sophie says.
“Oh, sweet. Big J, I didn’t know you were still taking Hebrew.”
“I’m not—”
Sophie cuts her eyes toward me, lips pursed—the patented Sophie Goldberg STFU Jamie Face. “Jamie is taking Hebrew,” she says loudly. “Because he needs a refresher so he can quiz me on my haftorah portion.”
I nod really fast. “Haftorah. Yup.”
“Dang,” Gabe says. “That’s a good brother.”
“He is. And I’m a good sister,” Sophie says, smacking my arm. “An extremely good sister. Too good.”
I glance at her sideways. “You have your moments,” I say.
Karma, though. Wow. Sophie may have been lying about Hebrew school tonight, but from the moment we step through the kitchen door, it’s clear: we’re in bat mitzvah planning hell. My mom and grandma are huddled at the kitchen table in front of Mom’s laptop—I mean, that’s not the weird part. Grandma’s always here. She moved in with us when I was nine, right after my grandpa died. And the huddled-over-a-laptop part’s not weird either, since Mom and Grandma are both big-time tech geeks. Mom runs campaign analytics sometimes for Senator Mathews, and obviously Grandma is our resident social media queen.
But the fact that Mom’s working from home in a bathrobe at four in the afternoon is concerning, as is the way Boomer, Grandma’s mastiff, is pacing nervously around the table. Not to mention the fact that the table itself looks like a paper apocalypse, strewn with centerpiece mock-ups, printed spreadsheets, washi tape, binders, and tiny envelopes. I’d say there’s a zero percent chance I’m making it out of the kitchen tonight without a stack of place cards to fold.
Sophie dives in. “New RSVPs!”
“Soph, let Grandma pull up the spreadsheet first,” Mom says, reaching for a large binder. “Also, I need you to look at this floor plan so we can think about the flow. We’ll mostly be in the ballroom, with the dance floor there, tables here, and we have two options for the buffet. One, we can stick it on the side, near the—”
“Tessa Andrews accepts with pleasure.” Sophie slams a card down happily. “Oh. Hell. Yes.”
“Sophie, don’t cuss,” says Mom.
Sophie tilts her head. “I don’t really think of hell as a cuss word, though.”
“It’s a gateway cuss,” I say, settling in beside Mom. Boomer parks his chin in my lap, leaning in for a head scratch.