My brain skids to a stop. A car?
Maya looks frozen. She stares at her plate.
“And I guess it’s safe to say canvassing turned out to be more fun than you expected. Win-win.” Mom smiles, patting our shoulders, before moving on to greet Felipe.
Maya looks at me. “Jamie.”
“So . . . your parents said they’d give you a car if you went canvassing with me.” Her face falls. “Which is fine,” I say quickly. “I get it. A car is a car—”
“No! Jamie. That’s not why I canvassed. Okay, it kind of was at first, but—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“No, I want to.” She grabs my hand under the table, lacing our fingers together. “I mean, yeah, I wasn’t really all in at first. It was something my mom roped me into doing. But then it started feeling more and more important, you know? With the racist guy and H.B. 28 and all the Koopa Troopas—”
“Yeah.”
“I promise it wasn’t just about the car.” She squeezes my hand. “I started to feel like we were making a difference . . . and I like spending time with you. Obviously.”
“So do I. I mean. Obviously.”
“This is really hard,” she says softly.
“What is?”
“Being in a room full of people. Not sneaking away to the coat closet again.”
“Oh.” I exhale. “No kidding.”
Sophie’s friends disappear to the teen room after dinner, but it feels like only moments before they’re herded back in for the hora. Hands joined, feet moving forward-step, back-step, around and around in circles. I keep my hand locked with Maya’s, feeling dizzy with joy. Like I’m threaded with something ancient, something larger than life. I feel so Jewish. I don’t think anything’s made me feel this wholly, utterly Jewish since Fifi. But this is the opposite of Fifi. The precise polar opposite.
The circles stall in place, and everyone steps back, clapping—everyone but a few of Mom’s burliest family friends. The DJ brings out a chair, and Sophie clutches the bottom and shrieks when she’s lifted. Then she comes down, and it’s Mom’s turn. Then it’s mine. At my own bar mitzvah, all I could think about was how many people were down below. How many people were watching me. But now I only see Maya.
I run back to her as soon as my feet hit the ground. We hook elbows and dance in the center of the circle. “Jamie, I swear,” she says, breathless from the movement. “Everyone’s looking at us.”
“Because we’re—”
“Not because we’re in the middle. Jamie. Look.”
I peer around the circle as I dance, and my heart thumps hard in my chest. Maya’s right. Sophie’s friends are openly staring. And giggling. And holding up their phones. Maddie’s glaring at Maya, looking close to tears all over again.
“Super weird, right?” Maya says. “It’s not in my head.”
“Definitely not.”
Everyone switches partners, so I leap toward Sophie. “Why, hello,” she says, linking our arms.
I cut straight to the point. “Why are your friends staring at us?”
I half expect her to deny it. Or say I’m imagining it. But she just shrugs and says plainly, “It’s probably the picture.”
My whole body goes cold. “The picture?”
We switch directions, still dancing, “Hava Nagila” still playing. I barely hear it.
“The one Maddie took of you and Maya kissing,” Sophie says. “Gabe put it on Grandma’s Instagram. And the Rossum account. I think it went kind of viral.”
I stop short.
Kissing? But we didn’t—we didn’t kiss. Believe me, kissing Maya is pretty much all I’ve thought about for weeks. I would fucking know if it happened. But Maddie took a picture? Why the hell was Gabe looking at Maddie’s pictures?
And it went—
No. No way.
I reach into my back pocket, hands shaking. Sophie eyes me nervously. “You okay?”
The hora circles have disbanded by now, and everyone’s trailing back to their tables for dessert. But I’m frozen on the dance floor. “I don’t understand.”
I tap into Instagram. Grandma’s account.
“Jamie, what’s happening?” Maya rushes toward me. “Is everyone—”
Her voice falls away.
I stare dumbfounded at the screen.
It’s us. On my car. In the temple parking lot. Our faces inches apart.
There’s a caption: We’re feeling the love! And hey, don’t forget to give Rossum his happily ever after on July ninth!
It’s been up for four hours. Twenty thousand likes. Over eight hundred comments.
Maya looks like she’s about to throw up.
Chapter Thirty
Maya
This isn’t happening. It can’t be.
Jamie’s searching for Gabe. To yell at him. To make him take the photo down.
Me? The same three words are running in my head on a loop: This. Isn’t. Happening. It could be some sort of hallucinatory dream. I’ve had them before—fever dreams, where I show up to school pantsless and everyone laughs at me.
But this isn’t a dream.
Jamie and I almost kissed.
Maddie took a photo.
Gabe shared it on the Rossum account.
The picture went viral.
Jamie deleted the one that got posted on his grandma’s page, but it’s on the official Jordan Rossum campaign feed, and a bunch of other places. The same photo over and over again, like endless infinity mirrors of us. The image is burned into my brain. Jamie and me sitting on his car. Our shoulders brushing against each other. Looking into each other’s eyes. My hair obscures a bit of the image. You can’t see we hadn’t kissed. Judging from what everyone is saying, we may as well have.
With a trembling hand, I click on the campaign feed. I never look at comments. I know better. But I can’t help it. When I start reading—my stomach drops. The comments under our picture churn into the four digits as I watch.
Yassss!
True love can’t be stopped!
She straightened her hair! It looks nice!
He is CUTE.
More like awkward.
Awkward SEXY.
He could do better tbh.
No way—she’s too hot for him.
Get a room.
Look at her skirt riding all the way up, im cringing
Each comment lands like a punch. Comments about my looks, my clothing. A couple of Islamophobic ones are in there too, because of course. I scroll down but I can’t keep up—more comments pop up each second.
I pause at one comment: I called it from the start, didn’t I?
Called it from the start?
My phone starts buzzing.
Text messages. Rania from Sunday school thinks Jamie’s cute. Serene wants to know if I want to have a talk about faith and sex. Acquaintances I haven’t seen since school ended are sending me shocked emojis. Heart eye emojis.
Kissing emojis.
The texts keep coming. A few are from Shelby—checking to make sure I’m all right. But so many are from numbers I don’t even recognize.
I want to scream.
I want to punch a wall.
But I’m too nauseous to do much of anything—and now that’s the least of my concerns, because the room has started spinning.