Chapter twenty-one
When school ends, I duck into a bathroom stall. I have ten minutes before I need to be in detention. I yank out my laptop from my bag. The race is still way too early for any of the poll numbers to be in, but I quickly scroll down the senator’s website. There. The video.
Josh enters the polling station with his parents. He’s cleaned up, as in…he looks clean-cut. He’s wearing a suit that fits so well it must have been tailored just for him. He smiles and waves at the cameras. His parents exit their booths. “Who did you vote for?” somebody shouts, and Josh’s dad says, “Was I supposed to vote in there? I thought I was placing a to-go order for breakfast!” Hardy-har.
It cuts back to Josh. He enters a booth while his parents look on proudly. A female reporter with large teeth shoves a microphone at Josh upon his exit. “How does it feel to vote for your father for the first time?”
“Surreal.” Josh flashes the camera a startling amount of charm. “It feels great.”
He’s not lying. And even though I understand that this is a genuinely remarkable moment in his life, it’s…it’s as if I were looking at a stranger. I rewatch the segment and pause it as he answers the reporter’s question. I touch his image onscreen.
If we hadn’t gone to Barcelona, he’d be back in Paris in twenty-four hours.
I push the thought down and away. Because if we hadn’t gone to Barcelona, we also wouldn’t have Parc Güell. Or a moonlit hotel room.
When detention ends, I run straight to my bedroom. I scour the internet, but the earliest poll numbers all read the same. The race is neck and neck.
Kurt shows up, and – to my surprise – he shuts the door behind him. “B?uf bourguignon suivi d’un clafoutis aux poires. For you.” He sets down a plastic cafeteria tray onto my desk. “I didn’t know what to do, so I took the whole thing.”
His embarrassment is touching, somehow. The still-warm dinner and pear dessert both smell intoxicating. “Thank you.”
He pushes back his hoodie. “Nate said I could wait up with you so long as no one else ever finds out, under penalty of beheading. But I don’t think he’d actually behead us.”
My breath is bottling up inside my chest.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t lie for you,” he says. “And I’m sorry that Josh is gone.”
I tackle him with a hug. It feels like the old days, even though we spend the night combing through the news instead of doing homework. Kurt crashes after midnight, but the race is too close for me to sleep. It’s still early in the States. A live feed plays softly, volume turned down. Predicted winners from all across America are announced one after another. At two in the morning, I’m given a six seconds of joy when it shows a clip from the Wasserstein headquarters.
Josh is standing beside his mother and father and a few hundred red, white and blue balloons. The camera moves, and the balloons obscure his face. The feed switches to the gubernatorial race in Florida. An hour later, my eyes are barely open when I hear the newsman with the bad toupee say, “And in the closest race of the night, New York senator Joseph Wasserstein is still fighting to hold on to his seat.”
I lean in towards the screen. As they watch the tallies, Mrs. Wasserstein still looks fresh and cheerful – ever the supportive wife – although I assume a make-up artist has given her a touch-up. The senator seems a bit haggard, but he’s keeping a brave face.
Josh looks exhausted and annoyed. I hope his parents don’t see this footage later.
Still…this is my Josh. Not the stranger from before. A tense-looking man, perhaps the campaign manager, whispers something into his ear, and Josh stands up straighter. The man must have told him that he’s on TV. The camera cuts away.
The news drones on. My burst of adrenalin fades.
I wake up to my morning alarm. Kurt is gone, and the covers have been neatly tucked around me. There’s a one-word note beside my pillow: VICTORY.
I have severely underestimated Josh’s parents. In the wake of the senator’s success, I imagined – at the very least – that they’d allow their son a celebratory phone call. No such luck. I wish I could tell Josh how happy I am for his family. I wish I could tell Josh anything. I’ve never before felt this helpless or cut off.
Two days later, the biggest morning news programme in New York has an exclusive with Senator Wasserstein. I find the link on his website, of course. The interview is standard political fluff, but the background. Well. It’s captivating.
It’s Josh’s house.
The camera follows his dad from the dining room into the living room. Everything is impeccably decorated, though perhaps too orderly. Delicate china plates hang in patterns on the walls. Extravagant vases are stuffed with seasonal grasses and pheasant feathers. It’s hard to imagine anyone living here. Mrs. Wasserstein joins him on the sofa beneath a prominently displayed, seemingly out-of-place oil painting of the Saint-Michel métro station – an Art Nouveau beauty that’s heaped in chained bicycles and dull graffiti. A teenaged boy languishes against one of the bike racks. It’s St. Clair. Josh painted this portrait of his friend last year. I saw it drying inside our school’s studio.
The interviewer, a beaky woman with shiny pale lips, knowingly asks about it, and Josh’s parents gush about their son’s promising future. It’s a jarring response. I’ve always assumed that the rift between Josh and his parents was caused by his desire to pursue a career in the arts, but their praise and support seems genuine.
“He gets it from his mother,” the senator says, beaming at his wife.
“His appreciation for art, yes,” she says. “But the talent is all his own.”
The interview flashes back to the polling station footage – Josh, so handsome, so charming – and when it returns, he’s joined them. My heart picks up speed. It’s that odd, clean-cut look again. An inexplicable pressure mounts inside of me.
The interviewer smiles, nosy and ominous. “We’ve heard that after that clip aired, young ladies flooded your father’s office with inquiries about you. What do you think will happen now that they know not only are you easy on the eyes, but you’re also an artistic genius?”
What?
Josh laughs politely. “I’m not sure.”
“Tell us.” She leans towards him. “New York is dying to know. Do you have a girlfriend?”
He pauses before giving another modest laugh. “Uh, no. Not at the moment.”
My ears ring. I rewind, heart reeling.
Uh, no. Not at the moment.
A dark churning rumbles in my gut. I blink. And then again. Pinprick stars obliterate my vision as they replay a clip from election night. It’s the one where Josh looks miserable, but now the interviewer says he looks nervous because he cares so much about his dad, and how it’ll be a lucky lady who lands such a compassionate young bachelor. “You won’t be single for long,” she teases, and his parents chuckle.
Rewind. Uh, no. Not at the moment.
You won’t be single for long.
Chuckle chuckle.
I reach for my phone and actually scream as I remember that I can’t call him. I do it anyway. No answer. I send a text: CALL ME.
Kurt receives a second text: 911.
“What’s the matter? What happened?” he asks, two minutes later. He’s out of breath.
I gesture frantically at my laptop. “Watch that. Tell me…what…just watch it!”
When it’s over, his brow furrows. “When did you guys break up?”
“We didn’t!”
“So why would he say that?”
“I don’t know! You tell me.”
His shrug is helpless. “You’re asking the wrong person.”
“No, there has to be a rational reason. Tell me! Tell me before I completely lose it!”
“Stop shouting.” Kurt pulls up his hoodie. “Is it possible that he broke up with you, and you didn’t realize it? People are confusing. They say one thing and mean the other.”
“I would definitely be aware of Josh breaking up with me.”
“Maybe…I don’t know. Maybe his dad wants to work this as a new angle for popularity. But he’s already won the election, so I doubt—”
“Of course!” I throw my arms around him. “Of course it’s his father’s idea.”
But Kurt isn’t convinced. I spend the next half-hour talking him through it, building my case, but by the time he leaves in fatigued irritation, even I don’t believe it. What if Josh panicked because this sudden influx of interest – Why the hell didn’t I know about this sudden influx of interest? – has him curious about other girls? And who are these other girls, anyway?
I type his name into a search engine, click on the most recent results, and discover him in the comments of several different websites, including the home page of that infuriating morning news programme. My spirit plummets even lower. They’re the typical boy-crazy, stalker-y comments that one usually finds online, but this time they’re different. This time they’re talking about my boyfriend.
At one a.m., my phone finally rings. My hands shake with anxiety and anger.
“I love you,” Josh says.
I’m thrown.
“Are you there? Isla?”
“Hi.” I say it cautiously.
“I thought we were starting every call with ‘I love you’ now.”
“I – I saw the interview.”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “I figured. My mom told me that you texted. She said I could call you to explain. I’m using her phone.”
There’s hope in my heart, but my voice cracks anyway. “Why did you say that?”
“I’m sorry.” His voice turns anguished. “I wanted to warn you, but I couldn’t. I said I was single, because I didn’t want to drag you into all of this.”
“I’m the girlfriend of a senator’s son. No one gives a crap about me.”
“You’d be surprised,” he says darkly. “I didn’t think anyone gave a crap about me, either.”
“So…it’s true? Girls are really calling for you?”
“Ugh. Yeah. Sort of. It’s weird. I wish they’d stop.”
Something glass, maybe a bottle, shatters on the pavement outside my window. A group of students drunkenly crack up. “So why wouldn’t you want to say you’re taken? It’s not like you had to give them my name and social security number.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He sounds pained. “That’s the last thing I want. I was trying to protect you, I was trying to keep you in the good part of my life.”
“But I want to be in all of it. Ugly parts included.”
“You sure about that? Because I have a lot of ugly parts.”
“Everyone does.”
“What are yours?”
“I get jealous when I think about other girls liking my boyfriend.”
“I get jealous when I think about Sébastien. And all of the guys at school who still get to see you every day.”
I snort. “You can stop worrying. No one is interested in me.”
“Nikhil likes you.”
I’m startled. “What?”
“Nikhil Devi. I overheard him talking about you to one of his friends once.”
Nikhil is the younger, nerdier brother of Rashmi and Sanjita. Not that I’m in any position to judge. He’s a sophomore this year. “That’s weird. What’d he say?”
Josh laughs once. “Oh, so you can leave me for him?”
“Yeah.”
“Nikhil likes your caboose.”
“I take it back. I didn’t want to know that.”
He laughs again.
“I’ve missed your laugh. I miss you.” I want to reach through our phones and touch his hand on the other side. “Thirteen days until I’m home. How will we survive?”
Josh sucks in his breath, and there’s a long and terrible pause. “That’s…the other thing I got permission to call you about.”
Oh, no. Please. No.
“My family has been invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the White House.”
The…what now?
“Isla?”
“The White House,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“As in, where the president lives? That White House?”
“Yeah.”
“Ha,” I choke out. “Ha!”
“It’s insane. I mean, a ton of families were invited, not just us. But still.”
“My boyfriend was invited to the White House.”
“Your boyfriend – who was expelled from high school – was invited to the White House.”
I begin laughing for real.
“My dad used to know the president, back in the day.”
I laugh harder. And I’m crying.
“Oh, Isla.” It sounds like his heart is breaking through the receiver. Whenever he says my name, he takes a part of my soul. I want him to say it again. “Please tell me that you know I’d give anything not to attend this dinner.”
“I guess it’s hard to say no to the White House.”
“Impossible.”
“What about winter break?”
“New York, I swear.”
I pick at a loose thread on my map quilt, a green thread that belongs to Central Park. “You’re sure you won’t be invited back for Christmas?”
“We’re Jewish.”
Shit. “I’m sorry. I know that.”
“I know you do.”
“I’m just upset. I feel so far away from you.”
“I know.” And his voice disappears into the ether. “Me, too.”