traveling.”
It wasn’t the first time my parents had made the offer. My dad had suggested it a couple of months earlier, saying it was the kind of opportunity I’d never have again, but I’d turned him down because it was my senior year, which was also an experience I’d never have again. My dad had been disappointed, but he’d understood. He’d done his best to make sure his campaign hadn’t disrupted my life more than necessary. But the more dinners my dad missed and the more time he spent away from home, the more I thought about taking him up on the offer just so I could spend time with him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t think too long,” Mom said. “And don’t worry about your dad. Everything will settle down again after the election.”
Whereas I didn’t want my dad to win the election—kind of—Mom was pretty sure that he wouldn’t win. All of this stuff was nothing but a weird scenic detour in our lives; we’d return to normal after Dad lost and got this whole trying-to-be-president thing out of his system. That’s not to say Mom didn’t support him—she did. She campaigned with him, with his running mate, and even on her own, carrying his message all over the country, and she never let on for a second to anyone but me that she didn’t think he was going to win. Of course, she hadn’t thought he’d win the primary either, and look how that had turned out. My father, the unlikeliest candidate, now had an actual shot at being the most powerful person in the country.
“You spent time with Governor Arnault during the lockdown at the debate, right?”
My mom seemed surprised by the question. She and Dad hadn’t talked about the ordeal much. “Yes, why?”
“What’d you think of her? And Mr. Arnault.”
“They seemed like perfectly normal people.”
“Talk about anything interesting?”
“The weather,” Mom said. “What might have caused the lockdown. Mostly we were worried about you and they were worried about their son.”
I’d spent so much time concerned about my parents that I hadn’t considered how much they’d been scared for me. “But you got along all right?”
My mom smiled. “Did you expect Janice and your father to duel with pistols?”
I laughed. “No, but . . . I guess, do you think it’s possible for people who disagree on basically everything to be friends?”
“You know, your father and I don’t agree on everything, right?”
“Like what?”
“Education,” she said. “I think school, including college, should be free, but your father worries that making college free would devalue it.” My mom worked as a librarian in the public school system, so it made sense that she supported free education. “But trying to understand people we disagree with is how we learn and grow.”
“So you think you could be friends with people like the Arnaults?”
My mom pursed her lips. “I don’t know them well enough to say, but I’d certainly give them a chance. You’ll never really know who a person is until you put in the effort to get to know them.”
“Hold up,” I said, and got my phone.
DreOfTheDead: can I ask a personal question?
DreOfTheDead: i’m gonna do it anyway
DreOfTheDead: so are you like into dating or sex or love or anything?
Mom was looking at me funny when I finished typing my questions to Dean. “What was that about?”
“Just putting in the effort to get to know someone.” My stomach growled furiously, and I patted it. “You said something about Indian?”
I knew I was crushing on Dean, but I didn’t know if I should. Not like I could control it, but I could at least manage my expectations. Like when I had a crush on Lee Ancrum sophomore year. He was a senior and on the basketball team, and I felt like little cartoon hearts floated around my head every time I looked at him. But he was strictly attracted to girls, so I was able to get over my crush because I knew there was no chance of anything ever happening between us.
With Dean, there were too many uncertainties. He hadn’t said he was definitively ace, but that he believed he was on the spectrum, which left open a lot of possibilities, but none that I could count on. If he did like me, there were a million reasons why we’d never work, but it didn’t make sense worrying about it if it was a situation that had no chance of happening.
Either way, my mom was right