“Orchid hunting. Did you know it was a surprisingly dangerous occupation?”
“Maybe that’s your future career.” A real smile creeps into his voice. “Orchid hunter. And I’ll join you on the expeditions. We can wear those khaki hats with mosquito nets.”
“How is it over there?” I ask.
“I’d rather be hunting orchids.”
“I hope your dad wins.”
“Me, too. Otherwise he’ll be intolerable for at least six months.” The sort-of joke falls flat, and he sighs. “Speaking of. Guess who’s sending a camera crew to my polling station? Guess who’ll be on the morning news?”
“Guess who’ll be glued to CNN’s live stream, hoping to catch a glimpse?”
“Guess who’ll be in class when it happens?”
“Oh.” My heart sinks. “Right.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be uploaded to my dad’s website. Aaaaaaand my mom’s back.”
“Iloveyou!” I say.
“I love you, too.” Josh laughs in surprise. “Thanks for the enthusiasm.”
“I didn’t get to say it last time.”
“Ah, well. From now on” – and I hear his smile grow into a dimple-bearing grin – “let’s start with it.”
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. “Bœuf 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.”