pitch black. Even though they won’t look like traditional red velvet cupcakes, they’ll still taste like them. When my timer beeps, I pull out the cooled cupcakes in the fridge and swap in the fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate ones.
Then I fill a piping bag and begin frosting.
Maybe if I make some of them not bloody cupcakes, Gramps can even bring them to Shabbat services.
I know he’s disappointed Ollie and I are not going. We can’t, though. We’re Jewish but we don’t know Hebrew or the melodies of the prayers or the order of the service. Mom and Dad never took us to temple. I’ve already had enough firsts for this week—I’m not ready for another situation where my anxiety will most definitely be on display.
I can’t Shabbat, but I can bake epic cupcakes. That’ll make Gramps happy. It always does.
I snap a picture of the first completed cupcake and send it to Ollie, even though he’s just upstairs—it’s easier than yelling over Kendrick Lamar.
Then, while I wait for him to rush down and give me an opinion, I remember I owe Nash flailing commentary on the new REX panels he emailed me this morning. It’s beautiful and devastating and starting to feel like Rex will never find Terry.
hey! sorry my notes are late, i’m just busy over here sobbing forever!!! seriously.
HOW DARE YOU?
4:31 PM
how does. REX. keep. getting. better???
4:31 PM
*flails*
4:31 PM
Please stop crying
4:32 PM
4:32 PM
Thank you—I think? I hope NYU thinks so
4:33 PM
THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL
4:34 PM
My parents will let me go if I get in? Right?
4:35 PM
i hope so.
4:36 PM
Every time I try to talk about it, I totally freeze.
4:37 PM
mood. they’re THAT against NYU? why? let me guess, your mom has a vendetta because they didn’t accept her a million years ago
4:38 PM
LOL no. It’s a lot of things. It’s expensive. It’s in the middle of a, quote, “big dangerous city.” It’s the fact that Wesleyan has an amazing art program, and it’s right here.
4:39 PM
so you have to convince them. WHY NYU?
4:40 PM
Because if I don’t get out of this town now, I don’t think I ever will, tbh.
4:41 PM
It feels so good talking to Nash from my phone, as Kels, like before. At school, the best strategy when it comes to dealing with Nash is total, complete avoidance. I always arrive to our shared classes right before the bell. I claim the lunch seat wedged between Sawyer and Autumn. Any and all school-related talk is strictly about assignments and due dates.
It’s the only way to avoid a repeat of that awkward first day.
Because already I can see that Nash is just as smart and funny and filled with book puns for every situation as he is on my screen. If I get to know him, I know I’ll think he’s even more wonderful, and I’ll wish I were brave enough to tell him the truth and take his reaction, whatever it is. Which I won’t be.
When we have conversations like this one though—where Kels can talk to Nash as if nothing has changed, where Nash confides in Kels—the IRL awkwardness is worth it to risk not losing this.
Enough about that. Are things going
okay at the new school?
4:42 PM
i’m trying to make friends, i swear, mom!
4:43 PM
That’s not what I meant.
4:43 PM
… ok that’s kind of what I meant.
4:43 PM
is there even a point? It’s senior year. i’m at yet ANOTHER new school. maybe it’s better to save the whole IRL friends thing until college
4:45 PM
That sounds lonely.
4:46 PM
who needs real people when i have the internet?
4:47 PM
You mean when you have me
4:45 PM
“What is all of this—?”
My eyes snap up from my phone, meeting Gramps’s voice, and wow, his pained expression wipes the Nash smile right off my face.
Okay, so I kind of made a mess … and am in the process of frosting two dozen cupcakes.
But Gramps is looking at me like—I don’t even know. Like I’ve done something wrong.
I place my phone facedown on the table. “Peak stress baking?”
“Is this—it’s all Miriam’s stuff? How?”
His voice cracks when he says Grams’s name and my eyes instantly start watering. The mixer, the bowls, the pans and spatulas—they were all Grams’s. But she always let me use them, and all of it was just sitting in a box in the garage, clearly labeled KITCHEN STUFF.
“I just needed to bake, Gramps. I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t think.”
I swallow my words. I don’t know what to say next. Whatever I do say will be wrong.
“You can’t just start taking things that aren’t