“How was that cookie yesterday?” I ask him. It was pretty brave of Jamie to take one for the team like that. Ill-advised, but brave. “No side effects?”
“It wasn’t too bad. My grandma makes those cookies all the time. The thing with them is, if you don’t seal them right away, they get stale within the hour. My grandma’s taste way better than Barbara’s, but hers were definitely edible.” He puts his phone in his back pocket and glances at me. “You met her, actually. My grandmother. At the campaign headquarters . . .” His voice trails off and he looks away.
“Your grandmother?” I flush. “That was your grandmother? Oh, wow. O-Okay.” I stammer. “I didn’t mean to . . .” My voice trails off. Did he notice me side-eyeing her?
“She’s a social media surrogate for Rossum’s campaign, but she has her own really popular Instagram account too. She’s got a great eye for photos and captions and she can hashtag like a boss, but she has a hard time getting the filters and Stories features just right. I run tech support for her.”
“Your grandmother has an account on there?”
“Yeah.” He looks over at me. “It’s called InstaGramm.”
“I know what Instagram is,” I tell him, trying to hide my irritation. This, after mansplaining Goldfish crackers to me yesterday?
“No, no,” he says quickly. “I mean, that’s not her handle, but that’s how everyone knows her on Instagram. She’s Insta. Gramm. Like Gramma.”
“Oh, wow.” I pause. “That’s clever.”
“She’s a pretty big deal.” He smiles. He’s so clearly proud of her, it’s kind of cute. “I don’t know how she does it, but somehow her stuff always goes viral. She’s got like ten thousand followers last time I checked.” He pulls out his phone, clicks around on the screen, and holds it out to me. “She takes photos with her dog, Boomer. People are seriously obsessed with her. She’s a local sensation.”
I shield the phone from the sun’s glare and scoot next to him to look at the photos. There’s one of her cuddling Boomer at Piedmont Park. Grandma and Boomer are wearing matching Hawaiian shirts in the next one. I smile at one with her sipping a frappé at a local coffee shop, and Boomer photobombing. The next one makes me pause—it’s an old-school photo. It’s clearly her, because she’s got some seriously fashionable frames on, but she’s younger—maybe in her twenties—and she’s next to a man with dark hair and a smile that looks like Jamie’s. They’re sitting on two matching Adirondack chairs with iced tea, gazing into each other’s eyes.
“That’s my grandpa.” Jamie points to the man. “He died when I was nine—my grandma shares their photos for Throwback Thursdays.”
“They’re so cute.”
“They really were. They’d been married over forty years, and they still used to hold hands all the time, completely lovestruck.”
My parents used to be that way. Holding hands. Looking at each other from across a crowded room and smiling in a secret language even I couldn’t decipher. I remember rolling my eyes when I’d walk into the kitchen early mornings before school and catch them standing next to each other, holding coffee mugs, heads pressed together as they took in the sunrise from our bay window. They made it eighteen years. They were happy for most of them. At least, I thought they were. I wish I knew why some people keep holding hands and why some people stop.
I’m not sure what the reason is, but the people in the next few houses we knock on actually open their doors. Five of them promise to vote in the special election, and one lady shrugs and says “maybe,” which is better than staring at closed doors while the owners peek down at us from their upstairs windows. I would call that behavior a bit creepy, except we’re the randos knocking on their doors.
When the person at the next house opens up, it takes a second to register that I actually know him. I’m not sure why that’s so surprising. We’re canvassing four miles from my house; it would probably be more weird not to run into someone I know, but it still throws me off guard.
“Kevin?” Jamie and I say at the same time. I look at Jamie. He knows him too?
“Maya?” He smiles at me and glances at Jamie. He’s wearing an Atlanta Falcons jersey. “And Von Klutzowitz, right? What are you both doing here?”
Von what?
“Um, we’re canvassing for the special election.” Jamie