“No…I’m just not there a lot.” He clears his throat and digs his own phone out of his pocket. “Hang on, I can find it.”
I look around Drip Drop as he starts typing and swiping. I’ve lived here my entire life, but it still astounds me how many people who aren’t at work during the day are consistently decked out in designer clothes, climbing out of Teslas and Porsches. It’s a Tuesday morning and the place is packed. I check every single person to see if they’re wearing voting stickers. Only about half of them pass my test.
“Okay, got it,” Duke says, and types the address into the site on my phone. His face drops immediately.
“What?” I ask before I take a sip of coffee, hoping it’s finally cooled enough.
“It’s at Flores Hills Elementary…where my mom works.”
“SO?”
I look up at her. “So? I should be in homeroom right now.”
“Yeah, but you’re skipping for a good cause. And the elementary school isn’t too far. We could even have you back in time for Calculus if traffic agrees with us.”
I squint at her. Does traffic ever agree with her? But I can’t help feeling relieved that it’s this easy. I showed up to the wrong spot, we found the right one, and I might even make it back in time for my test. Even though that last part doesn’t exactly make me feel better.
“Why do you look like that?” she asks, tapping a finger against her coffee cup. Her nails are short. I wonder if she bites them like I do.
“Like what?”
“Confused.”
I shrug. “I think this might just be my face.”
Marva laughs, picking up her phone. She stares at the screen for a moment, then looks at me. “Should we check to make sure you’re registered? Just in case?”
“Nah. I preregistered a couple of years ago. I just showed up to the wrong spot, and now we got the right one.”
She nods and drinks more coffee. I don’t miss the skeptical look in her eyes, but I feel like that may just be her normal face, too.
“So, if you’ve been preregistered since you were sixteen, that must mean your family is pretty political.”
“Understatement of the year,” I mumble, swiping a finger through the hill of whipped cream in my cup and licking it off in one quick movement.
Marva cocks her head to the side. “Really? Are they, like, actual politicians?”
“Nah, but my brother probably would’ve been. If he…”
“What? What happened?”
“He died.” I say it like it’s a fact, because it is. But it’s still weird as hell to me that it’s something I say now. That it’s something I’ve been saying for two years, something I’ll be saying for the rest of my life: My brother died.
“Oh.” Marva looks down at her Americano, hands wrapped around the cup like it’s a cold winter day instead of the sunny, seventy-five-degree fall day that’s normal in our town. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right. It was two years ago.”
A slight frown pinches her face. “Two years? That’s, like, no time.”
“Yeah…well.”
“Were you close to him?”
We’re in the middle of a busy-ass coffee shop with moms and dads and strollers and people typing away on laptops, but it’s suddenly too fucking quiet in here. I wish I’d brought my drumsticks. At least then I’d have something to distract me.
“Yup,” I say quickly. “I was.”
There are very clear Before and After moments when someone hears about Julian. Before, they feel fine thinking whatever they think about me. Even if they don’t know anything at all. But after…that’s when all the backtracking starts. You can practically see it on their faces, the worry that they’ve done or said something that might be offensive to the guy who has a dead brother.
“I’ve never known anyone who died,” she says slowly. “I mean, nobody who was young and that I was close to.…”
“It’s a trip. Do not recommend.” I clear my throat and change the subject so I won’t have to see her slide too far into the After. “What about your family? They all take this stuff as seriously as you do?”
“This stuff?” Marva shakes her head. “Duke, this stuff is going to affect our lives for years. And our kids’ lives, too.”
My eyes almost pop out of my head. “Kids? Damn, you already thinking that far ahead?”
“It’s impossible not to! Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising way too fast, and droughts, catastrophic hurricanes, and epic floods are becoming normal. Not to mention the growing amount of unchecked bigotry and hate crimes and school shootings…I mean, honestly, I don’t even know if I want to bring kids into this world with the way things are going.”
I take a long drink of hot chocolate. It goes down thick and sweet, and I lick the whipped cream off my mouth before I speak again. “How long you been thinking about this stuff?”
“Forever, I guess? But the last election, when we were fourteen…that was sort of my breaking point. Like, I knew I had to start working to make sure things change, or I’d never be able to forgive myself. I can’t just sit back and watch this world go to shit, you know?”
Her words send a shiver through me. This is the same kind of stuff Julian used to say. Almost verbatim. It’s not like I’m dumb enough to think my older brother was the only person who cared about voting this much. I knew his friends, who were all involved in some type of activism. They used to sit around our kitchen table for hours, talking about these things while Ma listened—sometimes contributing and most of the time making way too much food for their unofficial meetings.
“Have you ever thought about being a community organizer?”
“Not really?” she says. “I mean, I’m planning to go to school, and I’m probably going to be there for a while.”
“I know you’re not trying to be a professional student.”
“No, but I’ll probably go to law school.”
“You really do have your whole life planned out, huh?”
She slurps down the rest of her coffee and pushes the cup away, standing up. “If I don’t plan it, who will?”
MY PHONE PINGS WITH A TEXT AS SOON AS I unlock the doors to my car.
“This is a rich-person car,” Duke observes as he opens the door to the passenger side.
I look down at my phone. It’s Alec. Finally.
“Truth hurts, huh?” Duke continues.
I look at him over the top of my car. “What?”
“That you go to a fancy school and drive a rich-person car,” he says, smiling before he ducks into the seat.
“What are you talking about?” I slide in next to him, my fingers hovering over the phone screen. Since when am I afraid to look at texts from my boyfriend?
“Volvos. They’re luxury vehicles by design.”
“You don’t even know me.” I roll my eyes. “Why are you so obsessed with what I drive and where I go to school?”
His knees knock against the glove box as he settles himself in the seat. “You seemed embarrassed by it earlier. You don’t need to be. It’s okay if your parents have money.”