“Just a little Boomerang,” she says. She turns to Kevin, the employee. “Meet my brother, Butterfingers von Klutzowitz.”
“I’ll help you clean this,” I say quickly.
“Nah, you’re totally fine. I got this,” says Kevin.
Sophie peers down at her phone. “How do you send stuff to BuzzFeed?”
Out of the corner of my eye, a flicker of movement: the girls in hoodies veering quickly down a side aisle.
Getting the hell away from me, I guess.
I don’t blame them one bit.
Twenty minutes later, Sophie and I park at the Jordan Rossum state senate campaign satellite headquarters—technically the side annex of Fawkes and Horntail, a new-age bookstore on Roswell Road. Not exactly the Georgia State Capitol building, or even the Coverdell Building across the street, where Mom works for State Senator Jim Mathews from the Thirty-Third District. The whole state capitol complex looks plucked from DC, with its columns and balconies and giant arched windows. They’ve got security teams at the entrances, like an airport, and once you’re in, it’s all heavy wooden doors and people in suits and fidgety groups of kids on field trips.
And those bright, gleaming Coverdell Building bathrooms.
I know all about those bathrooms.
No suits or security teams at Fawkes and Horntail. I cut straight to the side-access door, hoisting two dozen bottles of water, while Sophie trails behind me balancing the snack bags. We’re here so much, we don’t even bother knocking.
“Hey, bagels,” greets Hannah, the assistant field coordinator. She means us, not the snacks. There’s a bagel chain in Atlanta called Goldberg’s, and since we’re Jamie and Sophie Goldberg, people sometimes . . . yeah. But Hannah’s cool, so I don’t mind it. She’s a rising junior at Spelman, but she’s staying with her mom in the suburbs this summer, just to be near the campaign office.
She looks up from her desk, which is stacked high with canvassing flyers—the ones Gabe calls walk pieces. “Is this for the phone bankers tonight? Y’all are the best snack team ever.”
“It was mostly me,” Sophie says, handing her the snack bags. “I’m like the snack team captain.”
Hannah, halfway across the room with the snacks, looks back over her shoulder and laughs.
“Except I drove,” I mutter. “I pushed the cart, carried all the water—”
“But it was my idea.” Sophie jabs me with her elbow and smiles brightly.
“Mom literally made us.”
“Okay, well I’m the one who didn’t knock over a display, so.”
Hannah walks back over and settles into her desk. “Hey, y’all are coming tomorrow night, right?”
“Oh, believe me,” Sophie says. “We’ll be there.”
Mom never lets us miss Rossum campaign events these days. Lucky us. They’re all the same: people milling around with plastic cups, making overly familiar eye contact. Me forgetting everyone’s names the moment I hear them. And then everyone gets super extra when Rossum arrives. People laugh louder, angle toward him, sidle nearer to ask for selfies. Rossum always seems a little startled by the whole thing. Not in a bad way. More like in a who me kind of way. It’s his first time running for office, so I guess he’s not used to all that attention.
But the thing about Rossum is that he’s amazing with people. I mean, his platform’s great too—he’s super progressive, and he’s always talking about raising the minimum wage. But a lot of it’s just the way he speaks. He can give you goose bumps, or make you laugh, or make you feel purposeful and clear. I always think about the people who shake the world with their words. Patrick Henry, Sojourner Truth, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King. I know Rossum’s just a guy running for state senate. But he makes it all feel huge. He makes this race feel like a moment, a brand-new dot on Georgia’s timeline. He makes you feel like you’re watching history change.
I can’t imagine being able to do that.
Tomorrow’s event is an interfaith outreach dinner at a local mosque, which means Mom’s extra excited. We aren’t the most observant Jews in the world, but she lives for this kind of religious community-building stuff.
“Should be fun,” says Hannah, opening her laptop. But then she stops short, glancing back up at us. “Oh, right, you need snack reimbursement, don’t you? Gabe’s in the VIP room. I’ll grab him.”
The VIP room? A supply closet.
Hannah emerges moments later, followed by Gabe, who’s wearing a crisp blue button-down shirt, with a picture of Jordan Rossum’s face stickered onto his chest. People sometimes say Sophie and I look like Gabe, since he’s tall and has