Page 29 of What I Like About You

4:36 PM

Samira Lee

And write KILLER reviews?

4:36 PM

Amy Chen

and you don’t let adults get away with any of their garbage YA takes!!

4:37 PM

Elle Carter

… have we inflamed your ego enough?

4:38 PM

too much!!

4:39 PM

Okay, yeah, if my post goes viral, I can admit to myself how cool being on a panel at BookCon would be—and also howamazingit would look to NYU. If it goes viral, BookCon will start to feel less likenot in a million yearsand moreprobably not, but maybe.

The only problem with totally falling for the idea of BookCon? Nash.

If I get in, Kels won’t be anonymous anymore. I’d submit a photo for the announcement—and even if I managed to avoidthat, I’d be all over Twitter during the actual convention.

I’d have to tell Nash.

Right now? That feels impossible.

But I can’t talk to my friends about this, obviously, given that they have no idea I’m actually a girl named Halle living in Connecticut sitting with Nash at lunch every day.

So I place my phone down on the countertop a safe distance away from the chaos of ingredients on the table, and focus on them instead. Batch one is in the fridge cooling and Gramps’s kitchen smells like red velvet batter. Batch two—dark chocolate for Ollie—is in the oven. For my cover reveals, the batter flavor doesn’t matter as much as the look, so for tonight’s dry run I can make everyone’s favorites.

I’m making cream cheese frosting from scratch with Grams’s standing mixer when my phone buzzes. I glance over my shoulder and see the Instagram notification. Right on time, it’s a new post from Mad Levitt’s account.

I have notifications turned on for all of Mad and Ari’s social media accounts. It keeps me in the loop and helps me feel like they’re not so far away. It’s jarring, not being on location with my parents, not sitting in on their top-secret meetings, not being in thesame time zoneas them.

Mom plans on sending a weekly email and we have an ongoing text chain in WhatsApp, but the electricity of being there doesn’t translate in emojis. Instagram is better. The candid shots of my parents scouting locations and exploring Israel are as close as I can get. Today’s post is an obnoxiously cute selfie of my parents, floating in the Dead Sea. While the legal team is crossing Ts and dotting Is, Mom and Dad have been playing tourists in their temporary home.

I double tap to like it.

The emails and texts remind me that I do, in fact, still have parents. But Instagram is where Imissthem. With everything going on in the past week, I’ve barely had brain space to think about it, but now I wonder if maybe this was the wrong decision. If I was with them, Nash would’ve continued to exist only in my phone and I wouldn’t be in this mess.

It’s fine.

I’m fine.

I separate the frosting into three bowls and add the appropriate food coloring—black, white, and red. Mix it until it’s the perfect shade of blood red or pitch black. Even though they won’tlooklike 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. Wecan’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 enoughfirstsfor this week—I’m not ready for another situation where my anxiety will most definitely be on display.

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