“How can you even tel ?” I wave at my face, hoping he can’t see how flushed my cheeks are. “In al this getup.”
He leans back, crossing his arms over his chest, and I try not to notice how strong his forearms look. I’m official y a heroine in a Victorian novel, noticing muscular forearms and perfectly proportionate ears, while everything else about his appearance is a mystery.
“I didn’t need to see you to be able to tel . But I knew if I told you online, you’d just think I was ful of it. As you can see…” He trails off awkwardly.
“I’m not that smooth.”
And he’s not. I can’t explain how I know, but I know. Maybe it’s the old New Balance sneakers or the too-flat brim of his hat. Or the fact that his
favorite singers are crooners when every other guy our age is listening to Drake.
But I can tel that he’s being genuine, and it makes my stomach do a giddy little flip-flop.
“Thanks,” I say. “I didn’t need to see you to know you’re pretty amazing, too. But it’s nice to know you’re real.”
“You were worried?”.
“Maybe not worried,” I say. “But I couldn’t imagine being that lucky.”
“Real y?” he asks, sounding so unsure, I practical y melt on the spot. I need to leave before I give the middle finger to the CDC and jump across this table to wrap my arms around his waist. This whole thing is equal parts impossible and incredible.
Colin returns and hands me the box of materials. I take it from his outstretched arms and thank him, starting to back away reluctantly. Before I turn to go, I look back at Jude.
“Real y, Jude. See you next week.”
I can feel his stare as I load the box back into my car and put my seatbelt on. My phone vibrates, and I pul it out.
Jude: I’m the lucky one.
I look up through the windshield and raise my fingertips close to my mask, blowing him a social y distant kiss. Across the lot, he catches it and covers his heart with his palm.
—
“I love Amelia Hargrave in these remote performances,” I say over FaceTime to my best friend, Chloe, as our favorite reality show blares in the background. “She seemed a little lost on the main stage back in Hawai , but she’s bril iant in a cozier setting.”
On my phone screen, Chloe slips a blond curl behind her ear and purses her lips. “Yeah, I don’t think she’d have broken Top Ten if the season had
been a normal one. She’s just real y good at set design. Which”—she pins me with a look—“is probably why you like her. Her vocals are shaky.”
“I do love what she does with twinkle lights,” I admit.
Chloe and I have been watching American Famous together since seventh grade. We might not be in the same room with our bowl of popcorn and chocolate chips between us, but it’s nice to have some sense of normalcy. It feels right. Usual y the top twenty performances are filmed in some exotic location (this year was Hawai ), but since the pandemic, the competitors are streaming their performances live from their homes. It’s strange and interesting. I haven’t seen the last two weeks of performances since I was in mask purgatory, but Chloe convinced me this would make me feel better.
She was right.
“So who else is stil in?” I ask, crunching loudly on a handful of salted, gooey popcorn.
“What you real y want to know is if Judah MacKenzie is stil in. Uh-uh,”
she says, shaking her curls back and forth. “You’l have to wait to find out.”
I cross my eyes at her in the screen and settle back into the couch, crossing my legging-clad ankles on the ottoman. During the commercial break, Chloe updates me on her social-distance love life. Just before the pandemic, Ferris Carter, a fel ow lead vocalist in show choir, final y asked her to be his girlfriend and prom date. They’re currently hovering in the weird place of “serious enough to be official, but not serious enough to break stay-at-home orders to make out.”
“I just want to lick his face already,” Chloe says, licking her ice cream spoon instead.
I grimace. “Gross.”
“Please. Don’t even pretend you wouldn’t lick Judah MacKenzie’s face if you ever had the chance.”
“I don’t real y want to lick anyone’s face, ever, and I think it’s weird that you do.”
“Okay. Maybe that was a little over the top. I just real y want to kiss him.
A lot. For a long time.”
“That’s more like it,” I say around another mouthful of popcorn, feeling my cheeks burn. Doesn’t take much for the hot cheeks these days. Not since
meeting Jude in real life, anyway. We spend most of our day talking and flirting via text…growing more and more brave. Not brave enough to google him yet, but maybe brave enough to send a maskless selfie.
I casual y swipe up on my phone, rereading our conversation.
Gray: Gotta run, American Famous is on in five.
Jude: Don’t you mean Judah MacKenzie is on in five?
Jude: I hear he’s from Michigan.
Gray: Jealous?
Jude: Maybe a little. Should I be?
Gray: Nah. He’s a total Bing. You’re definitely a Danny.
Jude: …
Jude: You mean you like me for me?
Gray: That’s what I’m saying.
Gray: Now shhhh. I need to go fangirl.
The show starts up again and there he is.
Judah MacKenzie is standing in the middle of a backyard deck. It’s surrounded by pine trees and a hundred softly lit candles, and he looks like every girl’s dream. I’m not surprised he’s made it this far. He’s got gobs of charisma and talent. From the moment he opened his mouth during audition week, I knew he was Final Four material.
I let out a tiny shriek, and Chloe laughs at my blatant fangirling.
He starts off, artful y gazing down at his fingers, plucking away at the opening chords to a song I recognize immediately, my stomach turning a tiny somersault. The thing about Judah MacKenzie is that he’s not afraid to experiment, even if it means reimagining an acoustic version of Taylor Swift’s
“Delicate.” Judah raises his face to the light, shaking back his dark waves from his forehead and piercing me with deep-sea-green eyes.
Holy moly, this boy is good-looking.
Everything else fal s away. My best friend, popcorn, my house, my existence. Al of it, forgotten. I don’t dare breathe, can’t possibly blink, or I might miss something.
You must like me for me.
“You al right there, Archer?” Chloe says when the song ends.
I blink, shaking my head. “I’m fine. That was amazing.”
Chloe giggles. “Cripes, Gray, you were transported there for a minute.”
I feel my face get hot. Again. “I love that song.”
“Me too! Extra swoony.”
Onscreen, the host is making smal talk with Judah as the judges gather their thoughts in their own locations and give constructive feedback. I don’t fol ow what they are saying. I just keep hearing his voice in my head. “You must like me for me.” Something is niggling in the back of my brain. I narrow my eyes at the boy on my TV. He’s tal with dark, wavy hair, bright eyes, and a dimple in his one cheek. I turn up the volume and shush my best friend, who’s stil giving me shit for drooling into my snack.
But he’s done talking. Instead, he’s standing in the middle of his deck, holding up eight fingers and miming for us to text and vote.
Which I do. Seventeen times.
I watch the rest of the competitors with Chloe, but I’m distracted. The moment the episode is over, I hang up, tel ing her I’m tired. After al , I’ve been staying up late every night sewing masks.
I crawl up the stairs to bed and poke my head in my parents’ bedroom, where they’re both reading. I blow them a kiss and turn to my own room, fighting the memory of blowing Jude a kiss just the week before.
Jude. I open my texts. He’d said, You mean you like me for me?
Jude. Judah. Jude
. Judah. Nope. No way. There’s no way. I’m making something out of nothing. Yeah, I know Jude plays guitar, but who knows if he can sing? Both guys are from Michigan…but so are mil ions of other people. Both are eighteen-year-old seniors in high school. Again, not super unique.
I would know if the guy I’ve been talking to almost nonstop was a celebrity.
Right?
I pul up Google and press my lips together, taking a deep breath before typing “Jude DuBois + Michigan” in the search field. I scrol through the results, but there’s not much. A few hits on his uncle’s delivery service. A link to Colin’s social media. But nothing else. Either Jude has zero social media presence or DuBois isn’t actual y his last name.
Frustrated, I look up Judah MacKenzie’s Instagram account. It pops up immediately. A mil ion fol owers, blue check mark. For a reality show contestant, he seems to do the bare minimum. Just photos of him performing from his back porch, and back in Hawai on the set of American Famous before the pandemic. I try YouTube. Same story there. Besides, I already know what Judah looks and sounds like. I try to hold my hand over his face on the screen and squint my eyes…if I imagine a pair of sunglasses just like…
Forget it. I close out of the page with a sigh. There is zero evidence to suggest Jude and Judah are the same person.
But there’s also zero evidence they aren’t the same person.
I check our text history. We don’t usual y talk on Sunday nights, which could be because he’s performing live from his backyard for mil ions of viewers.
Or it could be a mil ion other logical reasons.
I think about texting him now, but what on earth should I say? Hey, Jude, you aren’t actual y Judah MacKenzie, mega-hot contestant on American Famous, are you? No? Oh. Okay. I was just wondering.
Better not.
The next morning, I wake up to a buzzing on my night stand. I pul my phone toward me and smile.
Jude: I got Doris Day. Who are you? *attachment BuzzWord Quiz WHICH
HOLLYWOOD IT GIRL ARE YOU?*
Jude: I’m predicting Grace Kel y.
Gray: Wow, no pressure there!
Jude: Just cal ing it like I see it.
Gray: Okay, okay. Gimme a sec.
Gray: I just woke up.
I hesitate and then decide to drop the tiniest nugget.
Gray: Was up late watching American Famous. Popcorn hangover.
I watch the gray dots with a nervous feeling in my stomach.
Jude: I bet you look real y cute when you first wake up. Hair al over. Puffy eyes.
I release my breath. Okay. Wel , that was uneventful (and massively sweet). Fine.
Gray: We have very different definitions of the word “cute.”
I click through BuzzWord, answering the quiz, while propped up on my pil ow.
Gray: Hey! You were right. I got Princess Grace Kel y!
Jude: Knew it.
Deciding to be bold, I lift my phone over my head, making sure to capture every glorious hair out of place, snap the fuzzy selfie, and hit send.
Gray: You mean you like me for me?
Jude: That’s what I’m saying.
—
JUDE
In my defense, I was wearing a mask. I had to. It was required by the law and also my uncle. So I wasn’t trying to hide my identity. I never lied.
In fact, I was more truthful than I’ve ever been in my whole life.
That’s the thing about a mask. It al ows you to be realer than real because you don’t have to be you. The you that everyone else knows, careful y cultivated over years of trial and error.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first time I saw Gray Archer was earlier this year, at the cast party for my cousin Colin’s musical. Last fal .
Before any of *gestures at the world* this. Before the American Famous audition where I was only supposed to be accompanying Colin but ended up making it into the Top Ten. Before the mil ions of hits on my barely existent YouTube channel. Before the girls flooding the comment sections and texting to vote for me week after week.
Before the pandemic brought the entire world to a screaming, screeching halt.
Before al of that, I was just a guy nursing a breakup at a rival high school’s theater department after party. Colin had dragged me along, insisting I needed to stop moping, and then promptly ditched me at the door to accept his accolades and show off his boyfriend. Typical Colin. And I ended up spending the entire night warming a couch cushion in a basement, surrounded by strangers.
It wasn’t that bad, honestly. Better than being home, watching my little brother play Xbox with his friends. And it’s where I first met her.
It was barely a blip on her radar, I know, but I won’t forget it. She sat next to me on that couch for over an hour, talking animatedly with her friends about the glory days of Hol ywood costume design, and debating whether To Catch a Thief or High Society showcased Grace Kel y’s best looks. At one
point, she waved her hands so wildly, she smacked me in the head. When she apologized, I held out my hand and introduced myself.
“It’s okay. You were on a rol . I’m Jude.”
She smiled, ful on, and shook my hand. “I’m Gray.” Then she immediately turned to finish her argument.
So I sat and listened and watched and fel under the spel of this girl. That was it. You don’t forget a name like Gray and you don’t forget a girl like Gray Archer. But that night, I went home and never saw her again.
After that, my life got pretty crazy. I created a public Instagram account that immediately earned a blue check. I finished my senior year through a tutor. I spent January in Hawai taping the top twenty episodes for American Famous. And I’m grateful. This is my dream.
But when I logged on to my uncle’s A2NeighborGram account and saw Gray’s post, it was like the world’s strongest magnet drawing me to her. I just wanted to be her friend.
Maybe more.
Please, please, please let her stil want me when she knows who I am.
GRAY
Jude: Are you watching American Famous tonight?
Gray: Duh. Chloe would disown me if I didn’t. I missed two weeks in a row because of mask making and she threatened to replace me with her boyfriend, Ferris.
Jude: Not Ferris.
Gray: I know right?
Jude: Girls before Tilt-a-Whirls
Gray: Um
Gray: What?
Jude: Sorry
Jude: Ferris -> Ferris wheel -> Tilt-a-Whirl Gray: That was rough, man.
Jude: You stil like me.
Gray: Lord help me I do.
Gray: This is going to sound very awkward, but.
Jude: Yes?
Jude: Sorry! I have to run!
Gray: What is your last name?
I stare at my screen, confused for a second. We must have messaged each other at the same time, and now Jude’s gone. I glance up at my clock. It’s
nearly eight. Time for American Famous.
At the mask dropoff yesterday, I stayed nearly thirty minutes, talking with Jude alone, while Colin did deliveries. It was heaven. Muffled heaven.
Because, yes, I was doing everything in my power to study and memorize his voice. Maybe I don’t have a solid idea of how Jude sounds, but I definitely know how he talks. How he leans forward and uses his hands when he’s excited about something. How he throws his head back and his entire face scrunches when he laughs. How the tips of his perfect ears and back of his neck redden when he’s embarrassed.
Like when Colin came back early from a delivery and said to me, “You know this is his favorite part of the week, don’t you? It’s al he talks about.
When Gray comes this…and when Gray comes by that…You’d think the guy had nothing else going on.”
“Wel ,” I said with a shrug, feeling warm, but pleased, “It’s a pandemic.
What else does he have going on?”
Before Colin could respond, Jude cleared his throat and said, “Yeah.
Wel
. You get to see your boyfriend practical y every day when you”—he does air quotes—“deliver his lunch, so excuse me for savoring my one visit a week.”
That’s right, he basical y cal ed me his girlfriend. Sort of. Practical y.
Chloe FaceTimes me at exactly 7:59, and I smile at her flushed pink face.
“Almost missed it,” she says.
“How is that possible? We’re stuck at home.”
She rol s her eyes. “Mel is having a fit because I made her switch over from USA’s Funniest Stay at Home Videos. It’s al the same garbage we’ve seen on social media al day every day. They’re basical y ripping off TikTok and featuring a bunch of influencers. Not interested.”
“Right, wel it’s on now. So shush.”
“Oh, there he is, Gray! Is it him?”
I had to tel someone my theory about Jude and Judah maybe possibly being the same person. Chloe was the least humiliating option.
“I don’t know! I need to hear him speak. I might be able to tel from that.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t just ask him.”
“I wanted to, but it felt weird. Like what if it’s not and then he thinks I’m disappointed he’s not a celebrity? That would be soul-crushing.”
“You think?”
“What if he was obsessed with Dove Cameron or something and thought I was her, and then found out I was just me? Wouldn’t that feel terrible?”
“I guess. But you won’t be disappointed if he’s not some celeb.”
“I know that, but he doesn’t. I real y, real y like Jude. So much.”
“Al right. Just so we’re clear, are we hoping its him, or aren’t we?”
“We’re ambivalent.”
“Real y?”
“Mostly.”
“Right.”
“Quiet, it’s starting,” I say. “I’m stil sad what’s-her-face got voted off last week.”
“So sad that you can’t be bothered to remember her name.”
“Good point.”
I’ve barely touched my popcorn. If only Jude hadn’t had to run off earlier, I would already know if my crazy theory were true! I can’t believe I don’t know his last name. What kind of girl doesn’t know her maybe-boyfriend’s last name?
The kind who meets him in a pandemic, that’s who.
Together, Apart Page 19