“Davenport for Change.” She painted “Hope” over and over again, so many times that the letters started to look funny and the word lost its meaning.
Shannon went to Boston and fol owed Dan around to three different events in one day. She shook hands with the Candidate and nearly blacked out from excitement. She listened to him give the same speech over and over and she cried every time. He talked about the hardships people have to face, and he talked about wanting a better world for his children, and Shannon clapped and cried.
Shannon shouted that she was “fired up and ready to go” in seven different states. She passed out buttons and helped set up chairs. And sometimes, when she went to bed at night, she heard ral y cries in her head, soft and far away. They sounded so real that she was sure there were people gathered outside her apartment, huddled together, chanting the Candidate’s name as she tried to fal asleep.
Dan returned to New York for an event and Shannon recruited al of her friends to come. They waited in line at Washington Square Park for three hours, getting crushed by the crowd. “Dan wil be so happy that you came,” Shannon told them.
“Where is he?” Lauren asked.
“Up there.” Shannon pointed to the stage. Dan darted by.
“That’s fun that you got to see him last night,” Isabel a said.
“Oh, wel , I actual y didn’t,” Shannon said. “He ended up working al night. He slept here.”
“In the park?” Mary asked. “Gross.”
“Tonight, maybe?” Isabel a asked.
Shannon shook her head. “He’s off to Pennsylvania,” she said. The girls were quiet for a minute.
“Wel ,” Lauren said. “It wil be over soon, right?” Shannon started to agree, but the music came on and they al turned to the stage, and clapped and cheered.
As the primaries got closer, Dan traveled so much that Shannon didn’t even have time to go see him. He’d be in a city for twenty hours and then on his way to the next one. Even phone cal s became rare. Sometimes, though, she caught a glimpse of his head on the border of the TV, running from side to side in a gymnasium after the Candidate finished a speech. She watched for him closely, waiting for his blond head to flash on the screen.
“There he is,” she’d cry, although no one was there to hear her. And then as soon as she spotted him, he’d run off the other side, gone from her
sight.
When the Candidate won Iowa, Dan cal ed from the campaign center. He sounded muffled and far away. Shannon could hear screaming in the background and Dan had to yel to be heard. His voice was thick, as though he’d been crying or was just about to start.
When Dan did come home, he was exhausted and wrinkled. Sometimes, he’d been up for days. His hair stood up in clumps and his eyes were bloodshot. He’d come into the apartment, shower, and head straight for bed.
Shannon talked to him while he slept. She told him about her job while his eyes stayed closed. “Mmm-hmm,” he’d murmur sometimes.
Dan wore two BlackBerrys, strapped to either side of his belt. “You look like a nerd,” Shannon always told him. He didn’t care. Once when Dan was home and lying in bed, Shanon saw a red mark on his hip. “What’s that?” she asked. She touched it lightly.
“It’s from the BlackBerry, I think,” Dan said.
“You have a scar from your BlackBerry vibrating against you?” Shannon asked.
“I guess so,” Dan said.
“And that doesn’t strike you as strange? As not right?”
“Not real y,” Dan said. He rol ed over and turned out his bedside light.
“You’ve been branded,” Shannon said. But Dan was already asleep.
Every time Dan got ready to leave again, they fought.
“When wil you be home?” Shannon would ask.
“You know I don’t know that,” he’d say.
“Do you even miss me?” she’d ask.
“Shannon,” he’d say. “Don’t start this now. You know I miss you. Don’t fight with me right before I leave.”
Sometimes she let it drop, but sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she’d poke and whine until they fought. It felt good to scream at him, to scream at someone. Once she asked him, “Let’s say that you got to have dinner with one person and you had to choose: me or the Candidate. And you hadn’t seen me in a month. Who would you pick?”
“You, of course,” he said. He came over and kissed her good-bye. It was a lie. She knew deep inside that she
