She was right.
“So who else is still in?” I ask, crunching loudly on a handful of salted, gooey popcorn.
“What you really want to know is if Judah MacKenzie is still in. Uh-uh,” she says, shaking her curls back and forth. “You’ll 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 fellow lead vocalist in show choir, finally 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 really 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 really 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 casually 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, artfully 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 falls away. My best friend, popcorn, my house, my existence. All of it, forgotten. I don’t dare breathe, can’t possibly blink, or I might miss something.
You must like me for me.
“You all 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 small talk with Judah as the judges gather their thoughts in their own locations and give constructive feedback. I don’t follow 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 tall 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 still 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, telling her I’m tired. After all, 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 millions 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 pull up Google and press my lips together, taking a deep breath before typing “Jude DuBois + Michigan” in the search field. I scroll 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 actually his last name.
Frustrated, I look up Judah MacKenzie’s Instagram account. It pops up immediately. A million followers, 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 Hawaii
