Jonah: I’m sorry to hear that
Carlos F. Santi: I’ve been thinking again
Jonah: oh boy
Carlos F. Santi: the meaning of life was never love man
Jonah: . . .
Carlos F. Santi: you see love is shitty and stupid and I hate it
Jonah: I thought that was the whole point. The pod thing.
Carlos F. Santi: I was wrong. The peas just fall out, bro.
Jonah: So what’s the meaning of life?
Carlos F. Santi: I don’t know. You should have listened to Confusedness
Jonah: Did you hear me sighing from there?
Carlos F. Santi: I can imagine. Want to hang out later?
Jonah: dude!
Carlos F. Santi: Joking! But could I like sit in the front yard and yell up at you?
Jonah: I mean . . . we have phones.
Carlos F. Santi: I’m coming anyway
Jonah: Fine. I will wait by the window with bated breath.
Carlos F. Santi: Still got the message on it?
Jonah: . . .
Jonah: yeah.
I glance at my bedroom window. The words are fresh as ever, of course . . . the benefits of an inside job. But Dad was asking about it and didn’t seem overly thrilled that I was drawing on his windows, so it’s probably time for another cleaning. I guess I have been working on goodbyes.
I grab the Windex and a cloth and go to work, squinting against the glare, cleaning the words away to reveal an unfettered view of that awful cupid statue and the curbside where she used to park for deliveries . . . and a really old red car parked in front of Mrs. Clodden’s.
I freeze.
Max is walking back down the driveway, mask on, carrying the now empty delivery bag whose contents she has left on Mrs. Clodden’s porch. She reaches her car and strips off the mask, her long brown hair breaking free from her messy bun as ever, ripped jeans, worn-out sneakers, headphones jammed into either ear, mouthing all the words.
Whether she would have checked anyway, or whether she feels my gaze, she looks up at me. The words are gone. It’s just me with my Windex bottle and a cloth. I wave. She smiles and waves back, and for a moment, I think she might stay. Might walk over. Might sit and chat on the hood of her car.
Then she drives away, throwing off a trail of smoke and stray sparks, and I watch her go, and I suppose it was my infinite capacity for illusion all along.
My phone pings. I check it despondently, figuring Carlos is pondering life again.
Instead, I see Max.
I open the message in a rush, lay my forehead against the windowpane, and smile.
Max: FYI. If you need anything, I deliver.
EPILOGUE
See, the problem with conventional wisdom is that it really needs context. For example: avocados. With most fruits, you want them in the early stage of ripening. Maybe even pre-ripe: green bananas just keep getting better. The longer a fruit sits in the grocery store, the less people want it.
And then we have avocados, which is why I’m standing in the middle of the very busy produce section trying to find the old ones. If your goal is tonight’s guacamole, then you have to search for the ones with a little bit of squish.
It’s busy, but not crazy busy, which I’ve learned is a different vibe entirely. Everyone has a mask on and there are still arrows on the floor and dividers at the registers, but the state-wide shelter-at-home order is gone for now, and the general population has returned in search of non-canned sustenance.
My orders have decreased a little, which is nice, because I can attend online classes and help out a bit at Mauro’s Dry Cleaning. It was looking bad for a little while. But with the government loans, we put in a new drop-off system and some plastic barriers and, hey, people are still spilling stuff on their duvets. It’s slower, but I think we’re going to pull through. I mean, maybe. Conventional wisdom really does fall apart in a pandemic. I still have lots of petty grievances. My bank account balance barely warrants a bank account. I’m terrible at math. Logan Bennett is still a dick. And spending time with loved ones? Well, I guess that’s still relevant too. Except it’s loved one, Me and Mom. I almost had two for a little while. But I guess it’s hard to hold people close from a distance.
I pick up another avocado and squeeze. Old and mushy. Perfect.
“You know, avocados actually have more potassium than bananas.”
I drop my perfect avocado. Shit. I look up. Double shit. “Hello.”
He’s basically in disguise. Glasses and a big blue mask and he’s had a haircut, but not a particularly good one (I suspect Olivia). Still, he is like a pandemic Clark Kent, except a little skinny and holding toilet paper and, yeah, he’s still really, really cute. He’s smiling. I know how his eyes change.
“Hello,” he says.
“Your avocado knowledge never ceases to amaze.”
“I almost went with that one the first time, you know. It was close. I spent fifteen minutes deciding.”
“That checks out. No more personal shoppers?”
“Depends. But I get geared up now for the essentials and so far so good.” He crosses his fingers.
“So that explains why I never got another order.”
Wow, that sounded bitter.
Okay, confession: I thought he was going to order. Like I sent that text and was kind of looking at my phone for the next hour (or three) thinking, Here it comes . . . but, nope, nothing.
“I thought ordering groceries from an ex was morally questionable.” He clears his throat. The tops of his cheeks redden. “And . . . I didn’t know if you were just being nice.”
It goes silent for a second. I mean, not really, someone is yelling at their kid and an old man is complaining about moldy lettuce and there’s an announcement over the PA and actually it might be the loudest place on earth.
“I’m not that nice,” I finally say, because someone should probably say something.
He picks up the avocado I dropped and is about to hand it to me, seems to think better of it, reaches for the bin, seems to think better of that, and then just holds it.
He’s nothing if not polite.
“You know, I have a couple blankets,” he says.
“Con . . . gratulations?”
“Parks are cool.” He shoves his hands in pockets and rocks back, peering over the produce stands. “People are allowed to hang out in . . . parks. Like . . . at a distance and whatnot.”
“Jonah . . .” I say. “Are you asking me out on a picnic?”
“I was actually asking you out on a date. Was that not clear? I thought it was clear.”
“Always so mysterious. Never know what you’re thinking.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want me to shout it? I can do that.” He takes a big, heaving breath and—
“No, no, no.” I wave him down and he lets his chest fall. “I mean—what I mean is . . . When?”
“Tonight?”
“I can’t,” I say.
He deflates. “Oh. Yeah, okay, no problem. I get it.”
“My mom and I are trying out this new thing. It’s called ‘actually hanging out’? Have you heard of it? It’s pretty cool. You know, we got some inspiration from you. We’re doing a movie night thing. More March Madness bracket than fantasy football draft, and I’m not watching anything old-timey, but there may even be a trophy at the end.”
“Good for you two.” He nods thoughtfully. “So . . .”
“So . . .”
Well, what now, conventional wisdom? The world’s still hanging on. Love ain’t the last one standing. There are grievances and bad timing and all the things that came before. There’s the memory of tears when I put on my dress, and the red swell of anger when he went to that party, and the hollow loss when I drove away from a too-perfectl
y romantic apology and . . . yeah, maybe there’s Love. So I guess you just get to pick your avocado or . . . whatever.
“But I could do it tomorrow?” I say.
“Wha—wait, seriously?” he says in a rush of air.
I love it when he does that.
“Seriously.”
“Yes. Tomorrow. Fantastic.” He puts the avocado in his basket and basically skips toward the dairy section—okay, he doesn’t skip, that’d be cheesy even for Jonah, but at least knowing him, it’d be artisanal.
Someday, I think, we will look back at this moment and see that there were good times to be remembered—long phone calls, new hobbies, elastic pants. Someday, there will be BuzzFeed quizzes with headlines like: “You Might Be a Pandemic Kid If . . .” And it will be like how Maroon 5 always transports me to the feeling of having a crush in fourth grade or the smell of gingerbread brings me back to my grandma’s house, and for me, no matter what happens next, this time will be him. Jonah.
And since the world’s not really ending, Jonah and I can begin. Again.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If we were to write something in permanent marker across our own windows, it would be: THANK YOU.
Thank you to our Writers House agents, Dan and Bri, for bringing us together and helping us to navigate this uncertain time.
Thank you to our editor, Jessica Dandino Garrison. Your first email about our work bubbled with the type of enthusiasm writers can live off of for years. Ever since, you have proved to be the smartest, most thoughtful, and, yes, still enthusiastic advocate and guiding light we could have hoped for. We are also incredibly grateful for the efforts of Rosie Ahmed, Regina Castillo, Kelley Brady, Jeff Östberg, Felicity Vallence, James Akinaka, Shannon Spann, our expert readers Sharifa Love and Lily Malcom, and the rest of the Dial and Penguin Young Readers Team for turning our story into a book.
HELLO (FROM US)
Chandler: Our story, like Jonah and Max’s, started with a simple “hello” from our respective heres: Wes from Nova Scotia and me from Austin. It was April 2020 . . . early enough that we had no real idea what was coming, but far enough along that we knew we were in the midst of a life-defining moment. Quarantine was just so weird. We were all sort of ravenous for human interaction and, wow, people were Zoom-happy. I think it’s in that spirit of human connection that our agents set us up on a platonic blind date with each other.
Wes: At the time, I was dealing with the loss of Kobe Bryant, a friend and collaborator, and I was eager to channel my energy and uncertainty into a new story. Like Jonah, I was looking for a bright spot.
Chandler: We’re writers. Put us in a room, literal or virtual, and we’re going to start spinning story ideas.
Wes: I think that’s how we both process the world. The idea of writing something of the moment, in the moment felt like burying a time capsule for ourselves. We had no idea what our lives would look like by the time the book came out. Our characters’ ambiguity is our ambiguity.
Chandler: Unburying the time capsule for a second, looking back I can clearly see what I was trying to process. I’d had my second baby on New Year’s Eve and my husband, daughter, and I were supposed to take our newborn to see my parents in Florida the week of the lockdown. It was months and months and months before my parents saw my son, and my in-laws still haven’t been with him. I’m very thankful that my family is healthy, but there’s still some sadness that our parents have missed out on these irretrievable first few months (and now a full year) of our son’s life during which he has changed so much.
Wes: Yes, one thing Chandler and I agreed on right away: the little things still mattered. There was this constant need to contextualize our grief over these missed moments. I’d hear Chandler say, “I know I’m so lucky and can’t complain,” which is understandable. We knew people all around us, including teens, were losing parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends.
Chandler: And we could see how existing issues were turned upside down by the pandemic—struggles with housing, food and money insecurity, systemic racism, mental illness.
Wes: Some degree of pain sprouted up in every community. And we were both seeing this impulse in many teens—a reluctance to feel bad about feeling bad for missing the more “trivial” things like prom and graduation and sports seasons and trips abroad. Big moments they expected would mark their lives and now just . . . wouldn’t.
Chandler: Jonah and Max appeared to us when we started thinking about two people who connect because of the pandemic, but are also kept apart by it.
Wes: They’re seeing the world through each other’s eyes. They’re trying to figure out how to feel. They’re in it.
Chandler: Totally. Jonah said that everything about 2020 sucked except for Max, and that’s how I’ve felt about this process. Nothing about the past year has been easy, but writing this book with Wes was so joyful and, yes, easy.
Wes: Did you just get sappy? Is that a thing that happened?
Chandler: I know, I know, I’m usually the one cutting out laughing and smiling and, you know, nice things for my characters. Let’s pretend this never happened.
Wes: Well, we did write a love story. It was a bad year . . . sometimes you just need a good love story.
Chandler: I completely agree. I hope Hello (From Here) reminds readers, like it did for us, that good things can still happen in the worst times.
Chandler Baker is the author of five young adult novels, including This Is Not the End. Her adult debut, Whisper Network, was a New York Times best seller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. Chandler lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and two young children. She can usually be found listening to audiobooks at two times the normal speed, overspending at bookstores, or obsessing over true crime.
@chandlerbakerbooks
@cbakerbooks
chandlerbaker.com
Wesley King is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including the Wizenard series with Kobe Bryant, the Edgar Award–winning and Bank Street Best Book of the Year OCDaniel, and the Junior Library Guild selections The Vindico and The Feros. He lives in Nova Scotia, as well as on a 1967 boat that he’s sailing around the world.
@wesleykingauthor
@wesleytking
wesleytking.com
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