“Santiago offers extra credit,” I say under my breath. “If it’s dire.”

Reid shakes his head. “I got an eighty-one on the last quiz.”

I frown. Ms. Santiago is tough. Most of the class is floating in the B range. I’m hanging onto my A- by a thread. Reid’s parents embarrassed him… over an eighty-one?

“Oh,” I say.

“Yeah. Hardly dire. Melted, on the other hand? Good luck.”

Any sympathy evaporates. I don’t give Reid the satisfaction of a response. Because I don’t know what my future looks like. But I do know HAVE A HE(ART)’s plan is probably the best shot we’ve got at getting some form of our clubs back.

We’re not going to sit second chair to Reid and the band. Not anymore.

CHAPTER SIX

Stars or pearls?”

I am balancing chemical equations at Fitz’s desk when she approaches me with two chokers—one with delicate gold stars in her left hand and another with tiny pearls in her right.

“Definitely stars,” I say.

Fitz nods, moving across her room to her standing full-length mirror, where she adjusts the choker’s position until it’s to her camera-ready standards. Dressed in high-rise ripped jeans with a white cotton T-shirt, tucked in, Fitz’s look is almost plain until she adds the statement piece: a satin rose gold bomber jacket. It’s an If the Shoe Fitz original, upcycled from a prom dress we found at Goodwill over the summer.

“Perfect,” Fitz says, nodding in the mirror at her work.

As she scrunches out her curls and swipes rose gold gloss over her lips, I ask the portraits of Maya Rudolph, Timothée Chalamet, Stella McCartney, and Daveed Diggs that hang above Fitz’s desk to send me the strength to finish my homework, even though I know it’s already a lost cause. They make up her ever-growing collage of Low-Key Jewish Heroes.

A new celebrity is added every time someone says, Oh, I didn’t know you were Jewish.

Because being Jewish isn’t having a certain name or looking a certain way.

The Low-Key Jewish Heroes send positive vibes as I race to simply finish my homework before Henry, Makayla, Arjun, and Danica arrive in an hour to discuss all things HAVE A HE(ART)—our first meeting since the Rosh Hashanah hiatus. After Chao Down, we created a smaller executive board. Makayla represents the visual arts, Arjun represents the audio-visual and tech kids, and Danica represents the choir and musical theater students. Each of them are then coordinating and planning with their groups to ensure we’re all on the same page.

“Natalie,” Fitz says, her tone indicating that this is not the first time she’s said my name. “Can you do the sound check?”

She turns on the mixer setup to my left. I close my textbook and accept that no homework will be completed. “What do you do without me?”