by Emma Lord
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“But if you lose, you have to do that hundred-yard butterfly you skipped out on the other day.” She pauses. “And give back the dive team’s time in the lanes.”
The idea of losing with Grandma Belly’s grilled cheese on full display is so unfathomable I don’t even hesitate. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
This time, I’m the one who extends my hand out to shake. Pepper smirks, and when she takes it, she squeezes my fingers hard enough I’m half expecting them to be stuck together when she pulls away. Instead, there’s this strange tingle, like we’ve forged something, made a pact in this second with more weight to it than anything we could put on paper.
Then suddenly she’s laughing at me. I don’t even realize it’s because I’ve started drinking her stupid milkshake until something unfamiliar hits my tongue.
“This isn’t cookies and cream. You did something to this.”
Pepper takes another slurp of hers. “Salted caramel sauce,” she says.
I take another sip against my will, which has apparently disintegrated in the few seconds between the first sip and right now. Jesus, this is good. It feels like my taste buds just woke up from a long nap.
“That’s not even on the BLB menu,” I protest. I would know—I’ve been researching it with an absurd amount of dedication, to find things to mock on Twitter when the time is right.
The look she shoots me is patronizing. “I carry my own.”
“You what?”
She kicks herself off the wall and starts walking away.
“Get the picture sent to me by tomorrow night.”
“You can’t just casually tell someone you carry caramel sauce around and walk away like that’s a normal thing,” I call at her retreating back. “What other emergency dessert condiments do you have stashed in your bag?”
She deigns briefly to look over her shoulder at me. “Tomorrow night!”
I’m shaking my head and laughing as I head down the street in the opposite direction, still feeling the ghost of the smirk she aimed in my direction like it’s something I’ve accidentally carried with me. It’s not until the 6 train finally rolls up to collect me a few minutes later that I realize I’ve not only forgotten to restore the Girl Cheesing Twitter account back from its newly hacked glory, but that somehow my stomach has committed a crime against nature and managed to devour an entire sixteen-ounce Big League Milkshake Mash, possibly without even pausing to breathe.
I toss it into a trash can with a sigh. Twitter, I can deal with. Pepper, on the other hand, has a way of sneaking up on me I’m not so sure about.
I pull out my phone again, stricken with this not entirely unwelcome urge to text her, to keep the banter volleying back and forth in that easy rhythm it always does. But I have to remind myself that Pepper is still the enemy, insanely flavored milkshakes and memorable smirks and lingering handshakes aside.
And I’ve got a Twitter war to win.
Pepper
By Saturday, everything is back in order, and so am I. My uniform is perfectly pressed, my college admissions essay polished, my tweets queued for the weekend. Pooja’s brother’s handiwork hacking into Girl Cheesing’s Twitter has been undone. The photos of both grilled cheeses have been sent to Hub Seed, and both will be sent from their main Twitter account today at two o’clock.
Which happens to be the exact time I will be settling into my chair for my first college admissions interview with a Columbia alum named Helen.
“You look nervous, Pepperoni.”
I cut a side glance when I hear Jack approach, determined not to look at him. It’s weird enough, seeing him on a Saturday. But even in the side glance, something seems off—he’s standing up a little straighter, wearing his school uniform with a little more care. Even his usually unruly hair seems to have been tamed to some degree, looking very much like some well-meaning parent ran a comb through it. I can’t help but look him up and down because it’s uncanny how much he looks like Ethan.
He catches me looking, and I brace myself for the snarky remark that’s sure to follow. But instead, his cheeks redden like he’s more embarrassed to be looked at than I am to be caught looking.
I clear my throat, shifting my weight onto my other foot. “For a college admissions interview? Please. I could do these in my sleep.”
Jack stretches one of those wide, tall boy stretches, looking more like himself again. He loosens the tie on his school uniform and stares down the hallway at the rooms where other students are coming and going.
“Well, your resume is longer than a CVS receipt, so I don’t doubt it.”
“Did you just get out of yours?”
“Yeah. I’m all set. Headed straight for the Ivies.” His eyes cast off to the side, and there’s this edge to his voice that doesn’t match his words. Before I can ask, he blows out a breath and says, “So, who are you meeting with? Yale? Harvard?”
He says their names with a faint mockery, emphasizing it with a click of his heel. I wonder what his deal is. He goes to this school too, and he’s clearly interviewing—it’s not like he isn’t every bit a part of this.
“Columbia.”
Some of the bravado seems to leak out of Jack’s expression.
“What?” I ask, off his look.
He hesitates for a moment. “You know Columbia’s interviews are on their campus, right?”
My blood turns into ice. “What?”
And then, suddenly, it makes sense: why I don’t see Pooja or the other Columbia hopefuls here. Why there isn’t a sign-in for the Columbia rep yet. I just assumed it was because I was here absurdly early, the way I always am. It didn’t once occur to me it was because I’m an idiot.
How could I have let this happen? Instead of doing anything productive that might help the situation, my feet are rooted to the floor, my brain pressing back and back and back, into the haze of the last few weeks. The homework that barely got finished before sunup. The endless texts from Mom and Taffy. The color-coded pages of my planner looking like someone puked a rainbow onto it. And somehow, despite every precaution, I let one of the most important things fall through the cracks.
Oh my god. I’ve been so wrapped up in tweeting I might have just blown my chances at college.
Jack’s hand is on my shoulder. I don’t know how long it’s been there, because suddenly he is very close to my face.
“What time is your interview?”
“Two.”
“Okay. It’s one-thirty. You should still be able to get a taxi.”
It feels like the space between my ears is roaring. “I don’t have my wallet.” The interview was only a few blocks away from home; I didn’t think I’d need it. And now if I go back, my mom will know I screwed up, she’ll see it all over my face, and then she’ll be disappointed, and I think I’ll maybe just snap. I think I’ll maybe come completely unglued. It’s all bubbling to the surface all at once, the last few weeks of doing her Twitter bidding, the last few years of this stupid city and this stupid school and this interview for a college I don’t even know if I want to go to—
Jack is pressing something into my palm. A MetroCard. “It’s a spare. You can give it back on Monday.”
I’m still shaking my head, half of me here and half of me in the living room, where this imaginary fight is happening with my mom.
“I can’t believe I screwed this up.”
“Pepper, it’s fine. Just take the M4.”
“The what?”
“The bus.”
And then, senseless with the kind of panic only academia can incite, I am blurting for the entire hallway to hear, “I’ve never taken the bus in New York.”
Jack opens his mouth like he’s going to make a remark, but then thinks better of it. “Okay. That’s—well, this one’s easy. The stop’s like two blocks from here, and it’s a straight shot to the main campus, thirty minutes tops.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
/> “What?” Jack asks. Not unkindly, not impatiently. Which is why, before I make a conscious decision to, I’m admitting the second, far more embarrassing truth.
“I’ve never left the Upper East Side by myself.”
Jack laughs, the way you laugh at a friend who just rolled off a good one-liner. A beat passes. I can’t even make my face move.
“Oh. You’re serious?”
The word comes out in a croak. “Yeah.”
Jack yanks his sleeve up and checks his watch again, seeming to weigh something he decides on a moment later, when his eyes lift and immediately meet mine.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
He starts walking down the hallway to the front exit of the school, his legs so long, I have to scramble to catch up.
“Wait, you’re—you’re coming?”
“Yeah. But you owe me.”
I’m too relieved to protest.
“No more tweeting on Sundays,” he says. “We both lay down our keyboards for a full twenty-four hours. Those are my terms.”
“Done.”
I wait for him to list off whatever the rest of the terms are, but that seems to be the extent of them. A few moments and some extreme power walking later we’re on Madison Avenue, Jack cutting the corner before I do and yelling, “Run!”
I take off just behind him, my hair whipping out of its perfectly coiffed ponytail, the Oxford shoes my mom bought for the occasion scuffing on the pavement. He barely reaches the bus as the doors shut, banging a hand on the glass with that endearing, sheepish Jack grin, just as I skid to a stop and half stumble into him from behind.
“Sorry, sorry,” I blubber at his back, nearly tripping as I try to pull myself off him.
Either because of Jack’s awkward charm or because the two of us make quite the pathetic pair, the bus driver rolls her eyes and opens the door. We’re still stumbling as we pile on, trying and failing not to crash into each other as the bus starts back up again, until Jack practically falls half into my lap when we finally find two spare seats.
He opens his mouth to apologize, but before he can, I start to laugh.
“Oh, god,” says Jack, leaning back into his seat and taking a quick glance to survey the other passengers on the bus. “Is this it? Did you finally crack under the pressure?”
“I just—oh, man.” I’m so out of breath from running, I’m on the verge of wheezing. “I remember one time—in Nashville—my sister and I were running, and we beat my mom to the bus, and it just … took off. Without her. We were like, five and eight, probably.”
Jack’s eyebrows knit like he’s not sure whether or not he should laugh too. “That sounds … hilarious?”
I’m remembering that day so vividly, it feels like I’ve restored some color to it, like I’m living it more fully now than I even was then.
“She had to chase the bus for like a mile in her sandals. We were such little assholes. We didn’t even look out the window—we were already planning our new lives like we were orphans in a book series or something.”
“Were you going to live in a boxcar?”
“Nah. We were going to bake. Paige was really big on wanting to grow up to be a baker then. Open up her own place right next to Big League Burger. I think it was gonna be called Paige’s Pancakes. Clearly the branding needed some work.”
“Where is your sister?”
I blink, and suddenly I’m back on a bus on a street lined with buildings and traffic and too many people.
“UPenn.”
Jack’s eyes are teasing. “How come she’s not fighting me on Twitter?”
I raise my eyebrows at him. “How come Ethan isn’t fighting me on Twitter?”
The smile falters on his face for just a split second. “Touché.” He leans even farther back in his seat, stretching out his legs once a few people get off at the stop. “And because he kind of sucks at it. That was him on day two, you know. He tweets like he’s out for blood.”
“And you go easy on me, is that it?”
He knocks his shoulder into mine. “Hell no. I just don’t make the company look bad.” He turns his head to look at me, his eyes disarmingly close. “I take it your sister didn’t inherit the Evans family snark?”
“No, no, she did.” My cheeks are hot. I turn my head to the window, toward the cool air of the street. “She and my mom are sort of—well, I don’t know.”
Jack is uncharacteristically still, like he’s waiting. Like he thinks there’s more I’m going to say. And then, just like that, there is.
“After the divorce she came here with us for a while—before she headed off to school, I mean. And she and my mom had a falling out.”
“‘Falling out,’” Jack repeats, like he’s testing how it sounds. “That’s like something someone would say in a soap opera.”
I shrug. “Yeah. I don’t know what else to call it. I didn’t think it would last this long. I mean, I thought it was just delayed teenage rebellion or something. But then it stuck.”
“And your dad?”
“He’s still in Nashville. We go visit him on breaks.” I can tell he wants to ask, or maybe it’s just I want to explain—why he isn’t here, when my mom and I are. “I think he never quite got used to the idea of Big League Burger not being his baby anymore. So he stayed home.”
Home. Only after I’ve told the whole truth of it does it feel like I’ve put too much in the air, like it just slid out of me and into this bigger, scarier space where Jack can see it, and I can see it too. That I don’t belong here. That even after all this time and everything I’ve done, the things I’ve pressed and organized and pushed into myself to fit into this place, home is still somewhere a thousand miles away.
Farther than that, even. Because that version of home doesn’t exist anymore.
Jack points out the window, and I follow his finger to yet another Big League Burger location we happen to be passing.
I’m so relieved to have something else to focus on that my voice comes out too loud, too fast. “See? That’s weird! There used to just be the one, and now we’re everywhere.”
Jack tears his eyes away from it to look back at me. “Do they all know who you are? Are you the Burger Princess of the Upper East Side?”
This time I’m the one who ribs him, with an elbow into his side. “Yeah. They all have to curtsy when I walk in.”
Jack does an exaggerated bow with his chin, never breaking his gaze. I roll my eyes.
“Actually, nah, it’s weird. I know everyone at the corporate office, but not any of the people in the actual restaurants.” I’m nervous. That must be it. I’m nervous and I can’t shut up, and Jack is just sitting there and letting me not shut up. “Which is just sort of wild, since I watched the first one get built and basically grew up in it. Everybody knew everybody.”
“Yeah. That’s how it is down at our place.”
The unwelcome ache is back again, but now, I think, I’m starting to understand the root of it.
“It must be nice—growing up here, I mean. Staying in one place. Knowing everyone.”
Jack doesn’t do that teenage boy thing where he shrugs it off. Instead, he seems to come to life even more, with an openness I usually only see in him from a distance, talking to Paul or goofing around with other kids on the dive team. He leans forward in his seat, his eyes conspiratorial when he answers, like he’s sharing something special.
“Yeah. It’s cool. We have a bunch of regulars. Some old ladies who all make me call them ‘Aunt,’ so I don’t even know their real names. Some NYU professors, a bridge club, one of those run-and-chug running clubs that mostly runs a mile around the neighborhood so they can all get drunk after. Everybody knows everybody. I was practically raised on that deli floor.” He laughs a little ruefully, scratching the back of his neck. “Can’t get away with shit.”
“You’re an identical twin. You can’t just tell them Ethan did it?”
“Nah. Ethan’s too smart to get caught. Or maybe just too popular.” H
e deflates almost imperceptibly, blowing out a breath. “Which still does nothing to stop our classmates from mixing us up after twelve solid years.”
I peer into his face—the distinctive way his brow furrows, the unruliness of his hair already out of the confines of the style someone put it in, the way he seems to just fit in anywhere he goes with an understated kind of ease. He objectively is Ethan’s match in every way except for minor ones, but in my head they’re practically different species.
“I don’t get it. You two couldn’t be more different.”
Jack snorts. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“What?”
Jack extends his arms out to some invisible audience, his voice taking on a completely different pitch. “‘You’re nothing like your ridiculously popular, wildly successful brother everyone fawns over and adores.’”
“Whoa. That’s not what I meant.” My irritation at being misunderstood is instantly dampened by this look seared across his face, one he can’t hide because there’s really nowhere to hide it. Being on a bus is kind of like being on a stage. “Hey. I didn’t mean it like that. I meant—you guys are in your own worlds, you know?”
Jack nods. “Sorry. Just feels like—it’s dumb, but it just feels like everyone likes him better, you know?”
I wait for a second for a punchline, for him to soften it with something else. An excruciating few seconds pass, and then it’s all too clear he won’t.
“Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t.” And then, because the tips of his ears are suddenly visibly red, I add, “I mean, you’re both pains in my ass, so it’s really not worth much…”
“Aha,” Jack deadpans. The look is gone, replaced by the half grin. “I think you like me.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “I just said as much, jerk.”
“I think we’re even friends.”
I’m about to shoot another well-aimed crack at him, but it stops halfway up my throat. “Thanks for doing this,” I say instead.
The half grin softens. Jack rubs a hand on the back of his neck. “Yeah, well. The longer you’re knocking someone’s socks off in that interview, the more time I have to undermine you on Twitter, so—win-win.”
