by Emma Lord
My smile only falters for a second, only because for the first time in weeks, I forgot about the Twitter war altogether. The moment feels like a stolen one, until it isn’t. Jack leans back and so do I, and the moment goes on for just long enough that I almost wish I could stay here instead of having to face what’s on the other side of our stop.
Pepper
We make it to Columbia with a truly miraculous two minutes to spare. Jack knows exactly where to go, sprinting up ahead of me so I’m clunking behind him in my too-tight shoes, eventually admitting off my confused look he’d done a round of interviews with Columbia the week before.
“What?” I wheeze. “And you’re only just telling me now?”
“It’s not like I’m going to get in. What’s there to tell?”
“Everything they asked you in the interview!”
Jack gives me a quizzical look. “Well, that’s easy,” he says. “Brag about your grades and just tell them what you want to do. What you’re passionate about. That’s it.”
I open my mouth. Shut it again.
“Books. Wrecking grade curves. Tweeting mean memes,” Jack supplies for me.
“Right.”
Jack tilts his head to the side, his eyes searching my face before creasing into a frown. “These are the Ivy Leagues, Pepperoni. If you don’t know what you want to do, you’d better at least come up with a decent lie.”
“Patricia Evans?”
My ears perk at the sound of my full name, which I only ever hear once in a blue moon. It’s the interview coordinator, who has just stepped back into the lobby and, by the grace of whatever gods are in charge of college admissions, did not just see me sprint in here like a total doofus.
That small mercy was not, apparently, extended to Jack’s mockery.
“Patricia?”
I lean in close to him while the coordinator’s still out of earshot. “Utter that name one more time and you’re dead meat, Campbell.”
The grin is slower and softer than I’ve ever seen it, and this time more than a half. He nods at me, somehow both impetuous and sweet at the same time, and says my name the way I’ve never heard it before: “Patricia.”
My heart stutters under his eyes, cuts me off before I can even think of something to retort.
Then Jack’s eyes go wide and he gestures down the hall, where the coordinator has already taken off. “Go!”
I hustle down the hallway, feeling like there’s a strange aftertaste in my mouth. At least come up with a decent lie. It was the most helpful thing he could have said to me walking into this, because of all the things I’ve prepared and overprepared for to the point of exhaustion in the last four years of trying to keep up with the madness of this school, I have no idea what I’m going to say.
And more to the point, I have no idea what I want to do.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. I’ve had years to think about it. That, and just the other day I was pestering Wolf about what he wanted to do—talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
But that’s just it, I guess. I’ve never had to think about it. I have very diligently kept all of my options open. The AP classes, the killer GPA, the SAT scores in the 99th percentile, the varsity letters from swim team, the debate club, the fundraising … I’ve taken on everything and succeeded at it. There is not one weak spot that can be pointed to in my resume, not a single thing that would make an administrator say, “Yes, but what about her…”
Except maybe this. Except the part where it’s suddenly clear to me why I’ve been struggling so much with my college essays, with articulating who I am in so few words. How can a person even know who they are if they don’t know what they want?
“She just needs a few minutes to grab some water and freshen up,” the coordinator tells me. We’ve reached the end of the hall and are standing outside of an office door. “She’ll let you know when she’s ready.”
The door opens, then, and out comes Landon. He looks every bit as unfazed as he always does, as if he’s walking out of practice instead of out of the office of someone whose thumb is basically on the pulse of our entire futures. He smiles when he sees me, like it’s a reflex, and the smile immediately falters.
“Pepper. Oh, man. I meant to—I meant to apologize.”
I’m just rattled enough that I can’t keep the skepticism off of my face until it’s already there, furrowing in my brow. Landon doesn’t miss it.
“It’s just—uh.” He glances at the office door, which is still shut behind him. “My dad’s so—he’s always trying to drag me on these business things with him. He’s so pissed I’m going into app development.”
To be fair, I didn’t make it easy for him to apologize. Even though we’ve crossed paths at practice, I’ve spent the last week avoiding him, trying to convince myself he isn’t Wolf. I couldn’t let myself believe a person I’d shared so much of myself with would ditch me in real life. It would only confirm the worst fear—that the person who likes me as Bluebird wouldn’t like me half as much as the person I actually am.
But I haven’t stopped wondering, even if I stopped trying to connect the dots.
“And—and you want to go to Columbia for that?” I ask, because it’s subtler than, Are you the reason I’ve been having stellar mac and cheeses at every place within a five-block radius of my apartment the past few weeks?
Landon relaxes, assuming he’s been forgiven. “No. I’m just interviewing because he’s an alum.” He doesn’t even bother to keep his voice down—I wonder what it’s like, being that sure of yourself. Knowing what you want so definitively you don’t even care about keeping doors open. “Truth is, a few buddies and I are gonna launch a startup as soon as we’re out of here.”
I feel faint. “Sounds … risky.”
“Yeah, well. The internship’s been a real help. I think we’ve got a shot.” Landon rolls his eyes. “Either way, it’s better than all the money-pushing my dad does, that’s for sure.”
Wolf develops apps. Wolf talks about his parents trying to pressure him into the family business. Wolf never chats me during swim practice.
“Anyway—let me make it up to you. I’ll buy you dinner on Senior Skip Day.”
“Oh, uh—you don’t have to…”
Is this a date? Should I tell him I know who he is before I agree?
Do I know who he is?
“A bunch of people on the swim team are hanging,” says Landon. “You in?”
I’m expecting the air that blows out of me to be disappointment, but instead, it feels a little too close to relief.
“Yeah. Yeah, sounds fun. I’m in.”
Landon smiles, and the door opens, and I snap myself back into Studious, Goal-Oriented Pepper so fast, it’s like the encounter never even happened. I walk into the room so composed, the interviewer immediately smiles at me in that satisfactory way adults always smile when I put on my game face. I shake her hand, I make small talk, and I lie to her face—tell her I’m interested in studying world affairs, and basically parrot everything Paige has been telling me about her studies at UPenn. By the end of the interview, I can tell I have won her over the same way I’ve won over every teacher, every administrator, every object of my people-pleasing for the last four years.
I walk out, expecting to be buoyed by the same satisfaction I usually feel, but I’m completely spent. That, and a little terrified—it occurs to me as I walk down the long hallway back to the lobby that I have no idea how to get back home. The same bus that brought me here isn’t going to take me back.
I’m being ridiculous. I can easily walk. The city is a grid up here, numbers and columns and rows. Just because they’re not the rows and columns I’m used to walking on doesn’t make it mystifying.
My chest feels tight as I walk out, looking around like Jack is going to be standing there when I know nobody in their right mind would be. I pull out my phone in an effort to distract myself, remembering as I unlock the screen that Hub Seed’s tweets are probably up. I pull up t
heir page, and sure enough, at the top of their feed is a tweet explaining the terms of the bet, and another tweet below it with a picture of Big League Burger’s grilled cheese styled on a plate, without any other context to explain whose it is.
I scroll down to the second picture, and all my anxiety is swiftly and brutally replaced with rage.
Because the photo that Hub Seed’s Twitter account ended up tweeting was decidedly not the one Jack sent me. The one Jack sent me fit the bill: high resolution, well-lit, a respectable shot of what was, admittedly, a delicious-looking grilled cheese. Crisped to perfection, cheese spilling out of the edges, a sliver of apple jam gleaming from the sides—
Anyway. It was appropriate, for the terms of what we were agreeing to. What is markedly less appropriate is the image the Hub ended up tweeting instead, which features Grandma’s Special all right—Grandma’s Special, with Ethan holding it up on the plate and beaming into the camera with his best “Vote for Me for Student Council and I’ll Get Back Pizza Wednesdays” smile.
Naturally, the Twittersphere is in love.
I don’t even have to click to know the comments on it are already flooded with heart-eye emojis, but I do anyway, and sure enough—that grilled cheese looks delicious but that boy’s the REAL snack, reads one tweet. uh tell me he’s on the menu, reads another. I full-on cringe at the last one: WOW looks delicious … grilled cheese looks pretty good too.;)
It’s dirty on two counts: one is that everyone and their mailman will know that’s Girl Cheesing’s grilled cheese. Ethan’s whole look screams hometown boy. And another is that people are definitely not retweeting that picture for the sandwich’s sake.
They’re going to slaughter us. And my mom, in turn, is going to slaughter me.
I’m fuming by the time I walk out of the front doors, and sure enough, as if the universe materialized him there for me to funnel the rage straight into, there’s Jack. His back is turned to me, and he’s on his phone, hunched over, talking faster than usual. I lift an arm to tap him on the shoulder, imagining the way the air will puncture right out of him when he turns around and sees the look on my face, but I’m thrown off by the tone of his voice.
“—wasn’t what we agreed to. Mom and Dad said I was running the account; you had no right to get involved.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t care. You knew better. You knew that would break the terms of the whole agreement, and why? So you could get your stupid face tweeted out?”
All of the anger leaks out of me, leaving me on the sidewalk with my fists clenched and my body stiff and nowhere to put any of it.
“Yeah, I do care. Jesus. We’re better than this. And Mom and Dad clearly didn’t know what the rules of the agreement were, or they never would have sent that, which means you lied to them.”
I back up on the pavement, wishing I hadn’t just charged up to him. He obviously doesn’t want me hearing this.
“No, Ethan, it’s not about that. It’s about one more thing you just have to beat me at, you can’t even let me have—”
He turns, then, too quickly for me to anticipate it. Our eyes lock, and he looks so stricken to see me there that I want to look down, look at the street, look anywhere other than at the way he is trying and failing to wipe the hurt off his face.
“I gotta go.”
Jack
I hang up the phone, Ethan’s piss-poor excuses still ringing in my ear as I look up and see Pepper, standing there like a deer in headlights, looking like she wants to disappear.
No, worse. Looking like she feels sorry for me. Like the gears are turning in her head, and she’s trying to think of the right thing to say to make me feel better—the second twin. The lesser one. The one everyone only bothers to talk to when they’re trying to get to the other.
I was worried when I saw that stupid picture that she was going to be furious. That it would wreck this shaky friendship we had now, and the even shakier something else—that weird current between us on the bus when she ribbed me, or the way she almost seemed paralyzed in the moment after I said her full name.
It’s worse. Anger, I can handle. Pity, I really can’t. Especially not over this.
“Jack—”
“There’s a bus stop across the street. It’s another straight shot back to Stone Hall.”
Pepper takes a cautious step toward me. “Are you okay?”
I keep my eyes trained on the cement. “I’m sorry about the tweet.”
“It doesn’t sound like it was your fault,” she says, her voice low.
So she did hear everything. Of course.
“Your brother’s just being an ass.”
“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t talk about my brother.”
I’m waiting for her to rile in that way she usually does, waiting for her to rise up to meet me. But she’s too steady, standing on the sidewalk with a mortifying kind of empathy.
“I have to go home.”
She nods. Tilts her head toward the bus stop across the street. “Just over there?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
She waits for a beat, like she thinks I’m going to say something else, but there’s nothing in me. I know it’s ridiculous to be this upset over a stupid picture, but it’s not a picture. It’s the tip of the goddamn iceberg. It’s every sport Ethan had to beat me at, every stupid project of ours he’d be so excited to start and leave me to finish, every afternoon he left me alone in the deli to live his stupid perfect Ethan life with his perfect Ethan friends and make me lie to our parents’ faces about the times he wasn’t doing any of that, and smoking stupid pot—
It’s like I’ve been watching the shadow of some moon cross over me my whole life, and now it’s just a full eclipse.
Pepper walks toward the intersection to get to the bus stop, and without consciously deciding to, I follow her.
She slows her pace down so we’re walking side by side, not saying anything, letting me brew in whatever this is. I don’t know how it’s possible to want to get the hell away from someone and actively follow them like they’re a magnet at the same time, but Pepper seems to take it in stride, glancing over at me every now and then as she comes to a stop in front of the bus stop.
“I’ll be fine to get back,” she says.
“You’re sure?”
She nods. “I’ll get you back your MetroCard on Monday.”
I rock on my heels, not quite leaving and not quite not leaving. We both spot the bus coming down the street, and it makes the decision for me.
“You’re super sure?” I ask, just in case.
“Yeah,” says Pepper. “And—thanks again.”
I don’t say anything, just watch her get on, watch the bus pull away and her with it. I suddenly feel like an asshole up here in Morningside Heights, in my spiffy school uniform, my hair still slicked back in the style my mom made me brush it into on my way out the door. The style that screamed Ethan so much, it couldn’t not feel like a total kick in the pants when I looked at the end result in the mirror.
I shake it out of my hair now and walk over to a 1 train stop. I hope the walk across town to the east side when I get off the subway will do something to calm me, but if anything, I’m even more aggravated by the time I get to the deli—the weather’s nice for November and the streets are full, and I’m just the kind of invisible on my own that nobody thinks twice before nearly barreling into me.
Once I actually get home, the deli is packed. Ethan is manning the register. Through the window I can see him taking a selfie with a group of giggling junior high girls. My mom is fluttering around the floor, restocking the napkins and the condiments and the straws, which can only mean my dad is in the back helping out with the cooks or in the office making calls.
Basically, nobody has the time to listen to me bitch.
I do something then that I’ve never done in my whole life—walk away from the packed deli and head straight up the stairs to the apartment instead. I shut the door, and it feels like a vacuum, the noise of the
deli and the street and the cars whooshing out of my ears.
“How was the interview?”
I startle at Grandma Belly, who’s in her usual chair, her laptop propped on her lap and a game of solitaire pulled up on the screen. She looks close to winning it. One of my favorite things as a kid was to watch that flip flip flip flip flip of the animated cards cascading whenever she won; even now she’ll call me into the living room to see, will even let me click the last card to win it.
“Okay,” I say, shrugging off my backpack and dumping it on the couch in the way my dad hates. “How was your morning?”
She gestures out the window. “Good. It’s nice, hearing all that racket from downstairs.”
I smile despite myself. “Yeah, it’s pretty crowded down there.”
“And yet you’re up here with me.”
Her eyes are more teasing than scolding.
“I could take you down, if you want.”
She likes sitting in the booth right by the window. All the regulars know her, obviously. She’s something of an icon in the East Village—she’s been in business here longer than a lot of people have been alive. But ever since she’s been slowing down, she gets too tired to stay down for long and doesn’t want to go unless she’s got someone else in the family sitting with her.
But she shakes her head and pats the arm of the couch next to her chair for me to sit. “I’ve got plenty of good company right here.”
I take a seat, flopping onto the couch, knowing what’s about to come before it does. Nothing gets past Grandma Belly.
“What’s on your mind, small fry?”
I’m not going to tell her. It’s not like I’m lying to her about the whole Twitter thing—she doesn’t understand or care about the social media accounts, so really, there’s been nothing to tell. And there’s no point in stressing her out about this.
“Oh, come on. You walked in here looking like you dropped an ice cream cone on the sidewalk.”
I snort. “Nah.”
She raises her eyebrows at me.
