by Emma Lord
“It’s stupid,” I mumble.
Her eyes are just as steady on me as ever, only seeming to get sharper with each passing year. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
I glance behind me, as if Mom or Dad or Ethan are going to come out of nowhere and stick a pin in this whole conversation. It’s nothing I could ever say in front of any of them. Nothing I even want to admit to myself.
Grandma Belly is still fixing me with one of those looks of hers when I turn back; it’s impossible not to spill the beans.
“I just … sometimes…” There’s no way to say it without sounding like a total ass. “Sometimes it feels like I’m—not as—I don’t know.” It’s hard to admit to myself, and harder to articulate. “You know, it’s like, everyone goes nuts over Ethan. At school. At the deli. He just…” I gesture vaguely, as if I can fit seventeen years of mild inadequacy into the air in front of me.
“Honey, I don’t know how to break this to you, but the two of you have the exact same face.”
That face almost crumbles when she says that, because that is the crux of the whole thing. I can’t blame it on anything. I can’t say it’s because he’s taller, or better-looking, or older, or any of the other things a brother could say when one outshines the other. We got all the same tools. He’s just better than I am at using them.
Grandma Belly seems to see it written all over me. She reaches forward, toward my head, and I duck down to let her mess up my hair. Even after all this time, it’s weird to me that I’m this much taller than her, even though it’s never felt weird with anyone else.
“Don’t you worry about what Ethan’s up to,” she says. “You are going to come into your own in a big way. When you get out of this place.”
I blink at her in surprise. “Grandma Belly, I think we both know I’m not getting out of this place.”
She smiles at me. “You’re a homebody. You might stick around for a bit. But you’ve never been the kind of person who can stay in one place for too long, not since you started to crawl.”
I look across the living room, at the shelves crammed with video games and DVDs and the seashell collection Mom keeps adding to every time we go to Coney Island. At the old rug still stained from Ethan’s Hawaiian Punch he spilled ten years ago, at the pictures of me and Ethan my dad takes every summer and hangs sequentially on the walls, at the basket where Grandma Belly keeps her knitting needles, making little hats for the babies of regulars.
I look everywhere except at Grandma Belly, because these are the things that tether me, the things I’ve always been and just assumed would always be. What she’s saying right now feels a lot like permission to leave it behind, and it scares me every bit as much as it relieves me.
But we both know it’s not her permission to give.
“I don’t know if my parents think that.”
Which is to say, I know they don’t. The assumption that I’ll stay behind and help run this place, that I’ll eventually take it over, is so ingrained in them, we’ve never actually talked about it. It just is. Like it was set in stone before I even knew how to read the words.
She pats my knee. “You should talk to them about it. Graduation will come faster than you think.” She rests her hand there for a moment and says, “I love the hell out of that deli and everyone in it. I hope whoever runs it someday loves it that much too. But, small fry, it doesn’t have to be you.”
I’m not used to having serious conversations. Not with Grandma Belly, or with anyone, really. At least not the kinds of conversations that have so much riding on them like this. It suddenly feels like I skipped ahead ten years, like I’m talking for myself and whoever I’m supposed to be on the other end of it.
Still, the words come out in barely more than a mumble. “I don’t want to let them down.”
Grandma Belly tilts her head at me and narrows her eyes, her classic no-nonsense look. The problem is she always looks slightly ridiculous doing it, so it’s hard to clamp down a smile, even now.
“You could never.”
It still helps to hear, even if I’m not sure if it makes it true.
Jack
I sit with Grandma Belly for a while after that. We eat the day-olds from the deli that Dad stashed in the fridge, chocolate pie and Kitchen Sink Macaroons, and watch a few episodes of her beloved Outlander on the DVR under oath that we don’t tell Mom we watched it without her. Then the clock strikes eight and I slink into my room, conveniently just before I know Mom and Dad and Ethan will be trudging up from downstairs.
Nobody says anything to me, or even knocks on the door. I’m grateful and disappointed at the same time. I bury myself in my laptop screen—I’ve been working on something to surprise Bluebird—but the more I try to distract myself, the more restless I am. I don’t even realize I’ve started tap-tap-tapping my foot on the wall until Ethan bangs his hand on it from the other room to remind me to stop.
I’m too stuck in my own head. I pull out my phone reflexively, the way I have too many times to count in the last few months—talking to Bluebird has been like touching base with something outside myself, as if we’re just close enough to ease each other’s minds but far enough away it never feels as scary as it should.
I open Weazel and glance briefly at the Hallway Chat. A few people are swapping contact information for different organizations that are looking for volunteers, since the Honors Society kids have twenty-five hours due at the end of the month. Other than that, it’s a pretty slow night.
I hear footsteps in the hall and pull off my headphones, wondering if one of my parents is going to knock. I hear my mom’s voice, though, and realize she’s talking to Ethan.
“… nothing to do with this Weazel app we’re getting all these emails about?”
“I’m not even on it. Don’t have the time. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They’re saying a student made the app. And I know you’re good with computers…”
“Mom, I fixed the Wi-Fi, like, two times. I can’t develop entire apps.”
Whatever they say next, I don’t catch. I shove my headphones over my ears and blast the music loud enough to make them go raw. It’s the kind of feeling that transcends hurt or anger or any of the things I try not to feel when they do this, over and over and over again—always assume the best in Ethan, and just plain forget about me.
Okay. That’s not fair. They don’t know I’m in here teaching myself to make apps, and they certainly aren’t asking Ethan because they’re proud of the idea of him making my unfairly maligned creation. But it doesn’t stop my hands from curling and uncurling, doesn’t stop my teeth from grinding together, doesn’t stop me from wanting to open the window and scream out into the street like the New York cliché I’ve probably been destined to become from the start.
I click out of the Weazel app, then, and pull up Pepper’s number.
Did you get home okay?
I’m not expecting her to answer so quickly.
Yeah—thanks again. You were a real lifesaver
I’m weirdly nervous texting her, like it’s somehow left me more exposed than actually talking straight to her face. And I guess in a way it has. Every time we interact, it’s because we have to—whether for the swim and dive teams, or Twitter, or ill-fated college admissions interviews. This is voluntary. Personal. Like anything she writes or doesn’t write back can affect me twice as much as it would otherwise.
Today 7:21 PM
Sorry for being a dick.
You weren’t
… But Ethan did TOTALLY screw up our bet.
Yeah. I’m less than pleased with him at the moment
Pepper’s typing, and then not typing, and then typing again. I wince, watching the little ellipses come and go. I can almost picture the exact look on her face on the sidewalk this morning, in the beats where she was trying to decide whether to speak or leave it be.
But he’s still your brother
My throat feels thick. It hits the nail on the head, in so few words—I can’t reall
y hate Ethan any more than I could hate myself.
Today 7:27 PM
Yeah. Even if I want to scream at him sometimes
Hey, that’s the whole point of having siblings, isn’t it?
Do you and your sister fight?
Physically. In cage matches.
I snort. She’s still typing.
Today 7:28 PM
No, not really. But I’m mad at her sometimes. You know, sister stuff.
Like—the divorce happened, and everyone else found a way to get used to it. She’s the only one who won’t
Stubbornness must be another Evans virtue
Then breaking the rules of Twitter wars must be a Campbell one
I’ve stopped fidgeting, at least, but I only realize this because I’ve started chewing a hole into my cheek. The truth is, I haven’t even opened Twitter since I saw the picture of Ethan on the Hub’s timeline. I know we’re winning, and I wish we weren’t. It sucks all the fun out of it.
And for a little while, it was fun. Waking up in the morning to see what Pepper had cooked up the night before. Waiting to see the indignant look on her face when she opened up a response, and waiting to see the sly one that replaced it when she came up with something else. At some point, it stopped being a war and started being a game.
Today 7:35 PM
Are we maybe going too far with the Twitter thing now?
TBH, BLB has been going too far since the beginning. Thank god you guys got more followers or we’d really look like assholes
Eh, you don’t need our help to do that
But I mean more with the … phones and the hacking and stuff
Well, that was super shitty. And my mom was not pleased
But you know what’s weird is that Pooja and I are kind of friends now because of it?
Wait, what? Did I stumble into a parallel universe?
I’m part of her study groups now. We’re getting lunch tomorrow afterward
WOW. From frenemies to study buddies
This is going to turn the whole school upside down. Like, full on dancing in the cafeteria, “stick to the status quo” upside down
Yeah, it’s nice.
If you think you got away with making a High School Musical reference without me mercilessly mocking you for it, you’re wrong. I’m saving it for later
Noted. And I guess Paul had fun with the whole espionage thing
Just how pissed is your mom, though?
Eh. She’s mostly annoyed
I may have made a colossal mess stress-baking in the kitchen though, and have been banned from baking in the apartment for the rest of the week
Oh, shit. That sucks
Yeah, for you. No more random baked goods
I start to type and then stop. This could be a mistake. Like, the kind of mistake with a consequence as small as Pepper laughing in my face or as large as my parents tearing me a new one.
But I can’t imagine my parents not liking Pepper. Even Ethan remains somewhat endeared to her, despite disrespecting our Twitter rules.
So I send the text.
Today 7:47 PM
You could always come use our ovens
And step foot in the enemy camp?
It’s not a no.
Today 7:48 PM
We’d only poison you a little bit!
Seriously, though … you think after this we should just call it quits?
On the Twitter thing?
It occurs to me she thinks I might mean something else—namely, the whole friendship thing that seems to have inadvertently bloomed out of the Twitter thing.
Yeah. I think it’s run its course, probably
It takes Pepper a bit longer to respond.
Today 7:55 PM
Agreed
After the Hub thing is over?
It was my idea, but suddenly I’m reluctant to agree. No more tweeting means a whole lot less of Pepper, something I didn’t even know meant anything to me until right now—right now, when I’m every bit as annoyed about the Ethan thing on her behalf as I am on mine. Right now, when I’m actually upset over something as dumb as her getting grounded from baking.
Right now, when I realize I’m going to miss these barbs after it’s all over.
But we still have swim and dive, for another month and a half. And homeroom. It’s not as though we’re moving to other planets.
Yeah. After that we lay down our keyboards
Which means this will all be over by the end of this week.
I put my phone back down on my mattress, assuming that’s the end of our texting for tonight. It’s weird enough I texted her in the first place. Like nudging some kind of boundary, turning us into that kind of friend.
But then her next text pushes it further than I did.
Today 8:02 PM
It’s weird to me that it took four years and a Twitter war for us to be friends
Aw. So you do admit it?
Begrudgingly
But really. I know you have this thing about Ethan, but you shouldn’t. I feel like you’ve kind of been hiding because of it
Pepperoni. I’m the loudest person in our class.
And if we’re talking about hiding, it’s really Pepper who is probably guilty of it most. She chameleoned into Stone Hall so quickly, sometimes it’s hard to remember we didn’t grow up with her, like she was always there in the periphery, setting the bar annoyingly high for the rest of us.
Yeah. I think that’s a version of hiding, sometimes
I set the phone back down, my eyes flitting up to the window, feeling so absurdly exposed that for a moment I half expect someone to be peering in from the other side of it. I shut my eyes and try to rein myself in, the way my whole body wants to reject the thing I just read.
I don’t know what’s worse—that she might be right, or that she figured it out before I did.
Today 8:10 PM
Anyway, loudmouth or not, you’re fine the way you are.
But burn that text so nobody can hold it against me later.
I grin.
Yeah, well. Ruthless overachiever with a bloodlust for crushing other people’s GPAs aside, you’re fine the way you are too.
We both know that’s the end of our texting for tonight, as if someone gently closed a book before going to sleep. I sit there on my bed, almost in disbelief it happened in the mere span of an hour when it feels like it wasn’t in the bounds of normal time—the kind of conversation you already know is going to stick to your skin long after it’s over, long after the person you had it with is gone from your life.
I bite the inside of my cheek. I wonder where Pepper will end up when we’re all done here. Wonder in a way and with an ache I haven’t even wondered for myself.
In the end, it’s Pepper’s fault I do the thing I’ve been alternately trying to do and trying not to do for months now. I pull up the Weazel app and tap on my conversation with Bluebird.
Wolf
Okay, so it’s clear the app isn’t going to tattle on us anytime soon.
Only kind of a lie, since I’m the one who stopped it from triggering. But the response is almost immediate.
Bluebird
Are you suggesting we take matters into our own hands?
Wolf
I am.
Bluebird
When?
I glance up at the calendar I have hanging on my closet, the one my mom dutifully changes the months on when I forget. On Thursday the tally will be in for our retweet war on Hub Seed. The next day is Senior Skip Day.
Wolf
Friday?
Bluebird
Works for me.
I take a breath, feeling the familiar swoop of anxiety in my gut. But it feels anchored this time. You’re fine the way you are. It’s almost nothing, but in this moment, with this one choice, it makes all the difference.
Wolf
Cool. The seniors are all hanging out around town that night. We can figure it out then
Bluebird
Excellent. Gives me just enough time to come up with an alibi
God, this is gonna be fun.
Pepper
I lied to Jack. My mom wasn’t annoyed about Ethan’s picture. She was pissed.
“We need to get Hub Seed’s social media manager on the phone,” she said to me the instant I walked through the door.
I was oddly unfazed. “That’s Taffy’s job.”
She was standing in the kitchen, leaning over the counter, staring into the remnants of A-Plus Angel Cake—Paige’s recipe, not mine; apparently she’d aced her French midterm, and I couldn’t resist replicating her recipe after she posted it on our blog. Now, though, a good chunk of it was missing, and there was a fork propped in my mom’s hands.
“It’s a Saturday,” she said.
“So it can wait until Monday.”
“Weren’t you the one who arranged this whole deal?”
Despite Jack stealing my phone, I don’t think Mom has any idea I go to school with the sons of the people running Girl Cheesing. She just thinks I got hacked through the cloud or something. So she can’t know Jack exists, or that we’ve been toe-to-toe in person as often as we have been on Twitter. As far as she knows, my hands are completely clean of this.
“Hub Seed reached out to us,” I reminded her. “And yeah, the retweet showdown was my idea, and we set the terms. They broke them. That’s not my fault.”
She stabbed her fork into the angel cake, her mouth twisting into a frustrated line.
I stood very still, watching her mull it over and feeling more unsettled by the second. “The tweet’s already up, and there’s nothing we can do about it. And for what it’s worth, I said we should quit doing this weeks ago.”
“Well, that’s not your call.”
