by Emma Lord
“I am pissed. You stole from us,” I reiterate. “You stole from an eighty-five-year-old woman.”
“I didn’t—”
“Yeah, yeah, but still. You’re them, and I’m … her. It’s like a choose your fighter situation, and we just happen to be the ones up to bat.”
“So you’re saying—you don’t not want me to keep this up?”
“The way I see it, you don’t have to make your mom mad, and we get a few more customers in the door too.”
Pepper takes a breath like she’s going to say something, like she’s going to correct me, but after a moment, she lets it go. Her face can’t quite settle on an expression, toeing the line between dread and relief.
“You’re sure?”
I answer by opening the container she handed me. The smell that immediately wafts out of it should honestly be illegal; it stops kids I’ve never even spoken to in their tracks.
“Are you a witch?” I ask, reaching in and taking a bite of one. It’s like Monster Cake, the Sequel—freaking Christmas in my mouth. I already want more before I’ve even managed to chew. My eyes close as if I’m experiencing an actual drug high—and maybe I am, because I forget myself entirely and say, “This might even be better than our Kitchen Sink Macaroons.”
“Kitchen Sink Macaroons?”
Eyes open again. Yikes. Note to self: dessert is the greatest weapon in Pepper’s arsenal. I swallow my bite so I can answer her.
“It’s kind of well-known, at least in the East Village. It even got in some Hub Seed roundup once. I’d tell you to try some, but you might steal the recipe, so.”
Pepper smiles, then—actually smiles, instead of the little smirk she usually does. It’s not startling, but what it does to me in that moment kind of is.
Before I can examine the unfamiliar lurch in my stomach, the bell rings and knocks the smile right off her face. I follow just behind her, wondering why it suddenly seems too hot in here, like they cranked the air up for December instead of October. I dismiss it by the time I get to my desk—probably just all the Twitter drama and the glory of So Sorry Blondies getting to my head.
“One rule,” she says, as we sit in the last two desks in the back of the room.
I raise my eyebrows at her.
“We don’t take any of it personally.” She leans forward on her desk, leveling with me, her bangs falling into her face. “No more getting mad at each other. Cheese and state.”
“What happens on Twitter stays on Twitter,” I say with a nod of agreement. “Okay, then, second rule: no kid gloves.”
Mrs. Fairchild is giving that stern look over the room that never quite successfully quiets anyone down. Pepper frowns, waiting for me to elaborate.
“I mean—no going easy on each other. If we’re going to play at this, we’re both going to give it our A game, okay? No holding back because we’re…”
Friends, I almost say. No, I’m going to say. But then—
“I’d appreciate it if even one of you acknowledged the bell with your silence,” Mrs. Fairchild grumbles.
I turn to Pepper, expecting to find her snapping to attention the way she always does when an adult comes within a hundred feet of disciplining her. But her eyes are still intent on me, like she is sizing something up—like she’s looking forward to something I haven’t anticipated yet.
“All right. No taking it personally. And no holding back.”
She holds her hand out for me to shake again, under the desk so Mrs. Fairchild won’t see it. I smile and shake my head, wondering how someone can be so aggressively seventeen and seventy-five at the same time, and then I take it. Her hand is warm and small in mine, but her grip is surprisingly firm, with a pressure that almost feels like she’s still got her fingers wrapped around mine even after we let go.
I turn back to the whiteboard, a ghost of a smirk on my face. “Let the games begin.”
PART TWO
Jack
“Should we have a signal?”
I pull my goggles off my face. “Why would we need a signal?”
“I dunno,” says Paul, shifting his weight between his feet so rapidly, I’m a little worried he’s going to slip on the pool deck. “Just in case I forget? You said 4:15, right? Sometimes I just get so in the zone when we get to play water polo, man, and I might just—”
“If you forget, I’ll just … swim up and nudge you or something.”
“That’s not much of a signal.”
I hold in an almighty sigh. I’m lucky Paul is helping me in the first place. This is kind of above and beyond the best friend call of duty. “Fine. I’ll—hold up three fingers, I guess.”
Paul’s face bursts into a freckly grin. “Sweet. I’m on it. This is gonna go so great.”
Somehow the more times Paul has said some variation of that in the last twenty-four hours—which I think is a number in the dozens by now—the less likely it seems that it will. The good news is, as usual, if this doesn’t work, I have more than a few backup ideas in my arsenal. In the last two weeks, I’ve learned that staying a step ahead of Pepper means you’re already three steps behind.
We agreed not to go easy on each other, but I suspected for the first, say, four hours or so, maybe she was anyway. Apparently she was just waiting for lunch to quote retweet the deal I posted to our Twitter page:
Big League Burger @B1gLeagueBurger
Anyone who unfollows Girl Cheesing on Twitter gets 50% off our grilled cheese too! All three and a half of you are welcome anytime
Girl Cheesing @GCheesing · 1d
Anyone who unfollows Big League Burger on Twitter gets 50 percent off their next grilled cheese! And, y’know, the relative comfort of knowing they’re eating something that doesn’t suck
12:35 PM · 22 Oct 2020
Before we’d hit the pool deck that day, I’d been scrolling through Twitter and decided to go another route. Some video was trending, with the headline:
Big League Burger May Start Testing Delivery in Several States
I quote retweeted it from the Girl Cheesing account, writing:
Girl Cheesing @GCheesing
oh god is nowhere safe
Boostle @boostle · 1d
cool never putting on real pants again boostle.com/p/big-league-burger-maystart-testing-delivery-in-several-states
2:42 PM · 22 Oct 2020
It hit a thousand retweets before practice even started. I realized, then, the notifications that had been rolling in weren’t just comments and likes and retweets—people were starting to follow our account too. Thousands of people. People who seemed every bit as invested in this Twitter spat as Pepper and I were ourselves.
After practice that day she’d offered me a breezy wave, then walked into the locker room, where she’d promptly responded to my tweet with an image of a bike messenger posing outside of Girl Cheesing, holding up a giant Big League Burger bag. The tweet read: Apparently not!
By nightfall, Jasmine Yang released another vlog update on “Twitter Gets Petty,” breaking the whole exchange down with screenshots and even analyzing all the unrelated likes and replies both accounts made in between.
“Stay up-to-date with all things in the #BigCheese war by tuning in to my page, where you can decide in real time who’s in the lead.” She pointed down to the bottom of the screen. “Comment with the cheese emoji for Girl Cheesing, and the burger emoji for Big League Burger. Ta-ta for now, Petty People!”
And just like that, our Twitter war had a hashtag, we had a rabid new fanbase, and I’d learned a valuable lesson: I was better off not provoking Pepper into responding to something, because she had home-court advantage and knew how to use it.
I catch sight of her now, somehow ridiculously easy for me to spot in the sea of swimmers even though she’s wearing the same black Stone Hall swimsuit and cap as every other girl in the water. They’re doing some kind of sprint drill right now, switching back and forth between butterfly and freestyle every other lap, while their coach hollers vaguely
motivational things from the bleachers. It looks like hell, but for me, it also looks like salvation—when Pepper’s submerged for two hours, it’s the only time she isn’t a few buttons away from the Big League Burger Twitter page, poised to strike.
And boy, has she ever. So that evening I didn’t tweet at all. Well, couldn’t, really—the deli was packed to the gills again, with a line so far out the door that when Grandma Belly saw it from the window of the apartment, she asked if people were waiting to get raptured.
“They’re here for your grilled cheese,” I told her.
She fixed me with a look, crossing a leg on the massive armchair she spent most of her time in and raising a single eyebrow at me. “Not unless you changed my secret ingredient to cocaine, they’re not.”
I swear she only ever rolls out her most crass lines when it’s just her and me. I guess that’s the price Ethan pays for being so busy all the time.
When I didn’t respond right away, she added, “Back in my day, it was more than my grilled cheese bringing in customers, if you know what I mean.”
“Grandma.”
“What?” she asked innocently. “I also make a mean toscakaka. Best you can get this side of Sweden.”
I don’t know about the whole Sweden thing, since I’ve never actually left the East Coast, but I couldn’t deny the deliciousness of the toscakaka. It wasn’t on the menu anymore, since Grandma Belly’s version trumped all others, but that almond caramel cake was one of the things she’d taught me how to make on rainy Sundays when the deli was slow and she had the energy for it. I have a whole arsenal of mismatched Swedish and Irish dishes in my back pocket, courtesy of her and Grandpa Jay, who died when we were in middle school. My dad keeps saying we’ll bring some of them back once I graduate—assuming, I guess, that I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll have the time to make them, then.
“Seems to me like the grilled cheese isn’t the whole story, hmm?”
I hadn’t turned around because Grandma Belly can sniff out a lie faster than she can sniff out Kitchen Sink Macaroons cooking in the oven. Instead, I shrugged, still staring out the window. There was no reason to stress her out with the Twitter thing—I had it under control.
“Yeah, well. Good press,” I said.
Good press that had only gotten more aggressive by the day. That night, I waited for the Big League Burger corporate account to tweet, and it was deliciously generic—clearly something scheduled that Pepper didn’t have anything to do with. Customers who come to Big League BOO-ger on Halloween get a free junior milkshake with every Big League Meal purchase!
It was too easy. I responded to the tweet within five minutes of it with a picture of Big League’s version of the Grandma’s Special I screenshotted from their Instagram.
Girl Cheesing @GCheesing
I’m thinking about this for my costume, but I don’t know. Too scary for the kids? Don’t want to give anyone nightmares
8:45 PM · 22 Oct 2020
The next morning I woke up to another two thousand followers on the Girl Cheesing account, courtesy of write-ups on a few viral websites and another vlog from Jasmine. I walked into homeroom that day half expecting Pepper to go back on her own word. I thought maybe she’d be frosty with me or avoid me entirely.
Instead, she waltzed right up to my desk and said, “Pie?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, and then down at the container in her hands, where there were chocolate hand pies lined up in neat rows. The So Sorry Blondies were all gone by then, devoured between me and Paul and the rest of the dive team, and the memory of their deliciousness was too fresh for me to resist another Pepper Evans creation. I took one of the mini pies with a wary hand, just as she pulled out her phone, tapped it a few times, and smirked.
I stopped chewing. “Did you just tweet?” I asked, my mouth full of chocolate.
Pepper swept her bangs back with her fingers, and this time the gesture was calculated and breezy. “Did I?”
I scowled into my phone screen, lowering it under my desk so Mrs. Fairchild wouldn’t see. This one was just a GIF of Regina George from Mean Girls—“Why are you so obsessed with me?”
“At least your pie is better than your tweets,” I mumbled.
But the smirk on Pepper’s face only deepened. “Those are from the Big League Burger bargain menu, by the way.”
My mouth dropped open. Pepper turned her eyes back to her textbook, burying her smirk in it. “Enjoy.”
But that, as it turns out, was child’s play. Two weeks have passed since then, and I don’t think I’ve gone a full waking minute without thinking about our Twitter war since. I’ve started dreaming in memes. It’s a miracle if anything that comes out of my mouth isn’t unconsciously accounted for in 280 characters or less.
By then, the Girl Cheesing account had a whopping seventy thousand followers, and we had to install a ticketing system to stop the line from getting too out of control outside. We even put up the old HELP WANTED sign I hadn’t seen since freshman year. It was a brand-new Girl Cheesing, a new era, a charge in the air nobody was impervious to—Dad was running around like a teenager, Mom was smiling so hard, it looked like her face might hurt, and even Ethan started spending more time downstairs in the deli instead of always begging off to hang out with his friends.
But two weeks in and we’re both ready to drop. This morning, I fell asleep in English. Yesterday, I’m pretty sure I saw Pepper take a micro-nap while hanging on the pool wall waiting for a set to start. So really, as desperate as my next move seems, I’m doing it just as much for her benefit as mine—I don’t need Pepper drowning in the shallow end of the city’s ugliest community pool on my conscience.
And the only way to make that happen is to make Twitter go away. Short of hacking into whatever satellite keeps the internet running and pulling the plug on the whole thing, the only feasible way to do that is to shut down Big League Burger’s Twitter.
Hence, this ill-fated plan—one that hinges precariously on Paul, the general dismissiveness of our coaches, and Pepper trusting me not to be a complete and total ass.
“Okay, since this is the first Friday water polo game of the season, a refresher on the rules.”
Landon’s standing on the high dive board, like a king addressing his people. He kind of looks like one, with the heads of everyone on the swim and dive teams turned up to him, his hand raised with the moldy soccer ball we use to play water polo like some kind of scepter. Vice Principal Rucker would kill to command this kind of attention.
“The rules are: no drawing blood. And … that’s pretty much it.”
A few of the more nervous-looking freshmen cut glances at our coaches, who are, predictably, deep in some hushed argument about something I know for a fact has nothing to do with sports and everything to do with the rumor circulating on Weazel that someone saw them making out in the park over the weekend. But hey, at least it got Coach Thompkins to show up for practice for once.
We divide up into the same teams we’ve had since my freshman year, give or take a few new recent additions of underclassmen. Since the dive team is significantly smaller than the swim team, each of our water polo “teams” is a mix of both. Much to the annoyance of literally everyone in the pool, Ethan and I are on separate teams—a condition we abuse liberally, because more often than not some sucker from the wrong team will pass one of us the ball and give us an unexpected advantage.
Well, suckers who aren’t Pepper, at least. Who happens to be both ruthless and on Ethan’s team.
The game starts out the way it usually does—with Landon chucking the ball into the middle ground of the pool and everyone swarming it like piranhas, dunking each other by grabbing onto heads and shoulders, barely avoiding elbowing each other in the face. I steer clear of the madness, swimming out closer to our goal, hoping one of the six sets of hands currently clutching the soccer ball that’s half submerged underwater will throw it in my vague direction.
“Been a few hours since your last tweet. You l
osing steam there, Campbell?”
“Oh, trust me, Pepperoni, my next move will be worth the wait.”
She treads a few inches closer to me, close enough I can see the strands of hair poking out of her cap. Her hair isn’t particularly wild, but I’ve noticed anytime the swim coach puts them through an intense set, her cap can’t stay fully on her head to save its own life.
“Judging from what I saw of the dive team’s lap swimming today, you’re an expert at making people wait.”
I grin into the water. “Been watching me swim, huh?”
Pepper’s eyes are still on the mayhem ahead, unfazed, but I see her lip twitch. “If you can call that swimming.”
“Please, I could take you in a race in a heartbeat.”
She laughs out loud. “Wanna bet?”
“Sure. Let’s go.”
She follows my eyeline to the edge of the pool like she might actually race me, but then I reach forward and tug her cap off her head in one swift motion, her blonde hair spilling into the pool in wet tangles around her face and shoulders.
“Foul!” Pepper crows, yanking it back from me.
“You know, for someone named Pepper, you’re pretty salty about losing.”
She groans at my pun as she shoves her hair back into the cap, but then counters, “For someone named Jack, you’re pretty bad at knowing when to hit the road.”
“Wow, Burger Princess, sick burn.”
And damn it if she hasn’t gone and done it again—distracted me right at a peak moment for me to most fully make an ass of myself. The soccer ball is sailing over our heads, and Pepper’s already plowing through the water with the focus of a shark, halfway to where it’s about to smack into no man’s land.
Not on my watch.
I reach out and grab her ankle and yank her back the way she’s done to me too many times to count, but unlike me, she seems to be expecting it—expecting it so readily, she snaps her body through the water like a rubber band, using me as an anchor for momentum, and before I know it, she’s got a palm squarely on top of my head and is dunking my entire body underwater.