by Emma Lord
“Yeah. He’s been using the student council to help me organize the study groups too.”
When she says it, I can hear that same detached caution we usually use around each other starting to creep back in. It feels like there’s some kind of gate starting to close back up again. At the last second, I shove a hand through to stop it.
“Those are going well?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she says, brightening a bit. “It’s sort of getting people to—I don’t know. Band together. Us against them, instead of us against each other, you know?”
I do and I don’t. “But—aren’t we?” I feel stupid for asking, but it doesn’t change the fact of college admissions. “Against each other?”
Pooja’s lips crease. “See, I hate that. And I think it’s making us all a little dumber, in the end. What’s the point of learning if you’re just doing it to beat someone, you know?”
I blink at her. Because that’s the thing—that’s kind of always been the point. At least, it has been since I moved here.
“I actually remember stuff we learn when we all meet up to study. So I think it’s good. For grades, and for the long run.” She opens her mouth and hovers for a moment, hesitating. “You know—Ethan was supposed to lead the calc study group on Tuesday, but he can’t make it. And I know that’s one of your best subjects, if you wanted to maybe … I mean, if you have time.”
I open my mouth to dismiss the idea, but then I surprise us both. “Yeah. I’ll check it out.”
Pooja’s smile is bright enough to compete with all of the fluorescent lights in the girls’ locker room combined, and for an absurd moment, I almost want to tell her everything. The stupid Twitter war. The chats on Weazel. The way I haven’t slept through a full night in so long that every now and then, I feel like I’m about to crack. It’s stuff I can’t talk about with Paige because it would just make her angry with Mom—and stuff I can’t talk about with anyone else, because it feels like giving too much of myself away.
But Pooja just gave me a piece of her, whether she meant to or not. Maybe it really is that easy. Maybe I really can just talk to her, and not just to some faceless boy in an app.
“Pooja, your brother’s waiting for you!”
I let the breath I was holding go, and Pooja waves and heads out of the locker room, taking my urge to spill everything with her.
Pepper
The dinner is nothing short of a disaster.
First off, Landon is a no-show. A bit after six o’clock, my mom ushers his father into the dining room, where I’m already waiting in my blue sweater set and a pair of khakis like a Stepford child. She raises an eyebrow at me. The displeased eyebrow. More specifically, the I thought you told me your friend would be here eyebrow.
I don’t know what’s worse—my mom’s disappointment or the crush of embarrassment that immediately follows it. It’s so quick and so searing, it feels like he stood me up on an actual date.
“Where’s Landon tonight?” my mom asks, taking Mr. Rhodes’s coat.
“Oh, you know. Homework. Swim team stuff,” his father says.
I bite my tongue before I give in to the reflex to say I’m on the swim team too. My mom offers me the subtlest of nods as a thank-you. The last thing she wants to do is make him uncomfortable.
And maybe that would have been the end of the awkwardness, if my mom could just relax. She’s saying all the right things—hyping up the universality of Big League Burger, citing comparable successes from companies that expanded overseas, talking about emerging markets in countries that haven’t had a lot of chain expansions in them yet—but she cannot for the life of her stop checking her phone.
“Is something wrong?” Mr. Rhodes asks.
“Hmm? Sorry,” says my mom, putting the phone down with a smile that’s all teeth. “We’re having a slight issue with the company’s Twitter page.”
“Oh?”
“We had a security breach. Our team is still trying to figure out how.” My mom stabs at a piece of her parmesan roasted broccoli with more gusto than necessary.
I’ve been doing my best all night not to make eye contact with anyone and say the bare minimum required of me, so I can enjoy this fancy meal and start outlining my French essay in my head in peace. But even I’m not immune to the sudden shift in the room, to the way Mr. Rhodes’s lips press into each other and his eyes briefly go to his plate.
“That’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about—the Twitter account.” He straightens up a bit, firm but apologetic at the same time. “You talk a lot about this being a family company, and I just don’t see those values reflected in the company’s social media presence.”
The air in the room seems to come to a complete standstill. For some reason, my mom’s eyes sweep over to me—like she needs me to toss her some kind of lifeline.
I look down at the table and refuse to look back up.
“Well—of course, of course, I understand your concerns.” I can hear the slight edge in her voice. That nervous lilt I used to hear growing up when she had to talk to the landlord about rent being late that month, or prep herself in the mirror to talk to someone at the bank about business loans for Big League Burger with my dad. “But you know how it is with social media these days. The more of an impression you can make, the better for business.”
“You aren’t afraid the impression you’re giving might alienate some of your customer base?”
As pissed as I am at Landon right now, I could hug the life out of his father for this.
Because as much as my mom refuses to believe it, this whole thing has been a bad PR move for us. Most of the replies to tweets sent by the account are still either cat emojis, people who are up in arms about the protection of small businesses, and straight up trolls. I was almost relieved when Girl Cheesing started to rack up tens of thousands of followers—at the very least it evened the playing field so we didn’t look like total bullies.
I can tell my mom is trying to answer carefully. Despite everything, I wish, in that moment, there was something I could do to help her.
But it turns out, she can’t even help herself. I’m expecting her to concede. To smile and tell Mr. Rhodes that rerouting the social media strategy is certainly a consideration she’d be willing to make, especially given what’s at stake here. The idea of an international expansion is all she has talked about since she moved us to New York in the first place.
“If anything, I think it will make our brand even more recognizable overseas.”
Mr. Rhodes smiles one of those smiles that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Well. Maybe.”
Whatever my mom was hoping would get set into motion tonight falls so flat, there is no mistaking it. I basically tune them out after that, all but running into my room and shutting the door as soon as my mom ushers Mr. Rhodes out. I brace myself, waiting for her to knock—we’ll talk, maybe, and decide to drop the Twitter thing. And then we’ll go into the kitchen and bake something, the way we used to when things didn’t go our way. International Funding Rejection Pie. Something ridiculous, something that will make us both laugh.
But she doesn’t knock. I hear the door to her room click shut, and that’s the last I hear from her for the rest of the night.
I wish I could call Paige. But instead, I find myself opening the Weazel app, hovering over the chat between me and Wolf.
Bluebird
You know that whole thing about parents wanting stuff for you that you don’t know if you want?
Bluebird
Well, I get it.
I set the phone down, not expecting an answer. Almost hoping I won’t get one. I’m angry at Wolf for ghosting me, angry with Landon for standing me up, angry with myself for caring as much as I do.
Wolf
Yikes. Going full teenage angst on this glorious Friday night, huh?
I startle at the sound of the notification coming in. The relief is crippling, almost humiliating. Like I’ve been in solitary confinement and someone has
finally poked their face in through the bars to say hello.
Bluebird
Let me guess. You’re out drinking and partying with the rest of the reckless youth
It’s not meant to sound passive-aggressive, but I suppose it does. I wonder what Landon is doing right now that was so much more important than sucking it up and coming over here for two hours. Maybe this way I can find out.
Wolf
Nah. Much dweebier than that. Mostly messing around on the computer
My throat is tight. So, not important at all.
Wolf
How about you? Getting wild and reenacting Gossip Girl plotlines?
Bluebird
Yeah, I’m blowing through my trust fund as we speak
Wolf
Anyway, sorry the ’rents are giving you trouble, birdie. What do they want?
It occurs to me, in that moment, I’m not even really sure what my mom wants for me. I know all the immediate things—come up with tweets. Get good grades. Get into a good school. But beyond that, I have no idea what she wants me to do.
Beyond that, I don’t really have any idea what I want to do.
Bluebird
The usual, I guess
Bluebird
You’ve been busy, huh?
I think for a moment that’ll scare him off again. That the texts will peter out the same way they did before, and we’ll go back to the odd silence between us.
Wolf
Kind of, yeah
Wolf
But I’ve missed this
It’s not quite I missed you, but it’s close enough that just like that, the anger evaporates. Just like that, I forgive the murkiness of the last week with a kind of swiftness that should maybe alarm me. I don’t care. It’s nice to have someone in my corner again, even if that corner is one I can’t see.
Bluebird
Yeah, me too
Bluebird
Even though you have not made a cupcake locating app yet, which to me is a clear sign of disrespect for the institution of dessert
Wolf
Shit. Am I gonna wake up tonight with Cookie Monster two inches from my face holding a knife?
Bluebird
Sleep with one eye open
Pepper
It turns out all of Mom’s panicking is for nothing. Whoever hacked the Twitter account didn’t do anything to it, and didn’t bother trying to get in again over the weekend either. The tech team promises to keep an eye on it and try to trace the breach when they all get back into work on Monday.
I spend the weekend alternating between the homework I’ve neglected and battling Jack on Twitter. On Saturday morning he posts a tweet reading: finally tried BLB’s “grilled cheese.” video review below! with a link to a compilation of animals making scream noises in the wild that goes on for a full ten minutes.
“Have you noticed that the BLB Twitter page is off its rocker lately?” Paige asks when I finally manage to call her on Sunday morning. “It looks like they’re in some kind of tiff with a deli?”
I wince. “Yeah … I guess it’s all … part of the strategy, or whatever.”
“I can’t believe Mom hasn’t shut that the hell down. Even Dad’s noticed. He called me all stressed out about it.”
I talked to our dad just the other day, and he didn’t mention it to me. I think he must know I’ve been recruited into this Twitter madness. He’s pretty quiet, but not a lot gets past him either. Especially not when it comes to Mom.
“I mean, do we even know these people?”
Yes. A little too well. So well that I can, all too easily, picture the exact tilt of the smirk on Jack’s face when he posted the screaming tweet.
“I dunno.” I make a quick move to change the subject. “Wanna explain the Fuck Your Midterms Meringue recipe you just put on the blog, or…”
Paige laughs. “Buckle up, kid, cuz you’re about to get an earful about my Greek History professor.”
After I get off the phone with Paige, Mom and I go down to Bloomingdale’s to look at couches for the new corporate office expansion, which is renting out another floor in their Midtown building. We stop for lunch at a little café, and we talk about school and all the clothes I’m going to wear when I get to college and don’t have to wear a uniform and Taffy’s new puppy, which she has been Instagramming so enthusiastically, I feel like I’m half raising it with her.
Nobody mentions Twitter, or college apps, or the veritable disaster of Friday night. The day ends with a shine already on the memory of it. It reminds me of the way Mom would, once a year, let me and Paige play hooky from school—she’d drive us all the way there and then just pass the school and keep driving, and we’d get pancakes at IHOP or take pictures on the bridge or drive into Belle Meade and stare at all the mansions. A stolen day. The kind of day that ends too fast but stays with you much longer.
I should have known the universe would find some way to balance it out.
Jack is particularly smirky during Monday’s practice, for reasons beyond me—he has yet to respond to the latest volley in our tweets, so the ball is in his court.
“Seemed a little quiet on Friday night,” he says, as the swim team is getting out of the pool to give up the lanes for the divers. “Fall asleep on the job?”
And then the meaning of the smirk becomes all too clear. “Did you…”
Jack tilts his head at me. “Did I what?”
Landon calls over to me to help pull out the stretch bands for dry land exercises, and before I can turn back around, Jack has already jumped into the water and started swimming away. I go through the next twenty minutes trying to decide just how angry I’m going to get about this, or if I’m really even allowed to get angry at all. We said we wouldn’t let it be personal. We said we wouldn’t hold back.
But nobody said anything about hacking into a corporate-run Twitter account.
I guess he didn’t really do anything, though. In the grand scheme of things, he just minorly inconvenienced the tech team on a Friday night.
Or at least, that’s all I think he’s done, until I get into the locker room and see five missed calls and a voicemail from my mom.
“So the tech team finished their little investigation. Turns out whoever changed the password on the account did it from your phone.”
I freeze, the phone poised on my ear, my blood running cold. That’s impossible. If someone were going to access the account from my phone, they’d have to know my passcode first. And nobody would know that, unless—
I’m going to kill him. I’m going to maim him.
“Call me as soon as you get this, and come straight home after practice. We need to talk.”
I set the phone down and just stand there. Jack has jokingly called me a robot more times in the last few years than I can count, but in that moment, I genuinely feel like I’m short-circuiting. There is too much of me happening all at once, and my body doesn’t know what to settle on—the anger at Jack, the indignation at my mom, the fact I’ve been juggling so much in the past few weeks that I’m tired enough to sleep on the floor of the locker room with everyone gossiping and changing over my head.
Naturally, it eventually settles on the least convenient option, which is to burst into tears.
I feel someone’s hands on my shoulders pulling me away from the lockers, and only vaguely process they belong to Pooja, who manages to pull me over to the handicap bathroom stall and lock the door on us before the snot starts flying. I have the blessing and curse of being the kind of person who only cries twice a year, so naturally, when it happens, it happens in the most volcanic, disgusting way possible—red eyes, gushing nose, splotchy face, and all.
I manage to pull myself together after a minute or so, and blink at Pooja, who’s leaning against the plastic wall on the other side of the stall.
“Thanks,” I say, my voice clogged with snot.
She unrolls some toilet paper, bunches it up, and hands it to me. “You wanna talk about it?”
&
nbsp; I shake my head, but in that same moment I take this ridiculous, hiccupping breath, and whoosh. It’s not just the snot floodgates that are open, but the verbal ones too. Before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m telling her everything—about tweeting for Big League Burger, about Jack and Girl Cheesing, about my mom breathing down my neck and about me being stupid enough to tell a teenage boy my phone’s terrible passcode and not immediately change it.
For a few moments, all Pooja can do is blink at me.
“Okay, first of all, this is possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. And we live in New York City, so that’s saying something.”
I let out a wet laugh.
“And second of all … well. I don’t really know anything about sending good tweets or what exactly the extent of this bizarrely flirtatious war between you and Jack is.”
“It’s not—nobody’s flirting—”
“But,” says Pooja, pointedly ignoring my protests, “I can think of a way to get Jack back.”
Pooja may think the whole Twitter thing is weird, but to me, it doesn’t quite get any weirder than this—Pooja extending an olive branch, after four years of being just short of an archnemesis. I should be suspicious of this, maybe, but that’s the thing—despite never actually being her friend, I know Pooja. Alarmingly well, in fact. I know her motivations, know the exact expression she makes when she is calculating a next move, know her weaknesses and strengths almost as well as I know my own. The same way I know, for whatever reason, she is being sincere right now.
Plus, it means getting payback.
“I’m listening.”
Jack
I should know something is out of order with the universe the moment I see Pooja and Pepper huddled by her locker Tuesday morning. It is a known and established fact at Stone Hall that the two of them are neck and neck in just about everything; there are battle scenes between Gamora and Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy less brutal than their ongoing competition with each other.
But I figure, in the way all unsuspecting idiots do, that it has nothing to do with me. The same way I figure, the way all unsuspecting idiots do, that I’ve gotten away with something, when in fact it’s about to go terribly wrong.