Wolf
This. Has been. The longest day. Of my entire existence
Bluebird
Oh hey look who’s alive!
Wolf
Barely, though
Wolf
Sorry I’ve been MIA
Wolf
And to answer your question: be Spider-Man. That is what I want to do with my life
Wolf
But since that is a biological impossibility I have turned my attention to slightly more realistic pursuits
Bluebird
Disappointing, but go on
Wolf
Honestly? What’s probably going to happen is I end up in the family business
Bluebird
Maybe don’t go on. This is starting to sound like the opening to a Godfather movie
Wolf
Believe me, I have made PLENTY of offers people have no problem refusing
Wolf
But family business aside, I guess I like working with apps
Bluebird
Like making them?
Wolf
I guess, yeah. I mean I’m obviously not a pro at it but it’s fun to tinker with
Bluebird
Well? Have you made any?
Wolf
REALLY dumb things
Bluebird
Show me
Wolf
You might not like me anymore
Bluebird
Who says I like you now?
Wolf
Um OUCH
Bluebird
How about this? If you don’t show me I won’t like you anymore
Wolf
That logic is cruel but sound. You asked for this
Wolf
macncheeseme.com
Bluebird
Is this … is this an app for finding emergency mac and cheese
Wolf
Like Spider-Man, I am only looking out for the citizens of New York
Bluebird
Oh my god it says there are 203 places within a three-mile radius of me where I could get mac and cheese RIGHT NOW
Wolf
Really though is there any other reason for people to live in this city
Bluebird
I AM SO OVERWHELMED
Wolf
Mac and cheese fan?
Bluebird
You should do another one of these but with cupcakes
Wolf
Your feedback is noted and appreciated
Bluebird
Really though, this is super cool
Wolf
Thanks. You’re like one of two people on the planet who has the access link, so be honored I guess
Bluebird
WHAT? You should be sharing this shit with the world. It’s your moral responsibility
Wolf
With great power …
Bluebird
Comes delicious responsibility
Bluebird
I think I’m gonna get mac and cheese, I’m not kidding
Wolf
This is my legacy now, huh?
Bluebird
And hey your dreams technically didn’t NOT come true
Bluebird
Since you’re posting your app on the world wide … web
Bluebird
Get it?
Wolf
I’m blocking you.
Bluebird
WEBS. Like SPIDER-MAN’S!!!!
Wolf
Blocked
Bluebird doesn’t answer me for a few moments, then. I assume she’s just hustling her way out the door like I am, until I reach the 6 train platform and see another notification come in that makes my stomach drop.
Bluebird
Do you think it’s weird that the app hasn’t outed us yet?
Bluebird
Like maybe we are lab rats in this app’s experiment or something
Wolf
IDK. It is weird though
Bluebird
Are we going to do something dumb like not tell each other who we are until graduation
Wolf
Do you want to know?
Bluebird
Sometimes
Bluebird
You?
Wolf
Sometimes
Wolf
I feel like
Wolf
Ah sorry that sent too soon
Wolf
I don’t know. What if you think I’m someone I’m not and you’re disappointed?
Bluebird
I feel the same way
Bluebird
Just kidding. I’m embarrassingly hot. I’m actually Blake Lively
Wolf
Well this is awkward because I’m sitting with her right now, so
Bluebird
SHIT. Not again
Wolf
XOXO gossip wolf
I spend the rest of the ride to the Upper East Side typing and deleting messages back, wondering if I should just leave it at that or say what I want to say. The trouble is, I don’t know what I want to say. If I want us to stay in the dark, or if I want all our cards out on the table.
But if I’ve learned one thing from occasionally being too impulsive for my own good, it’s that once you open a door like that, you don’t get to close it again. Right now, Bluebird is nobody and everybody at once—but right now, Bluebird likes me. And I’m worried that in changing that first bit, the second one might change too.
Apparently that worry is intense enough that I forget my breakfast. My family owns a deli we live on top of, but somehow I not only forget to grab one of the infinite delicious options I have at my disposal, but I don’t realize it until I’m standing outside of homeroom, five minutes to the bell, with no other options but to eat the ridiculous red tie they make us wear as part of our uniforms.
My stomach gurgles like a sentient being. This is it, then. I’ll die before noon.
It doesn’t help I got next to no sleep last night. After that shift, I should have slept like a dead person, but every time I did, my dreams were all tangled, like someone rattled the synapses in my brain. I kept waking up to different jolts to my system—my anger at Pepper. The irritation of Ethan getting off scot-free, yet again. The worry of wondering whether I’d shown the mysterious Bluebird too much by sending her the link to that old app I made last year, and the gnawing guilt of knowing even by sending it, the situation just got a little more complicated than it was before.
I scan the hallway for Paul. There’s one friendship I know I haven’t screwed up. A friendship that comes with a free CLIF Bar, if I’m lucky, because Paul seems to be carrying an absurd amount with him at all times, as if the apocalypse is going to hit while we’re in class.
Apparently my luck has really and truly run out this morning, because the person whose face I spot instead of Paul’s is the last one I want to see right now.
“Can I talk to you?”
I had a plan for this. I rehearsed it in my head last night like a total loser, which I had plenty of time to do, thanks to the not-sleeping thing. And the plan was simple, because the plan was this: ignore Pepper. Don’t acknowledge anything she says, and walk away.
The thing I did not factor into that equation, unfortunately, was Pepper herself. Or the fact that she seems every bit as miserable as I do, with her bangs slightly off-kilter and her blue eyes earnest and overtired, as though she spent most of last night awake too. Still, I’m determined not to acknowledge her—that is, until I see that she appears to be holding a container full of the most obscenely gooey blondie situation I have ever laid eyes on in my life.
I shift my weight between my feet, my resolve and bravado as absent as my breakfast.
“The bell’s about to ring,” I say.
“Just for a second?”
It’s more than her eyes. There’s this openness to her. Not like there’s a crack in the mask of Robot Pepper, but like the mask is off completely. Somehow in this moment that she’s never looked more different, she’s also never seemed more familiar—and just like that, I realize she’s already become someone I can’t just dismiss, even though by all accounts I should.
“Fine.”
Ethan passes us in the hallway, raising his eyebrows at me as he does. Pepper’s face is on fire by the time he slips into homeroom.
“I know I said it, but—I really am sorry. I had no idea it was you on the other end of that.”
“But you knew it was someone.”
“Yeah. And I felt gross about it. But my mom…” She shakes her head before I can even pull a face. “It’s a whole thing. But what I wanted to say was that I get it. I mean, I know it doesn’t seem like I would, but—we were smaller, once.”
I can’t help it—it’s coming out of me before I can do anything to clamp it down. “You think we can’t hold our own because we’re small?”
“No, no, that’s not what I—sorry. That’s not what I meant at all.” She takes a breath, and I realize she’s actually flustered. Pepper, the girl who was one time challenged to argue against global warming for a debate club event in front of half the school, is flustered talking to me. “What I mean is, back when Big League Burger started, it was just us. My parents and my sister and me. And it was like that for a while, before we … well, you know. So I get it.”
There’s this uncertain lilt in her voice, in the way she is looking at me. Like she isn’t expecting me to accept her apology. To be fair, I wasn’t either.
But that’s not the reason why, for a few moments, I don’t say anything. It’s that there’s something else hovering on the end of that last bit, like there’s more to the story. Something else that fractured between the Big League Burger then and whatever it’s become since.
I want to ask, but then Pepper is shoving the Tupperware under my nose. “Also, these are for you.”
I may have my pride, but my stomach sure doesn’t. I already know I’m going to take them, probably already knew before Pepper opened her mouth and swayed me with her speech.
“What are they?” I somehow manage to ask, despite the saliva pooling in my mouth.
“An apology. They’re literally called So Sorry Blondies.”
“Another Evans sisters invention?”
She lets out a huff of a laugh, like she’s been holding her breath. “Yeah.”
I take it from her, partially because she looks like she has no intention of putting her arms down otherwise, and partially because I’m so hungry, the janitor might have to come peel me off the floor if I don’t eat something soon. She watches me nervously, as if she can’t tell if she’s actually been forgiven or not.
“Look.” I glance into the classroom, where Ethan is thoroughly distracted by Stephen and no longer keeping an eye on us. “I may have … overreacted.”
Pepper shakes her head. “I told you. I get it. It’s your family.”
“Yeah. But it’s also—well, to be honest, this has been kind of good for business.”
Pepper’s brow furrows, that one little crease returning. “What, the tweets?”
“Yeah.” I scratch the back of my neck, sheepish. “Actually, we had a line out the door yesterday. It was kind of intense.”
“That’s … that’s good, right?”
The tone of my voice is clearly not matching up with the words I’m saying, but if I’m being honest, I’m still wary of this whole overnight business boom. And if I’m being honest, I’m even more wary of Pepper. If this really is as much of a family business as she claims it is—to the point where she’s helping run the Twitter handle, when even I know enough about corporate Twitter accounts to know entire teams of experienced people get paid to do that—then she might have had more of a hand in this whole recipe theft thing than she’s letting on.
The fact of the matter is, I can’t trust her. To the point of not knowing whether I can even trust her knowing how our business is doing, or just how badly we need it.
“Yeah, um, I guess.” I try to make it sound noncommittal. My acting skills, much like my breakfast-packing skills, leave much to be desired.
“So…”
“So.”
Pepper presses her lips into a thin line, a question in her eyes.
“So, I guess—if your mom really wants you to keep tweeting…”
“Wait. Yesterday you were pissed. Two minutes ago you were pissed.”
“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.”
