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 their 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.”
