Once I actually get inside, I see someone at a table by the window bent over a cup of coffee, wearing Ethan’s baseball hat and holding Ethan’s backpack, with Ethan’s coat draped over the chair. I walk over to him and put my hands on my hips.
“Are you seriously trying to Parent Trap me?”
Jack looks up, brows puckered with disappointment, like he’s a little kid and I just stuck a pin in his balloon. “What gave it away?”
I gesture in the direction of his lanky frame. “Your general Jack-ness.”
“Jack-ness?”
“Well. That, and you’re a little bit of an ass.”
I smirk — a small peace offering — and he returns it and then some, with another one of those half grins. It’s so unabashed that I straighten up a bit, glancing away.
“So where is your brother? Is he in on this little prank of yours? Because if it’s all the same to you, I want to wrap this up quick.”
Jack cocks his head toward the window. “Ethan is currently preoccupied making out with Stephen Chiu on the steps of the Met.”
“So he sent you?”
Jack shrugs. “My brother’s an important dude, in case you haven’t noticed.”
I have. It’s hard not to. Ethan’s one of those man-of-the-people types — always has something nice to say, an extra few minutes to give someone, some practical solution to a problem. Which is why I had been counting on this meeting being a quick one.
Enter Jack, who seems to have absolutely no qualms with wasting time.
My phone pings in my backpack, and I realize with a lurch I haven’t checked it since I got out of the pool. I drop my bag, tell Jack to keep an eye on it while I go grab a tea, and look down at my phone.
Nine texts. Holy crap.
The most recent ones are from my mom: Where are you?? and Is everything okay? My stomach sinks — I never told her I had practice after school today because I didn’t think she’d be home. But then I scroll down and realize that although she is very much worried about my welfare, she was initially more worried about a “Twitter emergency” that needs attending.
I shoot her a quick text to let her know I’m alive and open the ones from Taffy, who — bless her heart — actually remembered I had practice, and broke down the situation with screenshots.
I’m caught up by the time I reach the cashier. Apparently some tiny little deli in the city is claiming Big League Burger copied their grilled cheese recipe, and the accusation now has ten thousand retweets. A Twitter account dedicated to the welfare of small businesses has even co-opted the #GrilledByBLB hashtag, so #KilledByBLB is trending instead.
Jesus. The internet moves fast.
Your mom wants us to fire a sassy tweet back, Taffy has texted. Which is Taffy code for, I know this is a terrible idea, but your mom is my boss and I’m too scared of her to press the point.
I guess I’ll have to, then. I send my mom what I hope is a pacifying text, telling her we should either just let it go or sit on it for a bit and see if it actually merits some kind of apology. I’m no PR professional, but attacking an itty-bitty deli that can’t rub two Twitter followers together can’t be a good look for a goliath like BLB no matter how you slice it.
By the time the barista puts my tea on the counter, my mom is calling. She starts talking before I can even say hello.
“What do you think our next move is?”
I walk over to the counter, prying off my lid to add sugar and milk. I peer out of the corner of my eye to make sure Jack hasn’t made off with my stuff, but he’s just staring out the window, tapping his foot to the beat of whatever he’s listening to with one earbud in his ear.
“I don’t think we should tweet anything at them. People actually seem kind of mad.”
“Well, let them be mad,” says my mom dismissively. “We’re not going to take this lying down.”
“Okay — but maybe you should — I don’t know, talk to them? Not send a tweet?”
“There’s no point in talking to some sandwich place looking for attention. Give me something to fire back at them. I can’t waste time right now.”
It feels like a gut punch through the phone. I clutch my tea, letting it burn against my palms, waiting for it to anchor me. I want to push back, but I know how this goes — it sounds like the beginning of half of Paige and Mom’s fights. One of them would push, and the other would dig their heels into the cement, and before I knew it Paige would be stalking off into Central Park, and Mom would be on the phone with Dad trying to figure out how to deal with her.
I don’t want to be someone she has to deal with. Things are already weird enough between the four of us without me making waves.
“Just, uh … send that GIF from Harry Potter. The ‘excuse me, but who are you’ one.”
There’s a beat. “You’re in the right direction, but let’s go edgier than that.”
I close my eyes. “Fine. I’ll text you something else.”
I text Taffy and my mom the idea, walking over to the table, where Jack is still so very clearly Jack that it’s ridiculous he tried to pretend otherwise.
I can’t lie — despite his shenanigans, it is kind of fascinating, watching him and his brother. How two people can be so strikingly similar, with the same build and the same open face, the same rhythm in the way they talk, and still present it to the world in such different ways. Where Ethan is almost coolly self-possessed, like some kind of politician, Jack is an open book — his eyes unguarded and unselfconscious, his tall frame always strewn across chairs like he has settled into himself earlier than most people our age, his dark eyebrows so expressive and honest that it’s laughable he even tried to pull one over on me in the first place.
While I’m staring without meaning to, Jack takes a very long slurp of his coffee. “So. This pool thing.”
I lean forward, leveling with him. We are two people at odds — me rigid and immovable, him just as at ease as ever, meeting my stare with faint amusement.
“What exactly did your coach want?”
“Ethan says we’re supposed to do a half hour of lap swimming a day.”
We only have the pool for two hours at a time. Every single year before this one, they’ve taken the area by the diving board, and we’ve taken the lanes. Half of me wonders if this is Coach Thompkins’s way of getting under Coach Martin’s skin — they are notorious for not getting along, especially when it comes to using the swim and dive budgets — but that doesn’t mean we can’t deal with it.
“How’s this: you get the pool for twenty minutes a day,” I propose. “The last twenty minutes we have rented.”
“And where will the swim team go?”
“We’ll do dry land exercises. Push-ups and lunges.”
“And you’re going to lead that?”
“I’ll ask Landon to do it.”
Jack blows out a breath. “Sounds like it’s all settled, then.”
I blink, surprised. I don’t know Jack all that well, but I’m not used to him being so … reasonable.
“Wanna go heckle my brother?”
Ah. There it is.
My phone pings from the table — it’s a text from Taffy, letting me know she’s in a meeting. My mom immediately texts and asks me to pull up the corporate account on my phone and tweet it instead.
I wait for a beat, wondering why I feel a pinch of guilt sending it. This isn’t my business, and it’s not my Twitter account. It ultimately has nothing to do with me at all. I’m just a set of fingers on a keyboard. 
Big League Burger