@B1gLeagueBurger
Replying to @GCheesing
*extremely ms. norbury voice*
do you even go to this school? go home
4:47 PM · 20 Oct 2020
I hit tweet and steel myself. Something feels … grimy about the whole thing. Like I’ve done something wrong.
“They’re only, like, three blocks away.”
I put my phone on the table, the screen facing down. “I know where the Met is,” I say, sounding overly defensive even to my own ears.
But Jack doesn’t even seem to notice. “So?” he asks — an invitation.
I feel like I am itching at my seams, compelled to open the phone back up to the corporate account and see what people are saying back to the tweet. It’s strange, how I can’t seem to untangle myself from the company, even though it looks nothing like it did when it first started. When I was little, the whole of the restaurant felt as if it were mine. Paige and I were so defined by it — everyone who worked there knew our names, let us make up ridiculous milkshake combinations, snuck us leftover fries when my parents were in meetings that ran late. The franchise is so corporate that it’s way beyond me and my dessert whims now, but no matter how big we get, I can’t quite squash the part of me that takes it personally.
There’s no way I’m going to be able to focus on anything tonight, not with the stupid notifications piling up. The idea of it is suddenly so suffocating, the last thing I want to do is go home.
“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”
Jack blinks. “Yeah?”
“Why not?”
Pepper
We take our drinks and head out, and it occurs to me as soon as we hit the sidewalk, into the cool October air, that I don’t actually have any idea what to say to Jack. I don’t usually have to come up with small talk for anyone, really. I walk to school alone, I walk back alone, and everywhere else I go tends to be in a group.
But Jack Campbell is nothing if not good at filling up silence.
“Where are you from, anyway?”
I wince. It’s not that I lied about it or anything, but after the first few reactions I got name-dropping a city in the South, I decided not to advertise it. “I’m that much of a sore thumb?”
“No, actually. You fit in alarmingly well.” I’m not sure if this is meant to be a compliment or not, and from the slight bitterness in his tone, I’m not sure if he is either. He clears his throat, the edge in his words softening. “But you were one of like, two people we didn’t already know freshman year, so I’m guessing you moved from somewhere.”
I’m never quite sure whether I’m embarrassed or proud of it. Today I settle on some mix of the two.
“Nashville, actually.”
“Huh.” Jack seems to mull this over, his tongue pressing into the side of his cheek. I can see something shift in the way he considers me, and it makes me uneasy — the not knowing.
I clear my throat. “If you’re about to make a cowgirl joke, you can save it.”
“Nah, it was gonna be Taylor Swift — themed.”
“In that case, you may proceed. But with caution. I was really into her when she was still country.”
“Was?”
There’s that little half grin again. I wonder if Jack has ever smiled with his whole mouth. Someday when he’s an old man, he’ll probably just have wrinkles on the one side.
“Am,” I concede. Just two days ago Paige and I were blasting “Shake It Off” so loudly on a three-way Skype call with our dad that he threatened to start singing himself if we didn’t quit. At that point, considering he has neighbors on both sides of him, it was our civic responsibility to shut it down.
We turn the corner and hit Fifth Avenue, which is emptier now than when I usually see it on the weekends. Today it’s mostly tourists and joggers who have gotten home from work. “Where are you from?”
“Born and bred,” says Jack, gesturing out in the direction of downtown. “We live in the East Village. Have since my great-grandparents.”
I feel an unexpected pang, then. An unwelcome kind of longing. My grandparents are still in Nashville too — on both my mom’s and my dad’s side. It seemed like Nashville was the root of our family tree, like there would never be any conceivable reason for leaving. Even now, four years on the other side of it, I haven’t fully come around to the idea.
I shove my bangs behind my ear, but the wet curl pops out, stubborn as ever. My hair is never more unruly than it is after practice, when I can’t style it between school and home.
“So you’re like some kind of unicorn.”
Jack’s lip quirks. “What?”
“When’s the last time you met someone in New York whose family is actually from New York?”
Jack laughs. “Up here? Not for a while,” he says. “But where I’m from … well. You meet a lot more New Yorkers downtown than you do up here.”
It is a true testament to how enthusiastically Ethan and Stephen are going at it with each other that I notice the two of them on the steps before I notice anything else in the surrounding area — not the intoxicatingly sweet smell of the nut vendor on the curb, or the massive fountains, or the group of little kids squealing and running up and down the iconic steps of the Met. The two of them are utterly oblivious to all of it, kissing like one of them is about to go off to war.
I clap my hand to my chest before I even realize what I’m doing, as if I’m watching one of the ridiculous rom-coms Paige puts on whenever she comes to visit. “Aw. Let’s just leave them be.”
“What? Where’s the fun in that?” Jack crows.
“They look so happy.”
“They look like they need to get a room,” says Jack. But he’s the one who starts walking away first, shaking his head with a rueful smile. “I should have known you’d be a terrible pranking partner.”
“How exactly were you planning on pranking them, anyway?”
“I guess now you’ll never know,” he says, elbowing me in the shoulder.
I rock to the side and push him back without thinking, the gesture so mindless and natural that only after it happens do I stop breathing for a second, sure I’ve crossed some kind of line. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve been interacting with everyone here from behind some kind of veil — as though I’m allowed to be here, but not engage. To look, but not touch. Like the entire social order of this place was decided long before my arrival, and any involvement I have in it is out of mercy from the people who actually belong.
But Jack is just smirking that faint smirk, walking farther down Fifth.
“So, seeing as I’m captain of the dive team now—”
“Is that so?”
“Well, you’ve seen that Ethan is clearly interested in other varieties of diving at the moment.”
“So you’ve decided to elect yourself?”
Jack shrugs, the smirk taking on a new sharpness. “What’s the point of having an identical twin if you can’t schlep your workload onto them every now and then?”
I hold his gaze. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
Jack is uncharacteristically quiet for a moment, watching a group of siblings stand very, very still for a caricature artist as their fanny pack — clad dad flits around them taking video of the whole thing.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got nothing better to do, so.” He licks his upper lip. “So, we should probably start coming up with ideas for fundraising. Before the coaches get on our asses about it.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“What else do we have to square away?”
I’m not sure how seriously I’m supposed to entertain this. Is Jack really just going to take over duties for Ethan and let him take the credit? I love Paige more than anyone in the world, but I can’t imagine giving up that much of my free time this close to trying to impress college admissions boards.