“Can’t Taffy handle it?”
“Taffy won’t be in until nine, and she wasn’t built for these kinds of tweets anyway. Not like you are.”
I hand her phone back to her, spitting my toothpaste into the sink. “Mom. The recipes are really, really similar.”
“It’s grilled cheese. Don’t be silly.”
But it isn’t silly, really. The recipe alone might have been a coincidence — sourdough bread with muenster, cheddar, apple jam, and honey mustard — but BLB branded it with the exact name as theirs. It’s enough to make any copyright lawyer do a double-take, if we’re unfortunate enough that this deli really does have some kind of legal position to come at us.
“Who even had this idea in the first place? I feel like you should talk to whoever it was.”
She bites the inside of her cheek. “You’re right. And I will. But first, let’s come up with a response to this tweet.”
I shake my head. “The hashtag is over. It was just for the day. It’ll be weird if we keep going now.”
“It’ll take you like two minutes.”
Two minutes to draft it, sure, but then an hour of compulsively checking it to see how it’s being received, and a day of feeling weirdly guilty about it, and by then, she’ll probably ask me to write more tweets that will “take two minutes” and the whole thing will start all over again. A point I have every intention of making to her, except she beats me to the punch.
“And if you see Landon today, could you ask him about dinner? His father and I are scheduling a sit-down here for when he gets back from Japan in a few weeks, and I’d love for him to join us.”
My mouth practically unhinges. “Landon can’t come here.” Not here, with my bright pink Pepto-Bismol bedroom and the watercolors of Big League Burger menu items my mom commissioned and hung on the wall. Not here, where I’d have even more space and time to make an ass of myself in front of Landon than I already do.
“It’ll be good for you. You’ll get a front seat to business negotiations.” She raises her eyebrows at me conspiratorially. “With the kind of jobs you’ll be fielding after college, you’ll need it.”
Before I can protest, her heels are clack-clack-clacking down the hall, her keys are jingling, and she’s out the front door.
I don’t tweet right away. The miniature rebellion doesn’t count for much, but it’s just enough to rub me the wrong way. I take my time getting ready before I send it, so much time that I’m too late to make myself toast and end up digging through the fridge to find my leftover Monster Cake to eat on the way to school.
I notice a bit of it is missing and smile despite myself. Some things, at least, never change.
Pepper
I hit Park Avenue, nodding at the doorman on the way out, and pull the corporate account back up on my phone. It will honestly look stupid for us to respond to this barb. We’re already in hot water for the way we responded to the last one. But it’s either tweet now or get a bunch of semi-terrified texts from Taffy later. 
Big League Burger 
@B1gLeagueBurger
Replying to @GCheesing
OMG! Finally! The public knows the ~secret ingredient~ grandma adds to your grilled cheese. Thanks for the pro tip guys but we’ll pass for now
7:03 AM · 21 Oct 2020
I’m still half asleep by the time I get to homeroom, but not half asleep enough I don’t notice Jack and Ethan muttering to each other in heated voices in a corner of the room. I sit at my usual desk, trying to ignore it, but the room is empty enough it’s hard not to hear them.
“… going to kill me. He thinks I sent that stupid picture.”
“So what? I’ll tell him it was me. I don’t care. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“He’s already texted me like seven times. He told us to drop it—”
“You should have seen the shit people were saying—”
“I did. I did see it. And then I logged off.”
I pull up the Weazel app, wondering if it’s something from the Hallway Chat. But the only recent message in there of note is someone roasting the grammatical correctness of the graffiti someone recently scrawled in one of the stalls of the girls’ bathrooms. No pictures that look like they’d set the Campbell twins at each other’s throats, which is a weird enough occurrence in and of itself — I’ve never once seen them fight.
“Just forget it,” Jack mutters. And then he’s sitting himself right down in the seat next to mine, the same way we were yesterday.
I don’t know if I’m supposed to say anything or not. There’s no way to pretend I didn’t hear their conversation because the three of us are practically the only people in the room. That is, until Ethan says something under his breath to excuse himself and then ducks out.
It’s quiet for a moment, then, but knowing Jack, it won’t be for long.
“Do you have any siblings?” Jack asks.
He looks antsier than usual, slouching in his seat, his knuckles quietly drumming on the desk.
“Yeah. An older sister.”
Jack nods. Opens his mouth as though he’s going to say something else, and then thinks better of it.
I pull out my Monster Cake, a little squished in its aluminum foil, and break off a piece to offer Jack. His eyebrows lift, and he looks at me in confusion, like I’m trying to hand him a fish.
“It’s not poisonous.”
He takes it from me, examining it. A few crumbs end up on his desk. “What is it?”
I hesitate for a moment. I don’t think I’ve actually discussed this unholy mash-up of desserts with anyone aside from my parents and Paige. I wonder if it’s some kind of betrayal, sharing it with someone outside of the family.
“Monster Cake.”
“Monster Cake?”
His lips quirk in amusement, and then I see it again — another shift, another reconsideration. I decide I don’t mind it this time.
“It’s pretty much a mash-up of every junk food known to man, baked into a cake. Hence the name.”
Jack takes a bite. “Holy shit.”
My face heats up. People are starting to walk into the room just as Jack literally tips back in his seat and moans.
“Jack,” I hiss.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
I can’t tell if he’s making fun of me or not, but either way, he is decidedly making a scene. I wrap up the rest of the cake and shove it into my backpack.
“I mean, this is obscene. How did you come up with this?”
“It’s just — I mean, it’s not like I … We were little kids when we made it.”
Jack literally kisses his fingers. I stare into my lap, my face burning, a reluctant smile blooming. I haven’t had a ton of time to update our blog lately — Paige has been posting on overdrive to make up for it — so I’ve forgotten how it feels, having someone try some weird dessert I made up and enjoy it. Usually it’s just people commenting from some corner of the internet, saying they tried it, or Paige groaning her approval when we meet up and bake together.
But this is different. This is so … personal, almost. Having someone outside of the family try something I made right in front of me. Maybe I don’t hate it.
“I feel like you may have flown too close to the dessert sun. I’ve never tasted anything like this, and my parents literally own a—”
“Mr. Campbell, if you insist on eating in my classroom, at least have the decency not to turn my floor into your personal napkin.”