And just like that, our Twitter war had a hashtag, we had a rabid new fanbase, and I’d learned a valuable lesson: I was better off not provoking Pepper into responding to something, because she had home-court advantage and knew how to use it.
I catch sight of her now, somehow ridiculously easy for me to spot in the sea of swimmers even though she’s wearing the same black Stone Hall swimsuit and cap as every other girl in the water. They’re doing some kind of sprint drill right now, switching back and forth between butterfly and freestyle every other lap, while their coach hollers vaguely motivational things from the bleachers. It looks like hell, but for me, it also looks like salvation — when Pepper’s submerged for two hours, it’s the only time she isn’t a few buttons away from the Big League Burger Twitter page, poised to strike.
And boy, has she ever. So that evening I didn’t tweet at all. Well, couldn’t, really — the deli was packed to the gills again, with a line so far out the door that when Grandma Belly saw it from the window of the apartment, she asked if people were waiting to get raptured.
“They’re here for your grilled cheese,” I told her.
She fixed me with a look, crossing a leg on the massive armchair she spent most of her time in and raising a single eyebrow at me. “Not unless you changed my secret ingredient to cocaine, they’re not.”
I swear she only ever rolls out her most crass lines when it’s just her and me. I guess that’s the price Ethan pays for being so busy all the time.
When I didn’t respond right away, she added, “Back in my day, it was more than my grilled cheese bringing in customers, if you know what I mean.”
“Grandma.”
“What?” she asked innocently. “I also make a mean toscakaka. Best you can get this side of Sweden.”
I don’t know about the whole Sweden thing, since I’ve never actually left the East Coast, but I couldn’t deny the deliciousness of the toscakaka. It wasn’t on the menu anymore, since Grandma Belly’s version trumped all others, but that almond caramel cake was one of the things she’d taught me how to make on rainy Sundays when the deli was slow and she had the energy for it. I have a whole arsenal of mismatched Swedish and Irish dishes in my back pocket, courtesy of her and Grandpa Jay, who died when we were in middle school. My dad keeps saying we’ll bring some of them back once I graduate — assuming, I guess, that I’m not going anywhere, and I’ll have the time to make them, then.
“Seems to me like the grilled cheese isn’t the whole story, hmm?”
I hadn’t turned around because Grandma Belly can sniff out a lie faster than she can sniff out Kitchen Sink Macaroons cooking in the oven. Instead, I shrugged, still staring out the window. There was no reason to stress her out with the Twitter thing — I had it under control.
“Yeah, well. Good press,” I said.
Good press that had only gotten more aggressive by the day. That night, I waited for the Big League Burger corporate account to tweet, and it was deliciously generic — clearly something scheduled that Pepper didn’t have anything to do with. Customers who come to Big League BOO-ger on Halloween get a free junior milkshake with every Big League Meal purchase!
It was too easy. I responded to the tweet within five minutes of it with a picture of Big League’s version of the Grandma’s Special I screenshotted from their Instagram. 
Girl Cheesing @GCheesing
I’m thinking about this for my costume, but I don’t know. Too scary for the kids? Don’t want to give anyone nightmares 
8:45 PM · 22 Oct 2020
The next morning I woke up to another two thousand followers on the Girl Cheesing account, courtesy of write-ups on a few viral websites and another vlog from Jasmine. I walked into homeroom that day half expecting Pepper to go back on her own word. I thought maybe she’d be frosty with me or avoid me entirely.
Instead, she waltzed right up to my desk and said, “Pie?”
I narrowed my eyes at her, and then down at the container in her hands, where there were chocolate hand pies lined up in neat rows. The So Sorry Blondies were all gone by then, devoured between me and Paul and the rest of the dive team, and the memory of their deliciousness was too fresh for me to resist another Pepper Evans creation. I took one of the mini pies with a wary hand, just as she pulled out her phone, tapped it a few times, and smirked.
I stopped chewing. “Did you just tweet?” I asked, my mouth full of chocolate.
Pepper swept her bangs back with her fingers, and this time the gesture was calculated and breezy. “Did I?”
I scowled into my phone screen, lowering it under my desk so Mrs. Fairchild wouldn’t see. This one was just a GIF of Regina George from Mean Girls—“Why are you so obsessed with me?”
“At least your pie is better than your tweets,” I mumbled.
But the smirk on Pepper’s face only deepened. “Those are from the Big League Burger bargain menu, by the way.”
My mouth dropped open. Pepper turned her eyes back to her textbook, burying her smirk in it. “Enjoy.”
But that, as it turns out, was child’s play. Two weeks have passed since then, and I don’t think I’ve gone a full waking minute without thinking about our Twitter war since. I’ve started dreaming in memes. It’s a miracle if anything that comes out of my mouth isn’t unconsciously accounted for in 280 characters or less.
By then, the Girl Cheesing account had a whopping seventy thousand followers, and we had to install a ticketing system to stop the line from getting too out of control outside. We even put up the old HELP WANTED sign I hadn’t seen since freshman year. It was a brand-new Girl Cheesing, a new era, a charge in the air nobody was impervious to — Dad was running around like a teenager, Mom was smiling so hard, it looked like her face might hurt, and even Ethan started spending more time downstairs in the deli instead of always begging off to hang out with his friends.
But two weeks in and we’re both ready to drop. This morning, I fell asleep in English. Yesterday, I’m pretty sure I saw Pepper take a micro-nap while hanging on the pool wall waiting for a set to start. So really, as desperate as my next move seems, I’m doing it just as much for her benefit as mine — I don’t need Pepper drowning in the shallow end of the city’s ugliest community pool on my conscience.
And the only way to make that happen is to make Twitter go away. Short of hacking into whatever satellite keeps the internet running and pulling the plug on the whole thing, the only feasible way to do that is to shut down Big League Burger’s Twitter.
Hence, this ill-fated plan — one that hinges precariously on Paul, the general dismissiveness of our coaches, and Pepper trusting me not to be a complete and total ass.
“Okay, since this is the first Friday water polo game of the season, a refresher on the rules.”
Landon’s standing on the high dive board, like a king addressing his people. He kind of looks like one, with the heads of everyone on the swim and dive teams turned up to him, his hand raised with the moldy soccer ball we use to play water polo like some kind of scepter. Vice Principal Rucker would kill to command this kind of attention.
“The rules are: no drawing blood. And … that’s pretty much it.”
A few of the more nervous-looking freshmen cut glances at our coaches, who are, predictably, deep in some hushed argument about something I know for a fact has nothing to do with sports and everything to do with the rumor circulating on Weazel that someone saw them making out in the park over the weekend. But hey, at least it got Coach Thompkins to show up for practice for once.