“Okay, first of all, this is possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. And we live in New York City, so that’s saying something.”
I let out a wet laugh.
“And second of all … well. I don’t really know anything about sending good tweets or what exactly the extent of this bizarrely flirtatious war between you and Jack is.”
“It’s not — nobody’s flirting—”
“But,” says Pooja, pointedly ignoring my protests, “I can think of a way to get Jack back.”
Pooja may think the whole Twitter thing is weird, but to me, it doesn’t quite get any weirder than this — Pooja extending an olive branch, after four years of being just short of an archnemesis. I should be suspicious of this, maybe, but that’s the thing — despite never actually being her friend, I know Pooja. Alarmingly well, in fact. I know her motivations, know the exact expression she makes when she is calculating a next move, know her weaknesses and strengths almost as well as I know my own. The same way I know, for whatever reason, she is being sincere right now.
Plus, it means getting payback.
“I’m listening.”
Jack
I should know something is out of order with the universe the moment I see Pooja and Pepper huddled by her locker Tuesday morning. It is a known and established fact at Stone Hall that the two of them are neck and neck in just about everything; there are battle scenes between Gamora and Nebula in Guardians of the Galaxy less brutal than their ongoing competition with each other.
But I figure, in the way all unsuspecting idiots do, that it has nothing to do with me. The same way I figure, the way all unsuspecting idiots do, that I’ve gotten away with something, when in fact it’s about to go terribly wrong.
Enter: one very skittish-looking Paul. Emphasis on skittish, because Paul is already baseline about as nervous as a chihuahua at any given time. He walks into homeroom and slides into the desk next to mine, leaning in close and talking out of the corner of his mouth.
“Is it you?” he asks.
“You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
He glances up at the front to make sure Mrs. Fairchild is still absorbed in the Fiber One bar she’s consuming, then slides his phone screen over to me. I skim the text, my stomach dropping a little more with each line of the email.
Dear eager beavers of Stone Hall,
After an investigation into the “Weasel” app, it has come to the attention of the school that its creator has limited access to the app to student email addresses at Stone Hall, and that the app originated under one of those addresses. We have concluded that the creator and distributor of this app is a student. I urge anybody with information about the app’s origins to come forward, so we may have a reasonable discussion with that person about next steps.
Vice Principal Rucker
“It’s not dangerous,” I say through my teeth. “That’s bullshit. Literally last week a whole bunch of people made plans in the Hallway Chat to put all those nice Post-it notes on people’s lockers. What the hell?”
“So … it was you?”
I unclench my jaw. Paul’s eyes are wide, as if he has just become the unwitting accomplice to murder.
“What makes you say that?” I ask carefully.
“Uh, the ten other work-in-progress apps you’ve talked about on and off for the last few years?”
Well, he’s got me there. Paul is one of the very few people who even knows I’ve been messing around with app development — mostly because at some point or another, Paul has been the reason for them. I once made an app whose sole purpose was to send him a random GIF of someone sneezing every time the pollen count hit a certain threshold, so he’d remember to take his allergy meds before class.
“Look, man, it’s not like I’m gonna rat you out.” There is something close to a whine in the back of his throat, the way it was when we were kids and he suspected he was getting left out of something (which, to be fair, he usually was). “You can tell me.”
It’s not that I don’t trust Paul. It’s just that I don’t want anyone knowing. The whole magic of the app is its anonymity, the safe space it’s created to just be. In a way, if I tell Paul I made it, I’m taking that away from him too.
But then enough seconds pass and Paul starts to deflate, looking even more like a kicked puppy than usual.
“Fine. Okay. I made it.”
“I knew it!”
“For all of a few minutes, yeah,” I grumble, making note of the time stamp on the email.
“This is so cool, Jack.”
“Keep your voice down,” I remind him, shooting a cautionary glance around the room. “Nobody knows about this.”
“Not even Ethan?”
I barely suppress an eye roll. “Especially not Ethan.”
Paul sits in his chair for a moment with his eyes all glassy, like he’s absorbing something too profound for his brain to accept. “Wow. You’re basically like — the secret god of Stone Hall.”
My face goes hot. “I just made some stupid app. All I do is make sure people aren’t being dicks.”
“Do you talk to people on it?” Paul asks. “Do you control when people get outed to each other? Do you know everyone’s aliases?”
“No, no, and absolutely not.”
Well, that’s a lie and a half, but I’m sticking to it. I don’t want him fishing around the aliases in the Hallway Chat and trying to guess which one is me. Or worse — ask me to out someone else.
“Oh, come on. You can’t check?”
And whoop, there it is. “No,” I say, firmly enough that Paul flinches a little bit. I try to relax, try to level with him so he’ll get it. “It’s — that’s the whole point of it. You know? Everyone’s anonymous. Everyone can feel comfortable. So no, I don’t check. I don’t even know if my own twin is on it.”
Paul considers this. “Shit. That’s hardcore.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat. “Yeah. I guess it is.”
The warning bell rings, and in comes Pepper. If I’m expecting any kind of reference to my handiwork on Friday, she makes it immediately clear I’m going to be disappointed. She lifts her hand and wiggles her fingers to wave at me, with a sly expression on her face. I know her well enough by now to properly dread whatever is on the other end of it.
But the rest of the day is eerily quiet. The only tweets that come out of the Big League Burger account are about a charity they partnered with and a stop-motion GIF of a hamburger doing a little dance. The only other notifications on my phone are from Bluebird, making some crack about the pattern of birds embroidered on Rucker’s pants today.
It’s a relief, having her back, just as much as it was a relief not to be talking to her.
I know at some point or another I’m going to have to come clean. We can’t exist in the bubble of Weazel forever. But for now — for now, it’s nice to have someone who isn’t tied up in the rest of the mess that is my life. Someone who isn’t either waiting for me to tweet or ready to jump the second I do. Someone who doesn’t think of me as Ethan’s brother before they think of me for me.
It’s different, in a way, now that someone knows. Maybe even more traitorous, now that I’ve told Paul and not the person I’ve been talking to on it for months now. It also takes away my coward’s way out — just triggering the app to reveal ourselves to each other, and never telling her I was the one who created the app. Now Paul knows. And the only thing bigger than Paul’s heart is his mouth.
Maybe it was meant to happen like this all along. Maybe there was no scenario where I didn’t get in trouble for it. Maybe this is just one of a slew of countless things I have managed to sabotage right from the get-go — only this time, I can’t even blame the Ethan-shaped chip on my shoulder. I did this all on my own.