I’m being ridiculous. I can easily walk. The city is a grid up here, numbers and columns and rows. Just because they’re not the rows and columns I’m used to walking on doesn’t make it mystifying.
My chest feels tight as I walk out, looking around like Jack is going to be standing there when I know nobody in their right mind would be. I pull out my phone in an effort to distract myself, remembering as I unlock the screen that Hub Seed’s tweets are probably up. I pull up their page, and sure enough, at the top of their feed is a tweet explaining the terms of the bet, and another tweet below it with a picture of Big League Burger’s grilled cheese styled on a plate, without any other context to explain whose it is.
I scroll down to the second picture, and all my anxiety is swiftly and brutally replaced with rage.
Because the photo that Hub Seed’s Twitter account ended up tweeting was decidedly not the one Jack sent me. The one Jack sent me fit the bilclass="underline" high resolution, well-lit, a respectable shot of what was, admittedly, a delicious-looking grilled cheese. Crisped to perfection, cheese spilling out of the edges, a sliver of apple jam gleaming from the sides—
Anyway. It was appropriate, for the terms of what we were agreeing to. What is markedly less appropriate is the image the Hub ended up tweeting instead, which features Grandma’s Special all right — Grandma’s Special, with Ethan holding it up on the plate and beaming into the camera with his best “Vote for Me for Student Council and I’ll Get Back Pizza Wednesdays” smile.
Naturally, the Twittersphere is in love.
I don’t even have to click to know the comments on it are already flooded with heart-eye emojis, but I do anyway, and sure enough—that grilled cheese looks delicious but that boy’s the REAL snack, reads one tweet. uh tell me he’s on the menu, reads another. I full-on cringe at the last one: WOW looks delicious … grilled cheese looks pretty good too.;)
It’s dirty on two counts: one is that everyone and their mailman will know that’s Girl Cheesing’s grilled cheese. Ethan’s whole look screams hometown boy. And another is that people are definitely not retweeting that picture for the sandwich’s sake.
They’re going to slaughter us. And my mom, in turn, is going to slaughter me.
I’m fuming by the time I walk out of the front doors, and sure enough, as if the universe materialized him there for me to funnel the rage straight into, there’s Jack. His back is turned to me, and he’s on his phone, hunched over, talking faster than usual. I lift an arm to tap him on the shoulder, imagining the way the air will puncture right out of him when he turns around and sees the look on my face, but I’m thrown off by the tone of his voice.
“—wasn’t what we agreed to. Mom and Dad said I was running the account; you had no right to get involved.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t care. You knew better. You knew that would break the terms of the whole agreement, and why? So you could get your stupid face tweeted out?”
All of the anger leaks out of me, leaving me on the sidewalk with my fists clenched and my body stiff and nowhere to put any of it.
“Yeah, I do care. Jesus. We’re better than this. And Mom and Dad clearly didn’t know what the rules of the agreement were, or they never would have sent that, which means you lied to them.”
I back up on the pavement, wishing I hadn’t just charged up to him. He obviously doesn’t want me hearing this.
“No, Ethan, it’s not about that. It’s about one more thing you just have to beat me at, you can’t even let me have—”
He turns, then, too quickly for me to anticipate it. Our eyes lock, and he looks so stricken to see me there that I want to look down, look at the street, look anywhere other than at the way he is trying and failing to wipe the hurt off his face.
“I gotta go.”
Jack
I hang up the phone, Ethan’s piss-poor excuses still ringing in my ear as I look up and see Pepper, standing there like a deer in headlights, looking like she wants to disappear.
No, worse. Looking like she feels sorry for me. Like the gears are turning in her head, and she’s trying to think of the right thing to say to make me feel better — the second twin. The lesser one. The one everyone only bothers to talk to when they’re trying to get to the other.
I was worried when I saw that stupid picture that she was going to be furious. That it would wreck this shaky friendship we had now, and the even shakier something else — that weird current between us on the bus when she ribbed me, or the way she almost seemed paralyzed in the moment after I said her full name.
It’s worse. Anger, I can handle. Pity, I really can’t. Especially not over this.
“Jack—”
“There’s a bus stop across the street. It’s another straight shot back to Stone Hall.”
Pepper takes a cautious step toward me. “Are you okay?”
I keep my eyes trained on the cement. “I’m sorry about the tweet.”
“It doesn’t sound like it was your fault,” she says, her voice low.
So she did hear everything. Of course.
“Your brother’s just being an ass.”
“Don’t,” I snap. “Don’t talk about my brother.”
I’m waiting for her to rile in that way she usually does, waiting for her to rise up to meet me. But she’s too steady, standing on the sidewalk with a mortifying kind of empathy.
“I have to go home.”
She nods. Tilts her head toward the bus stop across the street. “Just over there?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
She waits for a beat, like she thinks I’m going to say something else, but there’s nothing in me. I know it’s ridiculous to be this upset over a stupid picture, but it’s not a picture. It’s the tip of the goddamn iceberg. It’s every sport Ethan had to beat me at, every stupid project of ours he’d be so excited to start and leave me to finish, every afternoon he left me alone in the deli to live his stupid perfect Ethan life with his perfect Ethan friends and make me lie to our parents’ faces about the times he wasn’t doing any of that, and smoking stupid pot—
It’s like I’ve been watching the shadow of some moon cross over me my whole life, and now it’s just a full eclipse.
Pepper walks toward the intersection to get to the bus stop, and without consciously deciding to, I follow her.
She slows her pace down so we’re walking side by side, not saying anything, letting me brew in whatever this is. I don’t know how it’s possible to want to get the hell away from someone and actively follow them like they’re a magnet at the same time, but Pepper seems to take it in stride, glancing over at me every now and then as she comes to a stop in front of the bus stop.
“I’ll be fine to get back,” she says.
“You’re sure?”
She nods. “I’ll get you back your MetroCard on Monday.”
I rock on my heels, not quite leaving and not quite not leaving. We both spot the bus coming down the street, and it makes the decision for me.
“You’re super sure?” I ask, just in case.
“Yeah,” says Pepper. “And — thanks again.”
I don’t say anything, just watch her get on, watch the bus pull away and her with it. I suddenly feel like an asshole up here in Morningside Heights, in my spiffy school uniform, my hair still slicked back in the style my mom made me brush it into on my way out the door. The style that screamed Ethan so much, it couldn’t not feel like a total kick in the pants when I looked at the end result in the mirror.