And maybe it was funny. I’d spent my whole life in constant fear of rocking the boat, of making anybody angry. Jack had probably forgotten the Pepper People-Pleaser moniker he’d briefly given me sophomore year, but it applied then and certainly had up until now.
But nothing terrible happened. The earth didn’t pull out from under my feet.
I didn’t feel good, exactly, but I didn’t feel bad either.
And it was in this weirdly grounded mindset that Jack texted me out of the blue, and I found myself being more forthright with him than I ever would have been even a few weeks ago. It was in that same mindset that, not too long after, Wolf chatted me on the Weazel app and asked if we should finally meet.
It seemed stupid not to say yes. Especially since I would be out with Landon and the other seniors anyway. Now, hopefully, we could do it with all the air cleared between us. It would be different, then — Landon would snap back into the self he is with me, the self he is when everybody isn’t watching, and it would all make sense. I had to believe that.
So I said yes.
And it’s all I’ve thought about since — through the frosty breakfast with my mom the next morning, when we barely spoke to each other even though she was on her way out the door for a business trip; through my study date with Pooja, where we split a sandwich and a salad at Panera; through the phone call I had with my dad that night, when he near bored me to tears recounting something Carrie Underwood’s husband did in a hockey game.
All I’ve thought about until suddenly there was a much, much larger thing to think about in my immediate line of sight: the article that Hub Seed published about us.
And I mean us. Not us as in Girl Cheesing and Big League Burger — us as in me and Jack.
Pepper
It happens the moment homeroom lets out on Monday. Jack and I link eyes and open our mouths like we’re poised to rib each other like we normally do, but there’s nothing really to say — we’ve both stayed off each other’s respective Twitter feeds since our run-in on Saturday. Instead, we blow out the same breath and smile sheepishly at each other.
“So,” he says, walking up and drumming his knuckles on my desk.
I expect him to brag about the fact Ethan and his grilled cheese have racked up at least five thousand more retweets than we have, but somehow I know from the shape of the half grin that he isn’t.
“So,” I say back.
He huffs out a laugh. “Well — now that this is all winding down — we should probably … I don’t know. Actually do our captaining duties?”
I finish shoving my books into my bag. “Oh, those?”
“Let me guess. You already did everything and then some.”
“No, no.” Truth is, outside of talking to Jack and going to actual practice, I’ve barely had the time to do anything. “I wanted to save all the dirty work for you.”
“Well, in that case, we should probably figure out what we’re doing for fundraising. Since the bajillion dollars they bleed out of us for tuition isn’t enough.”
This time his tone isn’t bitter, but knowing — an acknowledgment that I get it. That I come from a background like his, even if I’m well displaced from it now. Like at the end of all of these shenanigans, we’ve finally landed on common ground.
“Actually … I was thinking maybe a bake sale.”
Jack’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “How old school of you.”
I shrug. “Between your deli and my baking prowess, we might actually make it, y’know, not suck.”
Jack considers this. “Huh. That isn’t a terrible idea.”
“I have a good one every now and then.”
“You should actually come to the deli.”
He made the offer last night, but only in person can I tell he’s actually serious about it.
“You guys are in the East Village, right?”
I must sound nervous because Jack pats me on the back. “It’s a straight shot down on the 6 train.”
“Right.”
“It’ll be good for you, Pepperoni. See some more of what this great big city has to offer.”
The idea of it somewhat terrifies me. It’s all well and good to say straight shot on the 6 train, but it’s so much more complicated than that. There’s wrangling a MetroCard, and making sure you don’t get on the wrong train, and making sure you get on one going in the right direction, and I’ve heard sometimes they just decide to go express, and if you’re not paying attention, you can end up in the middle of Brooklyn, and then what on earth happens to you?
“We can smuggle you in if you want,” says Jack. “I think I have a wig leftover from when Ethan was the Joker for Halloween.”
I’m being ridiculous. The subway isn’t going to swallow me whole. I’ll be eighteen in a few months, and in this city for at least seven more — I can’t be totally helpless forever.
“What day do you think we should—”
“Did you see this?”
It’s Paul and Pooja, blurting the exact same words at the same time on either side of us. They pause and look up at each other in alarm like they just ripped a hole through the matrix, and then they’re shoving phone screens into our faces, without any caution for Mrs. Fairchild five feet away on the other side of the door.
I take Pooja’s phone from her. I’d recognize the Hub Seed logo anywhere — what I’m having trouble processing is the picture of my face on it.
“Oh my god.”
Twitter’s Most Iconic Brand War To Date Is Being Spearheaded — Fittingly — By The Teens
“The teens?” Jack is muttering next to me. “I didn’t realize we spoke for all of Gen Z, but okay.”
“How did they get my picture?”
“Your mom?”
“Oh, hell no.”
It had to have been Taffy. My mom would never have sanctioned this. Hell, I wouldn’t have sanctioned this. And yet there I am — identified as “Patricia,” dear God — in my yearbook photo from junior year with the massive zit on my chin, and there’s Jack, cropped badly out of a shot of the dive team from last season.
If you’re a breathing human with a Twitter account, there’s no way you’ve missed #BigCheese, this month’s epic battle between fast-food chain Big League Burger and their unexpected adversary, a locally beloved deli by the name of Girl Cheesing.
Their respective tweeting has hit an internet already accustomed to the snarky, audience-targeted kind of tweeting we’ve seen from plenty of brand accounts in the past few years, from Wendy’s to Moon Pie to Netflix.
Those accounts may have just laid the groundwork for the kind of war that BLB and GC are waging — a war that has earned a small-time deli a whopping half a million followers and counting, and launched more hashtags than there are things on their menus. But the most surprising thing about this year’s #GrilledCheeseGate?
It isn’t being run by social media managers. This is a war waged by teens.
Embedded in the article is another video of Jasmine Yang, who seems to have done most of the sleuthing before the Hub Seed reporter wrote about us. Apparently a new vlog of hers went live late last night, and the amount of stalkery involved in it puts any research I’ve ever done for the debate club to shame. It introduces Jack first, with a smattering of information from his Facebook account and Ethan’s. Her bit about me is much shorter, but anyone who knows me would recognize me on sight — in addition to the yearbook picture, there’s an old one of me, Paige, my mom, and my dad, posing in front of the first Big League Burger in Nashville, some ten years ago. All four of us are holding burgers. Paige is beaming from behind a pair of braces, and my hair is pulled into astronomically high pigtails.