Tweet Cute: A Novel

I assume I won’t get to see Pepper gloating about her handiwork until tomorrow morning, but when I walk out of the community center, there she is, leaning against the wall and oh-so-casually drinking from an enormous Big League Milkshake Mash. She turns her head so slowly to look at me that for a moment I am stricken with the weird unfamiliarity of being seen—no, not seen. Recognized. It’s rare enough someone knows I’m me and not Ethan without getting a good look at me. It’s straight up weird when someone can tell without fully turning around. The only person I know who can do that is Grandma Belly—my parents still mix us up so frequently that there’s about a 50 percent chance I am Ethan, and someone switched us along the way.

In any case, her swivel of a stare hits its mark with an impressive landing, her eyebrows raised just so and the straw still puckered between her lips. The effect of it is absurd enough that it pierces through my bubble of self-pity.

“Did you—did you sprint to the Big League Burger on Eighty-Eighth and come back, just so you could wait for me here with that?”

She answers by lifting her other hand, which has another massive milkshake in it. “Cookies and cream?”

I’m starving, but I have principles. “How’d you do it, Pepperoni?”

She takes a noisy slurp of her shake. “Do what?”

I walk over and lean on the wall next to her, kicking my foot onto the brick with the same faux-casual pose. “You know what.”

She presses the milkshake into my hand, and I take it on reflex. “Same way you did.”

“You took my phone.”

That wipes the smug look off her face. “So you did steal mine.”

“Uh—wait, what? No.”

Pepper narrows her eyes at me.

“For like, a second,” I concede.

I didn’t know it was possible for someone to angrily sip a milkshake, but then again, making the impossible possible is kind of Pepper’s MO. “What the hell, Campbell?”

It would be easier to take her seriously if there weren’t ice cream on her upper lip. My hand flinches just before I realize I’m lifting it like I’m going to wipe it away or something.

“That’s crossing a line. I wouldn’t go into your phone.”

If we’re talking about line-crossing, I could argue that she had me squarely beat on that the moment Big League Burger ripped off my grandmother. But she had nothing to do with that. I may not have fully believed her two weeks ago, but I do now.

“Sorry.”

She lifts her eyebrows in surprise, then sucks on the inside of her cheek and stares out at the traffic like she’s trying to decide whether or not to accept the apology. “Well, I get it. It’s hard keeping up with me. You clearly needed the break.”

I let out a huff of a laugh, my chest untightening. “Please. I’m tweeting circles around you.”

“Then why don’t we up the stakes?”

“What, you want this war to bleed into Instagram?”

Pepper snorts. “Please. I have no interest in embarrassing you that thoroughly.”

“Embarrassing me, huh?”

Somehow in this back-and-forth snark we’ve gravitated so close to each other that my shoulder is grazing hers. Her eyes flicker to it for a moment, but neither of us moves.

“My staged food pictures put Martha Stewart to shame.”

“Yeah? Well, people are too busy actually eating our food to ’gram it, so.”

She responds with another slow slurp of milkshake, not breaking eye contact.

“Okay, fine. How do we up the stakes?”

I hear the smirk in her voice before it fully curls on her face. “Sudden death. Retweet war. We both tweet pictures of our grilled cheeses at the same time, and whoever has more retweets by the end of the week wins.”

I’m dismissing this before she even finishes the sentence. “You have way more followers than we do.”

“And you have way more engagement per follower than we do,” says Pepper, with the bored air of someone who is anticipating this argument, of someone who has done their research and then some. “But I have a solution. We get a neutral third party involved.”

“Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t have an opinion on our grilled cheeses right now?”

“Unlikely. Which is why I think we should approach an outlet. Isn’t one of the cofounders of Hub Seed a Stone Hall alum?”

“You think you can get the Hub involved in this?”

Pepper shrugs. “They’ve already reached out to Taffy about writing an article on the Twitter spat between the brands. I’m guessing if your parents have checked the deli’s email lately, they’ve gotten one too.”

It’s a true testament to how deep we’ve sunk into this that I not only know who Taffy is, but that she and her dog have been popping into my “suggest following” so much on Twitter, I know which sparkly outfit she dressed Snuffles in yesterday.

“So … what? We ask them to tweet images of both of our grilled cheeses?”

She nods. But she’s dreaming. The Hub might be interested in our shenanigans for a quick one-off story, but they’ve got over five million followers on Twitter. That’s the kind of social media real estate you don’t waste on two teens in a grilled cheese fight.

“I’ll propose it to them over email. They’ll send a tweet explaining the stakes and tweet two pictures: yours and mine.” She pauses for a moment, raising her brows. “And to really make it fair—we’ll ask them not to say which grilled cheese is which.”

“Won’t it be obvious when yours looks like flash-frozen garbage someone stuck in the microwave?”

Pepper doesn’t bat an eye. “So, are you in or what?”

I slump back farther on the wall, making myself her height so our eyes are level. Up this close, I can see the faint spray of freckles on her nose that must be more visible in the summer.

“Depends. What happens if I win?”

As usual, Pepper is all too prepared with an answer. “Loser concedes to the other from their account. A humble tweet of acknowledgment, once the people have spoken.”

“You seem eerily confident for someone who’s about to go down.”

“So you’re game?”

I consider her for a moment, with her tangled, wet bangs fringing her face and her eyes so steady on mine, and suddenly I can’t resist.

“Let’s sweeten the deal.”

“What are you thinking?”

“If you lose, you have to jump off the high dive.”

I’m expecting Pepper to freeze, or at least have a reaction half as visceral as the last time I brought up that little incident in freshman year when she scrambled off the high dive so fast her butt might have been on fire. Instead, she doesn’t break eye contact with me for even a millisecond as she gives me a nonchalant shrug.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“But if you lose, you have to do that hundred-yard butterfly you skipped out on the other day.” She pauses. “And give back the dive team’s time in the lanes.”

The idea of losing with Grandma Belly’s grilled cheese on full display is so unfathomable I don’t even hesitate. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

This time, I’m the one who extends my hand out to shake. Pepper smirks, and when she takes it, she squeezes my fingers hard enough I’m half expecting them to be stuck together when she pulls away. Instead, there’s this strange tingle, like we’ve forged something, made a pact in this second with more weight to it than anything we could put on paper.

Then suddenly she’s laughing at me. I don’t even realize it’s because I’ve started drinking her stupid milkshake until something unfamiliar hits my tongue.

“This isn’t cookies and cream. You did something to this.”

Pepper takes another slurp of hers. “Salted caramel sauce,” she says.

I take another sip against my will, which has apparently disintegrated in the few seconds between the first sip and right now. Jesus, this is good. It feels like my taste buds just woke up from a long nap.

“That’s not even on the BLB menu,” I protest. I would know—I’ve been researching it with an absurd amount of dedication, to find things to mock on Twitter when the time is right.

The look she shoots me is patronizing. “I carry my own.”

“You what?”

She kicks herself off the wall and starts walking away.

“Get the picture sent to me by tomorrow night.”

“You can’t just casually tell someone you carry caramel sauce around and walk away like that’s a normal thing,” I call at her retreating back. “What other emergency dessert condiments do you have stashed in your bag?”

She deigns briefly to look over her shoulder at me. “Tomorrow night!”

I’m shaking my head and laughing as I head down the street in the opposite direction, still feeling the ghost of the smirk she aimed in my direction like it’s something I’ve accidentally carried with me. It’s not until the 6 train finally rolls up to collect me a few minutes later that I realize I’ve not only forgotten to restore the Girl Cheesing Twitter account back from its newly hacked glory, but that somehow my stomach has committed a crime against nature and managed to devour an entire sixteen-ounce Big League Milkshake Mash, possibly without even pausing to breathe.

I toss it into a trash can with a sigh. Twitter, I can deal with. Pepper, on the other hand, has a way of sneaking up on me I’m not so sure about.

I pull out my phone again, stricken with this not entirely unwelcome urge to text her, to keep the banter volleying back and forth in that easy rhythm it always does. But I have to remind myself that Pepper is still the enemy, insanely flavored milkshakes and memorable smirks and lingering handshakes aside.

And I’ve got a Twitter war to win.