Tweet Cute(66)

Maybe even me and Bluebird.

Wolf

Yeah. But first—

Wolf

Emergency Cupcake Locator

It takes her a full minute to answer. I spend the first bit wondering if I’ve freaked her out, if the gesture wasn’t funny or it was too personal or if this is going to put a weird pressure on something that, in some ways, hasn’t even started yet.

But then, somehow, my thoughts slide right back to Pepper. I bet Landon doesn’t even end up at the group thing. He’ll say he is, maybe, and then oh-so-conveniently text her the wrong place for the meetup. Or maybe he’ll wait until afterward—“Hey, want to grab some ice cream?”—and maybe Pepper will even take him to a Big League Burger, just to be funny about it, and pull out whatever ridiculous emergency dessert condiment she happens to have in her bag, and Landon will laugh and tell her it’s cute, and her cheeks will get all red under her freckles and— Bluebird

Oh my god. YOU DIDN’T.

Bluebird

YOU MADE A CUPCAKE VERSION?!?!

I finally let myself smile, easing into the couch cushions and tilting my phone away from Ethan, who is raising his eyebrows at me. It took the better part of all my free time this week, but I used the same map formatting I based the mac-and-cheese locator app on for a new one, one that lit up 450 different places selling cupcakes in Manhattan.

Wolf

Well, mac and cheese and cupcakes ARE the two most essential food groups Bluebird

I might actually be crying?????

Wolf

Your dentist will be, that’s for sure Wolf

Anyway, glad to know you weren’t kidding about that cupcake obsession Bluebird

Not at all. You don’t even know how on brand this is for me Bluebird

Okay, so you showed me your big secret project. But I held out on you Wolf

Well now you’re obligated to unhold out. What’s yours?

Bluebird

It’s super dorky so you have to brace yourself Wolf

Consider me braced

Bluebird

ppbake.com

Bluebird

It’s a blog. For baking

Bluebird

It’s live and all, my sister and I run it together, but it’s anonymous Bluebird

And the stuff we make has ridiculous names because we basically bake like we’re five, so I tap the link, and it opens up a bright, cheery, robin’s-egg blue web page. P&P Bake, it’s called. It’s clearly one of those WordPress blogs converted into a website, but that doesn’t make it any less captivating—the pictures on the posts are so vivid, I can practically taste them through the screen.

I scroll down, glancing at the dessert names, lingering on the pictures. The most recent is Tailgate Trash Twinkies, which are apparently a homemade cake roll infused with PBR; I scroll down and see A-Plus Angel Cake, and Butter Luck Next Time Butter Cookies, and then— And then, on Halloween, there’s an entry for Monster Cake.

My breath stops before it can leave my chest, my entire body stiffening on the couch like a corpse. There’s no mistaking it. I may have a bad habit of eating Pepper’s baked goods so fast, it threatens the time-space continuum, but the bright colors and gooey mess of that cake are so distinct in my mind and in my taste buds, I could see it in another life and immediately identify it.

Yet my brain still refuses to process it, and I’m still scrolling as if I’ll blink and it will disappear, a vivid, sleep-deprived teenage hallucination.

But the further I scroll the worse it gets. The So Sorry Blondies. The Pop Quiz Cake Pops she and Pooja were eating the other day. A few things I’ve never heard of before, with irreverent, silly names, some of which must be Paige’s, but others that are so distinctly Pepper it stings to read.

I drop my phone.

“What?” asks Ethan, barely looking up from his screen.

Pepper is Bluebird. Bluebird is Pepper.

I can’t decide what to think, what to feel, but my body seems to decide it for me, my heart beating all over my body and my chest suddenly so full of air, I’m not sure whether to use it to breathe or yell “PEPPER IS BLUEBIRD!” at the top of my apparently very melodramatic lungs.

“Is it Pepper again?”

If there was any blood left in my body, I’m sure it would drain from my face. “What?”

“Did she tweet something?”

Right. Twitter. My head must make some kind of involuntary nod.

“So much for her being done,” says Ethan, rolling his eyes.

My mom walks in from Grandma Belly’s room, holding a mug full of tea. “Pepper? Isn’t that the name of the girl you were hanging out with the other day?”

The other day feels like a year ago. I try to think back on the last few weeks, the last few months, of talking to Bluebird and talking to Pepper, scrambling to untangle them in my head. What have I told Bluebird? What have I told Pepper?

“Yeah, that one,” Ethan confirms.

And more important, what is Pepper going to think? How many things did she say to me on the app that she wouldn’t want Jack Campbell, Twitter adversary and senior class disappointment, to know?

My mom beams. “And she saw that write-up of you on Hub Seed and asked you out, hmm?”

By some short-lived miracle, I finally find my voice. “Not exactly—”

“Pepper’s the one tweeting from the Big League Burger account,” says Ethan.