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Ethan cuts in before she can.

“If you give her even a bite of our grilled cheese, we’re all disowning you,” he announces from the register, with a salute at Pepper to let her know he’s mostly kidding.

Pepper salutes right back. “I’ll stick to the baked goods.”

“So this is the famous Pepper,” says my mom, leaning in as if to inspect her.

There’s a beat when Pepper freezes—our coloring and the messy hair is so similar on us there’s no mistaking my mom is, well, my mom. She cuts a glance at me and then back at my mom, and only then does it occur to me she’s worried we might also be holding a Pepper’s mom–sized grudge.

My mom softens her eyebrow, makes her voice low and conspiratorial. “So you’re the one I should send the bills to when I have to send my kid to Twitter therapy?”

Pepper eases up, letting out a breath. “He can just push them through the slits of my locker.”

“Hah!” My mom gives Pepper that look she gets when she’s decided she’s sized someone up and is satisfied with what she sees. I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath too until I’m slouching in relief. “Can do.”

Then she reaches out and nudges me on the shoulder. “Ovens two and four are cleared for teenage shenanigans. Try not to burn the place down, hmm?”

“Are these the Kitchen Sink Macaroons?” Pepper asks, her eyes wide on the display case.

“They sure are,” says my mom, her hands on her hips. “A Campbell classic, according to your father. I whipped up a batch this morning myself.”

I grab tissue paper and pluck one from the display, handing it to Pepper.

“What—are you sure—”

“He owns the place, he’s sure,” says my mom wryly.

I stiffen at the words, but then Pepper takes a hearty bite of it and closes her eyes. “Oh my god. Are there pretzel bits in this?”

“And you and that no-good brother of yours told me I was pushing my luck, adding those in last week,” says my mom, pointing a finger at me.

“Okay, okay, but to be fair, that was right on the heels of the licorice experimentation, and I didn’t want to scar any more customers for life.”

Pepper takes another bite. “This version might actually be better than Monster Cake.”

“Whoa. Don’t get too carried away,” I say, wondering when the tables turned so drastically on us that I’m defending her own food to her.

“Monster Cake?” asks my mom, intrigued.

“We’ll have some ready in an hour,” says Pepper. “It’s an atrocity.”

“A delicious one,” I add.

Pepper beams like I’ve just handed her on Oscar. Then she hikes her backpack off her shoulder, revealing enough junk food and various dessert sauces that it could put Cookie Monster into a coma just by looking at it.

“Well,” I say, “it looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.”

“Let the ridiculous dessert mash-up games begin.”





Jack


An hour and a half later, we are the proud parents of two massive sheets of Monster Cake, some impressive concoction called Unicorn Ice Cream Bread, three dozen Kitchen Sink Macaroons, peanut-butter-and-jelly cupcakes, a three-layer Paige creation dubbed Sex-Positive Brownies (“Slutty Brownies,” Pepper explained, “but Paige took a course on feminism and sex work, so.”), an ungodly amount of banana pudding, and a bunch of misshapen cake balls we rolled around in melted chocolate and stuck in the fridge.

My mom comes in at some point, lured by the smell. She tries a sliver of the Monster Cake, groans, and says, “Don’t look me in the eye,” as she immediately cuts off a second slice.

“We actually need that for school,” I remind her, as Pepper blushes furiously next to me, looking pleased with herself.

My mom holds up a finger. “Hush. I’m having a moment over here.” Pepper snorts as my mom finishes having said moment, and then turns to Pepper, her fingers still sticky with cake, and says, “You are welcome to this kitchen any day of the week for the rest of your damn life.” Before Pepper can respond, she turns to me and says, “But if you don’t clean up this disaster, yours, my dear, is over.”

By the time we finish scrubbing all the pots and pans, Pepper’s cheek is dusted with flour, and a strand of her hair has come loose and somehow ended up streaked with melted chocolate. I reach up without thinking and run my fingers through it, trying to get it out. Her eyes dart over to mine, but not in alarm—in this hopeful, surprised kind of way that suddenly gives meaning to something I thought in the moment was meaningless, that makes me second-guess myself.

“Chocolate,” I say dumbly, pulling my hand away to show her.

She rolls her eyes at herself. “Typical.”

I shift my weight onto the foot that’s farther from her. “We could, uh—chill at our place, while we’re waiting for everything to cool down?” I point upward. “We live right upstairs, if you want to stay for dinner.”

“Are you sure?”

I sweep my hand over to the other side of the kitchen, which is stacked to the gills with meats, cheeses, breads, and every weird sandwich accoutrement known to humankind. “If you can dream it, you can make it.”

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