Tweet Cute(82)

What I can’t live with is the fact the nightmare has come true: Wolf knows who I am and is obviously disappointed. And the hurt is twice as big knowing Jack is disappointed too.

It casts a shadow of doubt on everything. I was the one who kissed him. I was the one who pushed for us to meet.

It made everything weird. I hated it. I wished I just hadn’t known.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Pooja is looking at me like a ghost has approached her. I open my mouth—Jack is Wolf!—but that doesn’t make any sense, not to anyone, because I kept it so close to my heart that I never breathed a word of it. So instead, what comes out is an ill-timed, too-loud blurt: “Jack is the one who made the Weazel app.”

Pooja’s jaw drops, and the blood seems to leave her face. While I expect a reaction, I’m not expecting a reaction that drastic—but Pooja isn’t looking at me. She’s looking behind me.

“Miss Evans, can I see you in my office?”

Shit.





Pepper


In the end, Rucker can’t really do anything to us—the only proof he has that anyone did anything was me blurting it in a hallway with only Pooja as a witness, and Pooja was smart enough to grab another swimmer to put in charge of the booth and book it out of there the moment after Rucker called me in and sent one of the teacher’s assistants to go find Jack.

It’s fruitless. But I insist over and over, until all three of our ears are bleeding, that I was only kidding about Jack making Weazel.

“That doesn’t seem like a joke, young lady,” says Rucker, narrowing his eyes at me.

“It’s, uh … it’s part of the Twitter thing. I’m sure you’ve seen the article on the Hub about us?” I’m desperate. Grasping at straws. “We started, uh, pranking each other in real life too.”

“Spreading allegations like this doesn’t really seem like a prank.”

Jack isn’t even bothering to jump in. He was indignant when they first brought him in, insisting he had nothing to do with it, but then his eyes swept up and met mine, and the fight drained out of them. Rucker told him what I said in the hallway, and he hasn’t so much as looked at me since.

I don’t know what else to do to save him, if he’s not willing to save himself. So I play the only card that has a prayer of working. “I mean, it’s Jack. He’s not the brightest bulb. You really think he’s capable of making an app like that?”

Jack winces. I don’t move a muscle, determined not to break eye contact with Rucker.

They’ve already searched our phones. They didn’t find Weazel on either of them—someone posted an app in the Hallway Chat to hide app icons weeks ago. The only way they’ll find it is if another student rats us out and shows them how, and nobody can do that without incriminating themselves.

“I’m calling both of your parents—”

“Wait—could you…” Jack blows out a breath. “It’s not a great time.”

Rucker tilts his chin down in a way that would probably seem more effectively condescending if he weren’t wearing pants with palm trees embroidered on them. “My apologies, Mr. Campbell,” he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “When would be a more convenient time for you?”

He dismisses us, then, and we both walk out without looking at each other. I hover outside the office door, straddling an awkward line between guilt and rage.

“I didn’t mean to rat you out,” I finally say, so someone will break the silence. It’s not an apology, but I can’t find it in me to give him one.

Jack’s lips thin. “How long have you known, then?”

“I didn’t. At least not until a few minutes ago.” The anger makes me bolder than it should. For the first time in months, I finally say the name out loud, the same name that takes up so much space in my brain it seems ridiculous I’ve never actually uttered it: “Wolf.”

For once, Jack is utterly still, standing like a scarecrow.

“So,” he says.

I’ll say it if he won’t. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t mean to,” says Jack. “I mean, I rigged the whole thing so I wouldn’t know who you were. I didn’t want to know—”

“You’ve made that pretty clear.”

“I get that you’re mad, but—”

“And then you let me go to the park that day and make an ass of myself in front of Landon. And to top it all off, apparently you took a picture of me looking like a drunk hurling into a Big League Burger bag and posted it on the internet?”

I’m waiting for his face to shift into confusion, waiting for him to ask what I’m talking about. Waiting for that familiar tic where he scratches the back of his neck or moves like he doesn’t know whether to step forward or back.

Instead, Jack closes his eyes. “I can explain that.”

My voice is shaking. “Then explain it.”

“First of all, Ethan posted it.”

“I’m not an idiot. The angle that photo was taken from—it could only have been you. So how did Ethan get it?”

“The same way he always does,” says Jack. “He opened my phone with Face ID. He must have found the picture and tweeted it himself.”