Tweet Cute(83)

“Then why didn’t you delete it?”

“Because—because I thought we were done with Twitter. I thought we agreed. And then you came after my grandma.” I’m about to interrupt him and defend myself, but his eyes are red-rimmed and his face contorts into the kind of hurt that goes way beyond jabs on Twitter. “And she’s in the hospital right now, and I…”

Whatever I was going to say next is blown right out of me.

“So yeah, I didn’t delete Ethan’s little tweet, because I was mad, okay? And—and busy.”

The hallway has never felt more empty. Jack is somehow looking at me and not looking at me at the same time, alternating between apology and defiance and what I now understand must be complete and total exhaustion.

“Is she okay?”

Jack nods. “Yeah, she—they’re releasing her tonight.”

I wait to see if he’ll elaborate, but he doesn’t. And after everything that’s happened, I don’t think it’s my place to pry.

“I need you to know I didn’t post that tweet. My mom did.”

Jack swipes at his eyes and lets out a breathy noise that might have started its life as a laugh. “Well, shit.”

It’s not an apology, but the regret that so immediately sears across his face is more than enough of one.

“Yeah,” is the only thing I can think of to say. Because all my other questions—about Jack, about Weazel, about what on earth almost did or didn’t happen last night—dissolve all at once, drowned in a sea of something much bigger and more important than them.

Jack’s phone buzzes and lights up in his hand. “I gotta … that’ll be my mom. I gotta get back home.”

I nod. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

Jack nods back, and there’s something kind of tentative in it, but also kind of final. Like we walked out to the middle of a bridge together thinking we’d cross to some other side, even lingered in that middle spot over the depths below for a while, but ultimately turned right back around and headed to familiar ground.

My eyes are burning when I turn and head back to the bake sale. I’m not even sure what those familiar grounds used to look like, back when Jack and I were just classmates. When I didn’t know Jack’s half grin had infinite degrees that all held different feelings, when I didn’t know exactly what part of him was going to fidget before he even moved, when he called me Pepperoni and it didn’t unfurl something quiet in my chest.

It’s weird, how you have no idea how far you’ve come until suddenly you can’t find the way back.





Pepper


I don’t hear from Jack all night, but I do hear from plenty of other people. Pooja, checking in. Friends from my old junior high in Nashville. The Hub Seed reporter who wrote the article on me and Jack, asking for comment. My dad.

And then Paige.

“This has gone too far,” says Paige, before I even finish telling her what happened. “She’s out of her mind.”

“Okay,” I say, in a measured tone that I’m all too practiced in, “yes, it sucks, but it’s not like she could have seen this coming.”

“Bullshit. She should have known something was going to happen.”

The thing is that I agree with her. This part is squarely on Mom. But telling Paige about this even though I knew it would only make things worse is decidedly on me. Now, yet again, I’m backtracking, trying to undo the damage.

Too late.

“Why are you always defending her?” Paige snaps. For once, it seems like some of the anger is directed not just at her, but at me. “This is all her, you know. Twitter. Those stupid Stone Hall kids. If she hadn’t just uprooted you—”

“Paige, I came here by choice.”

Paige huffs. “You were fourteen. You were a little kid who didn’t know any better.”

My eyes squeeze shut, the words slicing in an unexpected way. Maybe because they’re true, but maybe because they’re not—maybe because even at fourteen, there was something in me that knew, deep under the frizzy hair and the acne and awkwardness, that I was supposed to be here. That New York was something I might never grow into, but would grow around me, making space where there wasn’t any before. That the future was going to be a big unknown either way, but I wanted to be with Mom when I faced it.

But in this moment, it doesn’t matter what I thought, not at fourteen and not right now—because the anger is suddenly so white-hot that I can’t stop myself from saying what I say next.

“But you did.” My voice is shaking. I don’t want to say it, but it feels like I’ve been pushed and pushed to an edge that I can’t lean over anymore, and it’s all just falling out. “You did know better, and you came out here anyway, and wrecked things with Mom when you could have just stayed and let it be.”

Paige doesn’t hesitate. She says it with a conviction so quiet and firm that I know there’s no way it isn’t true. “I came to New York because of you.”

The indignant breath I was sucking in stops in my throat, almost painful. It hovers there in the awful silence, as I scramble to make sense of something that makes too much sense all at once.

Some of that firmness is gone when Paige continues, like her voice is farther away than it was moments ago, farther even than the miles separating us. “I came because I thought you’d get eaten alive. And I thought—I thought maybe Mom would see how miserable we were and change her mind.”