The rivalry just kind of grew organically from there. I never forgot what she did, and I certainly didn’t forgive. Every time we’ve come head-to-head since, in class or in swim team or any other school-related thing in between, I’ve held the embarrassment of that with me like a constant throbbing reminder that this isn’t Nashville. That this is a whole new species of human, and its food chain goes so perilously high that there’s always someone at your feet waiting to pull you down.

But this—this doesn’t add up. Pooja being Bunny, the user on Weazel who’s been reserving library times and hosting coffee shop meetups for all the toughest AP classes. Because if Pooja is Bunny, that means she’s been pulling people up that food chain right along with her.

Finally I shake my head. “I guess I thought…”

The sentence hangs there uncomfortably, because we both know what I thought. Pooja shifts her backpack on her shoulders, looking at her shoes before looking back up at me.

“You should come, you know.” The words are hesitant, like she means them but isn’t sure how I’ll take them. “I mean—not that you need it. But I’m sure it would help some of the others.”

I’m so stunned by the offer that I forget I’m supposed to answer.

“Anyway, my brother’s waiting for me out front, so…” She waves awkwardly. “Thanks again.”

“Yeah.”

And then she’s off—Pooja, Bunny, or whoever she really is—leaving me torn with a new kind of uncertainty in her wake.

Pepper

Once Pooja clears the lobby, my phone pings in my pocket, pulling me out of my confusion and right back into the Twitter maelstrom. I pull out my phone, already bracing myself for the notifications, swiping through them one by one—

And realize there aren’t any from Wolf. That there weren’t any yesterday around this time either. That for the first time in our correspondence, neither of us has said anything between the hours of three and five, which is our usual peak time for bitching about whatever assignments we got earlier in the day.

Okay. I’m not stupid enough to think that Landon is Wolf just because he happens to not be texting on Weazel during the same times as swim and dive practice. By that merit, any member of the swim team, the dive team, the basketball team, the golf team, or the indoor track and soccer teams could be him too. If anything, this has only widened the ridiculously large pool of people he could be.

But it’s just one more thing in a list of already uncanny things that makes me think that maybe, just maybe, it is him after all. That fourteen-year-old Pepper’s crush was fast, but maybe not baseless. That maybe there really was something then, the way there certainly seems to be something with Wolf now.

Another ping comes in, this time from Taffy. U out of practice yet?

I sigh, shaking myself out of my head, and start walking to the bakery where Jack proposed we meet, while attempting to diffuse the Twitter situation on the way. I call Taffy first, an idea forming in my head as I walk down the street, the thousands of cat emojis still swimming in my vision.

“Is anyone from the design team in today?”

Taffy’s voice is approximately an octave higher than usual. “Yeah, Carmen’s here.”

“Okay. Get her to find, like, a stock photo of a cat.”

“Any cat?”

“A cute one, I guess. Yeah, any cat.”

My life gets more ridiculous by the second.

I wait for the light to change at Eighty-Ninth Street as she writes it down on one of the unicorn-shaped Post-it pads she keeps at her desk. We’re so in sync by now, I can sense the exact moment she lifts the pencil from the paper through the phone.

“Then do one of those, like, really corny photoshop jobs so it’s holding a Big League Burger grilled cheese. Like so bad that it’s funny.”

“Got it, got it…”

“Then have her do an animation of sunglasses dropping down on it.”

“I know that one!” says Taffy excitedly, as if she was not hired for the exact purpose of knowing about memes on the internet.

“Okay, those sunglasses. But no text,” I instruct her, feeling like a schoolteacher. “Just the sunglasses dropping down.”

There’s murmuring on the other end. “She’ll have it ready in a half hour.” The murmuring becomes decidedly more distinct, then, and I hear what can only be my mom cutting in, the low, authoritative tone of her voice unmistakable. “… She’ll have it ready in less than five,” Taffy amends.

I’m outside of the bakery, then, and see Jack has already found a table and is quite literally taking a baguette to the face. He looks like the picture of contentment, his hair still damp from the pool and curling at the edges, ripping off the end of the baguette with his teeth in that unselfconscious hungry teenage boy way. I stop for a moment just to watch him, feeling strangely charmed by the whole thing.

He spots me the moment the door opens, waving so I know where he is. I hold up a finger and stand in line to get a cup of tea. At the last moment I peer down at the counter and ask for one of the massive apple pastries, the ones I’ve passed in this window countless times but always have been too busy to stop and get by myself.

My phone hums in my hand. The GIF of the cat is in, just the way I asked for it. I save it to my drive and pull up the corporate Twitter, hating myself for it but also wanting to get it over with as soon as I possibly can.