“More like Waving the White Flag Macaroons. Also Sorry I Got You Banned From Baking Macaroons.”

I take one. “Well, you did win.”

“Unfairly.” He scratches the back of his neck. “So, listen—you don’t have to … send a tweet acknowledging it. I mean, we already won. No point in rubbing anyone’s face in it.”

I take a bite of the macaroon, studying him carefully. It’s good. And I am a person with extremely high baking standards. It’s just the right amount of crunch, balanced with just enough gooeyness, courtesy of the chocolate and the caramel and a whole host of other flavors I’m still trying to identify.

“Are you sure?”

Jack shrugs. “I supposedly call the shots on our account, so yeah, I’m sure.”

He’s not finished, though. I pause mid-chew, waiting for whatever is about to bloom on his face to take shape. Sure enough, he’s smirking into his desk before he finally looks up and aims it at me in full force.

“But if you think I’m letting you off the hook about the high dive…”

I swallow, hard.

He raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, that old thing?” I say, dusting a few crumbs off of my skirt.

“Yeah.” His eyes are suddenly focused on mine. I can’t look away. “Don’t tell me you’re still scared.”

I lean in close to his desk, propping my palms on it. “Jack, last night I went on the Tumblr tags for Big League Burger and Girl Cheesing. If that didn’t scare the ever-loving crap out of me, nothing will.”

Jack blanches. “We’re on Tumblr tags?”

I lower my voice. “I’ve seen things I can never unsee.”

“God, I wish this were not my legacy.”

I doubt he really means that, though. While I got a few weird looks in the hall and during study group and a ton of jokes from Pooja about the shipping, our classmates are weirdly into Jack being the underdog of Twitter. Yesterday at practice, a group of freshmen on the swim team practically cornered him in the pool, asking for his “real life” Twitter handle. I nearly choked on chlorinated water when he had to confess that, despite our shenanigans, neither of us has one.

I pop another bite of macaroon into my mouth. “This is actually delicious.”

“Why the surprise?” And then, before I can answer: “You know, you’ve never tried any of our stuff.”

“Pretty sure I would burst into flames if I tried to walk through the door at this point. Especially now that my face is plastered on those tweets, and I’ve basically become public enemy number one.”

The smile drops on Jack’s face so fast, I almost turn around, wondering if something happened behind me.

“Nobody’s actually bothering you about that, are they?”

“What? No.” The article, at least, didn’t use our last names, and didn’t mention I’m related to my mom. Taffy didn’t throw me under the bus so much as she lovingly, with the best of intentions, nudged me under one. “I’m so far off the grid even Jasmine Yang couldn’t fully blow up my spot. Nobody could find me if they wanted to.”

Jack relaxes, marginally. I can still see his foot tapping under the desk. “Yeah, well. Be careful, I guess.”

“You too. You have quite the fan club now.”

Jack shakes his head. “I’m a flash in the pan.”

“In the grilled cheese pan, maybe. In real life…”

Jack’s cheeks redden. There’s a beat where I think maybe I’ve gone too far, or that my face has given away something my words didn’t quite mean to. But then he punctures the moment, pointing a finger at me.

“If you think you can sweet talk your way out of the high dive, think again. You’re in for a reckoning, Pepperoni. Five o’clock. Bleachers.”

I roll my eyes. “We’ll see.”

Pepper

But that is exactly where I am at the precise time, at the precise place, all of the bravado from this morning leaked out of me like a balloon.

I haven’t thought about the high dive since freshman year. It’s a symptom of a larger problem, maybe: if I’m not immediately good at something, I drop it. As a kid I took piano classes for a month, ballet classes for a year, even soccer for one ill-fated practice that ended with me hauling ass across the field and leaping into my dad’s arms when the ball came within five feet of me. I’m a perfectionist, through and through, and even at five, I had no interest in embarrassing myself.

Swimming is something I’m good at, something I don’t even remember having to learn. It’s probably why I stuck with it so long, even when there were other, more impressive things I could have put on my resume. But diving …

I didn’t have to try it to know I was terrible at it. There is nothing intuitive about leaping that high up from the ground, in twisting your body into ridiculous shapes, in praying you time it down to the split second so you end up slipping into the water instead of face-planting into it. And having a front-row seat to the dive team’s practice sessions means I have seen plenty of face-planting in my day.

Jack is waiting at the top of the high dive, grinning down at me.

“How’s the weather down there, Pep?” he asks, shifting his weight on the board so it creaks up and down and up and down. Just watching him is enough to make me nauseous.