Tweet Cute

by Emma Lord

I bite down the smile on my face. “No, it’s—a friend of mine.” Well, kind of. I don’t actually know his real name. But Mom doesn’t need to know that.

Intrigue!!

But if you talk with anyone one-on-one on the app, at some point—you never know when—the app reveals your identities to each other. Boom. Secrecy out the window.

It’s probably why I rib her, in particular, more than the other Goody Two-shoes in our class—the nicknames, the teasing, the occasional foot-tapping on the back of her chair. Because I miss that strange, undivided attention. Because I know she wasn’t always like this. Once, she was every bit as out of place here as I feel every day.

Luckily, the coolness is genetic. Unluckily, Ethan stole it all in utero and left me out to dry.

I find out approximately two seconds later that it is very difficult to commit to a heated storm out of a bakery with a giant baguette in your hand.

For a second our faces are alarmingly close, close enough that she gasps and I forget to breathe altogether, and then wham—our foreheads smack right into each other’s. “Um, ow.” “Jesus.” And then, at the same time: “Are you okay?”

Physical comedy

“Just imagine whatever weird dessert you’re going to make based on this experience,” he says. “High Dive Cream Pie.” “Acrophobia Apple Crisp.”

Add chocolate chips, butter, flour, salt, cocoa powder, eggs, and more embarrassment than the body of a teenage girl can possibly contain, set the oven to a bajillion degrees, and set the whole damn thing on fire.

How to Suck at Confessing to the Girl You Like that You’ve Secretly Been Messaging Her on a Platform You Created, Then Convince Her It’s Not as Shady as It Sounds: a terrible novel, written by me.

Approximately eighteen hours after my kiss with Jack Campbell—my kiss with Jack Campbell—I am sitting at a card table with Pooja in the front entrance of the school behind our veritable army of baked goods, overanalyzing the situation to such an absurd degree, it is now less of a kiss and more of an FBI investigation.

I’m really raking in the superlatives. It kicked off with Worst Pseudo Pen Pal on the Planet, veered sharply into Worst Best Friend in the Galaxy, and now, to top it all off, Worst Son/Grandson in the Known Universe and Every Infinite Reality Hereafter.

There isn’t one corner of my life I haven’t actively sabotaged, and I’m so far past rock bottom, I’m basically in the earth’s molten core.