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my dreams of people appreciating tropical baked goods.
    Noted .
    I stood up slowly, staring at Emilia as she grabbed a roll of paper towels and handed them to me with a smirk. Before I could think of a suitably witty remark, she was gone.
    “So, uh,” Adam said sheepishly. “Like I said, I’m not sure sweeties is the word I’d have used to describe your team.”
    “Apparently not,” I quipped, wiping his desk clean with an apologetic smile.
    “Good luck.”
    “Thanks,” I said, wondering if I’d need it. The truth was, I had never worked with girls, and I certainly had my work cut out for me. Even so, I knew that I’d get a handle on the situation sooner or later. The team I could deal with.
    What I wasn’t sure about, however, was how to handle the one-woman army that my sweet little stepsister had become.
    Leaving Adam’s office, I headed straight for the gym and called for my team the same way Emilia had called for hers. After a couple of minutes, no one had come along, so I called again.
    Nothing.
    Sighing, I turned to walk down the long, winding corridors in search of my sweeties .
    After trying a few doors, I found most of them loitering in the so-called computer lab, which seemed like a generous name for a room with little more than three bulky PCs and a couple ancient dot matrix printers, complete with stacks of paper that had holes lining the sides. A few girls huddled together in the corner, reading a magazine, while the rest were crowded around one of the computers.
    “Hey Coach,” Shauna greeted me again, this time with markedly less sarcasm in her voice. Her smile seemed sincere, though she was the only one in the room to acknowledge my presence.
    “What is everyone doing?” I asked, and a wave of giggles echoed through the room.
    Oh boy .
    One of the older girls in the corner, who looked to be perhaps in her early twenties, rolled her eyes and snorted.
    “They’re all drooling over JBJB’s Twitter account, clucking about what he did, who he did it with, and where they did it,” she said, stretching back across an old couch, her feet propped on the coffee table. “Like anyone still cares,” she muttered with another eye roll.
    “No we’re not, Jessa! Whatever,” one of the younger girls at the computer spat back, her eyes never leaving the screen.
    “Huh. Isn’t he British, too? Something like that?” I asked, feigning ignorance. The truth was, I knew full well that the latest hip-hop lothario heartthrob was English.
    From Hackney, actually.
    I’d met him a few times.
    We partied in the same circles. He seemed nice enough, surprisingly grounded despite his success. He certainly had his act together better than I ever did at his age. We weren’t exactly close friends, but that had never stopped us from the occasional pub crawl together.
    “Ohmygosh, he is! Do you know him?” one of the girls squealed excitedly, and I knew my time had come.
    “Actually, yeah. He’s quite fun to hang out with,” I said, biting my lip as I confirmed to them a ‘fact’ that many Americans seemed to be born knowing.
    All Europeans know each other .
    I wasn’t exactly proud of myself, and the moment of silence that followed felt downright awkward as every face turned straight towards me. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane, and I had just enough time to second-guess myself before pandemonium erupted.
    Screams, questions, total chaos. Jessa launched to her feet and beelined straight towards me, apparently deciding that maybe JBJB wasn’t so played-out after all. I nodded and smiled, doing my best to keep up with the tide of shouting that followed.
    I needed to remember that this was war. If Emilia could fight dirty, so could I.
    Once the din had calmed enough that they could hear me, I answered in quick succession. Yes, I knew him. Yes, he was a sweetheart. Yes, his music was indeed quite innovative. No, I had no idea if anything the tabloids claimed about his secret marriage were true.