Abby chews on her lip. She’s probably thinking the same thing I am, that this is a trick. People want us to start giving out demerits or worse—falsely accuse the top student of cheating. That would trash our own scores and ruin our chances of winning.
“I’m going to need proof,” I say.
Janelle grins. “Oh, I’ve got proof.” She takes out her phone and opens it to the photo gallery. Then, peering up at us conspiratorially, she says in a voice barely above a whisper, “I have seventh period with Annabel. Yesterday I accidentally took her school laptop home and she took mine. Since they all look the same, I didn’t realize it until I got home and turned it on to do my homework. It was her computer, and guess what was on the browser she had left open?”
Janelle turns her phone to us, showing pictures she had taken of a laptop screen. Abby takes the phone and zooms in while Janelle explains more to us. “She found some guy online and paid him to hack her account and give her more points. He fixed the algorithm so that she’ll always have five thousand more points than the person in second place.”
White hot anger rises in my chest. “Seriously?”
Abby nods and then hands me the phone. I try not to think about how a tingle runs down my hand when her fingers touch mine. I look at the photos and they’re pretty convincing. It’s a website showing direct messages between Annabel and some guy with the username BlockBoyy99. She paid him two hundred dollars to hack her app.
Janelle shifts on her feet. “I realized what happened and that Annabel would probably kill me if she knew I knew, so I let the battery die and then brought it back to her the next day, saying I lost my charger so I never got to use it. She seemed like she believed me so she has no idea I saw her computer.”
“Why are you showing us this?” Abby says.
Janelle takes her phone back and walks toward the storage room door. “Because I hate cheaters. There’s no way I’ll ever win that contest, but someone will. I refuse to let it be a cheater. You have to tell someone. Tell the principal. Don’t let her cheat her way to a new car.”
“Will you send me those photos?” Abby asks.
Janelle grins and then opens the door. “No, sorry. Like I said… I can’t let this get back to me. Good luck.”
And then she’s gone.
And I am alone in a small room with the girl I haven’t stopped thinking about in days.
Nine
ABBY
The entire point of this month’s Un-bully contest is to teach people how to be kind to each other and eliminate bullying. I still remember that video they showed us because it was so unbelievably cheesy and lame. But the content was good, and the Un-bully app’s goals are noble. They discussed the statistics of bullying and how it affects self-esteem. They made a good case for why we should all be kind to each other. Only there’s a really big problem here.
The app is not making us kind. It’s making us fake. It’s making us all become enemies here at Brazos High. Instead of going home happy at the end of each day, feeling like I’ve made a true difference, I’m going to bed exhausted and dreading the next day where I’ll be obligated to be the extremely nice and generous Abby Pena that everyone loves. All for the sake of winning a car.
It sucks, but winning that car would be worth it.
But it’s because of this app that I don’t trust a single bit of what just happened.
Mark exhales loudly and rocks back on his heels. “That was… something.”
“Yeah,” I say with a snort of disbelief. “What are we going to do?”
“We have to tell on her. Normally I’m not a narc, but come on! She has to be taken down.”
Anxiety fills every inch of my body and I start pacing the small room just to let some of my energy out. “I don’t know. What if it’s a trick?”
Mark cocks an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
I reach the end of the room, turn on my heel, and start pacing back. I find it’s a whole lot easier to stare at the gray tile floor than to meet Mark’s gaze. He’s just too cute to function. Who does he think he is, showing up at school in those tight dark jeans and baby blue T-shirt? He must know how good that color looks on him. He’s doing it on purpose. Just rubbing in how cute he is so that every girl swoons over him and then gives him kudos for no freaking reason. Ugh.
“What if Janelle and Annabel are working together? What if it’s all fake?” I say as I pace back and forth in the small storage closet. “What if they just want us to go run off and tell someone and then the principals will investigate and find out that Annabel is totally innocent and we get in trouble for making up rumors? They’d kick us out of the contest for this. Then the car will never be mine.”
“You mean the car will never bemine,” he says in this insufferably playful way.
I scowl at him. “I don’t want you to win the car but I definitely don’t want someone who is cheating to win the car.”
“Look,” Mark says, running a hand through his silky black hair. I really wish I had kept my eyes on the floor so I wouldn’t have seen that just now. It’s such a sexy move it should be illegal. “I’m just as paranoid as everyone else, probably more so now that I’m in the top five but… Janelle looked sincere. I think we should trust her.”
“How well do you know her?” I ask.
