MARK
I’ve accepted that I’m not going to win this competition, and that’s fine. But I don’t need my brother waking me up about it in the morning. I swear he must enjoy bursting into my room and calling my name to wake me up from a peaceful sleep. It’s like his favorite pastime.
“Duuuude,” he says, shoving my shoulder to rouse me from sleep. “Mark! Wake the hell up, man.”
I heave a sigh and open my eyes. “What? What could you possibly want to tell me this early in the morning?”
My alarm goes off pretty early each school day and since it hasn’t gone off yet, I know it’s early. Way too early for his crap.
Julian plops onto my bed. “Just wondering if you’re really going to sell the car for cash or if you’ll keep it. A truck would come in handy around here. We could go camping or something.”
Julian has been out of high school for four years so he doesn’t have access to the app. I guess he stupidly thinks I won, or maybe he’s just trying to get on my nerves so I’ll be forced to admit I spent the entire month being nice to people for no reason. I’ll bet it’s the second one.
I yawn and look over at my phone to check the time. It’s six in the morning, right about the time he usually gets up to go workout at the gym before heading into work. I have about a million or two notifications on all my social media apps and even more texts.
“I didn’t win,” I say, yawning again. “Now please leave me alone.”
“You better check again, little bro.”
I stare at him. For some reason, that mischievous grin of his is missing. He actually looks… serious?
Frowning, I unlock my phone again and open the app. And then I bolt up in bed.
“How is this possible?” My thumb presses the app several times as if that’ll change what it says on the screen. “This isn’t… this doesn’t make sense. I was losing last night. Now…” My eyes go wide. “Fifty thousand points?”
Julian shrugs. “Everyone is texting me saying you won. Mom and Dad are gonna freak.”
“I won,” I say, but it sounds more like a question than a statement of fact. How did I win? I was losing last night when I fell asleep, all happy and eager for my upcoming date with Abby. “This is impossible.”
“Looks possible to me,” he says, tapping my phone screen where my name is displayed big letters with a gold medal and the word WINNER flashing at the top. “I don’t know how you did it, but you did it.”
“I don’t know either,” I say, standing up and running my hands through my hair. “I’m gonna go shower.”
I do need to shower, but I really just wanted to get away from him and let this new information process. I don’t get it. This can’t possibly be true. In the bathroom, I lock the door and turn on the shower, then I lean against the bathroom door and start going through my phone notifications.
It only takes a few minutes to discover what happened last night after I had fallen asleep. Brazos High has a group Snapchat story with almost every single student in every grade added to it. When one of us posts a photo to the story, everyone in school will see it. It’s how clubs spread information about their meetings, and occasionally someone will cheat by posting quiz answers or alerting everyone that a certain teacher will have a pop quiz or a sub or a movie day. With hundreds of students at Brazos High, I don’t check the group story very often. It’s always filled with crap I don’t care about. That’s how it slipped my notice—the thing that made me win.
An anonymous user posted a video to the story last night. The video was clearly taken in secret because it shows me standing on a tennis court, talking with the assistant principal from a weird angle, like someone was hanging out behind a tree and sneaking their phone around the it. The video shows me standing there looking all nervous as I explain about Annabel. You can’t see the principal but you can hear his voice. And you can clearly hear the entire story I told him.
My cheeks burn as I watch the video, reliving that moment from just a few days ago. I sound so dorky, it’s unreal. But I was being overly cautious when I spoke because even I wasn’t positive this wasn’t a trick. I told him that a concerned student had pulled me aside and told me that Annabel was cheating, and that I’d been watching her score for a while and the evidence seemed real. I also said I didn’t want to harm my chances of winning by making a big deal out of something that could only be a rumor, but I felt I had to tell him just so he knew because if someone was cheating, I didn’t think it was fair. Then the principal looked up the app and asked why I was so concerned because I was currently in thirteenth place and I wasn’t even winning. I told him Abby deserves to win, and I don’t want a possible cheater to ruin it for her.
That whole conversation was caught on tape and shared with the entire student population last night. It must have inspired tons of people to give me a last minute kudos, which not only made me jump ahead of Abby, but it made me win by a large margin.
The bathroom steams up from the hot water in the shower. I can’t believe this. I scroll through so many texts and DMs, but none are from Abby. I send her a message.
Me:Hey. Oh my god I can’t believe this. I’m so sorry.
Abby:Sorry that you tricked me? Nah, I always knew you weren’t genuine.
A lump forms in my throat.
Me:Seriously. I had no idea that video was even taken. I wasn’t supposed to win. You were.
Abby:You can leave my inbox now.
You have been blocked by Abby Pena.
I look up from my phone, only to be met with my face in the steamy mirror. This sucks. I can’t even be happy about winning a new car. It doesn’t even matter anymore. Abby hates me.
