Hi there? What the heck does that mean?
My chest constricts. Every time I see Mark he tries a new way to flirt with me. He’s always smiling at me, or saying nice things, or correcting my accounting homework. He even offered me free food at his restaurant! What a jerk. I know he’s only doing these things to win me over so I’ll give him kudos and he’ll win instead of me. Well, it’s not going to happen.
So what if he’s incredibly cute?
So what if his grin makes me weak in the knees?
So what if I look forward to seeing him every day at school just so I can pretend to ignore him?
I do not have a crush on Mark Caputo. He’s my enemy. As of right this moment, and for the next twelve hours, Mark is Enemy Number One. He’s all that stands between me and the new Jeep of my dreams.
I’m going to crush him.
With all the confidence I can muster, I type out a reply.
Me: Why yes, you can ride with me in my new Jeep. I’m assuming that’s why you’re messaging me?
Mark: I was actually messaging you to say you can ride in my new truck with me. Maybe we could go on a date or something next weekend?
The air whooshes out of my lungs when I read that. What a jerk! What a completely stuck up, arrogant, annoying, horrible jerk. Even now, over the internet, he’s still trying to flirt with me and mess up my head. It’s not. Going. To. Happen.
Never.
My fingers fly across my phone’s keyboard.
Me: Seriously, dude? You really think I’m that stupid? You can’t flirt your way into winning this competition. You’re cute and all, but you’re not cuter than a brand new Jeep. I’m not backing down. I will win this.
I send it before I have a chance to read over my words and edit them. Once it’s sent, I look back at what I wrote and hold my breath. Ah, crap. I told him he was cute.
I get more messages on Instagram, so I back out of this chat with Mark. Three people have replied to my babysitting offer and happily accepted. One person, a sophomore girl named Jameela, replies: Girl, I appreciate that but my brothers are hellions. I’ll give you some kudos just for the offer, but I’d never wish my brothers onto anyone. Haha. Good luck! Hope you win!
I smile. Not everyone is a manipulative jerk. Some people are just nice. Sure enough, my points go up a few seconds later. Two other people tell me they’ll let me babysit and then they give me kudos as well.
Several minutes have gone by and I’ve almost forgotten about Mark, but then he replies again. I bite my lip and check his message.
Mark: I know you’ll win. I’d still like to go on that date though…
You know how people say their heart “stops” when something crazy happens? And they don’t really mean that it stops, stops. It’s just a metaphor obviously because a stopped heart would mean you’re dead.
Well, I’m pretty sure my heart stops.
I take a quick breath and press my hand to my chest, relieved to feel my heart pounding away. Guess I’m not dead after all.
Is he serious?
Or is this a joke?
Another message appears.
Mark: Sorry… this is lame. I should ask you in person, but in person all we do is bicker. Maybe when this is over and you have your shiny new car, we could go on a date?
I swallow.
This is a trick.
Or is it?
I’m not a mind reader. I don’t have some Ph.D. in body language or anything, but… I guess it’s just a gut feeling. Every time I’m around Mark, well, I feel something. Not just my stupid crush on him but… something coming from him as well. The way he smiles at me. The tone of his voice when we talk. It’s different. It’s… it’s almost as if he likes me too.
Maybe this isn’t a trick.
And if I let my guard down, I know deep down that I’m crushing on him, hard. Like super hard. He’s gorgeous and smart and he can get me free Italian food. What kind of girl would turn down limitless pasta from a shockingly cute guy?
I taste blood and realize I’ve been biting my lip. If he’s for real, then I definitely want to go on that date.
Me: I’m not falling for your lies
Mark: :( Not a lie
I don’t even know what to say to that. I back out of our messages and check my inbox. I have several new replies, and everyone besides Jameela has taken me up on my offer. Looks like Maria was right—high schoolers hate babysitting their younger siblings. I send a reply to everyone telling them I’m happy to help out and thanking them for the kudos. Earlier in the month, I tried doing nice things without making it obvious that I was fishing for kudos, but this late in the game, everyone knows the drill. And they’re happy to play along.
When I check the Un-bully app again, I’m a thousand points higher than Mark. A few minutes pass, and now I’m thirteen hundred points higher. With eleven hours left, there’s no way he’s going to win this.
That red Jeep will be mine. All mine!
I take a deep breath to calm my excitement. Nothing is over until it’s over, but I’m so ecstatic I can barely contain myself. And you know what?
Maybe I do like Mark. Maybe he likes me.
Maybe it’s time to take a chance on something good.
Me: Okay
Mark: Okay… as in you you’ll go out with me?
Me: Yep, but one condition.
Mark: And that is..?
Me: I’m driving.
Mark: You’ll look great in your new Jeep.
Luckily my bedroom door is closed because I’m grinning like a fool. I’m about to win a brand new car, and I have a date for next weekend with the guy I’ve been crushing on for weeks. Even with my parents gone and my sisters annoying me constantly, things are looking up.
I spend the next several hours replying to people on Instagram. I wish I hadn’t sent so many offers to babysit because now I’m juggling dozens of replies, and marking my calendar for free babysitting jobs. I’m three thousand points ahead of Mark now, so there’s really no point in continuing to accept all these appointments. But I don’t want to anger anyone and give them a reason to give me a demerit, so I suck it up and pencil everyone onto my calendar. At least I’ll have a pretty new car to drive to my babysitting gigs.
Abuela makes tamales for dinner and because of all the excitement, she agrees to let us eat in the living room while watching TV. We sit around enjoying the food, talking and laughing like one big family. I wish my parents were here to celebrate with us. After we eat way too many tamales and then have some tres leches for dessert, we watch movies until we pass out. Abuela heads to her room around eleven. Maria carries Pippa to bed and then she comes back and snuggles up with me on the couch.
“I’m really excited for you,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder. The girl can be so sweet when she’s not being a brat.
“Me too,” I say. I haven’t told anyone about my date with Mark, not even Jules. I guess I just want to hold this information to myself for now.
Maria checks her phone. “In fifteen minutes it’ll be midnight and the car will be yours.”
“I don’t think I’m gonna sleep tonight,” I say, reaching for the remote and starting a new movie. “I am way too excited to sleep.”
I bet the app will give me some kind of fancy notification when it’s midnight. And then my phone will blow up with all the texts and messages from my friends. I’ll probably be more popular than Jules’ boyfriend, if only for a little while. I already have a ton of notifications from Snapchat, but I don’t feel like reading them all. It’s probably just a ton of people telling me that I’m about to win, or asking for some favor in exchange for kudos.
With ten minutes left to go, I lean forward and take my phone from the coffee table, then open the app. I want to be ready when it congratulates me for winning. I blink when I see the dashboard. This can’t be right. The gold medal is gone, replaced with a smaller silver one under my name.
No.
No, no, no.
One hour ago, Mark Caputo moved into first place, with just over fifty thousand points, nearly ten thousand more than I have. My heart might actually stop this time. My breathing certainly does.
“What’s wrong?” Maria asks, but her voice sounds far away even though she’s sitting right next to me on the couch.
My vision blurs.
As I stare at my name in second place on the scoreboard, the clock showing just four minutes until midnight, I realize that my biggest fear has come true.
Mark Caputo tricked me.
And now he’s going to win.
Fourteen
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.
* * *
The only good thing about this entire horrible day is that I get an excused absence from school. The principal actually calls me just before school starts and tells me not to come in today since everything will be so hectic and crazy. He tells me to meet him and the Un-bully guy at the car dealership. They’re bringing the cameraman again and filming the whole event for their website. The principal says my parents are welcome to come, but I lie and say they’re out of town.
The car dealership isn’t as big of a deal as I worried it might be. It’s not like there’s a huge party going on or anything, and no one from school is here. I guess I kind of worried that everyone would ditch class to see me get my car. Luckily, they didn’t. My phone is still blowing up with messages from my friends wanting to know the details of what’s going on, but I ignore them for now.
I meet with Roy, the salesman who walked me around last time we came here, and then the polo shirt guy from Un-bully arrives shortly after with the principal and his secretary. They all want to shake my hand and congratulate me, and while this is a whirlwind experience, it makes me sick to my stomach. This win should have gone to Abby. I don’t need a car as badly as she does. And I definitely don’t deserve it as much as she does. She’s sweet to everyone. Even before this month, she was kind and friendly. I was a jerk.
“Let’s go see your shiny new truck,” Roy says, grinning wide as he pats me on the back.
“Actually…” I glance at the Un-bully guy. “Do I have to pick the car I chose last time?”
“No,” he says with a shrug. “You can choose any car in the price range.”
“Great,” I say, smiling for the first time since Julian woke me up this morning. “I want the red Je
ep.”
Fifteen
ABBY
I tried so hard to stay home from school today. I begged Abuela to just let me stay home, but she refused. Unlike my teachers who are all happy to ignore class lessons to talk about the Un-bully app, Abuela actually cares about education. So she forced me to go. Also, she had a good point that I couldn’t really refute—that if I skip school today, everyone will just talk to me tomorrow.
Might as well suck it up and get it over with today.
The only good thing in my life right now is knowing the Un-bully competition is over. I uninstalled the app so fast it gave my phone whiplash. Now there’s no incentive to be nice to people, no reason I need to keep smiling and saying friendly things. When Jules and I arrive at school, I head straight for the coffee cart and I don’t say a single hello to anyone. Not that anyone besides my best friend even wants to say a friendly good morning or hello.
They just want to gawk at the school’s biggest loser.
You would think a high school would actually care about educating students, but no. They don’t. All they care about is this contest. It’s Monday, October 1st and this is hands down the worst day of my high school life so far. Every single person is talking about the contest and what’s even worse than that, is how everyone in all my classes wants to talk to me about my epic loss.
Most people see the irony of Mark freaking Caputo winning the new car after he told the assistant principal that I deserve to win instead of Annabel. So why did they all give him so many kudos when that secret video came out? Idiots.
But I’m also to blame here. I let my guard down. I stupidly spent the day flirting with Mark through DMs instead of working harder to get more kudos. I should have known he’d swoop in at the last minute and steal this from me. He’s a snake. He’s already rich and already driving around town with his luxury car his parents bought him. He gets free Italian food whenever he wants and I’m stuck eating peanut butter sandwiches with my sisters. Both of his parents live in the same house with him every night while mine are in a different country. He’s got it all, and now he has a new car that he doesn’t even need. And me? I’m stuck with no car and dozens of babysitting jobs that I won’t even get paid for.
The Enemy Hypothesis: A Brazos High Novella Page 7