“Welcome to the party, Nathan,” Allie said.
“It’s happening,” Courtney said. “I’m up to twenty-six users.”
“Twenty-two here,” Allie said. And then an avatar with thick black hair, a green tank top, and dark sunglasses joined. He’d named himself SurfSup. “Make that twenty-three.”
Allie checked the database, then angled the phone toward the floor, where Bo was curled up next to her chair. “Aww . . . look, Bo,” she said. “Marcus is even adorable in animated drawing form.”
A few minutes later, the queue started to fill with stuff for sale.
Maddie uploaded a photo and a description of a blue-and-white-striped shirt, Chris posted a watch, and Emma posted a bunch of books and a tub of green fluffy slime she made after soccer practice. Zoe posted her potentially disgusting Halloween candy, and Allie posted a necklace, a silver picture frame, and the mood ring.
It didn’t take long before the rest of the players followed their lead. Allie pictured them scurrying around their rooms just as she and Courtney had been the night before, digging deep in their desk drawers, poking around in their closets, shuffling through the junk under their beds, desperately searching for stuff to sell.
Soon, the queue was filling up. There were bracelets and necklaces, two pairs of sneakers, a bunch of used video games, a scented candle, a beat-up skateboard, a brand-new art kit, a deck of Pokémon cards, room spray from Bath & Body Works, four fidget spinners, and a clock someone had clearly made in woodshop.
As they appeared in the inventory, Allie dragged and dropped them, moving them all across the six auctions so there would be a mix of items in each one—expensive stuff, cheap stuff, new stuff, old stuff—something for everyone.
She couldn’t help but notice that Nathan hadn’t added anything.
“Okay, I did the math and here’s where we are,” Courtney said. “We’ll hold the first auction tomorrow, the second on Thursday, and the third on Friday. Check out my estimates.”
Allie switched screens and studied the queue. Next to each item, Courtney had created a field where they could manually enter an estimated selling price, and it would automatically calculate their 10 percent take. “We might make a hundred bucks by tomorrow?”
“Yep. And people are just getting started! Look, my queue is almost full. People are posting stuff faster than I can assign an estimate to it!”
“Same here,” Allie said.
“At the rate we’re going, we might even be able to buy my ticket on Friday instead of Monday!”
Until that moment, Allie hadn’t been completely convinced that Courtney was coming in ten days. She’d thought about it, and talked about it, and pictured it, but the whole thing still seemed so unlikely. The last thing she wanted to do was to get her hopes up, only to have them squashed when the Game On conference rolled around and Courtney wasn’t by her side. But now that they each had nearly twenty items patiently waiting to be sold, she let herself enjoy the possibility.
Allie sent out a message to all the players:
WELCOME TO SWAP’D!
FIRST AUCTION TOMORROW AT 3:30 SHARP!
Courtney locked her eyes on Allie’s. “Tomorrow is going to be fun.”
“Really, really fun.”
The bus arrived, and Allie climbed the stairs, pausing at the landing to glance at Marcus. Be cool, she told herself.
They greeted each other in their usual way, but then, as she was walking to her seat, Allie heard Marcus say, “Have you heard about Swap’d?”
Blood rushed into her cheeks and into the tips of her ears. If her hair could blush, it would have turned as red as Nathan’s.
“Yeah,” she squeaked out. “Sounds fun.”
And then she turned and bolted down the aisle. As the bus started moving, she collapsed into her seat and buried her face into Zoe’s shoulder.
“Wait.” Zoe chuckled under her breath. “What just happened? Did Marcus just say something to you?”
Allie nodded.
“What did he say?”
Allie repeated his question without lifting her head.
“And what did you say?” Zoe asked.
Allie looked up at her. “I said, ‘sounds fun.’ ”
“You said, ‘sounds fun’? That’s it? ‘Sounds fun’?”
“I might have said Yeah first. I don’t remember. It’s all kind of a blur. Oh. My. God. Is he looking at us?”
Zoe glanced in his direction. “No. He’s talking to Jack Amhurst.” She tucked one leg under the other and turned, facing Allie. “Dude, he gave you a perfect opening. He tried. That’s what we’ve been waiting for! All you had to do was respond.”
“And say what?”
“I don’t know, something like, ‘What’s the name of your avatar?’ ”
“I can’t ask that! It’s secret.”
“Fine, then, ‘Did you post anything to sell?’ ”
“I already know he didn’t. I have access to all the data.”
Zoe pretended to bang her head against the seat in front of her.
“I am not good at this, okay?” Allie said. “I’m absolutely terrible at this, and I will never be less terrible at this. And I don’t get it. I can talk to Chris, no problem. I can talk to Nathan without sounding like a complete moron, and he’s—” Allie stopped before she said the word “cute.”
“He’s what?” Zoe asked.
“A guy!” Allie said, shaking off the thought. “He’s a guy and I can talk to him, but for some reason I freeze up the second Marcus looks at me.”
“He’s really nice. He’s in my Spanish group and we talk all the time. You just need an excuse to get to know him,” Zoe said.
“Fine. How?”
The bus pulled up to a red light and stopped.
“I don’t know,” Zoe said, staring out the window. “But I’m going to come up with something.”
Allie was sitting at her desk, waiting for math class to start, when Evan Cardoza and Nick Bannerman walked in and took their seats in front of her. She smiled to herself as she pictured their avatars.
The first period bell rang, and the TV mounted in the corner of the room flickered to life. The short intro song played, announcing the daily broadcast as the camera zoomed in on the news desk.
“Good morning and welcome to your daily Mercer Middle School broadcast, KMMS. I’m your anchor, Maddie Ellerts.”
“And I’m your anchor, Kyle Crane.”
The two of them arranged the papers in front of them. The camera shifted to the left and zoomed in on Kyle.
“Our top story today is ‘debatable,’ ” he said, emphasizing the last word.
“You mean you don’t know the top story?” Maddie asked. She had that lilt in her voice that made it clear it was all part of the script.
“No, Maddie, I mean our top story is ‘debatable,’ as in our awesome debate team.” The camera zoomed in on Kyle. “This weekend our debate team brought home yet another Mercer win after a shocking upset against our rivals, the Steinbeck Stallions. Three more events to go before the regional championships. Do you think they can do it, Maddie?” Kyle turned to her and shot her a cheesy smile.
“I do, Kyle. I really do!” Maddie looked right into the camera and held it for a beat. “And now, in this week’s sports news—”
Maddie kept talking, but Allie tuned her out. It was too hard to concentrate on the morning report when there were twenty-two items going up for sale in only seven hours and twenty-six minutes.
She was lost in thought when Maddie’s voice caught her attention.
“And before I sign off I just want to give a quick shout-out to Princess Peach.” She rested her hand against her chest. “I, for one, can’t wait to go swapping. Good luck today.”
Kyle stared at her, but Maddie just grinned at him and said, “Back to you, Kyle.”
It took him a second to catch up. “Um, thanks, Maddie.”
Allie covered her mouth to stifle her laugh.
Evan and N
ick looked at each other and then bumped fists across the aisle as the TV went dark.
Mr. Harmon walked to the front of the room. “Pop quiz,” he said, waving a stack of papers in the air. He began passing them out, row by row.
Allie couldn’t imagine taking a test. It was all she could do to sit still in her chair. She felt restless. Giddy. It had been a while since she felt that way, but it was still familiar. It reminded her of those first few days after she introduced Click’d, when people were running around with their phones in the air, tapping them together, and squealing out loud when they saw where they’d landed on each other’s leaderboards. And even though nobody knew who she was this time, she knew. And she felt special again. For a little while, she’d forgotten what that was like.
At the end of the day, the bell rang, and Allie sprinted toward the roundabout. She was the first one on the bus.
She flopped down in her seat, pulled out her phone, clicked on Swap’d, and navigated over to the PLAYERS screen.
Someone named RainbowDash logged on. And then 3DPea logged on. And then ElevenWaffles, and FlipFlop, and Buh-Buy, and ScrappyDoo joined the party. Within minutes, there were sixteen people logged in, waiting for the auction to start.
“They’re here,” Allie said as Zoe slid in next to her.
“Of course they are. There’s buzz.”
“There is?”
“Lots of buzz. Good buzz.”
Allie quickly realized how quiet the bus had become. It was loaded with kids now, but there was none of the usual chaos. Some were chatting, and some were looking out the window, but a bunch of people had their heads bent low, staring down at their phones.
At three thirty on the dot, the bus started moving. A bunch of phones let out a celebratory ta-da sound, and the very first Swap’d auction began.
Five items appeared on the screen, and the clock started counting down.
Allie and Zoe watched.
And waited.
And watched.
And waited.
Twenty-six users were logged in, but no one was bidding.
Allie decided to get things going. She clicked on Maddie’s shirt and entered a $20 bid.
Within seconds, PonyGirl increased it to $21.
“It’s a super cute shirt,” Allie whispered as she increased it to $22. “Tags on and everything. Come and get it.”
PonyGirl raised it to $23.
“All yours,” Allie said as she clicked on the image of Chris’s watch.
He’d started the bidding at $15, and LastPopTart had already raised it to $16. While she was watching, FlipFlop jumped in and raised it to $17, so Allie left the two of them to battle it out and moved over to Emma’s item, where she found RainbowDash, ElevenWaffles, and ConeZone in a full-on slime war.
Allie checked the countdown clock: two minutes left.
“Aw . . . check it out,” Zoe said, tipping her phone in Allie’s direction. “They’re fighting over me.”
Seven players were rapidly bidding up the leftover Halloween candy that hadn’t cost Zoe a thing and had been stuffed under her bed for who knows how long. With ten seconds left to go, Spider-Pig was winning with his $12 bid.
The clock ran down.
Three.
Two.
One.
The cha-ching sound echoed off the walls of the bus. And then the leaderboard appeared on her screen, displaying the top winners from the first auction.
Zoe was in the #2 spot. “This. Is. Awesome!” she yelled.
Some of the items ran their full five minutes without a single bid, and others got so many bids within the first few seconds that Allie had to keep checking to be sure everything was stable. It was. Swap’d worked exactly the way it was supposed to.
The next set of items appeared, the clock started counting down from five minutes again, and a new auction began. This time, a bunch of her own items filled up the little boxes on the screen. There was one of her necklaces, the silver picture frame, and the mood ring.
Allie watched all the items, but she paid special attention to hers, mentally totaling her take. Scattered cha-ching sounds filled the bus again, and the leaderboard filled up, replacing the players in the top three spots with completely different ones.
The Pokémon cards were a bigger hit than Allie had expected them to be. She’d estimated they’d go for $20, but the fight was fierce, and they were up to $30 with a full two minutes to go. ReginaPhalange raised it to $31, BubbleGumThumbs raised it to $32, and 3DPea was right there, raising it to $33.
The battle continued as the clock ticked down. Three, two, one, and cha-ching! They went to BubbleGumThumbs for $40.
A few people on the bus screamed, “No!” at the exact same time. And then they looked around, trying to identify who’d yelled, who they’d been bidding against. When they couldn’t figure it out, they shrunk back in their seats, returning to their phones and the next auction. But the majority of the kids looked around, confused, noses wrinkled, shoulders shrugging, totally clueless about what just happened.
“Four more dollars in my pocket,” Allie said to Zoe.
“That’s it?”
Allie shrugged. “Ten percent. But, you know, it adds up.”
It better add up to two hundred bucks, Allie thought.
The final auction closed, and the system automatically sent out a message announcing the winner of each item, followed by instructions for the buyers and sellers:
BUYERS: DELIVER CASH TO
LOCKER #405 BY THE END OF THIRD PERIOD.
PICK UP YOUR ITEM AT LUNCH AT LOCKER #860
SELLERS: DELIVER YOUR ITEM TO
LOCKER #860 BY THE END OF THIRD PERIOD.
CHECK YOUR TEXT FOR THE COMBINATION.
And then it kicked out a message to all the players:
THANKS FOR SWAP’N!
NEXT AUCTION TOMORROW AT 3:30!
The second the auction ended, the whole mood on the bus changed. The weird outbursts ended, and suddenly, all the players were holding their phones up to the others, gesturing toward their screens, and explaining what they’d been doing. The clueless ones began pulling out their own phones, clicking on links, and downloading Swap’d. By the time the bus pulled up to Allie’s stop, a few of the people around her were already creating avatars of their own. Word was spreading. Everything was going exactly the way she hoped it would.
She jumped to her feet. “I’ll text you later! I have to go see how Courtney did!”
Allie flew down the aisle, around the corner, and down the steps, completely forgetting to say good-bye to Marcus.
“Daisy!” Allie screamed as soon as Courtney answered the FaceTime call.
Courtney reeled back. “What are you talking about?”
Allie held her DS in front of the screen proudly. “The first unlockable character is Daisy.”
Courtney laughed. “You’re playing Mario Kart? Now?”
“I had to do something while I waited for you to get home from volleyball practice. I’m dying over here. How did it go today?”
“Ah-maze-ing! I sold my microphone for fifty dollars and a video game for thirty. I only made about twenty bucks on my ten percent of all the other stuff that sold, but that’s a hundred bucks!” She did a little dance. “How about you?”
“I made thirty-three bucks in my share of everything else that sold, so that’s fifty-five dollars for me.”
“One hundred and fifty-five dollars! Allie, we made one hundred and fifty-five dollars in one day!”
“Technically, in thirty minutes.”
“Okay, what are you selling tomorrow?” Courtney stopped dancing and slid into her desk chair, all business, propping her phone up so she and Allie could see each other as they worked.
“I’m selling a bracelet and a pair of barely worn cleats,” Allie said. “Emma is making more slime tonight, and Zoe went to the store today and bought more candy. Chris is selling a skateboard. And Maddie posted this super cute sweater, and as soon as she did, thi
s girl named CrabbyPatty posted one too. I think Maddie is already starting to get some serious competition.” Allie shook her head. “She is not going to be happy about that!”
“And you’re selling the DS, right?”
“I’ve only unlocked the first driver!” Allie tilted her head to one side and stared at Courtney. “I have a bet to collect on, and I’m going to earn Gamer-Girl’s respect first. Then I’ll sell it.”
“You know that was a joke, right?”
“I know. But don’t worry. There’s no rush. Check my queue.” Allie scrolled past the list of items people had already loaded into the system for the next day’s auctions.
“I’m going to kill it tomorrow,” Allie continued. “Look at my estimates. If everything goes as planned, I’ll sell about three hundred dollars’ worth of stuff. With my items plus the ten percent from all the sales, that puts me at fifty bucks.”
“Mine should bring in about three-fifty, and with my stuff, that puts me at . . .” Allie could hear Courtney’s keyboard clicking in the background. “Around seventy, I’m guessing.”
“We’ll easily have a hundred bucks by this time tomorrow.”
“Or a lot more!”
“Exactly!” Allie echoed. “Add that to the one-fifty-five we made today, and we’ll be at well over halfway there!”
Courtney gestured toward the stack of books on her desk. “I’d better get some homework done or I’ll end up grounded next week and none of this will matter anyway.”
She had a good point. Allie had homework piling up for all her other classes, too, and a huge Spanish test she hadn’t even started studying for.
“Till good day/bad day,” Allie said.
They bumped their fists against the screen and signed off.
Allie had it planned. She’d been practicing in the bathroom mirror all morning. She was ready. She’d climb the steps, stop briefly at the landing, and then look right at him and say: “Hey, Marcus. Did you see the Swap’d queue today? There’s a bunch of great stuff!”
Swap'd Page 6