Swap'd

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  She tried to FaceTime Courtney to tell her what happened, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She’d been so excited about meeting Marcus in the library, but now, she couldn’t bear the idea of tutoring him, either. She sent him a text:

  Allie

  Need to cancel our session today. Sorry

  Now she was standing in her room, staring at Courtney’s name on her phone, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to start the FaceTime call. She tossed her phone on her bed and paced the floor again. Bo was on her heels, trying desperately to keep up, as she practiced what she was going to say for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  “I should just tell her, right, Bo?”

  He looked up at her.

  “You’re right. I just need to call and tell her what happened.”

  But it still took another full minute before she pressed the button.

  Courtney answered right away. “There you are! I’ve been texting you!”

  Allie had seen them all the way home. She’d been ignoring them. The last one read, I made $28. How did you do?

  Allie couldn’t bear to tell her she’d made nothing. That she’d killed the game. That they were still short.

  Courtney didn’t give her a chance to say anything. “Okay, so . . . I was just talking to my mom and filling her in on everything.” The family photos that lined Courtney’s hallway blurred by in the background. Allie watched her close her bedroom door and flop down on her bed. “My mom’s going to buy it on her credit card and we’ll give her the cash. Sound good?” She bounced in place. “I can’t believe this is happening! It’s all actually happening!”

  Allie tried to speak, but she couldn’t get the words past the knot in her throat.

  “Oh, and my mom wants to talk to your mom about picking me up at the airport, and getting me back home, and all that other stuff. So, fill me in! How much did you get for the DS?”

  Allie didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t at all the way she’d practiced it. She slid off her bed, onto the floor, and put her head in her hands. Bo settled in next to her and she buried her fingers in his fur. Here goes, she thought.

  “We don’t have the money.”

  The smile slipped from Courtney’s face. “What?”

  Allie didn’t want to repeat it. It was hard enough to say it the first time.

  “I had to cancel today’s auction.”

  Courtney stared at her in disbelief. The look on her face made Allie feel one hundred times worse than she already did. “Why would you do that?”

  Allie told Courtney all about her demo with Ms. Slade, and how it had been going so well until it went so wrong. “I didn’t mention that I’d already taken it live. She would have freaked out if I told her I’d sold more than a thousand dollars’ worth of stuff over the last three days!”

  “Wait . . . She doesn’t know?” Courtney asked. “Then why did you cancel it?”

  “Because I had no other choice. It’s not only against school rules, it’s illegal in California! I couldn’t hold another auction and risk getting caught.”

  “But we were this close!” Courtney held her thumb and forefinger together. “We could have made the money, bought my ticket, and then shut the whole game down before she ever found out.” Courtney jumped off her bed. “There’s still time. Hold it tonight! Send a message to everyone and tell them it’s back on.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Sure, you can. Think about it. It’s after hours. You’re not selling anything on campus right now, are you?”

  “No, but I’d have to do all the pickups at school tomorrow.”

  “Not if you change it. Have people come to your house after school with money and do the exchange there. Then you’re not breaking any rules.” Courtney was talking faster now. “Allie, look at me. We are forty-five dollars away from my plane ticket. That’s it. Forty-five bucks! Think about all we’ve done this week! We can’t stop now!”

  “We have to stop now,” Allie whispered.

  Allie knew what it was like to have an out-of-control app. She remembered that look on Ms. Slade’s face when she told her she knew Click’d had a glitch, and that she’d kept it going anyway. She’d never forget it. She wasn’t about to keep Swap’d alive and risk seeing her favorite teacher look at her that way again. “Always make new mistakes,” Ms. Slade liked to say. She’d forgive Allie for making that mistake once, but not twice.

  Courtney bit down on her lip. And then she shook her head hard. “You might have to stop, but I don’t. Different school, different rules . . .”

  “Courtney—” Allie began, but she wasn’t listening.

  “Ms. Slade told you it was illegal in California. I don’t live in California.”

  Allie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You know if it’s against the law here, it probably is there, too.”

  “Maybe it is, but no one’s told me that yet. As far as I’m concerned, this conversation never happened.” She waved her finger back and forth between the two of them.

  Courtney was up now, walking around her room, opening closet doors and desk drawers, and peeking under her bed.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for something I can sell for at least forty-five bucks.” She stopped moving. And then she walked straight to her desk. “Got it.” She held her brand-new game controller up in front of her. “I’m selling this.”

  “But you just got that for Christmas. You’ve been wanting that controller forever.”

  “I guess I want to see you even more.” Courtney’s voice hitched, and Allie could tell she was fighting back tears. “Too bad you don’t feel the same about me.”

  “What?”

  Courtney looked right at the phone. “You should have sold the DS. I never cared about your stupid bet to open all the racers. If you’d sold it last week, we would be at least thirty dollars richer. And we would have bought my ticket over the weekend, before the price went up, and none of this would be happening!”

  “So this is all my fault?”

  “Well it’s not mine!” Courtney yelled. And then she narrowed her eyes and said, “R.O.B.”

  “What?”

  “R.O.B. is the last unlockable character in Mario Kart. There. Now you know.”

  And then the screen went dark.

  Five minutes later, Allie was still staring off into the distance, wondering what to do, when her mom knocked on her door and poked her head inside.

  “Hey, what was all the shouting about in here?”

  Allie couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move.

  Her mom stepped into her room and sat on her bed. “What’s going on?”

  That was all it took. A tear slid down her cheek, followed by another one, and another one. She sat down next to her mom and buried her face in her shoulder.

  Her mom pulled Allie in close. “Talk to me.”

  And Allie did. She told her everything. She even told her how she’d cheated on the tutoring sessions she sold to Marcus, and that made her start crying all over again. And then she took a deep breath, dried her eyes, and collected herself before she got to the worst part: the conversation she had with Ms. Slade that afternoon.

  The two of them talked for a long time. They came up with a plan. And by the time they were finished, Allie was exhausted in every way. Her mom made her go downstairs for dinner, but thankfully, her parents didn’t make her talk.

  Later that night, her mom brought her tea and tucked her in.

  “I’m so proud of you,” her mom said. She kissed her forehead and pulled the covers up to her chin. “What you did took courage.”

  It didn’t feel like courage.

  “Don’t think about it anymore. Give your body and brain a break, okay?”

  Allie didn’t fight her. She couldn’t. She closed her eyes and let sleep take over.

  She didn’t realize until she woke up the next morning that she hadn’t started good day/bad day, and Courtney hadn’t either.


  And just like that, their 170-day streak was broken.

  Allie’s mom drove her to school so she wouldn’t have to take the bus. She was afraid if she heard all the chatter about Swap’d, it would make it impossible for her to do what she knew she had to do.

  They arrived early, and the campus was still quiet. Her mom pulled into the roundabout and stopped the car. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Allie said, but she wasn’t totally sure it was true.

  “You did the right thing.”

  Allie had lost count of how many times her mom had said it. And she wished it made her feel better, but it didn’t. Then again, at that point, she couldn’t think of anything that would. She got out of the car, waved good-bye, and walked to the lab.

  Ms. Slade was already there, sitting at her desk, her fingers typing fast on the keyboard.

  “Ms. Slade,” Allie said.

  Her teacher stopped typing and looked at her. “Good morning. You’re here early.”

  “I have to tell you something.” Her voice broke on the last word. “It’s important.”

  Ms. Slade stood and met Allie halfway, and then led her over to the green velvet couch in the corner of the room. It was covered in throw pillows with funny sayings on them, like Video games have prepared me for the zombie apocalypse and Come to the nerd side, we have π.

  Ms. Slade sat next to her. The red Lego blocks she was wearing as earrings swung back and forth.

  “Do you remember my friend, Courtney, from CodeGirls Camp last summer?” Allie began. “She was my roommate, and she was on stage with me during my Click’d presentation.”

  “I remember,” Ms. Slade said.

  “I got to camp not knowing a single person, but Courtney and I clicked immediately. She was my best friend that summer, and she’s still one of my best friends. We talk every day—four, even five times a day. We’ve been missing each other like crazy, and last week, when I told her I got two tickets for Game On Con, we came up with a plan to get her here, so she could come with me. She’s a huge gamer.”

  “I see.” Ms. Slade’s eyebrows pinched together, like she was trying to figure out where Allie was going with all of this.

  “We asked our parents to fly her out here, but the plane ticket was four hundred dollars, and they said no. They said the two of us should figure out a way to get her here on our own. And then you told us about the reuse assignment. Courtney and I built Swap’d so we could make money fast and buy Courtney a plane ticket to San Francisco.”

  Ms. Slade’s expression changed, as if all the puzzle pieces in her mind were falling into place.

  “We already rolled it out. Last week, here at Mercer and at her school. I held the first auction on Wednesday, the second on Thursday, and the third on Friday.”

  “You already held three auctions?”

  Allie nodded. “I sold over a thousand dollars’ worth of stuff. I would have sold another five hundred yesterday, but I canceled the auction.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me all this earlier?” she asked.

  Allie forced out an exhale. “I wanted to. But Courtney and I were so close. I couldn’t imagine shutting it down, but . . . I did.” Allie reached into her backpack for the list she and her mom had printed out the night before, sorted by real name, and complete with item, buyer, seller, amount, locker number, and avatar name. The list contained seventy-four items, sold for a total of $1,163, along with Allie’s earnings.

  “Well, that’s impressive. Against the rules, but still impressive.” Ms. Slade studied the list. She set it down on her lap and locked her eyes on Allie’s. “I’m really proud of you.”

  Her mom had been saying that since she told her the night before, but it sounded different hearing it come from her teacher’s mouth. Allie felt the tears well up in her eyes again.

  “For what?” Allie asked.

  She started listing them using her fingers. “First, because you absolutely aced this assignment. I can’t believe you came up with something so complex, but solid and user-friendly, in such a short time. Second, because you came up with an ingenious way to get something you wanted. I like that. And third, because you shut it down before it became problematic.” Ms. Slade rested her hand on Allie’s shoulder. “You did the right thing.”

  Allie felt a huge lump in her throat. She swallowed hard, but it wouldn’t go away.

  “And now, we have to fix it.”

  “How?” Allie asked.

  “Well, we basically need to go back in time. We’ve got to put everything back the way it was before.” She waved the list in the air. “We’re going to return everyone’s cash and all the items to their respective sellers, and we’re going to pretend this never happened. I’ll have to tell Mr. Mohr, of course, but I think he’ll be okay with that solution. How about you? Are you okay with that?”

  Allie kind of expected Ms. Slade to say that, but she still wished she hadn’t. She thought about Courtney and her Swap’d queue, full of stuff. If she sold even half of it, they’d have all they needed to buy her ticket. She wished Ms. Slade would yell at her but let her keep the money, rather than act so calm and make her give it all back.

  “I can’t keep it?”

  Ms. Slade shook her head.

  Allie held her breath as she reached into her backpack and took out the envelope containing all the cash she’d collected since that first wad of bills fell out of her locker and onto her shoe the Thursday before. She bit on her lip to keep from crying as she handed it to her teacher.

  Ms. Slade turned it over in her hands a few times.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” She stood and walked to her desk. She returned holding a little jar of paper clips and a stack of happy-looking yellow Post-its. “We’re going to deal with the sellers first. Go sit in the back and figure out how much money we need to give back to each one. I have a class right now, but I’m free during second period. We’ll call each person in, return the ten percent you took, and then tell them who bought their item and how much they need to return. Then we’ll call in the buyers and figure out how we’re going to get all the merchandise back to its original owner over the next few days.”

  “What if they don’t have the money anymore?”

  “We’ll figure that out as we need to.” She pointed at a desk in the back corner. “Get to work.”

  Allie stood. She walked to the back of the room in a daze, sat down at her desk, and started organizing everything. Before the bell rang, she pulled out her phone and launched Courtney’s version of Swap’d. Everything was still there in the queue, loaded and ready to start at 3:30 p.m. sharp.

  The bell rang, and the first period students filled the room. Allie hid in the corner creating stacks of cash, clipping them together, and marking the seller’s name with a Post-it. She was so deep in thought, she didn’t realize class was over until the bell rang again. And then it was time to return everything.

  Ms. Slade pushed two desks together at the front of the room. “Have a seat here, Allie.”

  Allie did what she was told.

  “I’ll be calling each person from class and asking them to come here to the lab. I’ll have them wait outside and send them in one at a time.” She picked up her phone, dialed the office, and said, “Okay, we’re ready.”

  Over the next forty-five minutes, each seller came into the lab and sat across from Allie. Ms. Slade explained things. Allie was quick with her explanation and her apologies. And then she slid an envelope filled with cash across the desk.

  Maddie was visibly shaken. Zoe looked furious on Allie’s behalf. Nathan just took his envelope and left, like he didn’t know what to say. And when Emma came in, she hugged Allie hard and refused to take the cash. “Keep it,” she whispered.

  “I can’t,” Allie whispered back.

  It was a nice thought, but it wasn’t as if Emma’s ten percent made a huge difference. Allie’s take on all the slime Emma had sold came to $4.50.

  And th
en the buyers came in. Allie knew many of them, and the rest she recognized from the locker pickups. Cassie said she’d return Nathan’s headset, and Evan and Nick agreed to return all the games they bought. Cassidy already used one of the bath bombs, but she said she’d return the room spray. Kathryn planned to give back the candles. All the fidget spinners were heading back to their original owners.

  It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t too horrible. Not until Marcus stepped into the lab.

  Allie shifted in her chair, and she was pretty sure she was going to throw up as she heard Ms. Slade say, “Have a seat, Mr. Inouye.”

  Allie picked at her fingernails. She bit her lip. She crossed and re-crossed her legs. The clock seemed to slow to a crawl as she waited for Marcus to cross the room and take the seat facing her. Allie gripped the sides of her chair.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Ms. Slade began as she had with all the others. “Let me explain what’s going on.” She filled him in quickly and then scanned the list. “It looks like you bought . . . tutoring sessions?”

  “From me,” Allie said. “Three anonymous Spanish tutoring sessions held online. To . . . help him pass a big test.”

  Ms. Slade looked at Marcus and then back at Allie. “How many tutoring sessions did you hold?”

  “Two,” Marcus said.

  She consulted the paper in front of her. “So, how did you do on the test?” Ms. Slade asked.

  “I got an A.”

  Allie beamed. “You did?”

  Marcus nodded, but he didn’t smile back. “Yeah.”

  Ms. Slade was all business. “Well, this one is easy. Allie, you owe Marcus a twenty-eight-dollar refund.”

  Allie reached over for the paper-clipped bundle of bills and slid it to Marcus. He didn’t pick it up. He didn’t even look at her.

  “So,” Marcus finally said. “Everyone knows.” He kept his gaze on the desk. “All your friends. They know it was me.”

  Allie nodded. She felt sick all over again. “Yeah. I mean, Zoe knows. And Maddie and Emma. And . . . Chris.”

  “Zoe knows?” he asked.

  Allie nodded again. “She helped me write the post.”