The Enemy Hypothesis: A Brazos High Novella

loopy like a girl wrote it. Does Abby have this kind of handwriting? How have I never noticed her handwriting in class before? It doesn’t matter how much I try to remember those few seconds in the hallway, I didn’t see who slipped the note into my hand.
I also have no idea where Supply Closet 8 is, but thanks to a fire escape floorplan map on the wall, I locate it way in the back of the school by the band hall. Once school is finally over, I make my way down there, keeping a cautious eye on everyone I pass. Is anyone looking at me weirdly? Is this some kind of set up?
The closet is bigger than a closet. It’s actually a small room filled with shelves and boxes. I’m the only person in here and my anxiety gets worse with each passing second. I start to casually glance around for a hidden camera or something. Then the door opens.
Abby walks inside.
My heart leaps into my throat.
“What are you doing here?” she says. She looks more confused than ever, like seeing me was the last thing on her mind. Which is weird because I kind of thought I might see her. I kind of hoped it would be her who had passed me the note.
“I’m here because of the note,” I say.
Her brows pull together, making a cute little wrinkle in the middle of her forehead. “You got a note too?”
I reach I not my pocket and hold it up. She frowns. “Did who see who sent it?”
“Nope,” I say. “You?”
She shakes her head. We have exactly three seconds of awkward silence and then the door slowly opens. A girl walks inside. “Good, you’re both here,” she says.
I know I’ve seen her around school before. She’s short with long blonde hair she keeps in a single braid down her back. Her glasses are bright purple. Brazos High isn’t so big that you don’t at least have a vague recollection of each student. But I don’t know her name.
“Janelle?” Abby says, sounding like that’s the last person she’d expect to join us in this random supply closet. “What’s going on?”
Janelle looks around as if she thinks someone else is hiding out in this small room. Then her eyes get big. “Annabel Jefferson is cheating the app.”
Abby and I look at each other in disbelief. I turn to Janelle. “How do you know that?”
“Listen, first of all, you didn’t hear this from me, okay?” Janelle glares at me. “Promise me.”
“I promise,” I say. She turns to Abby.
Abby rolls her eyes. “If you wanted to remain anonymous you should have made me promise before you dropped that bombshell just now.”
Janelle sighs. “Sorry. I’ve never done something sneaky like this before. But just promise me, okay? I don’t want it coming back to me, but you both need to know what’s going on so you can stop it.”
“I promise I won’t say anything,” Abby says. “But that’s a huge accusation to make. Everyone loves Annabel. That’s why she’s in first place.”
“They don’t love her that much,” Janelle says. “Isn’t it obvious she’s cheating? She has fifteen thousand points and you two only have about five thousand. That just doesn’t make sense.”
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