My lab partner was the ultimate genius in everyone’s eyes. And I was always stuck in second place. She slept through AP classes and played League of Legends all night, yet she always aced every exam to secure the top spot in our grade. I studied until 2 AM every single night, only to lose to her by a single point on the GPA rankings every semester. People constantly mocked me. “What’s the point of grinding so hard? You still can’t beat someone who literally naps through midterms.” “Some people just have the cheat codes. You don’t.” I swallowed those bitter words for six long years. Until one month before the SATs, she dragged me up to the school rooftop garden and said with a smug smile, “I’m going to tell you a secret.” “For six years, Aria, I’ve been able to hear every single thought in your head.” “Every formula you calculate, I write down. Every wrong answer you cross out, I follow suit. You’ve been taking all my exams for me.” “Now that I’ve secured my early-admission nomination to Harvard, you’re officially useless to me.” Before I could even process her words, she shoved me hard. I fell backward off the roof. The blinding pain consumed me as I plummeted to my death, my eyes wide with betrayal. When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the spring semester of junior year. I looked over and saw her face-down on the desk next to me, napping. I couldn’t help but smirk. On the day of the first unit test, she leaned back in her chair, waiting to tune into my brain waves. I opened my exam paper and lowered my head. “Dit, dah, dit-dit-dah, dah-dah-dit…” Her hand holding the pencil froze. Color drained from her face, inch by inch. I kept writing. But I didn’t think of a single actual number. Just rhythmic static. Just Morse code. She panicked. Leaning over, she whispered, “What the hell are you thinking about?” I didn’t even look up. “The answers. Can’t you hear them?”
When I opened my eyes, my fingers were tightly gripping a pilot pen. Spread out on my desk was the AP Calculus unit test paper. In the name block, “Aria Vance” was written in bold ink. Our proctor, Mr. Carter, tapped on the smartboard at the front of the room. “The exam starts in five minutes. Clear your desks of any non-permitted materials.” I turned my head to the left. Chloe Sterling was leaning back in her chair, her head tilted, sporting that signature smug smile I had endured for six years. Her eyes were half-closed, her long lashes casting a shadow under the classroom LED lights. She looked completely relaxed. I knew that smile all too well. In my past life, she wore that exact same expression during every single exam. And now, here I was, sitting right next to her again. She was in her usual pose, waiting to intercept my brain waves. I stared at her for three seconds, squeezed my pen hard, and then let out a slow breath. “You may begin,” Mr. Carter announced. I flipped open my test booklet and took a deep breath. All the clear numbers and formulas that had run through my head for six years shattered into meaningless, broken signals. Chloe’s hand holding the pencil froze. The smile on her face stiffened. She scribbled a few words on a scrap piece of paper and slid it over. [Why aren’t you reading them out in your head?] I glanced at the note, pushed it right back, and didn’t write a single letter in response. She snapped her head to look at me, her eyes wide with shock. I ignored her. She didn’t move a muscle during the rest of the math test. The second the bell rang and Mr. Carter collected the papers, she sprang up from her seat and grabbed my wrist. Her grip was incredibly tight. Her manicured nails dug deep into the sensitive skin of my inner wrist. Her eyes were bloodshot. “What were you thinking about? Why couldn’t I hear a single thing?!” I pried her fingers off my wrist, one by one. I looked straight into her eyes and let out a cold laugh. “The answers.” “Couldn’t you hear them?”
Chloe stamped her foot in frustration, but she couldn’t find a single word to argue back. Three days later, the midterm rankings were posted on the corkboard in the main hallway. When I walked toward the classroom, a huge crowd of students was gathered around the board. Complete silence hung over them. Zach Miller stood at the very front, his neck stretched out like a giraffe. His mouth was wide open, and the Starbucks breakfast wrap in his hand grew cold, completely forgotten. I walked up and glanced at the sheet. The very first line read: “Aria Vance, Rank: 1.” The name on the second line wasn’t Chloe Sterling. It was Ryan Cross from the honors class. Chloe’s name was buried all the way down on page four. “Rank: 142.” The crowd stood frozen for three full seconds before the hallway erupted. “Chloe ranked 142? No freaking way. Is there a glitch in the grading system?” “Aria, how did you do that? You finally got first place!” “Wait, didn’t you always lose to Chloe by just one point? The tables have turned!” Zach turned around to look at me, his breakfast wrap still hovering in mid-air. “Aria, you beat Chloe by like, a hundred points. How did you pull this off?” I looked at his wrap and smirked. “With a pen. How else would I do it?” Zach blinked, dumbfounded, while a few girls nearby burst out laughing. Then, a sharp voice cut through the noise from behind me. “Get out of my way.” Chloe threw her backpack onto Zach’s desk and shoved her way through the crowd, her shoulder slamming into a guy’s back. She stood in front of the ranking sheet, motionless. Her eyes scanned the very first line, paused on my name, and then dragged down to the fourth page to find her own. The color completely drained from her face. It wasn’t a look of sadness; it was the look of someone who had been violently dragged down from a high pedestal. She snapped her head toward me, her chin tilted up, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Aria. Outside. Now.” I leaned casually against the wall next to the corkboard. “The rankings are right here. If you have something to say, say it here.” Her eyes flickered, scanning the lingering crowd. “Get out here.” Leaving those words behind, she walked out first, leaning against the doorframe of the empty hallway, her fingers tapping impatiently against the wood. When I walked out, she straightened up. “Let’s go to the stairwell.” We walked into the quiet stairwell, and she turned on me. “How did you get that score?” I leaned against the handrail. “Didn’t you just stare at the board for ten minutes? First line, first spot. That’s my name.” Chloe slammed her Starbucks cup onto the windowsill. “I’m not asking about your score! I’m asking how the hell you got first place!” “I wrote the exam. That’s how.” “Stop playing dumb!” Her voice suddenly escalated, echoing in the concrete stairwell. She slammed her palm on the windowsill, making her drink wobble and spill a few drops. “I couldn’t hear a single one of the multiple-choice questions for math! What the hell was that ticking sound in your head?!” I tilted my head and locked eyes with her, a cold smile playing on my lips. “What goes on in my head is none of your business. Besides… how would you know about any ticking sound?” Chloe’s lips parted, but she choked on her own words. She couldn’t admit it. In my past life, she was so smug on that rooftop. But now, she didn’t even dare to repeat those words. “Don’t think you’ve won just because of one lucky test,” she hissed, trying to regain her composure. “I’ve been number one in this school for six years. Everyone knows I’m the genius here.” “You getting first place just looks like a fluke.” I stood up straight and adjusted the strap of my backpack. “Then go ahead and take the top spot back on the next exam.” “Aren’t you the genius? Surely a genius isn’t scared of one bad unit test.” “Do it yourself next time. Show everyone that you, Chloe Sterling, don’t rely on luck.” Chloe’s lips trembled. She bit her straw so hard it completely deformed. “Fine. Just you wait.” She kicked the heavy fire door open, letting it slam loudly against the wall. I called out to her retreating back: “Make sure you actually bubble in your answer sheet next time. Don’t leave it blank again.” Chloe paused for a fraction of a second, her shoulders rigid, before she walked away without looking back.
For the next two weeks, Chloe actually opened her textbooks. She stopped sleeping in class. She stopped playing games during study hall. Instead, she sat with a sophomore math textbook open in front of her. I glanced at the page she was struggling with—quadratic inequalities. Material from the first semester of sophomore year. She had been staring at that single page for ten minutes, her pencil tracing random circles on her scratch paper. In our past life, she sat in that exact same spot while my brain ran through the entire derivation of those inequalities. She had simply closed her eyes, leaned back, and copied my mental steps line by line. She never took notes from the board. She never borrowed my binders. She only had to close her eyes to get an A+. But now, all she could hear in her ears was “dit-dah-dit”. I lowered my head and went back to my own study guide, letting out a very faint, amused sigh. She heard it. She whipped her head around instantly. “What’s so funny?” I put down my pen and met her gaze. “I just solved a tough problem. I’m in a good mood. Is that a crime?” “Why do you keep staring at me lately anyway? Do I have the answers written on my face?” Chloe’s gaze went icy. She pressed her lips together and turned back to stare at the sophomore math page. During AP Physics on Wednesday, the teacher called on Chloe to solve a mechanics problem on the board—a basic block-sliding-on-an-incline problem. Sophomore-level stuff. Chloe walked up to the whiteboard, spinning the dry-erase marker nervously in her fingers. She wrote “F=ma” on the right side, paused for two seconds, and squeaked the eraser over it. Then she wrote a force decomposition formula, only to erase half of it again. The classroom started whispering. “Isn’t this a total freebie question?” “It’s just sophomore force diagrams. You just draw the vectors and you’re done.” “Why can’t Chloe solve this? She used to ace physics.” I leaned back against the desk behind me, crossing my arms as I watched her. Chloe stood at the board for almost three minutes. She wrote three different formulas and erased them all. The whiteboard was now just a smear of black ink. Her hand started to shake. The marker squeaked loudly against the board, the tip bending under her pressure. She tossed the marker into the tray. “Mr. Harris, I don’t feel like solving this.” Mr. Harris adjusted his glasses, his fingers freezing over his grading binder. “Chloe, what is going on with you lately? First the midterms, now this. Your physics grades used to be flawless.” “I’m just not feeling well, Mr. Harris.” She walked straight back to her seat and buried her face in her arms on the desk. She bumped the corner of the desk as she sat down, sending her pencil rolling onto the floor. Nobody picked it up for her. I leaned back in my chair, looking down at the rolling pencil, then at the back of her head buried in her arms. The second the bell rang, she lifted her head and glared at me. “You were laughing again, weren’t you?” I closed my textbook and turned to face her. “You’ve asked me that twice today, Chloe.” “Maybe instead of worrying about whether I’m laughing, you should focus on your work. You haven’t even finished that sophomore inequality chapter, have you?” The girl sitting in front of us turned around to peek, then quickly turned back. Chloe’s nostrils flared, her eyes wide with rage. “Aria, don’t get too cocky.” I crossed my arms and smiled. “I’m not. I’ve just never seen a ‘genius’ who can’t even draw a basic physics force diagram.” “You used to beat me by one point on every single test. You were the genius, and I was always second.” “So why didn’t you show us your genius on the board today? Your erased scribbles are still up there. Want to go back up and finish them?” Chloe slammed her hands on the desk and stood up, her chair screeching against the floor. The classroom went dead silent. A dozen students turned to look at her. Ignoring them, she bent down, bringing her face close to my ear, and whispered through gritted teeth: “You think you can ruin me with those stupid ticking sounds? I have a million ways to make sure you never recover from this. Just wait.” Her voice was so low only the two of us could hear. I tilted my face, looked into her eyes, and smiled. “Go ahead and try.” “But next time Mr. Harris calls you to the board, make sure you don’t use the ‘sick’ excuse again.” “Do it too often, and people might actually think you’re brain-dead.” Fuming, she grabbed her bag and stormed out of the classroom. While I was filling my water bottle at the cooler, Zach jogged up and tapped my shoulder. “Aria, what is going on between you and Chloe? You guys used to be so chill. You in second, her in first.” I pressed the button on the water dispenser. “Zach, let me ask you a question.” “How do you think someone who sleeps in class and plays video games all day manages to beat me by exactly one point, every single time?” Zach scratched the back of his head. “Talent? I mean, everyone says she’s a genius.” I took a sip of my water. “A genius who can’t even draw a force diagram? A basic sophomore question, and she couldn’t write a single correct line.” Zach froze, his mouth hanging open. I patted his shoulder. “Pay close attention next physics class. Let’s see how many lines she can write then.”
On Friday afternoon during homeroom, Mr. Carter stood at the podium. “Next Monday is the midterm exam. The results will be factored into the early-admission evaluation. Those of you hoping for the Harvard nomination need to lock in.” His eyes swept over our side of the room. Chloe sat up straight, her chin lifting once again. She was incredibly sensitive about the Harvard nomination. Six years of being rank one was supposed to guarantee that spot for her. But that was in my past life. Right now, her name was sitting at rank 142. After class, Chloe walked over to my desk, leaning down to whisper: “You better start thinking normally during the midterms. That Harvard nomination is mine.” I put my pen down and looked up at her. “If you’re so smart, what are you panicking for?” “Besides, for six years when I was stuck in second, I never came to your desk begging you to ‘think normally.’” Chloe’s eyes turned dangerously cold. She was leaning so close I could see her eyelashes trembling with rage. I leaned back and met her gaze without flinching. “Aria, stop playing with me. You know exactly how I got those scores.” I stood up, pushing my chair back, standing face-to-face with her. We were barely inches apart. “And you know exactly how you got them, too.” “Six years, Chloe. Did you really think I’d just keep quiet forever?” “Well, the forever ends now.” Chloe didn’t reply, her lips pressed into a bloodless line. She didn’t dare make a scene in a crowded classroom. I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked past her. “Let’s let the exam sheets do the talking, Chloe.” The next morning during study hall, Zach pulled me into the hallway near the water cooler, looking around suspiciously. “Aria, Chloe’s telling everyone in class that you cheated on the unit test. She says you got the test papers in advance because you have a relative in the district office.” I closed my vocabulary binder. “I got the papers in advance? Then why the hell would I have stayed in second place for six years?” “If I had the cheat codes, why would I choose to be second? Do I look stupid to you?” Zach blinked. “Right… if you had the papers, why wouldn’t you just take first place earlier?” “But she claims you told her yourself.” I scoffed. “She claims? Tell her to show the receipts. Chat logs, audio recordings, notes—literally anything. Can she?” Zach swallowed hard. I tucked my binder under my arm and took a sip of water. “Zach, use your brain before you help her spread this garbage.” “She dropped from rank one to 142. Instead of explaining her own pathetic drop, she accuses me of cheating.” “Does that sound logical to you?” Zach stood there, his brow furrowing. As I walked back to class, Chloe happened to be walking toward me, holding a stack of physics homework binders. She paused when she saw me, her chin tilting up. “What were you telling Zach?” I didn’t stop. “Asking him if you’ve finished your sophomore physics homework.” Chloe gripped the binders so hard the cardboard edges bent. “Cut the crap. You were talking about the midterm cheat rumors, weren’t you?” I stopped and turned around, a mocking smile on my face. “Which rumors? The one where you fell to 142, or the one where you’re crying ‘cheater’ because you can’t cope?” “Chloe, you’ve been spreading lies about me all week. I didn’t even come after you, and yet you’re putting yourself in my face.” The hallway went quiet. Several students stopped talking and looked over. Chloe’s chin was up, but her voice was low and strained. “Don’t get too cocky.” “I’m not. I’m just asking for receipts. If you’re going to accuse me of cheating, show the proof. Otherwise, shut your mouth.” “Just wait,” she hissed, clutching the binders tightly as she stormed off. During the next break, Chloe was still whispering to a group of guys, claiming I only stayed in second place before because “I was scared of getting caught,” and that I “couldn’t help but show off” this time. Hearing this from Zach, I slammed my prep book onto the desk and stood up. Zach tried to grab my sleeve. “Aria, what are you doing?” “Clearing my name.” I walked straight to the front of the classroom and clapped my hands twice. The chatter died down. Forty pairs of eyes locked onto me. “Some people think my first-place score was a fluke or that I leaked the test papers.” “Fine. Let’s settle this right now. I want our math teacher to write three random advanced calculus problems on the board. Right now.” “If I get even one step wrong, I’ll admit I cheated.” The room was dead silent for five seconds. Then someone in the back whistled, and Zach muttered, “Holy shit.” Chloe was sitting by the window in the third row. Her knuckles were white from gripping her textbook. Mrs. Gable, the math teacher, adjusted her glasses, stood up, and took a piece of chalk. She wrote three complex problems on the board. When she finished, she put the chalk down. “These are from a college-level prep syllabus. I haven’t even taught these yet.” I grabbed a piece of chalk, walked up to the board, and wrote out the step-by-step derivations for all three problems without hesitation. I tossed the chalk back into the tray, wiped my hands, and turned around. “All three are done.” “If anyone still thinks I cheated, come up here and check the math.” Nobody said a word. Zach sat in the back row, his jaw practically on his desk. A few girls in the front row started whispering. “They’re all correct… and Mrs. Gable literally just made them up.” As I walked back to my seat, Chloe suddenly bolted upright. She stood there, her chin high, staring at me with pure venom. “Who’s to say you and Mrs. Gable didn’t plan this? Maybe she showed you these problems beforehand!” The classroom went even quieter. You could hear a pin drop. Mrs. Gable’s face darkened, her grading pen halting mid-air. “Chloe, I drafted these questions on the spot. I didn’t even have them prepared.” Chloe ignored the teacher, her eyes still locked onto me. I stopped walking, turned around, and smiled. “Why don’t you come up and write them then?” “Aren’t you the genius who always got first place? Come up here and solve them with me. Let’s do a live showdown.” “Chloe, show us what a real genius can do.” Chloe’s face turned from pale to ash-gray. Her mouth opened and closed, but not a single sound came out. Forty-plus pairs of eyes darted from her to me, then back to her. She stood frozen for ten seconds before she abruptly slammed her notebook onto her desk and sat down. The loud thud of her book echoed in the silent room. I sat back down, unzipping my bag to grab my textbook for the next class. Chloe sat next to me, her entire body tense, her breathing shallow and rapid. She didn’t look at me, but the corner of her textbook was completely ruined by her grip. I flipped to the first page of my book and whispered, “Next time you want to call me a cheater, bring receipts.” “If you slander me again, I won’t be as nice as just solving problems on the whiteboard.”
🌟 Continue the story here 👉🏻 📲 Download the “NovelMaster” app 🔍 search for “460903”, and watch the full series ✨! #NovelMaster
Leave a Reply