Chapter 28 Chapter 28

Chapter 28 Chapter 28
My bag slid off my shoulder. I caught the strap before it hit the floor, my eyes darting from Chloe to Kem to the girl leaning against the wall behind them.
Chloe stood too close, close enough that I had to step back until my spine hit the lockers. Kem stood just behind her, arms crossed and the third girl leaned against the wall, picking at her nails.
“What’s your deal with Amber?” Chloe’s eyes didn’t blink. “You two trying to sabotage the vote?”
My mouth went dry. The hallway suddenly felt narrower, the distant chatter of other students fading into a dull hum that did nothing to drown out the pounding in my ears.
“Answer me.” She snapped her fingers an inch from my face.
I kept my gaze on the floor, tracing the scuffed tiles and the faint outline of old gum stains, willing myself to disappear into them.
“She’s not gonna tell you.” Kem leaned in, tilting her head with a mocking little smile. “Look at her. She’s obviously guilty.”
Chloe grabbed a fistful of my hoodie and twisted the fabric near my collar, the pull tight enough that the seams dug into my skin.
“Is that true?” 
My heart slammed against the back of my throat. I pressed my palms against the lockers behind me, grounding me just enough to keep my knees from buckling.
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Wrong answer.” She tightened her grip, dragging me half a step forward.
The third girl reached over and knocked my notebook out of my open bag with a casual flick of her wrist. It hit the floor, pages splayed open, and she stepped on the corner of it without looking down, grinding her shoe into the paper.
“Oops.”
“You think I won’t find out?” Chloe leaned in so close I could smell her sweet, cloying perfume. “What does she want?”
Kem’s gum-scented breath hit my cheek.
 “Tell her, or I’ll make something up. Either way, you lose.”
I looked over Chloe’s shoulder, at the far end of the hall, and noticed Amber and her friends by the water fountain looking at me.
I held her gaze, silently begging her to do something.
She glanced back down at her phone in her hand and kept walking.
“Hey, baby.” Nat’s voice came from the corner, his hand landed on Chloe’s shoulder gently. “Can I steal you for a sec?”
She let go of my hoodie and turned, her whole body softening the second she saw him.
“Yeah. Of course, baby.”
He glanced at me for exactly one second. That fleeting softness in his gaze lingered just long enough before it vanished. 
“Come on.” He slid his arm around her waist and steered her down the hall. Kem short me a look and trailed after them. The third girl kicked my notebook further across the floor before she followed.
I bent down and picked up my notebook, brushing the shoe print off the cover with my sleeve. My fingers trembled slightly as I gathered the scattered pages, smoothing them out one by one. I stood there until my legs felt steady enough to hold me, then walked to tech class, the stretched collar of my hoodie rubbing against my neck.
Ryan sat at his station, one earbud in, tapping a pen against his keyboard. Aaron was two seats over, muttering at his screen about a missing bracket, you could hear his frustration in the sharp clicks of his mouse.
“You look like shit,” Ryan mumbled without glancing up.
“Rough morning.”
I dropped into my seat, logged into my computer and pulled up my code from yesterday. The lines of text blurred for a moment as I tried to steady my breathing. Mr. Patterson stood at the front, sorting handouts, his coffee mug adding fresh rings to the old ones on the desk.
Ryan rolled his chair closer and lowered his voice.
 “Still thinking about the prom thing?”
“No.” I typed a useless line and immediately deleted it.
“I pulled something up.” He tilted his screen toward me. “Look.”
“Ryan-”
“Two seconds.”
Aaron glanced over at us, then went back to his own screen, uninterested in whatever we were doing.
I rolled closer. The nomination portal filled his screen, names and signature counts stacked in a column. Chloe sat at the top with a wide lead and Amber’s name sat near the bottom.
“Nothing’s off.” He tapped the screen. “No fake accounts or no hidden votes. It’s clean.”
“How’d you even get into this thing?” I asked, eyeing the login screen behind the portal.
“Please.” He smirked, still scrolling. “I built half the reset system for the tech department last year. Patterson doesn’t know half of what I can see.”
“So Amber was wrong.”
“Looks like it.”
Something in my chest loosened. Maybe this wasn’t going to be my problem after all.
Ryan leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head. “She’s just paranoid.”
“But this is cheating.”
“Will you tell her? .” He laughed and reached for his water bottle.
The screen flickered.
Ryan’s hand froze halfway to his mouth.
One name near the bottom vanished. The row above it slid up to fill the empty space.
“Did you see that?” His voice dropped.
“I saw it.”
He slammed the bottle down and attacked the keyboard. The activity log popped open. A session sat at the top, a green dot pulsing beside it.
“Someone’s in there.” He turned to me. “Right now. And it’s not me.”
My stomach dropped. 
“Can you tell who?”
“Give me a second.” His fingers flew across the keys, lines of text scrolling too fast to read.
The dot blinked twice.
Then the log went still and the dot turned gray. The screen sat frozen on a line of code neither of us understood.
Ryan sat back, both hands falling into his lap.
“It’s gone.”
I stared at the frozen line, not knowing what to do or say.
“Everything alright over there?” Mr. Patterson asked.
“Fine.” Ryan closed the window instantly, replacing it with his half-finished game.
I turned back to my own station and stared at my hands, my fingers hovering uselessly over the keyboard.