QUINCY-SIZED PROBLEM

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Over the next few days I wrestle with whether to tell Drew about the picture of him and how close he came to danger, but I can't bring myself to do it. Telling him would mean losing him. He'll distance himself from me the moment I tell him his life is still in danger.

Instead, I do the next best thing and show Quincy the pics. Then I swore him to secrecy. He thinks I should tell Drew, but I don't trust his motives for wanting to tell him. So, I keep what I know close to the vest while Quincy and I try to track the number that sent me the pictures.

In the meantime, we keep up appearances with our friends at school. Eager to beat the Mavericks, we gather in the school parking lot an hour before school is to start that following Monday and break off into teams of three to search the janitor's closets for the final clue. The fifteenth clue.

Chloe and Quincy take the main building, while Drew and I take two of the smaller buildings. Jason and Patrice take the other small buildings.

The first janitors closet we find barely has anything in it and neither does the second. While we walk, Drew unloads on me about how his dad and his mom were trying to work things out at some point but the woman his dad left his mom for managed to pull him back into her homewrecking web. He's been unloading his problems on me a lot lately, and like the good girlfriend I am, I'm here for him. He comes to me broken and I help him put himself back together.

After coming up empty handed, we head back out to the parking lot where the others are already waiting. Patrice waves the final clue in the air at us and we hurry over to put all the clues together to solve one final clue.

Drew reads the last clue. "The end is here and hopefully you're a bit keener. This is your last year here because you're a..."

"High School Senior," I answer unscrambling the letters at the bottom of each of the clues. "That's so lame. They could've come up with something harder than that."

"Whatever," Quincy snatches the last clue out of my hand and writes the answer down. "Let's go turn it in before the Mavericks get here."

We wait outside the front office for fifteen minutes while they open and hand both our clues and the final puzzle over to the school secretary. She smiles, gives us a number, and our faces drop when we see the number.

Two... she gave us number two...

"Does this mean we came in second?" Drew asks.

"I can't say anything officially because we have to confirm the answers first, but I will say I gave number one to team Maverick Friday when they turned their clues in," she smiles apologetically.

Defeated, we walk back out into the hallway looking like the sore losers we are. "I really, really wanted that laptop for college." Patrice pouts. Her arms folded across her chest.

"I just wanted to be able to shove this win down Kim's throat." I scoff.

Speaking of the devil, Dreux, his entourage, Kim, and her friends come around the corner to the office. They smile when they see us, and Kim waves their number one ticket in our faces.

God, I hate her... but more importantly, I hate to LOSE!

"No freaking way," I glower at both Kim and Dreux. "How in the hell did they get their last clue when they haven't even been looking? Every time I see them, they're sitting around laughing and having fun. We put fun on the backburner and we still weren't able to get a lot done."

"Whatever," Drew waves them off. "We don't need free laptops anyway. We can go out and buy one."

"That's not the point," I sulk. "I. Don't. Lose."

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