Chapter 1

 

The news spread through the school efficiently and quickly, in the same way a wildfire or an outbreak of lice does. There was no real system to it, of course, but rumor and gossip do not need a system. It finds the most efficient vector of transmission and then simply transmits itself, by way of crumpled up note, giggled whisper and message in the group chat. 

It avoided finding its way to Hunter, much for the same reason that lice had. Hunter wasn’t very good with people, and so he tended to stay away from them. He wasn’t exactly unpopular, he was mostly just very good at being invisible. In a school of some fifteen-hundred students, not attracting attention was both incredibly easy and practically impossible. There was a sea of people to disappear in, after all, but the problem was that all those people were, well, people, like him. Statistically, someone was going to notice. 

And someone had. Three someones, specifically. One by one, they had tripped over Hunter — literally in one case — and they’d collectively adopted him like a stray dog. Over time, they’d stuck around to see what cool fun tricks Hunter could do, already adept as he was at Bark In Frustration, Sit Down Exhausted and Paw. 

The first was Ryan, who was a bit of a meathead, but that’s what made him endearing when it didn’t make him incredibly annoying. He was one of those people who unironically said “healthy body, healthy mind” and then ran five miles while chugging sports drinks. Ryan would shout “bird up!” at random times and refused to explain what it meant. He had a Fitbit.

The second was Matthew, Ryan’s best friend and polar opposite. Matthew had never touched marijuana or in fact any kind of drug in his life, but he had weed vibes. He giggled at jokes only he got. He drew weird shit on the back of his hands. There was a lot of lying around in the grass and staring at the sky. He was also inexplicably popular with girls. He always had another girlfriend, though those flings never lasted very long. They also enjoyed practicing makeup on him, which he sat through with a sly grin and to Ryan’s annoyance. 

The last one was Drew. Drew was a Good Guy. Drew volunteered at the local shelter, for God’s sake. Anyone who met Drew was secretly wondering if maybe he was a serial killer because nobody is that nice, right? But after getting to know him, it was hard to find anyone who could say a bad thing about him. He made people feel good about themselves, including Hunter. Hunter never felt good about himself, so he loved being around Drew. 

The other guys were alright too. They shared several hobbies, like games, movies and television — groundbreaking and unique as they were — and pretty soon, they were also sharing the worst memes they could find in their own private group chat. 

And it was through the group chat that the news finally got to Hunter. It was a strange message at first, and he hadn’t understood what Ryan had meant when he wrote it. Not that that was new; Ryan’s approach to grammar and spelling would have confounded even Alan Turing. 

“Ayyyy ya’ll herd, about the stuff;; naaames and shit?”

Hunter stared at his phone. A part of him felt a horrible familiarity. A sinking feeling of recognition, like that moment in a movie where the hero realizes that the monster from his nightmares is real. Drew held his phone up next to Hunter’s. 

“Why does he type like a Homestuck character?”

Hunter squeezed his eyes shut. “Why did you have to say it?” He nudged Drew. “You didn’t have to say it, now you said it and now it’s real and I can’t un-think it.” They walked down the school hallway. They’d just finished their last class, and usually, this was when they’d meet up at the school gate. Ryan’s message had them pause, though.

“It’s true, though,” Drew said, one hand in his pocket. “What do you think he’s talking about? Names?” He held his phone sideways like that would help, then cocked his head like a malamute. 

“What are y--” Hunter said. “Never mind. I don’t know. Maybe something Matt said?” Just then, both their phones chimed. Drew’s head turned the other way, and Hunter bit his lip to keep from laughing. 

“Contestlist man!!! What; you d’ont know about THECONTEST??!! Ugughghgughguhghghgh just com’on tothe PINK b a th ro o o m.”

“You know,” Hunter said, “I think we should just take his phone away from him. I think it’s better for everyone. For society.”

“Yeah, I can’t disagree with you.” Drew nudged him. “Come on, let’s see if he got into another fight or something.” 

The Pink Bathroom, so originally named because someone had decided some time in the 70’s that the tile, flooring and stalls should be painted pink, were the only bathrooms people tended to use. Technically speaking there were others in the main building, but the doors there had a gap wide enough to fit a small dog through and the seats had a tendency to slide loose. Most first-years found themselves in a compromising position as they crashed bare-assed onto the floor. 

Turning the corner to the bathrooms, Hunter and Drew were faced with a strange sight. There was a large crowd outside the bathrooms, which was impressive considering most people had already gone home. There were a few teachers scratching their heads, trying to figure out what was going on. Another text. 

“Just;; comE ON THROUGH!!! Saved yal’l a s p ot!?”

“If he saved us a spot in a stall, I’m flushing him down the toilet,” Hunter said, already hating the idea of having to make his way through the crowd. That was a lot of people, a lot of them were bigger than him, and it was going to be awkward and ughhhh.

Not that Hunter was particularly short. He was close to finishing high school, he’d just never made it past 5’5 and nobody ever let him forget it, except for Drew who occasionally did. Drew was the only one who was allowed to properly bully him, however, and that was because Drew was bad at it and he kept everyone else from doing it too. Compared to Hunter, Drew was… larger. He was, in fact, perfectly average, if he was measured as a car. 

As a human, he tended to find it easy to find a spot in any show or play, though always to the detriment of the two people sitting behind him. Hunter sometimes joked that foxes were cats running on dog hardware, and Drew was dog software running on forklift hardware. He cleared a path, and people stepped aside or found themselves gently picked up and moved to the side. 

There were easily twenty, thirty people in the bathroom. Everyone was standing around the mirrors. Hunter saw a hand stick up out of the crowd, and he could tell from the grime and the Fitbit whose hand it was. 

“Yo!” Ryan yelled, “over here!” He was suspiciously coherent considering the fact that he texted like an alcoholic beaver. Drew and Hunter made his way over and looked at the mirror. There were words on them. Every mirror had a list of names in bright pink, glowing slightly. Hunter did a quick count, and estimated there were some forty-eight names between the four mirrors. Every name had a number next to it. 

“Um,” Hunter said, “why am I on this list?” 

You are reading story Girl By Popular Vote at novel35.com

“Not just you, man!” Ryan said. “Look! There’s me!” He pointed at his own name, quite a bit higher up. “Matthew is on here somewhere too.” He looked left and right. The people with fewer votes, like Hunter, had a number between ten and fifteen, and then it fell off quickly. The highest one was on the left-most mirror, way at the top, with a couple hundred points. “And Paxton,” Ryan growled. 

Paxton was the most popular kid in the school, which means Ryan both hated and looked up to him. He was ‘cool’, in that effortless “yeah I surf, why?” kind of way. He looked sandy. 

“But that’s not the last of it!” Ryan said. “Touch it!” As soon as Hunter stepped forward, a murmur went through the crowd. Suddenly people were looking at him. When he raised his arm, the mirror responded. His name was already on the mirror, but now it also appeared at the top with a timer next to it. It was counting down from five minutes. There was also a small text. ONE VOTE REMAINING, it said. “Go on,” Ryan urged. “Pick a name!”

Hunter swallowed and frowned and tapped a name at the bottom. He felt bad for people in last place. It was some kid named ‘Daryl’, one of the juniors who most people tended not to notice even harder than they didn’t notice Hunter. When his finger touched the mirror, the number next to Daryl’s name went from 2 to 3, and there was a slight ‘ding’.

“Thanks, man,” he heard. He looked aside. Daryl gave him an awkward thumb’s up. He wasn’t going to say it, but Hunter hadn’t even noticed him until he’d said something. He looked back at the mirror. His press had put Daryl above someone named Orson, who had also had 2 votes.

“Who the hell is Orson?” he said out loud. Ryan nudged him and nodded over his shoulder. The boy was probably a freshman, because he was shorter than Hunter was. He ran up to the mirror and tapped his own name frantically, but nothing changed. NO VOTES REMAINING, the top of the mirror helpfully told him bubblegum pink. The time was down to three minutes. “Uh,” Hunter said, turning to the crowd, “what happens when the timer runs out? Because all of this is clearly magic, right?”

“The teachers don’t know either, and they don’t know who did it,” Ryan said. “Magic isn’t officially prohibited on school grounds but this is probably some kind of prank from a student club or something.”

“And the teachers aren’t putting a stop to it?” Hunter asked with a frown. “Our names are on this, Ryan.”

“Yeah, and my name is higher than yours,” the other boy replied with a grin. “So whatever this is, I’ll be fine.”

“Eat me,” Hunter said as he turned to the mirror. Two minutes remaining. Clearly, something similar had happened in the girls’ bathroom, because every once in a while, the numbers next to the names went up. Paxton was pulling ahead by a sizable margin, his name now approaching 250 votes. 

“He’s not even here,” Ryan said, throwing his hands up. “How can he be winning a contest he’s not showing up for?!” There were some chuckles from behind him, and he spun around to face the mockery. “You wanna go, bro?” he said to someone who easily had a foot and fifty pounds over him, pointing a finger in his face. Strangely enough, it worked, and the boy took a step back. “Thought so.”

“Relax, man,” Drew said. He looked a little bit sad. “My name’s not even on the list, so I think this is probably something pretty exclusive. You should be happy you’re already included.” Immediately, both Ryan and Hunter changed gears from whatever they were thinking of into ‘making sure Drew is okay’ mode, because Drew managed to have the energy of a small kicked dog when he was upset, and neither of them was willing to have him feel that bad. Hunter patted him on the back.

“Hey,” Ryan said, “I’m sure this is some kind of dumb prank, man, don’t worry about it. The girls’ bathroom doesn’t even have their own names, it’s all the same ones.”

“That’s weird,” Drew said. “It’s just you guys?”

“Guess so,” Hunter said, frowning at the mirror again. The timer was almost at zero, which, he assumed, meant that in a few seconds Paxton would walk away with yet another prize for the trophy cabinet he most likely had. “5.”

“4,” Ryan said. A weird trance came over the crowd. Everyone just stared at the numbers, counting down together.

“3.”

“2.”

“1.”

Nothing happened for a second, then all the names went away. 

Ryan rubbed the back of his head. “Well, that was anticlima—”

“Aaaaaaaugh!” 

Every head in the room swiveled to Orson, who had his arms wrapped around his stomach. He fell to his knees. A few people stepped forward to help him, but he screamed again, and then a few things happened. There was a “pop”, and everyone was blown back. Orson lifted from the ground, his hair stood straight up, and seemed to stretch. The boy himself seemed to shrink, taking up less space. 

There was a sound, like a soda being opened but in reverse, and then a flash of light. Orson crashed into the ceiling, hard enough to dislodge some tile, and then fell to the floor. Hunter ran over to him as soon as he got his bearings, but the boy seemed to be none the worse for wear. He was already dusting himself off and…

That wasn’t Orson. Not like Hunter knew him, anyway. 

“What happened?” they said. “Did something happen to me? Why does my voice sound funny?” Hunter wanted to answer, but he didn’t know what to say to the girl who had been Orson just a minute ago.