Extra Credit

Zara

The radiator in the back left corner of Room 304 had a high-pitched hiss that usually kicked in around the forty-minute mark.

I sat three rows away from it, trying to focus on question twenty-four. It was a comparative political philosophy mid-term, forty percent of our term grade, and Dr. Vance was sitting at the front podium with his glasses resting on the tip of his nose, methodically tapping a red pen against a stack of blue exam books. Every ten seconds: tap, tap, tap.

I spun my mechanical pencil between my knuckles, my thumb pressing down until the lead clicked out one millimeter too far. I pulled it back, leaned over my test packet, and wrote down my answer.

The illusion of free will within a closed institutional framework.

I stopped. I stared at the line. I didn't remember reading that phrase in the syllabus, but it had slipped out of my wrist like habit. I scratched it out with two neat lines and wrote Hobbes’ Leviathan instead. That was what Vance wanted. At Crestview Academy, you gave the professors exactly what they put on the study guide if you wanted to stay at the top five percent of the class. And if you weren't in the top five percent, you didn't even get an interview for The Fellowship.

A muffled buzz rattled the edge of my wooden desk.

I didn't move my head. Phones were supposed to be powered down and placed in our leather bags at the front of the room. If Vance saw a screen light up, it was an automatic zero on the exam, no exceptions.

The vibration stopped. I took a breath and went back to question twenty-five.

Buzz. Buzz.

It was coming from my skirt pocket. I’d forgotten to turn off my ringer settings before class started. I clamped my thigh against the side of the chair, trying to smother the noise against the heavy fabric of my pleated uniform skirt.

Dr. Vance didn't look up from his desk. He just kept tapping his pen.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

It kept coming. Three short pulses, a pause, then three more. Crestview’s internal network didn't allow personal texts or push notifications during official testing hours. The school firewall blocked everything unless it came directly from the administration’s main server.

Slowly, keeping my shoulders still, I slid my left hand into my pocket. My fingers touched the cold glass screen. I pressed the power button once to mute it, but the haptic motor vibrated again immediately.

I glanced around. To my right, Chloe was furiously writing an essay response, her knuckles white around her pen. To my left, the window was clouded over with morning fog, cold condensation dripping down the leaded glass panes. Everything was totally normal. It was just another rainy Tuesday in October.

I slipped the phone out just enough to tilt the screen toward my lap.

A single notification was hovering over the dark lock screen. An email.

SENDER: Office of Academic Assessment ([email protected])

SUBJECT: EXTRA CREDIT

I frowned. Crestview didn't offer extra credit. It was written in the student handbook under Section 4: Academic Evaluation is absolute. Supplemental work will not be entertained under any circumstance.

My thumb hovered over the glass. I glanced up. Vance was turning a page in his book. I looked back down and swiped the notification open.

The screen brightness was turned all the way down, but the plain black text on the white background seemed blindingly sharp.

STUDENT ID: 4409-ZR

NAME: Ruelle, Zara

You have been selected for an independent academic opportunity.

Your assignment is as follows:

Make Sawyer Venn notice you.

Completion deadline: Friday, 11:59 PM.

Failure to comply will affect your academic standing.

I stared at it.

My first thought was that someone had hacked the school email server. It happened sometimes—the upperclassmen in the computer lab liked to run pranks during mid-term week to stress out the sophomores. Last year someone sent a fake mass evacuation order during the AP Chemistry final.

I read the line again.

Make Sawyer Venn notice you.

Not notice. Not contact. Just notice.

It didn't even sound like a real prank. If someone was going to hack the official school domain, they’d usually send something embarrassing, or fake a grade leak, or post a meme across the library monitors. This was just... weird. And oddly specific.

I raised my eyes slowly, shifting my gaze across the center aisle of the classroom.

Sawyer Venn was sitting four rows ahead of me, near the windows.

He was quiet. That was the main thing anyone knew about him. He had been at Crestview since freshman year, just like me, but he barely existed in the social hierarchy. He didn't play lacrosse, he didn't run for student council, and he didn't sit with any particular group at dinner. He just showed up, did his work, and left. He had dark hair that was always slightly too long, falling into his eyes, and he usually wore the school blazer without the mandatory Crestview lapel pin.

Right now, he was resting his chin in his hand, his pencil tracing light lines on the margin of his test paper. He looked completely untroubled by the exam. In fact, he looked almost bored.

I looked down at my phone again. The email was still there. The sender address was clean—[email protected]. That was the exact same email address that sent out our semester schedules, our dorm room assignments, and our official ranking lists.

Why Sawyer? We’d shared three classes over two years and I don't think we’d ever spoken a single direct sentence to each other. Last month, when we were assigned as lab partners in Physics, he’d just handed me his half of the data sheet without looking at me, taken his coat, and walked out before the bell rang.

It had to be a mistake. A glitch in an automated routing script. Maybe it was meant for someone else, or maybe it was an old coding test left behind by an IT staff member.

Across the room, a faint thump echoed against a desk.

It was low, but in the dead silence of the examination hall, it sounded like a door slamming.

I looked up.

Sawyer’s left hand was resting flat on his desk. Underneath his palm, his phone was face-up, its screen glowing bright blue against the dark oak wood.

He hadn't hidden it under his desk like I had. It was lying right there in the open, next to his test paper.

Dr. Vance didn't move. He didn't even raise his head from his book, as if an active phone screen lying on a desk during a forty-percent final wasn't happening six feet in front of him.

Sawyer didn't reach down to turn it off. He just stared at the screen.

His shoulders went rigid. I couldn't see his face from behind, but I saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. His fingers twitched once against the polished wood, his fingernails digging lightly into the grain.

The room felt suddenly very cold. The hiss of the radiator in the corner seemed to drop an octave, turning into a dull, wet hum.

I held my breath, my thumb frozen over my own screen.

Sawyer didn't close the message. He didn't put the phone away. Very slowly, he turned his head.

He didn't look at Dr. Vance. He didn't look at the door.

He looked straight back over his shoulder, through the gap between the third and fourth rows of desks, until his eyes locked onto mine.

He wasn't surprised. He didn't look confused, or amused, or annoyed.

His eyes were completely dark, heavy with a strange, exhausting weight—like a person who had just heard the exact same bad joke told for the fifth time in a row.

He didn't say a word. He just held my gaze while the clock on the back wall ticked loudly against the silence.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And right then, sitting in the quiet fog of Room 304, the back of my neck went cold.

He had received one too.