Chapter 1Three years of high school. Three years of copying my seat neighbor's answers. Three years at the top of my grade.
Then the SAT showed up—the one test that actually mattered—and he didn't.
I had no choice but to wing it. Walked out after and ran straight into him.
"Oh wow. Three years of copying my work, and look at you now. Crashed and burned, huh? Ha!"
I was sure he'd done it on purpose.
Then scores dropped. I lost my mind—
Because—ME.
NO. 1 in the whole fucking state.
WHAT THE HELL???
...
My name is Quinn Mercer.
My room has trophies on every shelf and awards plastered across an entire wall.
Looks good, right?
But EVERY SINGLE ONE of them... Was my seat neighbor Gavin Shaw's.
More specifically—Gavin's answers, written down on my test in my handwriting.
Okay.
Let me back up.
Freshman year. First day. Placement exam. I got seated next to Gavin.
Papers hit the desk. I stared at mine for a solid three minutes.
I knew every single word. Put them together and I had nothing.
My face? Blank.
Not because I was playing it cool.
I had genuinely already checked out.
The only thought in my head was: how am I going to fake my way through the next three years?
Then Gavin poked me with his pen.
I turned.
He slid his paper toward me—answers right there, clean and clear, his handwriting so neat it looked printed.
I just stared.
He gave me a little chin nod: Go ahead.
I stared for one more second.
Then I made the MOST important decision of my entire life.
Copy that boy's paper!
I placed third in the whole school on that test.
Gavin placed eighth.
And from that day on, my life went completely off the rails.
Every single test, Gavin passed me his answers.
Sometimes a folded note.
Sometimes a tapping code with his pen cap.
Sometimes he'd just nudge his paper two inches my way.
My job?
Lookout.
Watch the proctor, sweep the room with my side-eye, make sure nobody caught on.
The one thing I actually got good at in high school wasn't calculus.
It was clocking a proctor's next move in under half a second—left side of the room or right—before they even took a step.
Better than a security camera.
And my grades?
Went from third in school all the way up to first in my grade and stayed there.
Three years straight.
My homeroom teacher, Mr. Hale, told every parent he talked to:
"Quinn is just built for this. Twenty years of teaching, and she's the easiest student I've ever had."
My mom would come home from every parent-teacher conference glowing for a full month.
And there was a hot guy in my grade named Sean Hunter.
Every time midterm scores posted, he'd "happen" to stroll past our classroom door and smile at me.
My response: one flat nod.
Not because I was trying to be cold.
I literally could not smile back.
I was fucking terrified.
If I smiled, it would show.
I just knew my face would give it all away—I'm a total fraud and I'm absolutely going to get caught.
So I leaned into it.
Played the "stone-cold grade queen" for three straight years.
Every single day running on low-key dread.
Before every test, my biggest fear wasn't "is this gonna be hard?"
It was "is Gavin going to be absent?"
I thought about coming clean so many times.
I'd walk up to Mr. Hale's office, take a deep breath, almost say:
"I have to tell you something. I'm actually a terrible student."
Then I'd see the framed photo on his desk—
Him and me, side by side, under the "Outstanding Student Award" banner, his smile even bigger than mine.
I couldn't do it.
I decided I was taking this to my grave.
But life had other plans.
Chapter 2
May 4th, 2024. SAT day.
Up at six. First thing I did was text Gavin.
"What time are you getting there?"
No response.
Six-thirty. Nothing.
Seven. Still nothing.
Seven-fifteen, I started spiraling.
Called him. Straight to voicemail.
Called again. Voicemail.
I sat on the edge of my bed and felt this cold dread crawl up my spine.
No. No, no, no.
Not today.
Not the SAT!
"Quinn!"
My mom knocked at 7:45.
"Let's go! Traffic's going to be insane!"
I walked out gripping my phone, called him seven more times on the way to the car.
All voicemail.
The May heat was coming through the cracked window, that dry suffocating kind, but I felt frozen.
We pulled up to the test center.
Banners everywhere.
[Good Luck. You Got This. Stanford and MIT Are Waiting For You.]
My mom popped the trunk and pulled out her own banner.
Unrolled it in front of what had to be three hundred people.
[GO QUINN! STANFORD IS YOURS!]
Red background. White letters.
About four feet wide.
Every parent in the parking lot turned and stared.
Someone nearby whispered:
"Wait, is that the girl from Lincoln High? The one who's been number one for three years?"
"4.0 GPA. She destroys second place every single time."
"She's basically already in at Stanford."
My throat went dry. I squeezed out one word: "Mom."
"Yeah?"
"Can you put that away?"
"Are you serious? Your dad had this made specially!"
I breathed in slow through my nose.
And walked through the doors.
Mr. Hale was waiting right inside.
The second he spotted me he jogged over and clapped me on the shoulder hard enough to almost buckle my knees.
"Quinn! You've got this! Just do what you always do!"
What I always do?
Copy off the smartest person in the room?
I smiled.
The kind where your mouth moves but your eyes don't.
He added: "Don't even stress. Your level? Top ten in the state, no question. Eyes closed."
Eyes closed—yeah, that tracks.
Copying with your eyes closed and copying with your eyes open?
The result's about the same.
Except today —
There was no one to copy from.
I found my seat. Sat down.
Left of me: a girl with glasses already lining up her pencils and calculator.
Right of me: some guy chewing his thumbnail down to nothing.
In front: the proctor sorting test booklets at the podium.
Behind me: just air.
No Gavin.
There was never going to be a Gavin.
SAT rooms are randomly assigned.
Even if I wanted to copy—
That person was in a completely different building.
The bell rang. Papers came down.
I flipped to the first page.
Critical Reading.
First multiple choice. Four options.
I read through all of them.
Knew every word.
Together?
Yeah. Nothing.
My hands started shaking. I spun my pen cap around three times.
Breathed in. Then again.
Then I started writing.
Not because something clicked. Not because I suddenly got smart.
I just thought about what was waiting outside those doors.
That banner.
My mom's face.
Mr. Hale's enthusiastic shoulder assault.
Three years of being Lincoln High's "ice-cold grade queen."
If I turned in a blank test, I would not survive today!
So I wrote.
Pure gut instinct.
A, B, C, D—whatever hit me first, that's what I bubbled in.
For the essay —
The topic was Persistence.
I almost laughed out loud.
The most persistent thing I've ever done is cheat for three straight years.
I chewed my pen cap and knocked out a five-paragraph essay.
My brain was completely gone.
My hand just kept moving like it had its own idea.
The bell rang.
I put my pen down.
Palms soaked—there was a wet ring on the corner of my test booklet.
I walked out into the sunlight and had to squint.
Standing at the top of those steps, I felt like I'd just crawled out of actual hell.
Then I heard a voice.
"Hey."
That voice.
That familiar, so-punchable, three-years-of-hearing-it voice.
I looked up.
Gavin was on the sidewalk right outside, sitting on an e-scooter.
Flip-flops.
A popsicle hanging out of his mouth.
He grinned at me.
"Three years of copying, and now you gotta do it yourself. How's that feel?"
I stared at him.
"You... didn't come."
"Nope."
"Why?"
He bit off a chunk of popsicle. Crunch.
"Didn't need to."
"What do you mean...?"
"Got my early admission to MIT last month. Already done."
"..."
"Come on, I'll ride you back. Math section's this afternoon. I'll grab you a Gatorade on the way."
I just stood there. My legs felt like cement.
He looked back at me. "Why are you just standing there? Get on."
I got on.
Wind hit my face as we pulled into traffic.
I stared at the back of his head.
"I'm fucked."
He didn't turn around, but I could feel him smiling.
That specific, infuriating smile.
"Alright," he said. "So think of it as your first real test-taking experience."
Honestly, I wanted to shove him off that scooter so bad.
But we were on a main road.
I let it go.
Chapter 3
Got home that night.
My mom asked how it went.
"Fine."
"Fine means good! Perfect timing—I roasted a chicken!"
I sat down and picked up a drumstick.
Took a bite.
It was good—I could tell—but I just kept chewing like a robot, not even tasting it.
Next two days—Math, Writing, all of it.
I walked into every session like someone who'd already accepted their fate.
And the weirdest thing happened.
When you fully stop caring, you get this strange calm.
The hard math problems?
No clue.
But the multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank—I actually wrote stuff down.
Answers would just pop up from somewhere.
Not clear, not complete.
Just bits and pieces—half a formula, a vague sense of direction.
No idea where any of it came from.
Maybe three years of glancing at Gavin's work left something behind.
Grammar and vocab were the same.
I was reading long complicated sentences and finding myself guessing the meaning—and it didn't feel completely random.
Three years of Gavin sliding answers my way, and every time I'd skim the original passage just to kill time while I waited.
Not to learn anything.
Just because I had nothing else to do.
The others?
SAME.
When I walked out after the last session, Gavin was there again.
Same e-scooter. Same flip-flops. Same popsicle.
I climbed on without saying anything.
"All done?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"How do you feel?"
Silence.
"Quinn?"
"...I think I got an 600."
600 was me being generous with myself.
Gavin didn't say anything. The scooter turned toward school.
"Why are we going to school?" I asked.
"Mr. Hale wants everyone to come in and do score estimates."
"Estimate what. There's nothing to estimate. I'm not going."
"If you don't go, he calls your mom. Your mom calls you. You gonna pick up?"
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against his back.
"Just drive."
The classroom was already half full when we got there.
Post-SAT energy is something else.
Some people laughing, some people actually crying, some people comparing answers.
Someone was tearing their prep book apart.
Mr. Hale stood at the front with a stack of score estimate sheets, handing them out one by one.
When he saw me walk in, his whole face lit up.
"Quinn! Come fill this out—just so you've got a ballpark."
He handed me the sheet.
I looked down at it. Blank lines. Pen in my hand.
My hand just hovered there.
What am I even supposed to write?
I genuinely don't know what I put on that test.
"Quinn? You good?" Mr. Hale leaned over.
"I'm good. Just thinking."
I looked at the bottom line and wrote: 1030.
I stared at the number.
Honestly felt like I was being generous.
My actual skill level was probably in the 600s.
1030 was the most believable number I could fake.
Mr. Hale looked it over.
His eyebrows pulled together.
"Quinn... isn't this a little low?
"Hm?"
"Your practice tests never dropped below 1480. This is..."
Those practice tests had Gavin in them.
Today didn't.
"I think I just had an off day," I said.
He patted my shoulder.
"Hey, that happens. Even on an off day, you don't drop that far. Nothing wrong with being conservative."
"Yeah."
Someone glanced over from the next seat.
Zach Howard.
Runner-up for three straight years.
He saw the 1030 on my sheet.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
He drifted over, all casual.
"Hey Quinn. How do you think you did?"
"Eh. Not great."
"Oh." Beat. "I'm estimating 1420."
Loud enough.
Some people definitely heard it.
Then he glanced at my estimate sheet one more time and made this tiny sound.
Just: "Huh."
Three years of runner-up in that one little sound.
And all the satisfaction of finally being on top.
I didn't say anything.
Because honestly? He was right.
This wasn't even really his first win.
All those times before—he should've been number one.
There was just a guy named Gavin in the middle making it look different.
The two weeks after the SAT were the longest of my life.
Everyone else was doing road trips, lake days, Netflix marathons.
I was staring at my ceiling at 2 a.m.
Every night, the test replayed on loop in my head.
Those questions.
What did I even write?
I started wondering if those two days had even been real.
Maybe I never walked into that test center at all.
Maybe I turned in a blank answer sheet.
Maybe —
My phone buzzed.
Gavin.
"What are you doing?"
"Waiting to die."
"You've been waiting to die for two weeks straight."
"Because I'm actually about to."
He sent a voice message. I tapped it open.
"Hey Quinn. There's something that's been bugging me for three years."
"What?"
"You know how you'd copy my answers every test?"
"Yeah."
"Did you ever notice something?"
"Notice what?"
"Never mind. I'll tell you when scores drop."
Then he sent a smirking face emoji.
I wanted to go off on him.
I didn't.
Because it wouldn't do anything.
That buddy has had zero shame since birth.
May 20th. Score release day.
I woke up at three in the morning.
No alarm. Just shot straight up on my own.
By five, my phone was going insane.
The class group chat had completely exploded.
"Scores are up!!!"
"OH MY GOD I broke 1400!!"
"Has anyone checked yet???"
I lay there gripping my phone, thumb hovering over the College Board login button.
I couldn't press it.
Physically could not press it.
My hand was shaking.
"Quinn!" My mom's voice from the living room. "Did you check yet?"
She hadn't slept either.
"Not yet."
"Go check!"
"Yeah."
I closed my eyes.
And pressed.
Typed in my username. Typed in my password. Hit View Scores.
The page loaded.
My heart spun with it.
Then —
The numbers appeared.
1580.
