In a moment of rage, Elliott Cross writes an anonymous blog post about the most popular, most disliked girl at the highly-esteemed Grand Ridge Academy: Anastasia Montgomery.
It becomes a viral hit, causing Anastasia's popularity to rapidly plummet...
IT WAS the strangest week of my life and, also, entirely my own doing.
Striking a deal with Anastasia wasn't the touch-and-go situation I had somewhat suspected it to be. It had occurred to me, after the initial euphoria of the incident wore off, that she couldn't possibly be serious about this situation. After all, a think-piece on Anastasia meant weeks of me, a virtual nobody and certainly no friend of hers, trailing after her, watching her every move...befriending her, even. She struck me as the kind of person who liked the attention when she had prepped for it. She also struck me as the kind of person who didn't particularly fancy hanging around speccy-eyed boys with interests that involved long lapses of silence in the library and zero alcohol.
But Anastasia continued to surprise me.
That very night after we'd struck our deal, I received a text message from an unknown number:
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Unbelievable.
I didn't know what to laugh at. The unsurprising fact that Anastasia didn't just have one phone but two or the knowledge that she had a clear purpose for both of them as if she were a twenty-something business tycoon.
She probably would end up a twenty-something business tycoon.
But she'd brought up a good point that I myself hadn't thought about. There was absolutely no way Miss Brown - or Jane Mulligan, for that matter - would take this lying down. However, there was some optimism to be found in the fact that I was, unequivocally, the favourite out of all the student members of the journalism club.
Miss Brown would say yes, eventually. That I was sure of.
♕♕♕
"No!" Miss Brown snapped. "Forgive my unprofessionalism, Elliott, but I would rather our last article be about pasteurised milk than indulge this...this...child's demands."
