Hacked by My Crush

I accidentally texted my crush, I wanna sleep with you.

(I meant I wanna sleep. Autocorrect is a menace.)

[Him: ???]

Two minutes later.

[Him: Today? Can you give me an hour? I'll come straight over after my competition.]

Two hours after that, he caught me outside my dorm.

He took one look at my rumpled clothes. Then the marks all over my neck.

His eyes went red at the rims.

"...Were you seeing someone else behind my back?"

CHAPTER ONE

Let me rewind.

That night I was pulling an all-nighter in the lab, running on zero sleep and pure spite.

My phone buzzed.

[Callum: I've got a competition in a bit. I'll be off my phone for about an hour. I'm not ignoring you on purpose, I swear.]

[Me: mmk!! good luck senior!!]

[Callum: I'll come find you after. Anything you want?]

By then my eyes were crossing. I genuinely could not read. I scraped together my last two brain cells and typed back one thing.

[Me: I wanna sleep.]

I did not notice autocorrect stretch "I wanna sleep" into "I wanna sleep with you."

I hit send, both eyelids gave out, and I face-planted into my pillow, dead to the world, deaf to the little storm of notifications lighting up my phone.

Meanwhile, in the exam hall, Callum was turning a shade of red you could bleed.

First, cautious.

[Callum: What? Did you mean to send that?]

No reply. Terrified I'd take it back, he fired off more.

[Callum: Today? Where?]

[Callum: Can you wait for me? One hour. I'll come the second my competition's done.]

Right before he had to surrender his phone and walk in, he was still staring at the screen like it owed him money.

[Callum: Going into my exam now. Wait for me. Please.]

"SADIE. GET UP."

Quinn's yell peeled me off the mattress.

I grunted, eyes shut, and groped for my phone. Senior texted me. Hehe. Didn't even read it, just fired back on reflex.

[Me: Senior!! I'm awake!!]

"Sadie, MOVE. Beef ramen at the dining hall, first fifty people, buy one get one!"

"WHAT." I was awake. Fully. I scrambled off the bed using all four limbs.

You have to understand: that beef ramen is legendary. Rich broth, tender everything, criminally good. Its one and only flaw is the price, which is exactly why buy one get one is a once-in-a-lifetime miracle and I would sooner perish than miss it.

I splashed water on my face and grabbed my phone. Dead. Black screen. Powered off.

I chucked it, grabbed Quinn, and ran.

"Uh, you sure you don't wanna change? You've got, like, five red marks on your neck. People are gonna assume things."

I scratched at them. "It's fine, I'll grab some anti-itch cream after we eat."

I was so locked in I forgot to watch where I was going, and ran face-first into someone's chest. A smell hit me. Familiar. Warm.

I froze. Looked up.

"You okay?" the guy asked, gentle.

Callum.

"Senior! Small world!"

His eyes swept over my face and snagged on the marks on my neck. His pupils tightened.

"You... slept." It came out flat and low, more accusation than question, his gaze nailed to those red marks.

I beamed at him. "Yep! Slept great!"

Disbelief first. Then, slowly, something wounded. "Sadie. Were you with someone else behind my back?"

Oh no.

I'd completely forgotten I'd apparently agreed to dinner with him, and here I was, sprinting off to eat with Quinn instead. Which, technically, counted.

"Ah, that, I'm so sorry, senior, I'm just in a hurry."

He wouldn't quite look at me. Eyes pink at the rims, a bitter little smile. "Sadie. How big a hurry are we talking, that you can't even give me one hour."

I ducked my head so low I nearly folded in half.

Quinn tugged my sleeve. I snuck a glance at her, and in her eyes I saw it: beef ramen.

Her telepathic message came through loud and clear. Move. Or the deal is gone.

I nodded so hard my neck cracked. "Senior, I really can't this time, it's an emergency. Next time. Next time you're top priority, I swear."

"So I'm Plan B."

And on that devastated, disbelieving look, I grabbed Quinn and bolted for the dining hall.

Heh. Beef ramen. Here I come.

"Sadie," Quinn wheezed, jogging to keep up, "you'd ditch a literal dream guy. For food."

CHAPTER TWO

Quinn glared at me over her bowl.

I slurped. "You're the one who told me to hurry or we'd miss it."

She nearly inhaled a noodle. "I told you to let GO of me. You go flirt with your dream guy, I go fight for the ramen. Two separate jobs."

"Oh. So now what?"

"Now you eat. Then you go apologize to your man, because you just left him standing there for a bowl of noodles."

I stuck my tongue out, sheepish.

I thought back to the first time I ever met Callum.

Sunny afternoon. Our club had dragged us all out to a countryside cookout. And there he was, standing over a big cook pot, half-wreathed in smoke. Tall, lean, features carved clean.

A gust of wind carried the smell of the whole roast goose across the field. It drifted straight into my chest and quietly moved in.

I watched him from across the field, and my heart tripped like a dropped tray.

The world went quiet. That Callum absolutely undid me.

I swallowed hard and fell for him with zero survival instinct.

Quinn's eye twitched as I told it.

"You don't get it. That day there were only two goose legs, and he put one on my plate. So thoughtful."

After that, I added him online. Invented a fresh excuse to message him every single day. Good-mornings. Good-nights. Extremely subtle hints that he should bring me along to, you know, everything.

Quinn poked my forehead with a chopstick. "Sadie. Do you like the goose, or do you like the guy?"

I looked down, grinning. "I like the goose. And the guy."

Quinn shook her head at her ramen. "Jury's still out."

Full and happy, I looped my arm through hers and floated back to the dorm.

I powered my phone on. It went off like a slot machine, buzz after buzz after buzz. All him.

[Callum: Sadie, game's over, coming to find you!]

[Callum: Sadie, have you thought it over?]

[Callum: Sadie, I'm on campus.]

[Callum: Sadie, where are you?]

[Callum: Sadie, I'm standing outside your dorm.]

Ah.

This, this.

I scrolled through them one by one, completely at sea. Senior... likes me? Did I even tell him the text was an accident?

I typed, deleted, typed, deleted. Finally, after real suffering:

[Me: Senior... what do you mean?]

His little typing dots stayed on. And on. A full ten minutes. Then came a reply I would not have guessed in a thousand years.

[The account: Sorry, this isn't him. The original owner sold me this account.]

What?

Senior's account got stolen?

"Ugh, I got scammed out of fifty bucks!" My roommate's voice nearly launched me off the bed.

"What happened?"

Murder in her eyes. "My boyfriend's account got hacked. Conned me out of fifty dollars."

"Oh yeah, I heard a ton of accounts are getting stolen lately."

I sat with it a second, then sent one final message to "senior."

[Me: In that case, let's just unfollow each other. No hard feelings.]

For the sake of our precious chat history, I backed out and, through genuine physical pain, blocked him.

Honestly, this hacker's kind of a sweetheart. Stole senior's whole account and still gave me a heads-up.

On the other end of that message, Callum stared at the little grey Blocked notice like he could will it undone.

There was no hacker.

There was no "original owner."

There was just him. The guy she'd been quietly, catastrophically into, who'd panicked the instant she typed what do you mean, and instead of saying I like you too, you absolute menace, had typed the owner sold me this account and hit send.

He had catfished himself.

And the girl of his dreams had just tenderly decided that the "hacker" seemed like a genuinely decent guy.

Then blocked him.

He wanted to slap himself. Twice, minimum.

Of every hand he could have played, he'd gone and played hacked.

He was so, so dead.

CHAPTER THREE

That night I could not sleep.

Senior's account was stolen. So how was I supposed to apologize now?

Apparently I was thrashing around loud enough to wake Quinn in the next bed. She thumped the frame.

I grabbed my phone.

[Quinn: Why are you flopping around like a fish at 2 a.m.? Thinking about your senior?]

Attached: the single most obnoxious hehehe sticker in existence.

I went hot in the face and hissed at her.

[Me: His account got hacked. I never got to apologize.]

[Quinn: Wow. Convenient. And how do you know that, exactly?]

[Me: The hacker told me.]

[Quinn: ...You absolute genius. Sit tight.]

Furious typing. A minute later:

[Quinn: Tomorrow, 3 p.m., senior's got a basketball game. You go cheer, hand him water, apologize. Full-service package. A man with a heart of stone would forgive you.]

Fair. And I'd ask him about the hack while I was at it.

"Quinn, it's a basketball game. Why do I have to wear the little white dress?"

I held up her spaghetti-strap white sundress, eyebrows scrunched hard enough to flatten a fly.

"You're young. You do not understand the raw power of a white sundress and a high ponytail. Add one sweet little something in a breathy voice, and a man with concrete for a heart will melt on the spot."

I shuddered. Looked at Quinn. Looked down at the, ah, modest real estate on my own chest. And put my t-shirt back on.

Quinn gave me the look you give a hopeless child.

Up in the stands, water bottle in hand, I craned my neck and found Callum center court in about half a second. Light grey warm-ups, tall, easy on his feet.

He smiled in my direction. My heart dropped into a higher gear, like a fryer basket hitting the oil, and I cheered myself hoarse.

Halftime. I hugged the water to my chest and jogged toward him, working up my sweetest smile.

And a syrupy little "Cal, drink up!" cut me clean off.

There it is.

A girl in a white sundress and a high ponytail bounced up to Callum, all sugar, and the whole bench started whooping like they'd caught the two of them mid-proposal.

My breath stalled. I locked onto Callum.

Reject her. Reject her. Come on.

"Thanks." He took the bottle. Tipped his head back. Drank half in one pull.

From my angle I could see his throat bob, a bead of sweat sliding down into his collar.

I stared a hole clean through that bottle. My chest went tight and airless.

So senior likes white sundresses and high ponytails too.

"Sadie? Why are you here?" Callum turned, his gaze dropping to the water in my hand. His eyes went bright.

"Ha. Obviously I came to bring you water."

I bit down hard on bring you water, and shoved the bottle at some random guy beside me.

Callum's hand, already reaching, stopped midair. The light in his eyes guttered out.

"That's the guy from yesterday?" He was glaring, jaw tight, at Caleb.

I turned to look at the buck-toothed guy beaming a thanks at me, and, oh. No wonder he looked familiar. This was the dude standing behind us in line yesterday who put away four entire bowls of ramen by himself. Truly unforgettable.

"Yep. That's him."

CHAPTER FOUR

Callum's jaw ticked, and his knuckles cracked in his fist.

I still wasn't ready to fold. "Senior, tonight, do you wanna."

I didn't get grab dinner out before he cut me off again.

"Sadie. Yesterday it was this guy. Today it's me. Am I just some cheap thing you pick up when it's convenient?" His eyes were red, like he was holding something back by force.

"Cal, you promised you'd have dinner with me tonight!" the girl in the white sundress whined, tugging his sleeve.

"Okay." He ruffled her hair.

Something sour rose up in my chest. Watching him ignore me like that, I got angrier the longer I sat in it. Excuse me, it was dinner. How did we end up here? It's not like I don't have people to hang out with. Who needs him!

"Who needs you to keep me company, I've got plenty of people," I huffed, and turned on my heel.

The entire walk back, my brain was static. Regretted not wearing the white dress. Regretted snapping. And launched the whole hacked-account mission clean into orbit and forgot about it.

Wahh. I lost. I really, truly lost.

The second I was gone, Callum shot Caleb a look and simply lifted the water right back out of his arms.

"You're not thirsty. I'll be taking this."

"Quinn, he's actually mad, he's got dinner with sundress-girl tonight, I've got zero shot, wahhh." I sobbed into Quinn's arm.

She patted my back, deeply unimpressed. "So? Nobody's married yet. You've still got a shot."

Fair. I perked right up. "Next time. White dress and white socks, and I'm doing two ponytails. He won't survive it."

Big talk. I still didn't sleep.

I lay there staring at Goose sitting in my blocklist, scrolling our old chats over and over.

All that hacker's fault. If he hadn't stolen the account, I'd have apologized last night and explained everything.

Angrier by the second, I dragged the guy back out of the blocklist and unloaded every drop of my grievance onto him.

[Me: Hey. HACKER. Get out here.]

[Me: What's your problem, can't stand watching other people be happy? You've got two hands and two feet, and of all the things to do, you picked stealing accounts?]

[Me: If it weren't for you, I could've reached senior. Now I don't even have a way to talk to him.]

[Me: How broke ARE you? Of every account on earth, you stole HIS.]

The typing dots just kept pulsing.

I'd planned to flay him alive. But the more I typed, the more pointless it felt, and my tone slowly crumpled into something pathetic.

[Me: Okay, please. I'm begging you. Give senior his account back, I just really want to talk to him.]

[Me: Dude. What'll it take for you to give it back?]

No reply. I checked my balance, like seventy bucks to my name, gritted my teeth, and sent him fifty.

[Me: This is everything I have. Please give senior his account back.]

[Me: O supreme, all-powerful, legendary hacker king. I am begging you.]

Somewhere in my avalanche of flattery, the hacker finally wrote back.

[The hacker: Keep your money. Is this guy really that important to you? You'd actually pay to buy his account back?]

[Me: Obviously. He means the absolute world to me.]

On the other end, Callum read he means the absolute world to me. From the girl of his dreams. About himself. To himself. And had to physically sit on his hands. He'd been running the long game for months, hedging every single bet, terrified of the answer. And here she was, all in. For him. And she didn't even know it was him.

[The hacker: Done. Giving it back right now, this second.]

I clapped a hand over my mouth, grinning in secret. Finally, I could talk to senior again.

Then I remembered how mean he'd been all afternoon, and tacked on one more line.

[Me: Actually, senior was really mean to me today. As punishment, could you sit on it a few more days before you give it back?]

Let him sweat. That'll teach senior to be mean to me. I climbed into bed feeling very smug about ordering the hacker to punish him on my behalf.

CHAPTER FIVE