Every Time I Check My Score, It Resets to Zero Chapter 06

Slowly, I straightened.

The mouse slipped from my palm and hit the desk with a dull thud.

“What’s wrong?” Mom turned around with a glass of water in her hand. “Are you feeling sick?“,

I looked at her face.

That same face had touched my forehead countless times in the middle of the night over the past

three years.

“Nothing,” I said, bending down to pick up the mouse. “I just suddenly feel like there’s no point

fighting anymore.”

I picked up the pen.

The tip touched the signature line on the waiver.

Without hesitation, I signed my name.

Elena Chase.

The handwriting was neat.

Dad’s tense shoulders finally relaxed. He exhaled a stream of smoke.

“See? Should’ve done this from the beginning instead of dragging everyone through hell.”

Uncle Victor walked over and snatched the paper away.

“Good. Then this is over.”

Mr. Hale stood and patted me on the shoulder.

“Elena, report to the warehouse tomorrow. Work hard.”

They walked out, laughing and talking.

The door locked with a click.

Their footsteps gradually faded.

Soon, I was the only one left in the apartment.

I turned around and fixed my eyes on the ports at the back of the computer tower.

One end of the Ethernet cable was connected to the computer. The other ran to the router.

I pulled the cable free and felt around the base of the router.

A USB flash drive was taped to the back.

I peeled it off and plugged it into the computer.

Then I opened the USB folder and clicked into a code file.

One character in the script had been highlighted.

I stared at that zero.

So that was it.

Just now, the Ethernet cable had been kicked loose.

Without an Wi–Fi connection, how could the webpage refresh?

Even if it had best

prod

d, there was no way it could skip the loading animation and instantly

e score report.

o Wi–Fi, the page should have shown an error.

But the screen had only flickered once.

The score report with the zero had popped up again immediately.

Not even half a second of delay.

Unless the page had never been pulling data from the outside Wi–Fi in the first place.

It was running locally.

There had been no hacker.

No crash in the State Department of Education’s system.

And no psychotic break.

It was just a crude local network scam.

They had disconnected the apartment from the real internet and used this flash drive to fake the

score portal right on the computer.

I took a deep breath.

From the bottom drawer of my desk, I dug out an old phone.

The backup phone had no SIM card installed.

I walked to the window and leaned halfway out.

Across from me stood another apartment building.

A few weak Wi–Fi signals appeared on the phone screen.

I tapped one that did not require a password.

The signal had only one bar.

I opened the browser and entered the real website for the State Department of Education’s stig

portal.

The page loaded painfully slowly.

Every second scraped against my nerves.

Finally, the page opened.

I entered my student ID and Social Security number.

My finger hovered over the screen for two seconds before I tapped Submit.

The score report appeared.

Name: Elena Chase.

Reading and Writing: 770.

Math: 800.

Total Score: 1570.

I stared at the number.

I had not remembered anything wrong.

I had not slept through the test.

I was Brookhaven’s top SAT scorer.

Then my eyes drifted down to the admissions status section, and my whole body turned cold.

[Admitted Institution: Eastbridge University]

[Current Status: Admission Letter Signed For. Enrollment Record Activated.]

Signed for.

During the half month I had been locked inside the psychiatric hospital, someone had taken my admission letter and enrolled under my name.

wonder they had gone to all that trouble to create a fake score portal.

No wonder they had forced me to sign away my right to a score review.

As long as I stopped making noise, this whole thing would stay buried forever.

The sound of a key turning came from outside the door.

I shoved the old phone into the gap under my mattress and returned to the computer.

Mom pushed the door open.

She was holding a glass of milk.

“Elena, drink some milk and take your pills. Then get some sleep.”

She set the glass on the desk and peeled two tablets from their foil packet.

I picked up the glass.

Steam rose from the milk and brushed my face.

Beneath the sweetness, there was a faint bitter smell.

It was the exact same smell as the warm porridge she had served me the morning of the SAT.

I looked at the pills in Mom’s palm.

“Why aren’t you taking them?” she asked, smiling as she pushed them closer. “The doctor said you

can’t stop your medication.”

I lifted the glass and put the pills into my mouth.

Then I tilted my head back, took a large swallow of milk, and made myself look like I had swallowed

everything.

Mom stared at me until she was sure the pills had gone down.

Only then did the smile on her face become a little more real.

“Go to bed early. You still have to report to the warehouse tomorrow.”

She stroked my hair, picked up the empty glass, and walked out, closing the door behind her.

The second the door shut, I dragged the trash can out from under the bed.