Closer to the Whispers

The Competition

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I expected a hundred students maybe to show up to the competition finale. Instead the auditorium was filled to the brim, with every single chair taken and even more students standing in the back to watch the showdown.

I was on a stage with the five other contestants, the bright lights warm and distracting in the most unpleasant of ways. The only plus side of being in the spotlight was that it was hard to see the details of the audience or specific faces, which helped my nerves.

"Idiot...why?" Leo came out in one of his nicer suits with the blazer unbuttoned showing a pristine white button up. It was much fancier than his normal clothes and his hair was perfectly slicked back.

He stopped in front of me just to hiss his insult, his eyes stareing at my chest pointedly.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Grande. Do you have something to tell me?" I asked him innocently, smiling and daring him to question me more in front of the whole school about why I wasn't wearing the necklace he gave me.

He ground his teeth, but the principle came on stage to start, so he angrily went to the side of the stage to glare at me.

"Welcome all! I'm so glad everyone could make it out to support our star students here! I will read out the questions, and Mr. Grande will check everyone's answers on the provided paper. If you get a question wrong, you are eliminated. Any questions before we start?" She asked, looking at us before nodding, her excitement tangible as she bounced around on the stage.

"Great! The first question is: What is the theoretical maximum number of electrons that can occupy the 3p sublevel in an atom?" She asked, smiling when the crowd collectively gasped at how hard the starting question was.

I immediately knew the answer and wrote it down quickly before turning over my paper. Caleb was sitting next to me and fidgeted with his glasses, which kept trying to fall off his nose, but he seemed unphased and even gave me a smile.

"Okay, everyone's answered! Let's see how everyone did!" Ms. Skinner said, waving to Leo to look at the papers. He turned each paper over slowly, not meeting my eyes as he passed.

"The correct answer was six. Aurora and Sasha were incorrect." He said that the crowd cheered for the remaining contestants, even as the two girls left. I was sure I saw Sasha start to cry as she got to the edge of the stage, and I couldn't help but feel guilty about getting the question right.

I thought we would go through three questions, maximum, but Ms. Skinner went through question after question with Caleb, Ian, and I battling for the lead, each question more random than the last one. I had never viewed Caleb as super smart so I was shocked at how easily he was writing down the answers.

"Who proposed the heliocentric model of the solar system?" I, of course, knew the answer, but I looked over to Leo, who was leaning on the wall at the edge of the stage. He gave me a pointed look and tipped his head to the side. I was confused what he was trying to tell me.

I wrote down the wrong answer then looked back to him and he had taken out his glasses and put them on his nose, slowly pulling them down to the tip, then again jerked his head to the side.

No one was paying attention to him, but I got the message loud and clear. Caleb was using his glasses to cheat. I had thought they looked darker than usual, but I had been so worried about the contest that I hadn't put much more though into things than that.

"Ten seconds." I counted out the last few seconds, giving myself only just enough time to cross out my incorrect answer and scribble the right one while blocking Caleb's glasses view.