The Night Tournaments

18 - Claude

"Claudius, my friend!" Flynn Armani greeted, approaching me in the morning. The entirety of my locker was overflowing with books, binders, and loose pieces of paper, and they were threatening to come crashing down on me at any moment now. Seriously, I really needed to work on my organization skills . . .

"Hey, Flynn. What's up?" I replied, giving him a forced smile as I slammed the door shut on the unsightly mess behind me. I would deal with tidying up later, although that was a very bad habit of mine: reassuring myself that I could save everything and anything for another time, no matter how urgent it was.

"You've been missing out this whole time! Our new podcast is going viral as we speak," my blue-eyed friend said, trying not to look too excited.

"What? Viral?!" I repeated, staring at him in shock. "I had no idea! When did it start?"

"Last Friday, almost right after Bree uploaded the first episode to SoundCloud," Flynn answered, loftily leaning against the locker next to mine. "A bunch of comments from the public started piling in, and now, a huge crowd is waiting for the release of Episode 2. It's actually crazy."

"Wow. I can't believe that this is happening," I said in awe, trying to blink. "People are actually interested in what we have to say about the mysteries that we solved in Paris? Us?"

"Yup," Flynn said, flashing a dazzling grin. "Our podcast is currently blowing up, and it's mostly thanks to Sherlock. It's kind of a good thing that we decided to listen to her idea, right?"

"It's not kind of a good thing," I objected, smiling widely; I still couldn't manage to wrap my head around all of this. "But, um . . . does that mean that we're something like school celebrities now?"

As if on cue, a group consisting of three girls walked past me and Flynn, giggling and whispering amongst themselves.

"Hey, who do you guys think is cuter?" one of them asked in a hushed tone, poking her friends as they gawked at us. "Oh, my gosh, all of their head shots in the podcast were so fine!"

"Obviously the Ice Prince! He's already legendary in our grade; didn't you know that?!" another girl hissed, digging her hawk-like eyes into Flynn.

The third student shot her a glare, clearly expressing a different opinion. "No, I personally think that the brunette one is adorable. The other guy's handsome, too, isn't he?"

"What was his name again?" the first girl wondered, squinting her eyes while deep in thought. "Oh, of course! It was Archer - Archer West."

"Guys? I just heard from Arielle that we're sort of famous now," our green-eyed friend himself said, suddenly appearing beside us. Confusion clouded over his face as he glanced at the group of girls, who were hurrying by and gaping at him like he had just grown three heads. "Or, uh . . . something."

"It appears that we are," Flynn confirmed, sighing and burying his face in his hands. "Never mind, I take that back, Claude. It wasn't a good thing that we decided to heed Bree's idea, after all - not in the least bit."

I gave him a sympathetic pat on the back, gulping. What had I just heard from those female students? Were the three of us actually becoming insanely popular just because of the podcast? And that wasn't even the real problem; Flynn was probably used to being well-liked by other people because of his aloof personality, social status, and attractive appearance, but it was evident that he wasn't a fan of such blatant attention. I had to admit that I wasn't, either - it just felt all weird and uncomfortable, although I knew that I technically shouldn't be complaining.