What To Do When The Venom Kicks In

Chapter Two

***Naomi***

Telling my boyfriend about the app was an interesting phone call. He doesn't really like being on the phone, but he does it sometimes because he knows it makes me happy. We were both doing homework - or at least I was trying to - so I don't think he really took it in, but I didn't mind. I knew he had a lot on his plate.

He was a few years older than me, and he went to the rival school, across the lake. We didn't see each other much, but we were constantly texting. That had been the second time we'd dated, with the first not ending too well.

I'd been in Disneyland when he asked me to be his girlfriend, in the avatar park thing-y, with the drink that looked like bubble tea but with no tea and all bubbles. 5 days was all we lasted, 5 days and I was home. I had gotten off the extremely long plane flight, ecstatic to be back, to be in the same time zone, to be able to see him, and my fingers had raced across my screen to talk to him, before I opened a text that read,

'We need to talk when you're home...'

So at home, as I always do when I'm worried, or sick, or both, I sat in the empty bath, and I remember so vividly my heart aching like nothing I'd ever felt before when he'd said that one word: when he'd said her name. I cried for three straight hours in the bathtub. He was the first guy that broke my heart because I loved him with absolutely all of it.

Anyways, that's besides the point.

"Babe, I really have to go, I have dinner, but I'll call you later if you like?" His voice snapped me out of my daze. I could have sworn that the timer had sent me into some kind of trance.

"Oh, sure, hun, are we still on for tomorrow?" I had asked, quickly scribbling some numbers down in case either of my parents came in to see no homework on my page.

"Of course, I couldn't miss seeing you for the world, peaches." He laughed softly, and we said our 'I love you's and our goodbyes, and then he hung up the phone.

Silence is my least favourite sound, so I grabbed my phone and decided to call up Skye to see if she'd got the message. It rang a few times, but she answered pretty quickly, as always. We talked for hours and hours everytime we'd call, so she'd learned that I'd only call her when I had drama to tell, tea to spill. Which, in turn, meant that she'd always pick up when she could.

"Yo, wassup?" She greeted, in her extremely posh and ill-fitting voice for this particular statement, which always made me giggle.

"Have you checked the gossip app since you've been home?" I asked eagerly, opening the unknown app and checking the timer.

00:47:33

"If you're asking about that weird grey app, then yes, I got it, and I got in, so did Grace, but her brother, in the year above, didn't." She recited, sounding as bored as Mr Sheffield when he drones on about Linear Equations and logarithms.

"Oh, how weird, do you know what it's about?"

"I know just as much as you do, Nai, quite evidently."

"Somebody's touchy."

"Thomas and I fought."

"Same."

"He's an idiot."

"So are we."

***

00:02:01

Through multiple conversations with just about anyone I knew, I'd uncovered two things:

1. Only second year students seemed to be getting invited to join the app.

2. Nobody knew more than I did, so every conversation was useless.

There had been interesting theories about the timer though. For example, an alien race had targeted our school and were going to save just us young, intelligent, but still impressionable people from planet-wide destruction. Or that someone was going to blow up the school and that was the bomb's timer. Or that the person behind the app was just one of the hacker nerds pulling a prank on everyone. Either way, that countdown lead to something, and we were all desperate to find out what.

00:00:57

Adrenaline invaded my veins, charging me with a feeling so similar to fear and lust and hunger that I couldn't decipher what exactly it made my heart feel. The language was so new and I was so stupid to think that I could understand it with a single train of thought but I was so desperate to. My eyes became fixated on that ticking clock, with an intensity as such that I felt each second like an earthquake in my very core.

Something was imminent.

00:00:15

I grabbed my notepad and my trusty multi-colour bic pen, just in case there was an alien transmission and I needed to write something down. Tapping my pen proved to be the only way to battle the persistent, aching urge to bite my nails, because they weren't real nails, and acrylics are damn expensive if you want them done right.

00:00:01

I may have squealed just a little bit as the clock finally ticked over. Instead of some dramatic turnaround, the app restarted itself, rather anticlimacticaly.

When it returned, however, it brought with it a new, white screen, and the ugly loading bar was replaced by a new, faster, grey circle. It was quite pretty, made entirely of shifting dots: a good compliment to the white. When the app had finally loaded, it looked sort of like the Instagram startup page, two fields for username and password respectively, and a small box at the bottom labelled 'Sign Up', which, I guessed, I had to click before anything else. The screen that came up next was unexpected - a big white text box with an 'x' at the top, taken up by a long paragraph, that you could scroll through.

'Hello, dear user. We welcome you warmly to Instanonymous, our new (anonymous) social network, specially designed for you, and the people that surround you, for a single specific purpose.

I trust that you're all familiar with my news platform, marketed for the students of Cherry Oak, the very thing that brought you all here, and I also put my faith in your eagerness to discover more on this new, intriguing incident. Let me explain.

I am not going to be continuing with my work with the app. But one of you is.

By 'winning' this particular challenge, you will gain access to my creation, gain the trust and knowledge of all of my sources, and gain immense power. But how exactly do you 'win'? And 'win' what? This is not just a social media platform. It is a competition.

Here are the rules: Every person will have a persona, and aim to remain totally anonymous. If anyone finds out who you really are, and reports those findings, you are out of the competion, and your secrets will take up the entire headline page of my next issue. Your goal is to be the most popular person in a world where you must grow from nothing. I hope you are ready.

- Anonymous.'