March Madness

When Amelie Clark constructs a tournament to prove that her class is ultimately better and smarter than fellow history teacher Michael Mandrake's, it turns into a battle of the classes.

A select number of students are directly involved in the teacher's experiment until they all consider the tournament stupid. They don't care which class is smarter and end up bonding together to sabotage the games, rigging the scores to overthrow their teachers' expectations.

Fueling the rivalry between the teachers becomes more of a reward than their separate class parties at this point.

And the cherry on top? The students see sparks within the jabs and insults Amelie and Michael throw at one another.

For Open Novella Contest 2026

Prompt 55: Two teachers at the same school are determined to outdo each other by having the top-scoring class. But when their students start enthusiastically shipping them, the rivalry takes a very unexpected turn.