Val and Upton sat on Staircase E between the second and third floors of Heights Co-operative Preparatory Academy. The floor felt grainy. Rap Caviar echoed from Val’s speaker. It was almost five, and the sunlight slanting through the windows next to them was turning yellow. Technically, the investing club had a club room, but their advisor had left the classroom door locked.

“Okay, but where the fuck is he?” Val asked.

“Dunno,” Upton said.

“Like, where does he have to go on a Thursday? Or any day?”

Upton opened Outlook. “Does he know he’s our faculty advisor?” he asked reasonably.

“He was last year.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t fill out the re-registration form until eighth hour today.”

“That’s my point. He should have seen it before he left.”

“Maybe he had plans.”

“Travers? No.”

“You never know.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Maybe he has a date. Maybe he’s on Coffee Meets Bagel.”

“God, imagine cheating on your wife on Coffee Meets Bagel.”

“Travers is married?”

“I don’t know.”

Upton finished selecting all of his Google Alerts and pressed ‘delete.’ “Statistically, I guess, it’s more likely than not.”

“If there was only one person in the country who’d never been married by fifty, it’d be him.”

Upton looked up at the rectangle of fluorescent light in the ceiling above them. One of the bulbs was out. 

“Imagine,” he said, “having a midlife crisis and trying to cheat on your husband, but the only guy you can find to cheat on him with is Travers.”

Val shuddered. “Thanks for that new recurring nightmare.”

Upton snorted.

“How did you re-register the club without a treasurer?” Val asked.

“You can re-register without a full executive board. You just can’t get funding.”

“Oh. Can you just put one of us down as the treasurer, then? Is that allowed?”

“I feel like asking if it’s allowed is the fastest way to get it explicitly banned.”

“I mean, it’s worth a shot.”

“Why would they require a president, a vice-president, and a treasurer if they could all be the same person?”

“Okay, fair.”

Upton stared at the bulletin board on the second-floor landing. He’d used the Plasma Donation Club poster’s thumbtack to pin up the investing club’s green-and-white Canva default template flyer. He realized that it still said SUBTITLE between the clipart dollar bill and the Robinhood logo.

“Why do you need a club for plasma donation?” he asked.

“What?”

“Can’t you just…” He gestured vaguely. “Do it? And don’t you have to be eighteen?”

Val shook his head. “It’s not for donating plasma. It’s for recruiting other people to donate plasma.”

“Huh.”

“You can get NHS hours for it. And a commission.”

“Can’t you only get NHS volunteer hours for…”

“Volunteering? Sure. You volunteer to recruit people. You get paid when they donate plasma.”

Upton sighed. “We should have thought of that.”

“I know.”

“Organ harvesting is a growth industry. Especially during a recession.”

“For real?”

“I don’t know. There’s no data.”

“There’s always data. Someone has to have done the DD.”

“I’m not going to cold-call BlackRock and ask.”

“You should.”

“Yeah, that’ll help when I interview for a job.”

“How will they know it’s you?”

“My phone number. My email address.”

“Make a burner.”

“My LinkedIn.”

“Well—”

“The interviewer will be the person who took the call and they’ll recognize my voice.”

“Okay, that’s just paranoid.”

The interior door to the first floor hallway opened. Someone’s shoes scuffed through.

“Hey!” Val called.

The scuffing stopped. A voice wavered up the stairs. “Hello?”

“Do you want to join the investing club?”

“Uh…” The voice hesitated. “No, thank you?”

“You sure?”

“Uh… yes?”

“Yes, you’re sure you don’t want to join? Or yes, you do want to join?”

“I’m, uh, sure. That I don’t want to join.”

“Wow.”

“I’m… sorry?”

“You have absolutely nothing to worry about. Have a stellar afternoon.”

“Yeah. Uh, you too.”

The shoe scuffed across the vestibule. The exterior door closed.

“Nice,” Upton said.

Val shrugged and muttered something Upton couldn’t make out. Upton refreshed his inbox. He had a new Google Alert. He deleted it. 

“Did you hear Zephyra broke up with whatshisname?” he asked.

“She did? When?”

“The day before school started. Allegedly.”

“Damn. Has York or Xavier made a move yet?”

“No.”

“Yeah, that’d be pretty fast, even for York.”

“Xavier wouldn’t. Obviously.”

“I mean, she broke up with him.”

“It’s just principle.”

“Who gives a fuck?”

“Xavier.”

“Fair.” Val dragged his backpack over to him and fished around in the main pocket. “York technically outranks him. So, on principle, does he get dibs?”

“Please ask Zephyra that exact question. I’ll give you fifty dollars if you let me watch.”

Val pulled a dented can of Celsius out from under his laptop. He opened it with a clean crack. 

“Fuck no,” he said.

“How much do you want?”

He wiped the Celsius spray off his hand on the side of his jeans. “More money than you’re ever going to give me.”

“Probably true.”

Val took a long drink and stared contemplatively down at the bulletin board. “What do we do if we don’t get funded?”

“Dunno. Probably dissolve.”

“But we have money left over from last year, right?”

“Yes. Fourteen dollars and sixty-one cents.”

Val stared at Upton. “How the fuck did that happen?”

Upton shrugged and refreshed his inbox again. He deleted a Google Classroom notification. “Going all in on Macy’s. Remember?”

“Why did we do that?”

“It was your idea.”

“I told you, if it went up to even a tenth of its peak market valuation, we would have made—”

“It didn’t, though.”

“Okay, but you agreed to it.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Seriously, what happened?” Val asked. “We still had— how much money did we have left in the account? When we went all in on Macy’s?”

“It doesn’t matter. The stock price is down seven hundred percent.”

“The fuck?”

Upton shrugged. “I sold our stock after it fell five hundred percent.”

“You sold?”

“Yeah. That’s why we still have fourteen dollars and—”

“—sixty-one cents, yeah, you said that. But you sold on the dip.”

“I told you, it kept going down after that. Two hundred percent.”

Val sighed. He took a drink of Celsius and looked out the window. The parking lot was mostly empty. His car sat alone, gradually being swallowed by the shadow of the bleachers. A thin bar of sunlight gleamed gloriously across the windshield. He remembered his wiper fluid was low and sighed again.

“What about York?” he asked.

“It’s probably still too soon, even for him. What’re the chances she says yes if he asks now?”

“I mean, she’s the one who broke up with him.”

“It’s still too risky.”

“He’ll ask before Xavier does, though.”

“Well, yeah. Obviously.”

“Does she like either one of them?”

“Does anybody like York?”

“She does.”

“I doubt it. If it’s going to be one of them, it’s going to be Xavier. Everybody knows that.”

“I told you, though, he’s just the treasurer. Why have the treasurer when you can have the vice president?”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Upton asked casually.

“What? —no. Fuck no.”

Upton laughed.

“Asshole.”

“Oh, shit. We got a signup.”

“Fuck yeah. Who is it?”

Upton squinted at the email. “Do you know anybody named Winona?”

“No. Is she a freshman?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck it, it’s fine. Put her down as treasurer.”

“I already did. I’m filling out the funding application now.”

“Isn’t that her job, if she’s the treasurer?”

“What if she doesn’t actually show up?”

“She probably will. It’s not like club fair. We’re not gonna get a bunch of signups from people who don’t actually want to join, they just want us to shut up.”

“True.”

“See, that’s why you don’t do club fair.”

“I’m still going to finish the funding application now.”

“Fair. Why’d she break up with him?”

“What?”

“Zephyra.”

“Oh. I mean, allegedly, he was just tired of the whole student-council thing,” Upton said. “ ‘I thought she was dating York.’ ‘Isn’t she dating Xavier.’ ‘Who the fuck is—’ —whatever his name is. He got jealous.”

“Was she cheating on him?”

“No. Not as far as anybody knows, anyway. Apparently he just got really weird and paranoid.”

Val shook his head. “Dumb as hell. Why the hell would she pretend he had a chance with her if she was actually fucking with one of them?”

“Well, maybe he was jealous, or maybe he got tired of people dunking on him because York’s hotter than he is and Xavier’s smarter. He doesn’t even own his own business.”

“York owns a business?”

“Well, technically, only Xavier owns a business. Technically, York runs some subsidiary of his dad’s company.”

“That counts.”

“And they’re both better at tennis than he is. Obviously.”

“Yeah, no shit. You know Xavier and York’s win-loss record against him and— whoever his doubles partner is?”

“No.”

“Eleven-one.”

“Why do they have win-loss records against each other?”

“It’s for scrimmages. So maybe York and Xavier threw yesterday out of pity.”

“The one they lost was yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“That explains it.”

“Huh?”

“Xavier’s in my English class. We have Summers again, and we’re reading Macbeth—”

“Is she still making you read out loud?”

“Yeah. Anyway, yesterday Xavier was on so much cold medicine it took him like an entire minute to figure out how to pronounce ‘aroint.’ She had to—”

“ ‘Aroint’?”

“Like ‘fuck off.’ ”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, yeah. She had to stop calling on him. And then she had to start cold-calling, because no one else wanted to do it, so I had to read.”

“He was volunteering?”

“Of course he was.”

“Yeah, fair.”

“Anyway, I’m surprised he even made it to practice, so if he and York lost a scrimmage match, that’s why.”

“Yeah, that checks out. I can see Xavier throwing a match out of pity. Not York.”

“Who’s keeping a win-loss record for scrimmages, though?”

“Somebody who enjoys dunking on— fuck his name. The NPC.”

Upton snorted.

“So maybe York, actually.”

“For real.”

Val finished his Celsius. He tried to throw it into the recycling at the bottom of the stairs. It bounced off the edge of the bin and fell on the floor next to it.

“Nice,” Upton said.

“Asshole,” Val said. “Okay. Maybe York’s not as smart as Xavier, but he’s definitely smarter than the NPC.”

“No one’s debating that.”

“Xavier’s also better-looking than he is.”

“Why do you have an opinion?”

“It’s not an opinion. It’s objectively true.”

“I guess.”

“And he doesn’t own a business, not even a subsidiary of his dad’s company, and he’s shit at tennis. So why was Zephyra dating him?”

Upton shrugged. “Maybe her type is NPCs.”

“Then she won’t go for York or for Xavier.”

“Maybe she will. Maybe York and Xavier will become NPCs.”

“Yeah, good luck.”

“Xavier could probably pull it off, if he really wanted to.”

“York definitely couldn’t.”

“She wasn’t going to pick him anyway.”

“See, why are you so sure?”

“Because he’s competing with Xavier.”

“Yeah, but everybody likes Xavier.”

“That’s my point.”

“Everybody likes Xavier because Xavier’s easy to like. But Zephyra hangs out with both of them. So, proportionally, she must like York a lot better.”

“She has to work with both of them, and even if she likes York more in absolute terms, he’s starting from such a low base that, relatively speaking, Xavier still comes out ahead.”

“I disagree.”

“Okay.” Upton switched off his wifi and opened a new tab to play the dinosaur game. “What happened to that girl York was dating?”

“Broke up with her. Also the day before school started, so it’s probably because he found out Zephyra dropped the NPC.”

“Did he dump her before or after that?”

“It depends. When did she break up with him?”

“Allegedly, she did it before the band practice before the Memorial Day parade, so at like six in the morning.”

“Yeah, definitely before York broke up with—” Val shrugged. “That girl.”

“Zephyra’s not in band, is she?”

“No. Orchestra.”

“So she broke up with him, what, by text?”

“No, she went to practice to give him the news.”

“Stone cold.”

“Yeah.”

The dinosaur died. Upton closed the tab and turned wi-fi back on. “Why did she do that?”

“I don’t know. She wanted to make sure York found out about it?”

“Maybe. Or it could have been in her ten-year life plan. Who knows?”

“Is the ten-year life plan thing for real?”

“Allegedly.” Upton hit ‘enter.’ “The funding application is submitted.”

“How much did you ask for?”

“The maximum. Everybody does. We’ll just see what we get.”

“We have to do a hearing, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not going.”

“Winona can do it.”

“You said you thought she might not show up.”

“Yeah, but we can tell her the club will go under if she doesn’t go. That usually works, especially on girls.”

“Yeah, fair.”

“It doesn’t really matter if she shows up after that, but she probably will, if she’s the one who gets us the money. Have you heard of the IKEA effect?”

“Huh?”

“People feel emotionally attached to IKEA furniture because they built it themselves. They’re statistically less likely to get rid of it.”

“What about IKEA furniture that someone else built for them?”

“Have you ever actually seen IKEA furniture?”

“I mean, no. I don’t think so.”

“If people are attached to it, it’s because they built it themselves.”

“Actually, have you ever seen IKEA furniture?”

“Well, no, not as far as I know.” Upton closed his laptop and slid it into his backpack. “All right. We have a treasurer, and the funding application is in.”

Val stretched. “And we have fourteen dollars and sixty-one cents.”

“Technically not. I took it out of the club fund.”

“What?”

“You have to count your current club fund against your funding application, so I took it out. I’ll donate it back to the club once we get school funding. Everybody does it, if they have money left over from the previous year.”

An engine revved loudly. Val looked out the window. The cluster of cars around the door to the auditorium was starting to disperse. The engine revved again, and a red Lexus shot out of the parking lot.

“You’re convinced Zephyra’s going to date Xavier?” he asked.

“Yeah. Everybody knows that.”

“I still think she’s going to date York. So—”

“You thought it was a good idea to go all in on Macy’s,” Upton said reasonably.

“I mean, so did you.”

“Well, yeah.”

“So here’s what I propose,” Val said. “You can keep the fourteen dollars and sixty-one cents, if Zephyra dates Xavier.”

“Sure. Why—”

“If she dates York, though, it’s mine.”

Upton shrugged. “Sure.”

Val extended his hand. Upton shook it.