CHAPTER 22

I SNATCH VICTORY FROM THE JAWS OF DEFEAT

CLAUDIA

First of all, it was news to me that Reese’s Blurt account had been completely deleted.

REESE

Me too. The Bewbees must’ve posted a bunch of really skeezy stuff on my page because Blurt shut my whole account down. The same thing happened to my ClickChat account, and it took Dad a CRAZY amount of time to get ClickChat to reopen it.

After that, he was like, “How bad do you want your Blurt account back? ’Cause I’m REALLY getting sick of waiting on hold for two hours to talk to tech support.”

And I was like, “You know what? Just forget about it.”

Because by then, I was kind of wishing I’d never even heard of Blurt.

CLAUDIA

When I found out Reese’s account was gone, the first thing I did was take a very close look at the original bet that Athena and I had agreed to.

All it said was this:

… and this:

What it did NOT say was ANYTHING about what would happen if Blurt deleted Reese’s account because hackers had taken it over and Blurted a bunch of incredibly inappropriate clips. ^{Ed. Note: (not sure what the clips were, but prob totally filthy)}

So I spent the rest of Sunday doing two things: A) constantly refreshing the comment section of Marcel’s Blurt to see if the Lovefighters had figured out who I was, and B) getting ready for a MAJOR argument in the cafeteria on Monday morning.

Because I knew Athena wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

SOPHIE

It was actually an interesting question. “If an account gets deleted, how many followers does it have?”

It’s kind of like, “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s around, does it make a sound?”

PARVATI

Hello? OF COURSE it makes a sound!

And OF COURSE Claudia won the bet! If your account disappears, so do your followers!

CLAUDIA

In the end, Reese’s friend Wyatt came up with the key piece of evidence for my argument.

WYATT

I didn’t get on Blurt until after the bet started. So I was only following six people.

And after Reese’s account got deleted, my home page said I was only following FIVE people. And Reese wasn’t one of them.

CLAUDIA

In other words, Wyatt and all the other 19,000 people who were following Reese had automatically UN-followed him when Blurt deleted his account.

So if his account was reactivated, it would have zero followers.

Which meant I won.

ATHENA, the bride of Satan

I’m sorry, but that is the dumbest, lamest thing I have EVER heard.

CLAUDIA

The rest of the sixth grade didn’t think so.

ATHENA

Because they are idiots.

CARMEN

That whole scene in the cafeteria was SO great. Like, when Athena claimed Reese got Blurt to delete his account on purpose?

REESE

I was like, “Do you seriously think I sent a picture of myself getting pooped out by a dog to EVERYBODY ON EARTH just to help my sister? I don’t even like her that much!!”

No offense, Claudia.

CLAUDIA

It’s fine. It was actually very helpful that you said that.

It was also helpful that I wasn’t trying to claim Athena owed me $1,000. I didn’t want her money—I just wanted the whole thing to be over. So all I did was argue that nobody won and the bet should be called off.

And when Athena said that was ridiculous, I asked for a show of hands from everybody in the cafeteria.

CARMEN

You were like, “Raise your hand if you think the bet should be off.” And pretty much everybody in the cafeteria raised their hands except for Athena and the Fembots.

Then Athena called us all idiots and stormed out of the room. It was so awesome.

CLAUDIA

It really was. And it would have been a great ending… if it was actually the end of the story.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t.