Chapter 2: The Climb and the Crowd

After the first practice SAT results came out, I was still ranked first in the whole county.

The school was buzzing—kids crowding around the hallway bulletin board, teachers passing with congratulatory smiles, and Maddie, who grew up in a tiny Appalachian town where the nearest Walmart was an hour away, held her head high as she scanned the rankings. She was second in the entire school.

She was generous and confident. She reached out to me with a smile and a subtle Appalachian lilt: “Rachel, congrats on snaggin’ first again. Don’t forget us little folks when you’re valedictorian, alright?”

Her handshake was warm, her voice carrying the gentle drawl of the mountains. The tension between us was almost comical, like in those movies where rival runners size each other up on a foggy track at sunrise.

The next second, the live chat started flying:

*[Look how arrogant the supporting girl is. Our main character congratulates her, and she gives her that kind of attitude?]*

*[So what if she’s a Chicago suburb princess? Our Maddie clawed her way up from elementary school, relying on her own grit to get into the top high school as number one.]*

*[But Rachel was only top fifty when she entered high school. When it came time to pick classes, she insisted on choosing AP science with our Maddie. If it weren’t for her family background and her parents investing in her since middle school, could she have taken Maddie’s first place?]*

*[Don’t worry, our Maddie has the one-click swap system. On SAT day, she’ll deliberately tank her score, then swap and become valedictorian.]*

*[That Chicago suburb princess can only end up at a third-rate college as number one.]*

I rolled my eyes at my phone. It was honestly wild, the way the online crowd twisted every moment into some kind of cheap reality show. The school walls felt thinner, as if the digital world was leaking through the bricks. My jaw tightened, a spike of anxiety prickling under my skin, but I tried to laugh it off.

Maddie’s entrance exam score was first in the school. She kept that first place through her freshman year of high school.

Then, during course selection and class division, the homeroom teacher asked her, “Maddie, your strengths are all in English and History. Why do you want to take all AP science classes?”

The smell of dry-erase markers and cafeteria fries hung in the air as Maddie squared her shoulders. She replied, “Mr. Carter, I want to challenge myself. If you keep dodging the hard things, life will only get harder. Are you gonna avoid everything?”

There was a slow clap, a ripple of respect that went around the classroom. Even the quiet kids in the back row nodded like they’d just heard something that would show up on a motivational poster. That moment was pure, and for a second, I admired her guts.

What Maddie said back then got a round of applause from the whole class.

But after the class split, Maddie’s grades dropped sharply.

Her eyes were rimmed red from late nights, knuckles white as she scribbled formulas that never seemed to add up. You could see the strain in her eyes during every test. She stayed later in the library, her fingers tapping frantically on her calculator, her textbooks frayed and scribbled full of notes. But no matter how much she tried, the numbers weren’t lining up for her anymore.

Meanwhile, my grades went from top fifty in the school to top three.

Then to first in the county.

All the way to the first practice SAT, I never let go of first place.

That’s because I got up at five every morning to do a practice set, gave up my lunch break for two more, and was still at it past eleven at night.

Every spare moment was spent on practice tests.

I’d finished every prep book from the tutoring center and every senior year workbook from the bookstore.

My bedroom looked like an SAT-themed tornado had hit it. SAT flashcards were taped next to a faded Cubs pennant and a half-empty bottle of Starbucks Frappuccino. The only decorations were stacks of filled-in bubble sheets and coffee-stained notes stuck to the walls, reminders of formulas, vocab, and pep talks scribbled in blue ink.

The stack of practice tests I’d done over the years was taller than me.

My first-place results came from paying attention in class and working hard.

It stung, sharper than any test question I’d ever missed. Was effort invisible if you didn’t wear it like a badge? How did it turn, in the eyes of the live chat, into me buying first place with my family’s money?