Chapter 3 GoldPen Logs In
Zara's POV
His answer came in at 11:47pm.
"What makes a person worth respecting? Easy. Results. If you can do something nobody else can do, people respect you. That's just how it works."
Zara read it once. Then again. Then she closed her eyes for three seconds.
Two years. She had been helping this person for two years. She had talked him through a chemistry exam the night before he took it. She had rewritten his college prep introduction four times until it stopped sounding like a robot wrote it. She had stayed up until 1am helping him understand an essay question he had misread, and she had never once complained.
And this was what was inside his head.
Results. That was his whole answer.
She typed back: "What if the results belong to someone else? What if someone handed you everything you have? Do you still get the respect?"
She hit send before she could talk herself out of it.
His reply came in forty seconds later. Fast. Like the question bothered him.
"Why are you asking me this instead of just starting the essay?"
Because, she thought, I need to know who I'm dealing with. But she did not type that.
She typed: "It's a leadership essay. I need to know how you think about leadership before I can help you write about it well. Answer the question."
— ✦ —
While she waited, she pulled up his full file. GoldPen kept notes on every client — not personal details, just learning patterns. What they struggled with. What they were good at. What kind of help actually worked for them.
LHarlow97. Two years of sessions. Strong at arguing a point. Weak at admitting when he was wrong. Got frustrated fast when he did not understand something right away. But when he finally got it, he remembered it forever. She had written in his notes: "Proud. But not stupid. Push him and he rises."
She had liked working with him. He made her think harder than most clients. He pushed back. He asked follow-up questions instead of just copying her answers. She had respected that.
She looked at the eighty-thousand-view video still open on her other tab.
She closed it.
"I'm still waiting," she typed.
Another forty seconds. Then: "Fine. I think real respect has to be earned. Not given because of a name or money. But I also think most people don't earn it — they just get lucky and then pretend they worked for it."
Zara sat up straighter.
That was a real answer. Honest in a way she had not expected.
She typed: "Okay. Now we can start. Tell me what the essay prompt says exactly."
He sent it immediately. Like he had been holding it ready.
The prompt was from the Crown Contest application: "Describe a time you led something difficult. What did you do, and what did it cost you?"
Zara stared at it.
The Crown Contest.
She pulled up the school website on her second tab. The contest announcement was right there on the home page, posted two hours ago. Five rounds. Two hundred thousand dollars in scholarship prize money. Open to all enrolled students.
Her heart did something fast and uncomfortable in her chest.
She looked back at his message. He was entering the Crown Contest. She was going to enter the Crown Contest. And right now, at 11:58pm, she was sitting in a tiny scholarship dorm room helping the boy who had poured orange juice on her back figure out how to win it.
The thing that came up in her chest was not anger. It was something colder and more useful than anger.
She typed: "This prompt is asking you to be honest. Not impressive. Honest. Those are different things. Can you do that?"
He took longer this time. Almost three minutes.
"I don't know," he finally wrote. "I'll try."
She nodded at the screen even though he could not see it.
"Good," she typed. "That's the first honest thing you've said. Start there."
— ✦ —
They worked for an hour and twenty minutes. He wrote, she pushed back, he rewrote. It was not easy. Twice he got defensive and said she was being too hard on him. Both times she told him she was not grading him, she was helping him, and there was a difference. Both times he backed down and tried again.
By the time they finished a rough first paragraph, it was past 1am.
"Better," she typed. "Sleep. We can finish the rest tomorrow."
"You're harder than my actual teachers," he wrote.
"Your actual teachers are being paid to like you," she typed back. "I'm being paid to help you. Different job."
A pause. Then: "Okay. Same time tomorrow?"
"Same time," she said.
She closed the laptop. Sat in the dark for a moment.
Tomorrow she was going to walk into that school and put her name on the Crown Contest sign-up sheet. She was going to compete against him. And tonight, she had just helped him write the first paragraph of his entry essay.
The situation was so strange that she almost laughed.
Almost.
