Free Extraordinary Losers 1 by Jessica Alejandro

the discoveries of the day… and something else. Why did Damien have to resort to that?
    It was 1am. I removed my earphones from my ears. My ears caught the sound of something familiar.
    Click, clack, click, clack, click, clack. Someone was on the keyboard typing away. I slunk into the living room. I heard a “hee hee, kee kee”.
    â€œBoo!” I pounced.
    â€œSssssssshhh!” came the reply.

    â€œCaught you! What are you doing here at this hour, Sophia? You had better sleep. Mum’s going to kill you if she knows.”
    â€œSssshhh!”
    â€œWho are you talking to?”
    â€œWatermelon.”
    â€œYou mean the Annoying Watermelon?”
    â€œNo!! Just Watermelon. Now go away.”
    I caught a glimpse of the screen. There was a chat going on between Sophia and Watermelon:
    Sophia: You are soooo cool, Watermelon. LOL
    Watermelon: You are too cute and pretty to be true too! LOL. I wish I could see you in person.
    Sophia: Let’s meet! For REAL this time.
    My goose pimples were rising from the mushiness of the chat content. They were mushier than Grandma’s gross porridge.
    â€œHey!” Sophia elbowed me while trying to block the screen at the same time. Then, she typed “BWOM”.
    Instinct told me to be brotherly. “You’d better be careful. You know that there are many perverts out there.”
    â€œHe’s not a pervert. He is always helping me with my Math and telling me jokes.”
    â€œOkay… as long as you….”
    â€œDarryl?? Sophia!?” Mum’s voice stirred the midnight air.
    â€œOh no!”
    â€œOh no too!”
    I sped off to my room. Sophia slammed the laptop shut and skittered after me.
    We dived into our beds, buried ourselves in a shallow grave of pillows and blankets and froze.
    â€œDarryl?!” Mum checked again from her room.
    Sophia and I played dead.
    When we sensed her let up, I whispered, “Pssst! By the way, what does BWOM mean? I have never heard of it.”
    â€œIt means Brother Watching Over Me.”
    â€œWhat?! Okay, goodnight.”
    â€œGoodnight. If you ever leak a word to Mum, I will…”
    â€œI know! I know!” I said. “Promise!”
    Sophia giggled herself to sleep that night. I was now more awake than I had ever been. Was Sophia, my 12-year-old sister, falling in love?

    The next day, the members of Operation Pants on Fire decided to meet early in school. The cool foggy air made our sleuth operation even more surreptitious. We had arranged to meet in the hall, the busiest place, so that our meeting would look less suspicious.
    â€œHey, did you bring the erasable pens?” I asked Clandestino. He had a store of pens at home since he was a pen ninja.
    â€œYes. Of course.”
    â€œOkay, great! I’ve got the paper,” Mundi said, whipping out a clean sheet of A4 paper. “This paper has the exact same texture as those used for our test papers. No?”
    â€œGood thinking, Mundi,” Janice said. “Let’s see…” she said as she placed the piece of paper on the floor. We all huddled very close together on the floor, a piece of paper at the centre of our circle.
    â€œThis is unbelievable, no?” Mundi piped up.
    â€œWhat Leonard does is this…” I wrote down a few numbers on the paper with a blue erasable pen. After that, I erased the numbers and went over them with a different number using the same pen.
    â€œThree seconds!” Mundi cried.
    â€œWhat three seconds?” Clandestino asked.
    â€œThree seconds you took to erase the number and write the correct one. If the cheaters did that for five questions, they would need 15 seconds. No?”

    â€œWhich is the amount of time it takes for Miss Jacobs and Madam Siti to do class control!” I added. “Brilliant!”
    Clandestino scratched his neck in doubt. “That’s it? Justin and Leonard could have erased their answers during the test