CHAPTER 134: SEVENTY TWO HOURS TWO GO

CLARK POV:

So yeah—Mom didn’t come home, and somehow, by the grace of whatever guardian angel watches over idiots and evil twins, I got away with it. No broken vases, no calls from neighbors, no angry texts from Mom asking why there were tire skid marks on the driveway. It was like the universe decided to look the other way just this once.

Clare’s chaos party flew under the radar. Again. But I’m not stupid. Or at least, not stupid enough to rely on blind luck twice.

I am not going to roll the dice a second time. I mean, this girl still had those videos of me singing like some cracked-out geography idol, and if she used them once to blackmail me, she’d definitely use them again. Probably when I’m meeting some Memoville professor on Zoom or something and she thinks, "Oh, wouldn’t it be funny if they heard Clark’s rap about the tributaries of the Amazon?"

Clare doesn’t just collect blackmail material—she archives it like a maniacal little squirrel prepping for winter. That video of me singing those dumb history songs? Oh, she wasn’t going to forget about it. She was going to keep it. Probably add sparkly captions and background music. Maybe even show it to my future girlfriend just for laughs.

So yeah. I had a plan.

Step one: Wait for Clare to fall asleep. Not hard. I’ve said it before—she sleeps like she’s been tranquilized by a rhino dart. She could sleep through an alien invasion, a hurricane, and a marching band all at once.

Step two: Sneak into her room, steal her phone, and delete the video evidence of my humiliating performances. And finally sleep knowing I’m no longer a hostage in my own house.

Good plan, right?

Except...

She locked her door.

From the inside.

Like she knew I’d come for it. Like she had psychic twin powers or something.

Naturally, I tried every TV and YouTube hack I could think of. Paperclip. Bobby pin. That credit card trick that only seems to work in movies. I even considered going full-on Mission Impossible with a wire and mirror setup. I also tried unscrewing the doorknob like some desperate weirdo. Nothing. Her door was a freaking Fort Knox of humiliation protection.

So I trudged back to my room, utterly defeated, feeling like the world’s most hopeless twin and wannabe spy. I was already plotting Plan B—maybe bribing her with more ice cream? Threatening to sing all her favorite emo songs loudly in public?

And just when I thought the day couldn’t get any worse, my phone pinged.

It was from Sara. I’d sent her a message earlier, and now I was waiting for a reply—but the message wasn’t delivering.

I figured, okay, maybe the Wi-Fi’s being dumb again. I checked my connection, reset it, still nothing.

Then something evil sparked in my brain.

If I couldn’t break into her room physically... I’d do it digitally.

She backs up everything to the cloud.

Photos. Videos. Memes. Random screenshots of text fights.

All on auto-sync.

And I am a hacker.

I wasn’t just some average guy—I was a self-taught, midnight-hacking, tech nerd, and Clare? She had the tech defenses of a kitten. I knew her old passwords, her backup emails, even her stupid security questions. (Your first pet’s name is not a good answer, Clare. Especially when it was a goldfish named "Goldy.")

It was a genius plan. No locks, no doors, no paperclips or FBI infiltration tactics. Just me, my laptop, and some very personal motivation.

So I sat back in my chair, cracked my knuckles, and got to work. My goal? Hack her cloud storage. Not her entire phone—just the media folder. Specifically, the ClarkeBeingAnIdiot.mov file I knew was in there somewhere.

It was risky. If she ever found out, she’d murder me in my sleep. But honestly? I’d take my chances with her wrath over letting that video ever see the light of day.

And as I typed away, waiting for a code to run, I glanced at Sara’s message that finally came through:

"You okay? You seemed stressed earlier."

No idea how she picked that up over text, but somehow, she always knew. I quickly replied back:

"Yeah. Just twin stuff. Blackmail and trauma. The usual."

Then I dove right back into the mission.

Because if I was going down, I was going down with dignity—or at least without a video of me singing about Napoleon’s exile in falsetto floating around the internet.

Let’s be honest—I love my twin. But if she ever decided to upload that Nile River rap to TikTok?

I would never recover.

So yeah. This time, I wasn’t relying on luck.

I was going full digital warfare.

Clare started this. Now I’m finishing it.

********

Okay—72 hours before results drop. The countdown is real. But for once in my life, I’m not pacing around like a caffeine-crazed squirrel. You know why?

Because I had the best sleep ever. No nightmares of Clare standing in front of the whole school projecting my "Napoleonic musical numbers" on a ten-foot screen. No fear of her snatching my phone mid-convo and pressing play in front of Sara. No more threat of doom hanging over my head like a cursed halo.

Because I did it.

I deleted the video.

Wiped it clean from her cloud storage like a digital exorcist. Burned it from all corners of existence. No evidence. No proof. Just the sweet, sweet silence of security.

Yeah, she’s going to find out eventually. Probably the next time she opens her phone expecting to laugh herself into a coma watching me reenact the French Revolution in interpretive dance form. And I can’t wait. The face she’s going to make? Priceless. I might even take a picture. Might even turn her into a meme this time.

I guess I was too happy. Like, suspiciously happy.

Because at around noon—yes, noon—Clare finally wakes up, crawling out of her cave of blankets like a half-dead gremlin, hair everywhere, eyes squinty, wearing one sock and last night’s hoodie. She looks like a rabid squirrel who just lost a fight with a pillow.

She yawns, scratches her head, and squints at me.

"Why are you looking like some evil scientist who just discovered how to conquer the world?" she asks, blinking like a confused cat.

I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, cross-legged, arms behind my head, just radiating peace and triumph like Buddha after a Wi-Fi upgrade. I don’t even bother lying.

I give her the grin.

You know the one.

The smug, evil, "I know something you don’t" type of grin that immediately makes you want to slap it off someone’s face.

She stares for a second.

Narrows her eyes.

Squints harder.

I stay silent.

Still grinning.

Power move.

She shrugs. "Weirdo," she mutters, like that’s some kind of insult coming from someone who once put cereal in the microwave because she thought the milk was too cold.

Then she stumbles off toward the kitchen, mumbling something about peanut butter and leftover pizza.

And me? I lean back and enjoy the moment.

Freedom.

Victory.

Digital justice.

For once, I’m ahead of her.

For once, she doesn’t hold the upper hand.

She thinks I’m being weird?

Good. Let her wonder.

Because in three days, results drop.

In four days, she finds out what I did with her application.

And in five days?

She might kill me. Or hug me. Maybe both.

Until then, I’m basking in this peace like a king in exile—before the war returns.

And man... it feels good.

******

So Mom finally came back that evening—tired, of course, but with enough energy left to drop a bomb on Clare’s lazy, couch-glued existence. And like a well-trained general returning from battle, she went straight into command mode. Unfortunately for my lazy couch-goblin twin, Clare, the orders were not in her favor.

"It’s your turn to do the laundry and take out the trash," Mom announced casually, like she was suggesting a stroll in the park and not handing Clare her personal apocalypse. Clare, who was halfway through devouring a bowl of popcorn and watching cat fails on her phone, froze mid-bite like the popcorn betrayed her.

She tried the usual excuse: "But Mooom, finals just ended. Shouldn’t we, like... rest? Recover? Heal emotionally?"

Nice try.

Mom, being Mom, wasn’t having it. "Exactly. Finals are over, so now you two can start picking up more housework. Keeps your mind off the results. Plus, we’re switching up cooking nights too. Fair’s fair."

Clare groaned dramatically, like Mom had just sentenced her to twenty years of hard labor. Then she turned to me, and there it was.

That look.

That glint in her eyes that says "I’m about to pull a fast one, and you won’t see it coming."

Oh, but I did.

And I saw it.

That evil glint in her eyes.

I knew that look like the back of my hand. That was her "time to manipulate my goody-two-shoes twin into doing my chores" look. I didn’t even let her get a word out.

"Don’t even think about it," I cut in, stone-faced. "The answer is already no."

She didn’t respond—not verbally, at least. Just gave me that slow, smug smile that could only mean one thing: blackmail mode activated.

And then she reached for her phone.

I knew what she was about to do. Oh, I knew. She thought she had me trapped, like she was about to pull Excalibur from her camera roll—the videos of me singing those ridiculous memory songs I made up to help her study for geography and history. The ones that made me sound like a deranged preschool teacher on sugar.

She paused. Smiled wider. A dangerous smile.

Oh, she thought she was about to win. She thought she had me cornered.

So I did the only thing a smug twin could do: grabbed my phone too.

Camera ready.

Operation "Catch Clare’s Downfall" was a go.

The second she realized the videos were gone—that there was nothing to blackmail me with anymore—I was going to be there, front-row seat, capturing the pure essence of "WTF" on her face.

You know the kind of photo you turn into a phone wallpaper? Or better—Christmas cards?

Yeah, that moment was coming. And I was two steps ahead.

Let’s just say, the trash wasn’t the only thing getting taken out that night.

She opened the gallery app with full confidence. That’s when her eyes narrowed, her thumb swiping a little faster. Confusion crept in, then frustration.

"Where are they?" she mumbled to herself.

That’s when I clicked the photo. Perfect timing. Shocked Clare. Confused Clare. Defeated Clare.

Frame it. Print it. Poster it. I was thinking Christmas cards again.

She whipped her head toward me. "You—"

"Already took care of it," I said, cool as ice. "I’m no one’s chore slave anymore."

She huffed and stomped off toward the laundry with all the rage of a Disney villain in fuzzy socks. And me?

Let’s just say... victory never looked so sweet.