Ooh, Bright Colors!

*Sorry about the delay, everyone…


"…but so if she votes for—that means he'll vote for—wait, no, that would leave three votes against me still…"

Theo was using a borrowed computer furiously typing away on his bed. It was past three o'clock and his other roommates told her they were going to sleep in the living room since the keyboard was making so much noise. He noticed they were unusually quiet tonight. Maybe they left… He took a swig from his bottle of Coke. He didn't normally drink caffeine, but desperate times call for desperate measures. He paused for a moment and thought of the conversation he had with JT the other day:


"…which would make her vote for Gavin, which would in turn make him vote for—"


"Whoa, whoa. Hey, look. I'm not even playing" said JT, "I don't—"


"But how am I supposed to win? I need people on my side!"


He took another swig from his soda. JT just doesn't know what's important, Theo thought. He pulled off his dry-erase board from the wall. It was covered in names, pictures, graphs, lines, and colors. He had the next week's worth of voting planned out. He thought of Andrew's reaction when he saw it:


"…so this way, I can keep track of everyone's moves. I've tapped into their texting too so I can—"


"Theo, when was the last time you did homework? Didn't you have a test this week?"


"None of that matters anymore. I need to be the last one standing!"

He had on his screen a tentative plan. If voting turned out like so, he would survive at least another day or two, but will be able to sway the vote of one more person. He started to transfer his plan onto the whiteboard. The problem with whiteboards is you can't include all the automatic calculations that his spreadsheet had. And those were crucial.


Suddenly, he heard his apartment door open up and heard the sounds of a small crowd of people enter his apartment. That's weird, he thought, it's past three. The door to his room burst open and he saw his roommates and a few other people walk in. 


"…uh, guys?"


"Well, hello there, Theo," said a nice man. "Won't you come with us?"


"Wait, why? …uh, can I bring my whiteboard?"


"You can bring whatever you want," said the nice man with a smile. He winked at Theo.


"You guys are on my side, right? I mean, I can trust that you won't tell anyone else anything, right?


They invited him to take ride in the back of their van. Ooh, it's padded, thought Theo, and is full of bright colors! He saw some other friends in there with him. 


"Hey, Michelle! Hey, Megann! Are you coming too?"


"Yeah…" they replied. 


As his roommates watched the van drive away into the sunrise, they couldn't help but feeling bad for the guy. But then again, Simon could get his bed now. That's a definite plus.