Page 12 of Run, Run, Roommates
Marco leans forward. “Is your plan to just do every task as they’re presented to you?”
“How else would you do it? And this is the only task we have so far.”
Marco sighs and rolls his eyes, but it’s in an exasperated how-silly-are-you way. He leans back and pats the couch cushion next to him. “Come here.”
I roll forward over my crossed legs and crawl toward the couch. Marco’s dark eyes meet mine for the briefest of seconds before his jaw tightens and he looks away.
I hide a snort. He’s so annoyed that I’m diving right in instead of making a plan.
When I plop down next to him, I peer at his laptop. “A spreadsheet?” The ugh is implied.
“There’s going to be more than one task at a time, and how will we decide which one to work on?”
“Whichever one gets us the most points, right?”
Marco shrugs. “Something might be worth more points, but maybe there are more opportunities for creativity, or maybe it’ll be further away from us than two tasks nearby of equal or more points.”
He starts making a table, columns at the top labeled task, estimated time, distance, difficulty, etc. I lean against him and watch, his fingers deftly moving around the keyboard. Then he switches tabs over to the Discord server, which still has just one thing visible: a giant clock counting down. We have eighteen minutes left until the clock hits zero and we’ll get more information.
Marco lifts his head, eyes searching the room. “Wasn’t there an information sheet with the toys? Did it say how many points this task nets us?”
I slip off the couch and bend over, digging into the box. There’s still supplies in here—scissors, tape. I guess they assume we have nothing helpful. Level the playing field or something.
I find what I’m looking for and grab the sheet. I straighten and spin around, Marco’s eyes looking up from where I was digging around to my face. I wave the paper. “Found it. Okay, let’s see.” I scan the sheet, which has the address and some tips as I walk back to the couch.
If the toy or packaging breaks, call . . .
Deliver the wrapped toys to . . .
Drop a photo of both team members with the wrapped gifts in . . .
“Aha.” I plop down next to Marco, accidentally sitting closer than I intended. My knee nudges the laptop and I fold my leg, my foot going underneath my butt, my knee resting on Marco’s thigh.
He doesn’t seem to notice.
I frown. “Two points? That can’t be right.” I glance up at the pile of presents. “Two measly points for wrapping all of this?”
Marco frowns too and leans into me, looking at the paper. “That’s what it says. The activity points can total up to sixty, plus another forty possible judges’ points. We have three days; assuming roughly an even distribution over the days, that’s twenty points per day.”
“So wait. Billy Bob has made a pledge for every point that we earn, right? How much per point are we earning for charity here? What’s our time worth?”
The keyboard clacks as Marco adds another two columns to the spreadsheet. Actual time and Dollars raised per hour. Then I watch over his shoulder as he clicks around to his browser, then his email, and opens the PDF of our sign-up form.
I leap to my feet. “Whoa! Holy bananas!”
Marco holds up a hand. “Easy. That’s a mistake.” He squints at the PDF, where Billy Bob handwrote a two and four zeroes on the pledge line. “Maybe. Probably. Do you think he meant twenty dollars and zero cents? Like he’s missing the decimal?”
“If the total points available is a hundred, I was thinking that people would pledge, like . . . ten dollars. Or less. But also Billy Bob is fucking rich. He probably wipes his ass with twenties.”
“He has a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bidet,” Marco says absently while he types the number into his spreadsheet. “If we were to get all hundred points?—”
“Which is impossible.”
“We’d be raising two hundred thousand dollars for charity.”
“Holy shit,” I laugh. I imagine all my debt wiped out in one go, with some left over to get my own apartment so I don’t have to accept Marco’s charity anymore. It seems impossible that with a simple swipe of a pen, Billy Bob’s just going to give away a life-changing amount of money.
Marco’s face scrunches up and he tilts his head all the way to hit the back of the couch. “I feel like working with William has made me out of touch with these kinds of things. Is this a lot of money for William? No. But is this a lot of money for a charity organization? Probably. Right?”
