Chapter 9 : The Bet

Chapter 9: Chapter 9 : The Bet

The view count passed two hundred thousand sometime after lunch on Tuesday, and Ethan decided that was enough to go knocking on doors. He put on the one shirt he owned with a collar and printed the numbers at the library so he’d have something to put in a folder. The ending went up Saturday. He wanted a sponsor on it before then.

First stop was the Subway by the campus gate. The manager listened to three sentences, then pointed at the poster on the wall. "Corporate handles advertising." Twenty seconds, start to finish.

Second was a sports bar on University Avenue. The owner was shaking his head before Ethan finished. "Kids who watch videos don’t buy beer. They steal pint glasses."

Third was Caruso Wireless, an authorized Cingular dealer. One whole wall was RAZRs, silver, black, pink. The owner was Vince Caruso, early forties, hair gelled to a shine, a Bluetooth earpiece clipped to one ear with its little blue light blinking.

Ethan opened the folder and set it on the counter. "This month, half the six thousand freshmen on this campus are signing their first phone contract. My last video got two hundred thousand views in two days, mostly college kids. First five seconds of Saturday’s, your store. A hundred bucks."

Vince didn’t even look at the printouts. He pulled the campus paper out from under the counter, flipped to page three, and slapped it down on top of the folder. A half-page ad, half of it his own face, giving a thumbs-up.

"This runs me four hundred a week. Eight thousand copies. That’s advertising."

"How many of those eight thousand are still sitting in the racks on Friday?"

Something crossed Vince’s face. Just for a second. Then he laughed.

"YouTube’s for kids, kid." He pulled the paper back. "Kids don’t sign two-year contracts. Their parents do. Out of your two hundred thousand, how many walk through that door? Give me a number."

Ethan didn’t have one.

"Door’s behind you." Vince was already tapping his earpiece, turning away to take a call.

Out on the sidewalk, Ethan found he wasn’t even mad, which surprised him a little. The guy had a point, and it was annoying how good a point it was.

Views weren’t customers. Two hundred thousand was a big, real number, and it had nothing to do with how many phones Vince moved by the end of the month.

Back in 2026, Ethan could have walked into a room like that with a company name on his business card and forty slides behind him, and people would have taken his word for the rest. Here he was a freshman in his only collared shirt, holding library printouts, and nobody was taking his word for anything.

Whatever he brought next time, it had to be something Vince could punch into a calculator.

He was still chewing on that when he reached the fourth place on his list and stopped at the door.

Pelican Pizza. Through the window, a man in a flour-covered apron was yelling at a delivery kid, waving a pizza peel through the air. The sign on the door had already been flipped to CLOSED.

Ethan knew this place. In his old life, freshman year, every birthday on his floor had ended with a large pepperoni from here. Some year after that he’d walked past and found the storefront turned into a phone repair shop.

Two blocks down, across the street, a brand-new Domino’s had its red and blue sign lit up, LARGE PIZZA $5.99 taped to the glass. Every table inside was full of students.

Ethan stood there a while, looking from one to the other. Then he tucked the folder under his arm and headed back toward the dorm, already working out what he’d carry through that door tomorrow instead of a view count.

Back in his room that night, Ethan logged into AIM and sent Maya a message.

Ethan: I need numbers from the site. Total guesses. Total emails. How many end in scu.edu.

She answered fast.

Maya: Why.

Ethan: To sell pizza.

This time there was a long gap. Long enough that Ethan figured she wasn’t going to answer. Then three lines came in at once.

Maya: 14,206 guesses. 9,841 unique emails. 3,117 scu.edu.

Maya: Also 212 from other .edu addresses within 30 miles. I sorted them for you. You’re welcome.

Maya: This still doesn’t mean I said yes.

Ethan looked at the second line. He’d asked for three numbers. She’d given him four, and the fourth was the one he hadn’t thought to ask for yet.

Another window started flashing.

Chloe: You said tomorrow. It is now tomorrow. It is almost the day after tomorrow.

Ethan glanced at the memory card on his desk, about the size of a fingernail.

Ethan: Thursday. Promise. The outfit’s almost ready.

Chloe: Making a girl wait. Bold.

By the time he went back the next afternoon, the lunch rush was long gone and Pelican Pizza was down to one man in an apron, bent over, scrubbing the oven deck. It wasn’t a big place. Twenty years on the same corner, named after the school mascot, eight tables, red-and-white checked tablecloths, a faded photo on the wall of a Little League team with PELICAN PIZZA across their chests. Next to the register sat a spiral ledger with a pen tied to it on a string.

"Lunch is over." The man didn’t look up. "Ovens are cooling. Come back at five."

"I’m not here for pizza."

Sal Moretti straightened up and slung the rag over his shoulder. Forty-five, forearms thicker than Ethan’s calves, flour in his eyebrows. He looked at Ethan for two seconds, and his eyes narrowed.

"The money kid," he said. "My delivery boy hasn’t shut up about you in two days." He tossed the rag onto the counter. "You know what I think? I think it’s a scam. Nobody throws away a thousand bucks. So what’s your angle?"

"I didn’t throw it away," Ethan said. "I bought something with it."

"Bought what?"

Ethan didn’t argue, and he didn’t mention the view count. He set one sheet of paper on the counter and slid it across. Three numbers on it, the ones Maya had sent the night before.

"Fourteen thousand people guessed who won on my website. Almost ten thousand left an email. Three thousand one hundred and seventeen of those end in scu.edu." He drew a line under the last number. "Three thousand people who live within a mile of your front door. I have their names."

Sal looked at the paper and didn’t say anything.

"Saturday morning, every one of those ten thousand people gets an email telling them who won. They’ve been waiting a week for it. Every single one of them opens it." Ethan tapped the bottom of the page. "The last line of that email says: Say WHOWON at Pelican Pizza, twenty percent off your order."

"And how do I know it works?"

Ethan reached over, picked up the spiral ledger with the pen on a string, flipped to a blank page, and set it in front of Sal.

"Every time somebody walks in and says WHOWON, you make a mark on this page. You don’t have to trust me. Trust your own notebook."

Sal looked down at the blank page. In twenty years he’d taken out ads in the campus paper, stapled flyers to telephone poles, put his name on Little League jerseys. Not once had he known how many customers any of that money had actually brought in.

That was the answer Ethan had brought back from Vince’s store. Online advertising would later call it performance marketing: don’t sell exposure, sell results, and be able to count what every dollar bought. In ten years it would be an industry worth hundreds of billions. In this pizza place, it was a spiral notebook and a pen on a string.

"What’s it cost?" Sal asked.

"Fifteen hundred."

"Fifteen hundred?" Sal yanked the rag off his shoulder. "I don’t spend that in a month of campus paper ads. Door’s behind you."

Ethan didn’t move, and he didn’t say anything.

Five seconds of quiet. Sal cracked first. "...You’re kidding me."

"Then let’s do it another way," Ethan said. "Five hundred now. The other thousand, you only pay if Saturday’s reveal video passes five hundred thousand views. If it doesn’t, I give you the five hundred back. All of it. You’d have gotten your name in front of ten thousand people for free."

Sal grunted. "And what does five hundred get me?"

"Five hundred buys you three things." Ethan held up one finger. "Saturday’s reveal video, first five seconds: This video is brought to you by Pelican Pizza." Two. "Your name across the top of the guessing site. The hundred-dollar prize becomes the Pelican Pizza Grand Prize, and you put up the hundred." Three. "That last line at the bottom of ten thousand emails."

"So it’s six hundred."

"Six hundred for the whole campus," Ethan said. "One week in the campus paper costs you four hundred, and half those copies never leave the rack."

"One more thing." Ethan tapped the spiral notebook. "Every mark in this book, you owe me fifty cents."

Sal’s eyebrows shot up. "You want a cut of my discount too?"

"I want a cut of customers you didn’t have yesterday."

Newspapers charged for how many copies they printed. Online, you charged for how many people actually saw it. What Ethan was selling Sal was ten thousand envelopes that were going to get opened.

Sal wiped his hands on the rag, slowly, one finger at a time.

"You’re making a bet with me."

"I’m making a bet with myself. You’re just holding the stakes."

Sal’s eyes went past Ethan’s shoulder to the window. Two blocks down, the Domino’s sign was glaring red and blue in the sun. A muscle in his jaw tightened and let go.

Then he popped open the register, counted out a stack of twenties and tens, and slapped it down on the counter.

"If this is a scam, kid," he said, "I know where you live."

"Carver Hall, 314." Ethan tucked the cash into the folder. "My roommate thinks I owe him twenty bucks. You can come collect together."

Sal didn’t laugh. He pulled the spiral notebook back in front of him and, with the pen on the string, printed five capital letters across the top of the blank page, one at a time: WHOWON.

Out on the sidewalk, the afternoon sun was beating down. Ethan didn’t head off right away. He stood by the door and ran the numbers in his head.

Out: a thousand for the game. Fifty for the footage of the ending. Seventeen for the domain and hosting. Forty-five spreading fake news. Eleven hundred and twelve.

In: five hundred, fresh out of Sal’s register. If Saturday went right, another thousand behind it. The first video had already paid for itself.

Then there were the marks in that notebook. Fifty cents apiece. One more payday, at the very least.

And that was only what fit on paper. Ten thousand email addresses. Three thousand of them on this campus. A business owner who’d paid once and would pay again. None of that had a column in the ledger.

Good start, he thought.

He tucked the folder under his arm and started back toward campus. Now all that was left was the reveal.