3. Evelyn
EVELYN
“ Y ou couldn’t pay me a million bucks to trade you places in there,” my best friend, Madison, said as we stepped out of the building.
I rolled my eyes as I pulled the umbrella from my bag. “If I had a million dollars, I’d really be pushing for it right now,” I joked.
“What is with that guy? He really hates you. Do you know him or something?” she asked as she pushed closer to my side to hide beneath the umbrella as we continued our walk to the dining hall.
“I don’t know why he hates me so much. I’ve never done anything to him,” I told her, trying my best to think back, but the only thing I could think of was all the good times we shared.
For an entire summer, he was basically like a brother to me.
Then he went back to college, and I didn’t see much of him until he got another break from school.
He always came back. Until he didn’t. I hadn’t asked Gabe about it in a long time, but I knew from the last time I asked that he wouldn’t be honest with me.
From his response, or lack thereof, I could only assume that Gabe was in the wrong.
And he knew it. That was only confirmed once school started because Elliot was a total douchebag toward me.
“There has to be something you’re not thinking of. I mean, plenty of girls have giggled in class, and he didn’t treat them the way he treated you today. Just breathing wrong sets him off.”
I took a deep breath, hoping it would help to release some tension. It didn’t. “I don’t know what’s going on and why he’s the way he is.” I worried my lip before confessing, “I think he’s really trying to get me kicked out of school.”
Madison tucked her curly blonde hair behind her ear before reaching out and pulling open the door to the dining hall. She held it for me as I put away the umbrella, and we both walked in together. “Why would he want to do that, though? There’s, like, no reason.”
I shrugged as we made our way up to the end of the line.
Grabbing a tray and some silverware, I said, “Like you said, I breathe wrong or something.” I didn’t mention our past even though I wanted to.
I thought that maybe she could help figure things out, but I took Elliot’s warning on the first day of school seriously.
The last thing I needed was for word to get out that we once knew one another.
It didn’t take much for rumors to start, and once they did, they took off like wildfire on campus.
It would get back to him within the day, and then I’d really be done for.
The line moved at a leisurely pace, and as we made our way up to the buffet-style lunch setup, we each grabbed what appealed to us.
That day, I wanted to indulge in the cozy fall vibes, so I selected a cup of vegetable soup accompanied by a small package of crackers and a grilled cheese.
I tried to eat as many meals as possible in the dining hall because it was much cheaper than eating at one of the restaurants near campus or going to the grocery store and cooking at home.
At the end of the line, I paid a total of six dollars and fifty cents for my lunch, and then Madison and I made our way to an empty table to eat.
She sat across from me and immediately started ripping open the package of dressing to pour onto her salad. “You should file a complaint with the school. I mean, I’m pretty sure you can find people to say that he treats you unfairly. You know I will,” she said, leveling her eyes on mine.
I gave her a tight smile. “Thanks, but I think that’s a bad idea.
It will only make him target me more, and I’m on thin ice as it is.
” I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, and I didn’t know why.
I turned and looked around the room, almost like I was expecting to find a predator watching my every move.
I saw nothing but students and staff getting lunch, eating, or making their way out.
I let out a long breath of relief as I opened my bottle of water.
As I was tilting my head back to take a drink, that’s when I saw him.
Elli—I mean, Professor West.
He was in line, tray in hand and sights set on me. His gray eyes narrowed. His jaw flexed as his back straightened. I saw his sweater tighten across his chest as he took a deep breath. Then he released it and pushed himself forward, moving to a table several feet away.
Madison leaned in a little, her voice low as she said, “What the fuck? Is he following you or something?”
I snorted as I stirred my soup, doing everything I could to ignore him. “It’s lunchtime. Even evil has to recharge from time to time.”
She laughed with me.
I didn’t know how I was making light of the situation, given how serious it all was. He had it out for me. He was clearly determined to see me fail. I was living on borrowed time, and it was running out quickly. I was only a few days away from losing everything I’d worked for.
“The next time he’s mean to you, I’m going to say something. I should’ve said something today. I was just so surprised that he was acting that way.”
“No, don’t.” I ripped a chunk of my grilled cheese off and dipped it into my soup.
“Someone has to do something if you’re not going to file a complaint.”
“Seriously, Maddie, don’t. It’s just going to get you in trouble, and there’s no point in you getting in trouble for nothing.”
Her brows furrowed together. “What do you mean, for nothing? It’s not for nothing, Eve. It’s for you. You’re the nicest person I know, and you don’t deserve this. You’ve worked too hard, gone through too much to get where you are.”
“It would be for nothing because come Friday, I’m flunking out anyway.”
“Why would you say that?” she asked, dropping her fork and popping open her Diet Coke.
“Because that paper is due and I haven’t even started on it,” I confessed.
Her blue eyes doubled in size. Once she swallowed the soda in her mouth, her lips formed an O. “We’ve had weeks to write this paper. Why haven’t you started on it?”
“I just haven’t had time.” I breathed out, pushing my hair behind my ears.
Suddenly, having it in my face was driving me crazy.
“I’ve been working two jobs and picking up any extra shifts I can just to keep my rent paid.
I had planned to start this paper when I had a little more energy to devote to it, but it just never happened, and now I’m basically out of time.
There’s no way I can write a paper that will get me a passing grade in two days. ”
She shook her head as she moved her salad around her plate. I noticed the moment she had an idea because she tilted her head to the side while biting down on her lower lip.
“What?”
“Huh?” she asked, brows lifting and eyes widening.
“You have an idea. What is it?”
“What makes you think that?” She finally took a bite. A bite so big that it filled her mouth to the point that she couldn’t talk.
“Madison, tell me your idea. At this point, I’m desperate.”
She sighed, rolled her eyes, and then held her index finger in the air, telling me to wait a moment while she chewed and swallowed her food. Wiping her mouth with her napkin, she finally said, “Okay, so this is a really bad idea. Like a really, really bad idea, but it’s all I got.”
“Let’s hear it.” I waved her on.
“So… over the summer, my older brother started telling me all of his outrageous college memories, and he told me about the time that he forgot he had a paper due. It was his senior year, and things were winding down as graduation approached. He was busy with all of the end-of-the-year fun. I guess he and a bunch of his friends planned this camping trip, and they spent the weekend doing nothing but getting wasted in the woods. Anyway, by the time he got back to campus, it was somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning. One of the guys he was with said he was glad that he had finished the paper, as it was due in a few hours. That’s what reminded my brother that he didn’t do the assignment.
It was way too late to do any work, plus he was still hammered, so he got online and bought a paper that someone else had written.
He turned it in, got an A, and graduated. ”
“ Cheat? You’re telling me to cheat?” I asked her, surprised that she would suggest such a thing.
She shrugged. “Do you have a better idea?”
I clenched my jaw and dropped my gaze down to my tray. She knew damn well that I didn’t have a better idea. Looking back up at her, I said, “How do you even go about buying something like that? I don’t know anything about the dark web, Madison.”
“Oh my God. You’re buying a paper, not a kidney.” She laughed.
“Shh!” I quickly looked around us. “He’ll hear you.” I glanced back toward him, but he wasn’t looking our way. He actually looked like he was doing everything he could to avoid acknowledging my presence.
She clasped her hand over her mouth as a look of panic filled her big, blue eyes. She let her hand fall away before whispering, “Sorry.”
I leaned in. “Did he tell you what website he used?”
She leaned in to whisper, “He said he just put an ad up on Craigslist.” She cleared her throat and straightened her back.
“I mean, college kids are always looking for a way to make an extra buck. Maybe you can find someone who’s already taken this class and has already written this paper.
You would have just enough time to change things up to make it your own. ”
I took a deep breath as I thought about her idea. She was right. It was a bad idea, but I was running out of time. The longer I took to think about it, the less time I had. “How much do you think something like this goes for. I’m not exactly rolling in dough, if you know what I mean.”
“Let’s check it out.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and started tapping around.
“There are websites where you can purchase pre-written papers, and they’re going for around sixty bucks or so.
” She went back to scrolling. “They don’t have very good reviews, though.
People say that teachers are feeding the text into a plagiarism detector and they’re getting caught. ”
I rolled my eyes. “So much for that idea.”
“I’m going to put up an ad on Craigslist.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she cut me off.
“Only as a last resort. I’ll put the ad up, and if someone responds, we can buy the paper. You can keep it in your back pocket and use it only when needed. In the meantime, you can do everything you can to write the paper yourself. Sound good?”
I worried my bottom lip until I tasted blood.
“Okay, fine,” I agreed. It wasn’t against the rules to buy someone else’s work.
It was against the rules to turn in someone else’s work as your own.
And I hadn’t broken that rule. Yet. Hopefully, I can complete this paper and avoid it.
Like Madison said, using it would be a last resort.
I couldn’t help but feel like I was letting my dad down in some way.
I remembered how proud he was when I told him at fifteen that I would graduate from college one day.
He and my mom both came from working-class families, and neither of them attended college after high school.
My mom got pregnant with my brother during her senior year, so my dad dropped out of school, earned his GED, and went straight to work.
My mom managed to graduate from high school, but she was so busy being a young mom that she never found the time to attend college.
She was a stay-at-home mom until I started kindergarten, then she got a job working as a receptionist at a local doctor’s office.
My dad worked hard at a factory job to provide for his family, and he did it for many years, slowly advancing up the ranks and earning bigger and bigger paychecks.
My parents had always pushed both of us to do our best in school and to work hard for what we wanted.
They didn’t want either of their kids to face the same struggles they had, which is why I was determined to attend college.
Even after they passed away, I knew it was something I had to do.
I had to keep my word. There were days when all I wanted to do was lie in bed and cry over losing them.
Still, I pushed myself forward, completing my homework, studying for tests, and ultimately graduating at the top of my class, earning an academic scholarship.
I worked too hard to give up because of a professor who wanted to punish me for something my brother had done.
I knew my dad would be upset over the fact that I was planning on cheating, but it was a last resort.
If there were any other way, I’d do it. Until then, I had to do what I could to survive.
Even though I hadn’t actually done anything yet, the guilt was already eating at me.
I was scared that I’d get caught because I knew if Professor West even had the slightest idea that I was cheating, he would end me right then.
I turned my head to look over my shoulder at him, but he was gone.
I had been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t even seen him get up and leave.
I just prayed that he stayed in the dark and that I’d still be on campus the following week.