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 itwas 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?”
