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I dropped my bag on the floor while Beth grabbed her roommate’s desk chair and dragged it over to her side of the room, near her desk and her identical chair. “Doesn’t it get lonely in here, with your roommate gone all the time? Do you even know if she’s alive?”
Beth let out a chuckle. “Yeah, she’s alive. I just saw her Sunday. She was here for about three hours, and then she was gone.” She shrugged, sliding into her wooden chair. No wheels for their desk chairs. No way to lean back and be comfortable; it was probably why Beth had gotten a cushion to put on the seat. “It’s not too bad, really. I’ve heard horror stories about devil roommates, and I’d rather have someone who’s never around than someone who has no life.”
No life. Those words hit me harder than they should’ve, but Beth didn’t know. I had no life. If I would’ve signed up for the dorms and roomed with someone, I would’ve been the roommate who was always there, hanging by herself, because she had no place else to be, no friends to hang out with.
So, instead of saying my thoughts on the matter, I simply said, “Yeah.” Mostly to agree with her. I’d done that a lot in our time together; I was pretty sure that was why we’d ended up as friends. Hard not to be friends with someone when they constantly agreed with whatever you said.
But, even though Beth and I weren’t exactly the same, I liked her. I enjoyed being friends with her. I didn’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have her, other than be lonely.
“Well, you wanna jump right into it?” Beth asked, bending over to unzip her bag and pull out her laptop, which she then set on her desk and turned on. “If you want snacks, we can run down and get some. I have no idea how long this will take.”
“Maybe in a bit,” I told her. I wasn’t too hungry right now, anyway.
Her laptop turned on, and she opened up the document with her paper. She pushed it toward me, saying, “Don’t hold back. If there’s something you think I need to fix, tell me. I need to get a good grade on this.”
I nodded, my eyes shifting to the screen and the beginning of her paper. Papers, regardless of how long they had to be, were pretty much all the same—at least in the college sphere.
Each and every professor, regardless of what they were teaching, wanted the same thing: an introduction which included a hook, some background info on the main subject of the paper, and a thesis you would then write about. That thesis was usually three-pronged. Three main points.
And then you had your counterargument, and then the counter to the counter. That was my least favorite part, because trying to think up a way someone might counter your whole paper was annoying.
And, of course, you couldn’t forget the conclusion at the end. Tying everything together in a neat bow as you finished presenting whatever it was you wrote about while hoping it was good enough to nab you a decent grade.
My papers always did pretty well; Beth knew that, hence why I was here.
Some professors let you send in a draft, which they would then mark up and send back to you, with stuff they wanted you to fix. I guess this professor wasn’t one of those.
Beth waited until I read over the entirety of the paper once before asking, “Well? How is it? Is there a lot you think I should fix?” She let out a sigh. “Lay it on me.”
The paper wasn’t horrible, but… it could be better, and I told her that.
Together, we worked on her paper. Sometimes I’d slide the laptop back over to her so she could rewrite something or add a bit more explanation after a quotation from one of her five mandatory credible sources.
We worked for a while, though we did stop to head down to the ground floor to get some snacks. I didn’t even realize how much time had passed until I happened to glance toward the lone window in the room and see that dusk had fallen.
Crap. I didn’t mean to spend this long here. I should go.
But, on the other hand, she’d just finished tweaking her counterargument, which was my last issue with her paper. All I really had to do was one final read-through just to make sure everything she’d changed and added flowed.
I decided to text Creed:Almost done. Sorry it’s taking longer than I thought.
His text back was almost instant.Call me when you’re done. I’ll come pick you up. I don’t want you walking home by yourself in the dark.
I fought the smile that message rose up within me; it didn’t surprise me Creed didn’t want me to walk home in the dark. Beth saw my smile, a mischievous glint in her eyes as she studied me and asked, “You talking to that guy still? The one you refuse to tell me his name? The one who supposedly isn’t on any socials?” She couldn’t get over that part.
“I, uh… sort of, yeah, but that wasn’t him. That was my brother.”
“You know, I’ve been curious about him, too. You’ve never really talked much about him. Heck, before a little bit ago, I didn’t even know you had a brother,” Beth pointed out. She had her phone in her hands the next second. “Please tell me he’s somewhere I can stalk—”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said.
She let out a huff of a sound, saying, “You and your weird guys. Seriously. You know two guys who aren’t on anything? What are the odds? Like I said before—everyone’s on something, even if they say they’re not. It just means they’re hiding something.”
“I told you, he’s not hiding anything. And as for my brother… his job keeps him pretty busy. He’s never really gotten into social media.” As far as I knew, that wasn’t a lie. With Creed’s job, with how dangerous it could be, I’d bet there were rules against having social media profiles. It could potentially put a target on his back or on the back of whoever his security firm was working for at the moment.
Beth started to say something else, but I lifted a hand to stop her, turning my attention back to the paper. “Let me do one last read-through,” I told her. “It’s getting late.”
She tossed a glance over her shoulder, spotting the darkening world outside. “Yeah, okay. You’re right. Wouldn’t want you to stay up past your bedtime.” Though she poked fun at me, she spoke it seriously.
