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“I have a good idea of what you’re doing, and you suck,” Penny says in a low voice. “It’s fine. My social media went crazy for a few hours, but everything has stopped now. There was nothing over the weekend, and I told Bubbe that she had no say over my friends.”
My poker face is being put to the test. Everything stopped because of the agreement I made with Syn, but it’s harder not to react to what she says about her grandmother. She was summoned home because of me?
So not only will being friends with me make college awful for her, but going home will suck more than usual too.
I can’t even risk telling her to leave me alone.
Thankfully, the chorus of sighs around us alert me to the fact that Dr. Wright has walked in. Today he looks a little more informal than usual, with the first couple of buttons of his shirt undone beneath his jacket.
He stops in the center of the room, and his gaze goes straight to me.
With everything that’s happened since Friday night, I’m completely unprepared. Seeing him in the church was a forgotten memory that comes rushing back as I sit here. I can feel my face and neck burning as I drop my gaze.
How muchhadhe seen? And what was he even doing there?
“What did you do?” Penny mutters under her breath before I can convince myself it was some weird hallucination on my part.
When I look back up, Dr. Wright seems to be taking his time looking at the face of every person in the room. Considering his job is to teach college students, he seems to be looking at everyone with suspicion and contempt.
Maybe we’ve all disappointed him.
“And the start of this class marks the deadline of your assignments. Anyone who failed to submit their work on time will automatically lose fifty percent of your points in this assignment. Which means, unless you can hand in a perfect assignment, the best you’re receiving for this assignment is a D,” he announces, like it’s a new development.
It's not. This was written very clearly, in bold, red font at the topandbottom of the assignment page.
Dr. Wright moves over to his desk and pulls his tablet out from the bag he’d placed on top. He turns back to face us, tilting his head. “Shall we see who’s going to need some luck or holy intervention in their midterms next week?”
There are some sniggers, but there’s something that makes me feel like he’s not trying to be funny.
After tapping the screen of his tablet, Dr. Wright lowers his arm. “It seems that the only person who was disrespectful to me and this university is Ms. Anderson.”
XXVIII
Tori
“Me? That’s not possible.”
The professor holds up the tablet, screen facing the class. Like I can read that from this distance. “And yet, the system tells me otherwise.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, that’s not right. I submitted it yesterday morning.” I’d just had a nap, and my highly filling breakfast, and gone straight to the library. After a final proofread of my assignment, I made sure to submit it before I carried on with working on Royal’s assignment, so I didn’t forget.
“Ms. Anderson, I will not be arguing with you on this matter. The submission system has the assignments of every student in this class barring yours. You can stay behind at the end of class if you wish to waste your time with excuses, but right now, I’m starting our lesson instead of wasting the time of your classmates.” Dr. Wright sets the tablet down on his desk then walks over to the Smartboard. He glances over his shoulder at me. “Considering we will be going over the midterm assessment today, I suggest you pay attention. You’re going to need all the extra points you can get.”
The lesson is the last thing I’m paying attention to.
Instead, my mind is racing as much as my heart. In the end, the assignment I submitted hadn’t been written to the best of my ability anyway. I left it to the last minute and I spent more time on the assignments for Syn, Royal and Gemini. But my goal was to be at this university long enough to find the truth, not graduate valedictorian, or even summa cum laude.
Which means something had to be submitted.
And I’d done that…
Instead of paying any attention to what was going on the Smartboard or what was coming out of Dr. Wright’s mouth, I’m opening my email. At the top of my inbox are the three confirmation emails from the submission system for Syn, Royal, and Gemini.
There isn’t one for mine.
Which makes no sense, because I submitted mine, then went to my inbox to confirm it had gone through before going back to work on Royal’s stupid question. It was there when I saw each of their confirmations come through…
I check the other folders in my email, and then I run a search.
