“She what?” I shouted.
“You might have known that if Grace hadn’t stepped in and lied about a scene she caused. If you hadn’t immediately believed her bullshit instead of trusting your gut and your oldest friend outside of your brothers, Aoife might have been able to fill you in herself.”
“Fuck!” I hissed the word out and then grabbed the phone and watched as tears streamed down Aoife’s face while I berated her for the bullshit lies Grace fed me. My stomach felt like a cannon had just been fired off inside it. I could almost feel as an Aoife-sized hole tore itself through me. What had I done?
“I need to get to her, but I don’t think I can drive with the pain meds I’m on. I’ve been loopy as hell and falling asleep at the drop of a hat.”
“You mean between rounds of sex with the she-beast who ruined your life-long friendship with the girl you were supposed to protect?”
I cringed at that, hating that I’d gone there. “Yeah.” It hit me then that the sun was blazing into my room. “What the fuck time is it?” I glanced down at Miles’s phone. It was quarter after one. “Shit! Is it Monday?”
“Yeah, it’s Monday.”
“Fuck! I was supposed to meet with my advisor to turn in my code for the project we’re working on.”
“You didn’t set an alarm?”
“I’ve had an alarm set in my phone since last week. Several, in fact.”
I grabbed my phone up and turned it on. Not only had it been turned off, despite being at full charge, but my calendar events for the meeting were deleted and all of my alarms were turned off. A sinking feeling of dread flowed through me as I turned to the desk where I kept my laptop locked up. “Check the drawer. Is my laptop still there?”
Miles reached over and tried to tug on the drawer. It didn’t budge because it was locked. “Thank fuck for small favors,” I said. My friend didn’t seem to share my enthusiasm. “I need to reschedule my appointment with Professor Archer, but after that, I need you to take me to Aoife.”
“We can try,” he said. I didn’t like the defeated tone he used, though.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that she already graduated from college, Logan. If her dad hasn’t sold her off yet, then maybe she was quick enough to get lost before he realized she was done with her education.”
“Fuck!” I yelled that time. “Come on,” I reached over and unlocked my desk, grabbed my laptop, and pocketed my pain meds. “You need to come with me, so we can leave as soon as I’m done presenting.”
“Fine, but I don’t think it will matter.”
“It has to,” I told him as we rushed out of my room.
“I had hoped that Grace Humphries’fears were unfounded, but after reviewing your code, I have no choice but to take this to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards.”
“Take what? What the hell has Grace done?” I asked.
“It’s not what Grace has done. It’s what you’re trying to do, Logan. She came to me this morning with concerns and wanted to present her code early because she was worried you might have gotten close to her in an effort to gain access to her work. She told me she was paranoid enough to have a dummy version of the code on her laptop and even supplied the portions of the code that were purposely incorrect, in case you tried to present her work as your own.”
“I’ve been working onMY codefor months now. I have no need to steal anyone else’s work,” I assured Professor Archer.
“And yet, you gave me the exact files Ms. Humphries reported might be stolen.”
“Son of a…” I started to say. “She was in my dorm room all weekend and I was out of it because of the pain meds,” I said as I pointed to my face.
“Even if that was the case, Ms. Humphries presented me with her code this morning and it worked flawlessly while yours is the one that matches her dummy code. I’m afraid, unless you have proof that she tampered with your laptop, that I have to take her word since she is the one with the complete, working code and she came to me first while you missed our appointment.”
“I missed it because she turned my alarms off and she was the one who gave me my pain meds.” I thought back to the night before when I could have sworn I’d already taken them and she insisted that I hadn’t and gave me a pill to swallow. I took it,thinking that I’d forgotten or somehow mixed up when I took it last.
“She double-dosed me,” I whispered as I realized what happened. “That’s why it was so hard to wake up when Miles came pounding on my door this afternoon.”
“You can try to fight this with OSCCS, but they take these accusations seriously. If you’re found guilty of cheating and trying to steal another student’s work, you know what that means.”
My heart hammered against my chest. I’d be kicked out of school and labeled in such a way that I might never be able to complete my degree because no university worth its salt would take me as a student.
Fuck! I was going to kill the bitch.
