Lost cause

Lost cause

Where did I leave them? All my precious notes and textbooks with annotations, all the hard work I spent on them. Anger started creeping into my voice. There is only one place where I left it, and only one person who knows where I left it: Piper, my best friend. She could not have done this to me. I have known her all my life, and she can’t possibly do this, but she has a motive. We have been in what we like to call an academic war all our lives, both striving to be the best in everything from small end-of-topic tests to final exams. Even so, we knew everything about each other. We are both doing our finals, the ultimate exam, the one we have both been waiting for all our lives.

Frantically, I pull out my phone, hesitating before calling her. She answers on the first ring (as always), “Hey Q, what's up?” Q? The audacity to call me by my nickname during this situation. I don’t respond. “Quince?” her voice rings through the phone. 

“Piper, did you take my life's work of notes for the finals?” my voice trembles as I form words. 

“Are you kidding! Of course not, why would I!” she says. I want to believe her, but my gut feeling is telling me the opposite. I know it is wrong to narrow it all down to her because it really could have been anyone who might have found the spot and taken everything they saw. I try to stop myself from overthinking, like I always do, and take in deep breaths before responding to her, “I need you to be honest with me, Pip.” I say.

“I swear I didn’t!” Piper’s voice escalates with every word she says. That's when I knew it was time to end the call. I started to think about what I should do if I never found those notes. My eyes are heavy; this means I need to sleep; now it is 9 pm anyway.

I wake with a scream from my roommate. I jump up, fumbling when I get to my feet to check what happened. I am half asleep, but I am not blind, only to see her staring down at her phone and then chanting, “Finally! A thousand views!” My shoulders slouch as I turn back around to head for my bed. She notices me and comes skipping, “Q! Can you believe it? I'm practically famous!” I groan as I have disturbed such a tranquil sleep for this. 

“I'm so happy for you,” I mutter under my breath, and I walk to my bed. I go to wash up to see dark circles surrounding my eyes. My eyes are still red.

Most people think losing a couple of notes or textbooks isn’t a big deal, but to me, it means life or death. Those endless hours I annotated every line, every word, those key terms I wrote repeatedly, I miss them. Then I remember. I'm going to be late! My roommate had left after I had come out of the bathroom, and now I have to rush to be on time. I hate rushing; the last time I did that, I ended up throwing up. I know it sounds silly. I just literally hate rushing. I don’t live at home, so I have to lock my apartment's door before leaving as we have had several break-ins around here, and I don’t like risking it. I arrive at school just ten minutes later, so I am on time when I see Piper. She has a smug smile on her face, her blonde wavy hair falling elegantly to her waist. Her skirt is blue, and she wears leg and hand warmers to match, while she wears a cyan crop top; in this weather, those warmers aren’t going to save her. She is giggling with her other friends as they love to suck up to her. They follow her around all the time as if they are pleading for something. For some reason, when they see me, they start to flee. I don’t mind that much as they weren’t ever ‘friends’ to me.

Piper runs over to me, waving as if the call we had never even happened. “What's up?” she says. “Nothing,” I muster under my breath; she notices how I speak and steps in front of me to stop me from heading to class. “Look,” she says, placing her hands on my shoulders to pull me from being hunched back. “I promise it wasn’t me, okay, but I can help you with finding all of it?” she says.

 “I know, it's just hard for me to believe, and no one gets it,” I say. 

“I get it, okay. I would go bonkers if someone took all my hard work away from me; you surprisingly are taking this all really well,” she says, reassuring me. In the end, she is my best friend after all; she is the only thing holding me up right now as I have an absent family; she is all I have right now. I thank her and start heading for class. I can't forget to do my daily quote. I always write down one of my favorite quotes for the day. Today's quote: ‘You laugh at me because I am different; I laugh because you are all the same.’ I love that; it means so many things. It is also quite intimidating if you say so.

Now it is break time, and I have a headache; my hand is aching from taking down so many notes. My phone buzzes, and I reach to get it. It is a text message, but it doesn’t have a name; probably one of those scam texters, I think. I place my phone back in my pocket and go on about my day. A couple of minutes later, my phone is rapidly buzzing. The texts just come piling through from the same number ‘unknown’. I don’t open them because I know scam texters don’t usually spam you; they would just sit and wait. I pluck up the courage to open the texts; maybe it is one of my classmates who has just gotten my number, so it says unknown. No. Not classmates; no. It is unknown. A real unknown. I read what it says. “Watch out; I have the notes and your little friend.” And another, “Time's ticking.”