“You wouldn’t mind doing that part of the project would you?” she asked, handing me the complex rubric. The letters were small, with various highlights all over the page. I looked back at her and groaned.

“I’ll be too busy making a noose for myself.” She sighed.

“You can’t be serious. You’re still upset over that?” she looked at me with an incredulous look on her face.

“I have to take the final now.” She rolled her eyes.

“Boo hoo. So what? A lot of people have to.”

“But I’m smarter than that!”

“You pretentious asshole.”

“It’s true.”

“You got a B+ though, it’s not doing very much to validate your statement.”

“See, I have every right to be upset, it shows that I’m an idiot who doesn’t deserve to live.”

“Because you got a B+ in math.”

“Yes.”

“So everyone who gets below an A- in math deserves to die?”

“But they’re not cocky bastards…”

“So everyone who is a cocky bastard that also got below an A- deserves to die?”

“Yes.”

“Why? They didn’t do anything wrong!”

“They’re cocky bastards, of course they did.”

“So it’s more about the bastard part than the grades part?”

“Really more about the cocky part actually.”

 ”You’re not a cocky bastard.”

“You just called me a pretentious asshole.”

“Yes, but you’re not a bastard. Your parents are married.”

“I am an asshole though.”

“Yeah, you’re an asshole.”

She smiled at me. I looked back at the paper. There, circled in blue pen, was what she wanted me to do. She had even put a post-it-note on it with step by step instructions.

“I’ll do it tonight, but don’t expect it to be good.”

“I gave you instructions, if you mess up…”

“You’ll have tear drops all over it.”

“Ollie, get over yourself.”

“Wish you wouldn’t call me that.”

“What, Ollie?”

“Yeah.”

“What would you prefer?”

“Leo, like everyone else. Or y’know, Oliver.”

“What’s your middle name?”

“Uh, Quentin, but you can’t call me that.”

“Oliver Quentin Stewart. You sound British.”

I didn’t bother responding, choosing instead to examine her instructions. It was a fairly simple project, or at least the part she gave me was simple. Even if we were both ‘honors’ students, she was clearly more honor-y than me. But I mean, who cares if you don’t do the work but get the grades? Then again, I just got a B+ so I guess there’s not much I can say.

“So when you say ‘put the poster together’…”

“If you complain about anything I will kill you.”

“I’m just saying there seems to be a leap of difficulty in these steps.. I mean the step right before that is ‘print out a picture of George Washington’. That’s hard enough don’t you think? The whole ‘put the poster together’ thing seems a bit out of my league.”

“How the hell did you get into this class?”

“Charming good looks, of course. And balls out luck.”

“Why did I expect hard work to be in that list?”

“Because you still expect too much of me? You overestimate me, Em.”

“Which is sad because I don’t have a very good opinion of you in the first place.”

“I’m offended.”

“Do your work.”

Grinning, I turned back to my computer. Google was all ready open, of course. Though there was a Bing search bar in the corner. I’d have to get rid of that. I typed in ‘John Adams’ and watched the pictures pop up. Personally, I wasn’t impressed. Politicians back then weren’t that attractive. But then again, I guess you could say the same about now…

Let’s skip forward.

Let’s skip past the computer.

The printer.

The poster.

Em.

Let’s fast forward until we reach my home. Let’s watch the colors run together, and the voices become a single high pitched noise. And then, everything goes jerks back to normal.

I walked up the staircases, gripping the golden key in my hand.