Stand By Me

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❊ 

LAUREL 

               MY TOES WERE FALLING OFF. 

       I stumbled through door of my dorm with my hands full of four bags of groceries, my purse, my textbooks, and my backpack. Before even doing anything else, I kicked off my too-tight work shoes and immediately felt the circulation in my toes again. The room was pitch black, with the dim yellow light of the hallway filtering through. My hands grappled for the light switch, and in my effort to find it, I dropped one of the bags of groceries. Immediately, I heard a heartbreaking crack. 

       "Well there go my eggs," I huffed. 

        Hopping over randomly strewn clothes and grabbing a mop, I started cleaning up the yolky mess, before feeling my pocket vibrate. Isabel's picture popped up on the screen, with her eyes crossed and tongue out. "Hey Laurel!" she 

      "Hey, where are you?" I said, balancing the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I mopped. 

      "Library, where else?" 

     "Ah, yes. Of course." 

     "How was your first day of work?" 

     I rolled my eyes, sighing. "Extremely and utterly terrible. People can already be rude, but when they're millionaires, it's like they're entitled to being jackasses." 

       "Oh no," she whispered. "That bad?" 

     "Bad is an understatement," I replied, stowing away the mop and turning on the TV. "I remember now why, out of the twenty-one jobs I've been fired from, being a waitress was the worst one. And in an airport restaurant for crying out loud! Everyone's already cranky from missing their planes or having to carry around a screaming toddler, so naturally, they take it out on me." 

      "Aw, I'm so sorry, L." 

     I sighed again, shaking my head. "It'll only be a matter of time before my curse catches up to me."    

   She could imagine her roommate rolling her eyes on the other side.  "Oh my God, stop it with the whole curse thing! That's just something you made up." 

   "Actually it's not," I pointed out, literally raising a finger even though she couldn't even see me. "I can't ever keep a job for more than a week. It's scientifically proven." 

        "And that's the curse's fault?" she scoffed. 

    "Rude." 

    I could hear Isabel's light and airy laughter on the other end, before someone in the distance shh'ed her. "Well, you won't lose this one, I promise. Did you go grocery shopping? Did you get more eggs?" 

      My eyes widened, looking at the spot where I had dropped the eggs and shattered them. "Uh...of course." 

       "Great!" she chirped. "I'll be back at the dorm soon, I just gotta study for that math exam tomorrow." 

   My heart was electrocuted to a stop. "E-Excuse me, t-the what?" 

      "The math exam," she repeated slowly. Then, she gasped. "Oh no. Laurel, please don't tell me you forgot. I wrote it on the fridge! I thought for sure, because it's the fridge, you'd see it there!"