"Where am I now?
"Pretend to be me in class," Jess whined, turning off the alarm on her phone and burying her head in a pillow.
"Today is an evidence law test, Jess. So get your ass out of bed," I scrolled through the playlist, pressed play, and rolled out of bed and onto the floor, landing on my stomach. My daily ritual is a morning plank while the soundtrack slider slowly slides through the cracks on my phone screen until the song ends.
Usually, I chose what to wear on impulse, which led to three changes of clothes and a fourth time just before leaving my dorm room, swapping my skirt for jeans or my white conservative shirt for a comfortable colored sweater.
But today was different from the others, so I had my outfit ready for today since the evening. After the lectures at West Virginia University College of Law, I will have an interview for an internship at a law firm.
Do you think this story is about the beginning of a great career for an ambitious student? Or maybe a workplace romance? No, it's something else.
It's a story about despair, death, betrayal, and crippled souls.
Another me was looking at me in the mirror - a girl with long brown hair, a rather cute face and eyes that matched the color of my dress. Nothing out of the ordinary, a completely mediocre and rather unremarkable appearance. That's what I was actually going for.
"You look damn good, Adria," my bestie friend said.
I was wearing a deep dark green jacket-dress with a button on the right side at the waist, reaching my mid-thigh. Black ankle boots and tights made it less strict and a little more relaxed.
"You too, Jess," I replied, glancing at her pajamas from head to toe, "You'll be in fifteen minutes, or Mr. Snape will start his song.
"With such irresponsibility, your cases is doomed to failure,"
We said in unison our lecturer's favorite phrase, which we had heard five dozen times this semester.
Half an hour later, Jess and I took the seats assigned to those who arrive for the test a minute before it starts, in the front row.
On Mr. Snape's desk, as all the students in the course called him, were three stacks of test forms, and I'm willing to bet that this pedant divided them exactly equally and aligned the sheets with a ruler.
Speaking of which, Dr. Arthur Gan, as his real name was, was a very handsome man. Sharp cheekbones, gray eyes with thick eyelashes, perfect hair, and, of course, a perfectly pressed suit and shirt. Okay, he's not good-looking, he's very pretty good. It's an amazing talent to be so attractive on the outside and at the same time disgust everyone. Thanks to his excessive formalism, literalism, and the greatest nitpicking I've ever known, this teacher became the object of hatred of almost every student. Except for Sarah, a girl who, I guess, clearly had obsessive-compulsive disorder and always walked around with an A3 poster in which she probably planned her entire life. For her, he was an idol. And for all normal students, he is a caustic, uncompromising, arrogant, supercilious jerk. Including for me.
However, Mr. Gan's course was probably the most valuable for me in the entire course. That's why I concentrated more on studying evidence law, something that would help me identify the gaps in the case of my family's death four years ago, restore justice and find peace in the end.
In fact, by searching for answers to the questions, of which there were many, I gained a lot of knowledge and studied the program for about two years in advance. I had a slightly different approach to learning than most students, and this next test did not bother me in terms of grades. It doesn't bother me at all, to be honest. I still have the main test ahead of me.
"Miss Herbie?" Mr. Gan interrupted my conversation with myself, which startled me for a second, "Good morning!" Snape shook the pile of tests in front of me. Sarah snorted smugly somewhere in the distance.
I picked up the stack of papers and met my teacher's eyes, and for a second I thought he had picked up the radio station of my thoughts to eavesdrop on them. My eyebrows furrowed.
"Since you and your colleague happened to be too late to take your regular seats in the back, please pass the forms to those who were more responsible."
"Jesus, just start the damn test already," I thought, glaring at him in response to his remark. I must have drilled him enough to make him uncomfortable, because something made him look down at his shoes and finally release the stack of tests into my hands.
The white papers floated up the rows, passing from hand to hand as if on an assembly line, while the world's most boring teacher monotonously announced time limits, test taking rules, and blah blah blah.
An hour of non-stop writing and another half hour of pretending to check my answers, which I was already pretty sure of, and the time was up. Despite my second place ranking, I never looked like a typical honor student, quite the opposite. That's why I preferred not to run first and not to jump over my head, so as not to attract too much attention.
The bell on the teacher's phone rang, signaling the end of the period, and everyone rushed to the teacher's desk with their papers.
"Pss-t, Adria. "Adria!" Jess took advantage of the moment when a traffic jam of students formed between Mr. Gan and the front row. "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree precedent?" her friend asked almost silently.
"Silvestrone Lambert v. United States, 1920," I hope she heard or read my lips.
She must have heard, because she finished her work with a satisfied face and started to turn it in, but a huge crowd had gathered while Gan was putting the papers in a straight stack. So Jess flopped back down at her desk.
At that moment, I caught Sarah's eye, holding an A3 poster board with a to-do list containing other to-do lists. She was all smiles, proud to have caught Jess and me red-handed. And, of course, she marched straight to Mr. Snape to report it, and left the room with an even bigger smile and a sense of accomplishment.
"Pff-t," I rolled my eyes, collecting all my disgust in response to her childish prank and Snape's quick look that said, "I see".
"What is it?" my friend whispered to me. She didn't notice.
"Forget it," I told her quietly.
Honestly, I wouldn't worry about the consequences for me, but someone as picky as Gan could get Jess. That worried me.
My friend and I were the last to take our tests.
"Please stay, Ms. Herbie."
Jess said with round eyes and lips, "I'll wait outside".
"Come on, Mr. Gan. You're not going to fail us for this," I said, straightening my paper on top of the pile.
"Actually, Ms. Herbie, I wanted to ask you first why you didn't take the test as soon as you wrote it, or would your friend have done better without your help?"
"To be honest, I was afraid that Sarah Reeves would launch her glider at my head if I turned in the work before her." In answering the first question, I mentally constructed a strategy to defend my bestie. But imagine my surprise when Arthur Gan was gonna laugh. Sure enough, beneath his plump lips, usually drawn in a thin line to convey seriousness, were perfect white teeth. Damn, this man was incredibly attractive, but he had chosen to lead the asshole rankings at this college.
