What Doesn't Kill Us

Chapter 1

"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.