Mirrored Cuts

Chapter 25

I came home the next night to Ruby putting on makeup, dressed in a baseball shirt that cut lower than anyone could play in. I threw some clothes in the laundry bag and pretended to straighten up while I watched.

"Where are you off to?" I said, staring at my cluttered desk.

"Lily and I are going to a baseball game."

I moved the stapler, last month's mail and a box of crackers around. "I didn't know you liked baseball."

"Did you want to come?" She pulled one of the pieces of her hair into a ringlet and then let it fall in an effortless curl.

"I have a lot of work to do," I said, gesturing at a pile of papers that had been my work but was so long overdue, it didn't count anymore.

"Did you ever think that that might be the reason you didn't get invited? All you do is work and complain. Lily and I just want to have fun. She wants to blow of steam. Carl is acting up again. Besides Akul has been waiting for this game for a month."

I tried to process the information but my brain couldn't handle it. A month? How could they have been planning this for a month? Wouldn't they have said something in front of me? Was everyone mad at me because I hadn't been fun since I started failing my classes? Akul too?

I watched Ruby finish her preparations from my desk. I had assumed that Ruby would be one of those fair weather friends when I met her, but it still hurt when I discovered that I would lose her whenever the tide changed. The thing about college is, when you're a freshman, you've only known your friends for a few months. You can't expect them to stay. You don't know who they are and they don't know who you are. How could you know someone after a few months. Some people could. I think the one-year rule is much safer. After a year, even the sociopaths might tire of putting on a show for you and reveal their true colors.

Before Ruby left, she turned and looked me in the eye. "If you need the stats binder I got from my old high school friend, you can look through it. It's in my trunk. Just don't mess everything up."

She slammed the door. I resisted the urge to throw my hands up to cover my head in case any of the ceiling tiles decided to fall. I'm sure everyone in the dorm felt the vibrations in their walls. They probably ignored it though; it was something you got used to. I sat there for a millisecond before my curiosity overwhelmed my sense of dignity. I scampered over to her faux-antique, periwinkle trunk and lifted the baskets off the top. I opened the trunk, expecting rays of golden sunshine to come streaming out. Instead, I was confronted with a pink binder overflowing with papers. I slipped it out of its dark abode and spread the papers on the floor. I recognized most of them. They were homeworks, tests and quizzes from our statistics class. Except the date was two years prior. I laughed. No wonder Ruby had been doing so well in Stats.

I left the binder there and stared at it from my bed for hours. I had a choice. I could use these materials, cheat my way through statistics and maybe pass the class or I could put the binder away and most likely fail. Looking back, I have developed sympathy for students who cheat. I don't condone it, but I understand it. I was there. I wanted nothing more than to find a way to rationalize how this was okay. And honestly, sometimes I wonder, if I had seen it as more of a possibility that I could pass statistics, if I might have actually taken advantage of the binder. It certainly would have prevented a lot of damage. I closed the binder inch-by-inch and tucked it back in Ruby's chest.