You probably don't remember me, but I remember you.
That was the first line of the odd, handwritten letter that I found stuffed inside of my P.O. box. The letter was hard to read in the dimly lit mailroom of my run-down apartment. A wall of miniature iron doors loomed before me, each little door a gateway to a person's private correspondence. A sea of letters had spilled out onto the white floor on the mailroom. I hadn't opened my mailbox in two months.
Looking back, I probably would have never found that letter had it not been for the events of the prior two days.
Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz ... Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz ...
I quickly rolled over in my bed and slammed the snooze button. The alarm stopped, and I quickly fell back asleep.
Bzzz Bzzz-
"Ugh ..." I groaned as I hit the snooze button again, squinting at the clock on my phone. It was 8:40 in the morning.
Shit.
I threw off my bed cover and rolled out of bed. Class was in twenty minutes. It didn't really matter if I was late or not, but the professor had sent me an email about meeting me after class. I had never spoken to him before, so I was a bit nervous.
My name is Jacob Quinton. I'm a sophomore college student who goes to Northern Illinois University. I stay in a small apartment that's paid for by my parents. Overall, I'm utterly and completely normal. I go to parties, have a girlfriend, see my parents once a year at Christmas, get straight Cs, and work a dumb part time job delivering pizza. I watch a lot of Netflix; whatever's popular. I like to play Valorant, and I played Fortnite before that.
The car ride to school was a short one. I speeded into class about two minutes before it started, but I made it to my seat okay. I was in Dusable Hall. The grey carpet floors and white walls were consistent across the cookie cutter classrooms.
Class had already ended. I blinked a couple of times and looked down at the piece of paper I had taken out for notes. I had idly scribed circles on it while I was zoning out. Putting away my stuff, I grabbed my backpack and walked over to the front desk, where the teacher was standing.
"Jacob," the teacher said, noticing me, "Thank you for coming to talk with me." I stared blankly at the teacher. It took me a minute to remember his last time. We had so many TAs and I had such a bad memory that I was having trouble recalling it.
"Uh ..." I said, forgoing his name, "what did you want to see me about?"
"I wanted to talk to you about your grades, actually. I haven't handed it back quite yet, but do you recall your persuasive essay you just turned in?"
I nodded without saying anything.
"I see. Well, I wanted to talk to you first about it. I'm afraid I had to give you a failing grade. I think you missed the mark on this one by a lot."
"Uh—" I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I wasn't really surprised. I had written some garbage thirty minutes before it was due. I didn't even read the rubric.
"I've failed a paper before. What's the big deal?" I asked, shrugging.
Sighing and shaking his head, the teacher said, "It IS a big deal. You can't just go around failing papers like this. Look, you can pass my class with a failed paper, but not with two. You've moved from a C- to a D-. The grade hit hard. Do you understand the implication?"
"A D is still passing though, right?" I asked.
"It is, but we have one more paper this semester. If you fail that paper, you will fail this class."
YOU ARE READING
Lover's Leap
AdventureJacob Quinton is an average sophomore college student at Northern Illinois University. His peaceful life is upturned one day when he finds out his Girlfriend is cheating on him. At the same time, his future at college is put into jeopardy. As he ent...