Borrowed Time

Chapter Thirty Three

Juliette hadn't actually sat down to study her own schoolwork in a long time... Sure, she and Esme had study dates, but it was mostly her helping Esme understand her English homework and then getting very distracted by each other and never actually finishing anything they were working on. They were not good study partners... Well, it was always great, but they never fully helped each other. Carly, on the other hand? She wasn't a distraction and they had a couple classes together so it worked out great.

"Have you started the essay due Friday?" Carly asked, and Juliette glanced up from her notebook, raising an eyebrow. Everyone had started that essay, they'd had to turn in a rough draft two weeks after school started. Did she mean to ask if she'd finished it? Because if so, the answer was a hard no.

"The one on Beowulf?" She nodded, resting her chin on her hand as she looked at her, waiting for an answer.

"Yeah." Juliette sighed and shook her head, drumming her pen between her fingers as she flipped another page in her Chemistry textbook. God, this shit made no sense, why did she have to learn any of it? She was never gonna use it again.

"Well, obviously I've done my rough draft but no, I haven't started my final one at all. You?" She asked, and Carly nodded. Well, good for her, she didn't have to scramble on Thursday night like Juliette was probably going to do... She didn't like doing things with enough time for her to not panic, it mostly just ended with her not actually doing the work well because she never opened it again after finishing it.

"Oh, I'm done with mine." Well, wasn't she just perfect? Sometimes Juliette envied the people who didn't need the crushing pressure of the last minute to get an essay done, they seemed so much more at peace than she was with their work... Juliette constantly wanted to throw herself off of a roof because she procrastinated... but she'd just do that later.

"Good for you." How did this pertain to her or anything she was doing? Was she just bragging about having it done before Juliette did? Weird thing to brag about... Weird thing to be jealous about... What was wrong with both of them?

"Do you want me to look yours over? Give you any last minute notes that someone else might've missed?" Carly asked, giving her a wide smile. Oh. She was being nice... Well, now Juliette felt like a bit of a dick for mentally arguing with her.

"You'd be willing to do that?" Juliette asked, and Carly nodded, like it should've been obvious... But it wasn't because Juliette probably wouldn't out that extra work on herself, so she wouldn't expect anyone else to do that for her, that'd be rude and assumptive and she did her best to be neither of those things because they were a sign of a person who didn't truly care about those around them.

"Of course." She took a deep breath and nodded... Yeah, that'd be good because the people who'd done her peer review had given her next to no feedback aside from 'this looks pretty good' and 'I hope you get a good grade'... Not really feedback, but still appreciated the encouragement.

"That'd be amazing." Juliette tapped into her computer and pulled it up before sliding it over to Carly. "Here, it's all up on there." She said, and Carly read for a couple of minutes in silence as Juliette continued to define her useless Chemistry words... God, this test was going to tank her GPA, she could feel it. Carly cleared her throat.

"You're missing an in-text citation here." There was no way she was missing an in-text citation, someone would've told her sooner so that she could fix it, that was how feedback worked.

"What? No way, I cited everything." She said, and Carly raised an eyebrow, glancing between the computer and Juliette a couple of times... Okay, so now she was feeling way less sure of herself, which didn't feel good.