Me, Myself, and I

breaking promises

The morning before next class period, and Alex wouldn't let me cheat off of the scenario he found, nor would he assist me in finding one myself. With some assistance from online video surfing and voice typing, I spewed out a couple of paragraphs about a scenario I'd made up in my head: what we had from class but replacing water with coffee and the "solution" with another competing business. At some point I got lost in the details of it, and the opposing business stopped existing in my head.

Business was five days a week. I needed something. Alex had threatened to cut me off of dates if I didn't turn this in today. I was all too motivated to get out of that empty dorm room. I'd hardly seen Brooke since Monday. By the time she'd get in she was so exhausted and hungover she'd just collapse onto her unmade bed and entire corpse mode until noon the next day.

Unfortunately, with the exception of when my grandpa let me sip out of his old flask when I was thirteen, I didn't drink. And neither did Alex, meaning there was no one around to talk me into it.

A few minutes early, I marched to my spot in the back of the classroom, a printout of my paper in hand. It had cost me three dollars. I'd already forgotten what I'd written. Its very existence was enough for me to be proud of that moment.

Up ahead, Alex had his whole desk color-coordinated, papers lined up with the edge of the desk.

"Okay Dokay. We'll be doing a bit of a philosophical approach to the papers. I'm gonna grade them during class in front of you, verbally." He laughed and took the usual lounging position. "Don't worry, it'll be one on one. You can all fiddle around on whatever social media platform you deem most suitable." He looked at a list he'd written out the chalkboard and swiped away the name on the bottom. "Julia?"

I hadn't gone first in a classroom since I threw that conniption fit about it in second grade.

I brushed Alex's shoulder on my way up. Chattering ensued, one student started a phone call. I handed Jake the papers and watched him flip through and make dashes across a few letters with his red pen, clicking it every few seconds.

"You heard of spell check? Or paragraph breaks?"

He tossed the red-covered pages back at me. I could hardly see the ink anymore. I pretended to read it. Alex was writing out more notes, proofreading his own paper. Perhaps participation wouldn't be enough anymore. Not sure how I'd break the news to him.

Jake stood up. "Actually, I have a better question. Have you heard of...I don't know, reading what's assigned?"

"You didn't give an assigned reading. You gave us a website. It was confusing."

Something snapped inside of me, perhaps the glaring look in his eye, or the fact that my voice had echoed, and the class could hear every word out of my mouth. I remembered that I wasn't in some coffee shop talking to my friends about a recent bad grade. I was speaking to a professor with a degree and the ability to rend any money spent on this place to nothing. I apologized and crossed my arms.

Jake pointed to the back of the second page, where he'd hand-written an essay of his own. "The problem isn't the scenario you made up. You have some promising ideas. It's just disorganized. I am not sure what you are trying to prove, or what the problem even is."

"Do I have to redo it?"

He shrugged. "Do you want to?"

"Not especially."

"Look, I'm all about new ideas. I'm just confused, you have a rival company, and then they stop existing, and then the problem is actually some tedious customer based thing. I can't even summarize it." He laughed and gestured to the paper again. "If you did the reading, instead of gallivanting around your hometown, I don't think you'd have the problem. You just overestimated your ability to create the hypothetical yourself."