As Long As You're Mine

Recovering You

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No, no, no! She repeated that thought helplessly, her heart racing and her eyes filling with tears. Dread was spreading in her stomach faster than a virus. She restarted her laptop thrice, but that fatal pop-up screen returned every single time. She must have renamed it. Andrea opened and searched through every single folder on her laptop, her breathing becoming quicker and hollower by the second. The assignment was due in a week's time. She could not redo it on time. The renamed document was nowhere. She moved her cursor to the recycle bin. Other than some random empty Word documents and a couple of embarrassing photos, it was empty.

She thought it was some sick joke.

Sophie was known to joke a lot. She might have taken it too far this time. In grade 8 Sophie had orchestrated such a prank, Andrea couldn't trust her for weeks. It could have been one of those situations. It was her science assignment. They had to create a project in pairs, and instinctively they paired up. They had to create a natural habitat of an animal in a diorama and write a research paper on why that is the best place for the animal to live, including their physical feature, behaviours diet and so on. They chose a giraffe. Why? No one knew.

Sophie, being the playful person she was did the bare minimum of writing 2 sentences and colouring in. Yes, there have been situations where Sophie did all the work, but those were puny class projects that meant nothing. Aggravated, Andrea did all the rest of the work. She had brought the diorama home for days on hand, working on it and spent many weeks writing the research paper. In the end, she had no choice but to also write Sophie's name on sheet. Last minute Sophie offered to bring the assignment home. She said she had some ideas to make it better. Delighted, Andrea immediately agreed. The next day, when the final was due, she had asked for it, when Sophie entered to school. Sophie had said she had never brought it home and Andrea was hallucinating. After a lot of arguing, Sophie had convinced Andrea that she had lost it. Andrea hyperventilated and had a panic attack. She could still remember the quick transition from being able to breathe and forgetting, the world circling around her and bursting out into tears.

Only then did Sophie realize she took it too far and explained it to her. Sophie had the assignment. It was hidden near with her older sister Charlotte. Andrea was furious, but she couldn't stay mad from how relieved she was. Sophie could have done something similar. That had just been her grade 8 science, but this was her grade 11 history. This meant a lot for her university. She aggressively opened the Phone app, selecting the contact with a picture of the pretty blonde girl and called her best friend. The line rang for about a minute until she picked up.

"Bitch. It's like 7am! I don't get up until like, I dunno, 7:45. I am not some nerd who wakes up at, like, 6, like you! What do you want, motherfucker?" Her scratchy voice, as though she was still lounging in bed.

Andrea's voice was sharp, serious and stiff, "Sophie. Did you delete my history assignment?"

She could hear Sophie gasp and clear her throat on the other side of the phone call.

"No? Andrea. What happened? Are you okay? I like to pull pranks, but that is too far. Even by my standards. Did you lose your assignment?" Sophie asked, visibly concerned.

"But remember Grade 8 science! You do stuff like this."

"I WAS 13, ANDIE! 13! I've grown up now... And I've apologized like a million times for that, okay. Can we forget about that?"

"I know, I know, ok. Alright, see you at school."

"No, Andrea. What happened. Tell me."

"It's nothing, Soph."

"Andre-"

Andrea cut the call.

She didn't have an assignment to submit.

She was going to fail history.

The Harvard degree just flew past her eyes. She would have no chance to get that medical Harvard degree she needed. It was her childhood dream. The purpose of her life. She could not let go of that so easily.

Another funny thing about life is that no matter how much you think you've got it, life will throw another hurdle towards you. It was one of those sickly situations where it hurt so much, your body changes it so it feels funny. A way of coping. She almost laughed as her eyes started to pool.

She blinked back her tears and jarred her head. She opened her phone and opened YouTube, tapping into the search bar. She typed 'How to recover deleted files.' Her finger selected the first video. Useless. A brown-haired woman with a face full of makeup, more interested in looking pretty and to the audience than to inform. She clicked on another video. A middle-aged man who was making terrible jokes, not suited for the situation she was in. She exited the video angrily when he simply asked them to check the recycle bin. She selected a short video that seemed helpful. The whole video was basically just the intro and an outro. She scrolled through, filling her watch history with these useless videos, not satisfying her with her recovered assignment that might just save her career.

She selected a video with just 13 views and no likes or comments. The video was a voice over a screen recording. A man with his heavy accent, she picked up, not knowing what accent it was. The man explained thoroughly, showing the free download software that scans through picks up deleted and corrupt files from the memory disk. She hungerly followed the steps, the only video showing some sort of hope.

She successfully downloaded the full 5 GB of the application, sighing at the size of it. After a short scan, a long list of the documents she had deleted from her laptop appeared. A small pang of hope in her heart. She scrolled through, recognizing each document from when she deleted them. Bad drafts, empty documents, useless worksheets she wouldn't need to even her cringeworthy stories she wrote as a young teen.

Finally, nearing the bottom, there was it. Andrea Gonzales 11B History Term 3.docx. A tug of a smile curled at her cheek as her heart lifted from the depths of the stomach. The dread started clearing. She somehow knew she would end up with one of these videos. A highly helpful video from a lesser-known channel. She double clicked the file, labelled as corrupted as it loaded, questions running through her head. She wondered how that happened. A virus? She guessed wildly, her eyes widening in suspicion. Another pop-up screen flashed in her face.

File recovery success.

A word document was opening. Her hands nearly trembling as she dragged her cursor towards it.

AndreaGonzales 11B History Term 3.docx opened

Author's Note:

Hey lovelies! Yay! You took the time to read this! 

Also the next couple of chapters (I think 3) are flashbacks. I'm sorry! Bare with me please! I just need to give some (a lot) of back knowledge!

Love ya'll so much!

- JacksonPotter2099