you. | sean lew

chapter thirteen

february twenty-three ; day nine

"w-what did i do? is this about my grades because i can still impro-"

"look, sean," the principal, mr. peters., sighs. "it's not about that."

"well, w-what is it then?" sean's voice shakes, trying his best to hold back his tears.

"we have a strict no cheating and no plagiarizing policy here, and a specific account of yours has recently come to my attention," mr. peters stands up.

sean bites down on his lip, making it start to bleed, but he doesn't bother to stop.

"everything is explained in detail, including which specific incident it was, in the letter i just gave you," james father says, with not a single emotion showing in his face. "i'll also be calling your parents to notif-"

sean storms out of the office and runs out of the school. he runs and runs, not caring about how out of breath he is. the tears continue to fall from his face.

what would are my parents going to think? hell - they probably even expected this. this is what i am to them and everyone anyways - a fucking failure.

he finally stops running when he reaches an empty alley behind the beat up convenience store. he slides his back down against the wall and just stares at the ground.

"i'm trying....so hard," sean's voice cracks.

he buries his face into his hands and remains in that state for what feels like an eternity.

to sean, it felt as though it only added to his bad reputation. it's almost as if this is was people expected of him - either that or he'd drop out early and never make it to graduation.

he looks up to see it's already dark out. he weakly grabs the letter from his back pocket and opens it.

"i don't even remember doing this," he says as reads the assignment he was expelled for.

[ a comparative essay on the roman empire versus the han empire;
assigned november 17, 2017 ]

"fuck," he curses under his breath, suddenly remembering the essay.

he finally stands up and starts walking, letter scrunched up in his hand. he's practically dragging himself home because it seems like all the energy he had was taken away from him.

"it was assigned last semester," he mutters. "how the hell did they find out about it?"

he recalls calling up julian at four in the morning, the day the assignment was due, desperate because he forgot to do it.

it was a first for sean considering he always did his homework - though they did not always score the highest. he always made sure he did them, because even his C's and D's would be better than a zero.

julian sent sean a copy of his older brother's essay from years ago. he had graduated so long ago that they didn't even have that teacher at the school anymore, so the two assumed it was a safe bet.

instead of going home, he walks to josh's house, being it's the closest to where he is.

josh answers the door, looking extremely tired.