The Imitation Game ✓

TWENTY-FOUR | MY TEARS RICOCHET

The year was 2016, and Natasha Wilde was immensely stressed about her impending college graduation.

When November hit, so had the anxiety. She'd thought she was being so resourceful, saving money by cramming her degree into three-and-a-half years and all of that, but now she was wishing she had that extra semester to stall. In some of the quiet, more lonely moments, she began to wonder if her entire college career building up to this point had been one massive mistake.

But no, she was ready to get the hell out of here. She'd lived in the state of New York for her entire life and didn't want to waste another year of it there. While she much preferred being out here on Long Island to going back home to her parents' house Upstate over the summers—at least she was near the ocean here—New Yorkers were rude and everything was too damn expensive. She was going to make terrible money as an illustrator, so she needed to go wherever that money would get her the furthest. She'd already been applying to jobs all over the country.

Still, there were certainly aspects of New York that she was going to miss someday in the near future when she left for her new life out there in the great unknown, such as the girl sitting across from her now: her roommate, Cora.

Cora, Nat was convinced, had a heart made of pure dynamite. She didn't put up with anyone's bullshit, vocalized how she felt, and was a fiercely loyal friend—not to mention that she was insanely talented. In many ways, the two of them were very much alike, which was probably why they got along as well as they did. If you wanted to complain about something, Cora was there for you. If you wanted to cry about something, she was there for you. If you wanted to laugh, she was there for you. Once she decided that you were her friend, she would never let you go, but you sure as hell didn't want to be on the opposite side of an argument from her.

Nat had seen that scenario play out many times over the years with her friend Rasmus, but he had gotten harder and harder to defend with each passing day. How was she supposed to justify actions that were unjustifiable, or still call him her dearest friend when he'd started feeling like a stranger to her years ago? The boy she'd loved as a child was long gone. It was as though he wanted to watch the whole world burn, but only if he was burning with it.

It was uncanny that she had that thought today of all days. She was about to learn that the one thing he had left in this world to burn was her.

"We should maybe head back to the room," Cora sighed shortly after a group of boisterous sorority girls entered the campus Starbucks that they were currently camped out in to study.

Their chatter had abruptly doubled the volume of noise inside the store, which was already loud enough as it was—preemptive Christmas music had been playing since the first of November. College kids, Nat and Cora included, always got restless as the Thanksgiving holiday loomed. That and their upcoming final exams made for a terrible combination, so the two of them were trying to combat their burnout as well as they could with varying levels of success each day.

Neither of them needed more caffeine, anyhow, so they crammed their various school supplies, a script for Cora and an art theory textbook for Natasha, back into their bags and made the trek back across campus to their dorm. Cora dug her key to their room out of her purse; Nat's was buried somewhere in the abyss of her rucksack, or so she thought.

Cora performed the risky maneuver of opening the door whilst also holding her iced coffee in the same hand, shoving it open with her elbow as soon as she'd twisted the knob far enough. But when they stepped inside the room, both girls blanched.

Nat's desk was in a state of total disarray. All of her art supplies, which had been so neatly organized when they left to go to Starbucks, were scattered across the desk or discarded onto the floor. And her drawing that she had been working on–