Caged In

Chapter 2: Six Years Later . . . (edited)

6 years later . . .

In a University of Pennsylvania lecture hall

I'd stopped paying attention to the power point slides somewhere around halfway through my biology lecture. The class wasn't boring, but even interesting things became hard to pay attention to when you are forced to sit in the back of the lecture hall because you came to class late.

" And that concludes today's lecture." My professor clapped her hands and turned to face the class," Now, I graded all your summaries from the article I assigned last week. Please come and pick them up from one of the folders on my desk, they're in alphabetical order."

My ears perked up at the sound of class ending and I quickly shoved my blank notebook into my bag and tossed it over my shoulder as I stood up to make my way to the front of the classroom. There were three folders on her desk labelled A-J, K-O, and P-Z.

Three semi-straight lines were formed behind the three folders. Each person would take their turn flipping through the folder to pluck their graded papers out before either shoving it in their bag or intensely staring at the grade at the top of the paper and then proceeding to read through the professors comments.

When I got to the front of the P-Z line, I flipped through the papers until I saw my last name at the top of a paper. I slipped my paper out of the folder and tried to speed walk out of the lecture hall as I looked down at my graded paper.

97%, not bad.

My eyes scanned down the paper to see my professor's comment in red ink: Nice job Lucy, it was the most thorough yet concise report in the class.

I honestly hated Biology, but that didn't mean that if I studied I wasn't good at it. The professor was urging me to intern with her for her research lab over the summer. From what I read on her lab page, she worked with the effects of certain morning sickness drugs on kidney functions.

I considered applying until I realized her lab involved injecting live voles and killing them after the experiments. I preferred working with bacteria . . . or plants. Petra Wild's belief in the sanctity of all life had rubbed off on me as a teen, and because of that I never liked the idea of animal testing. I particularly disliked how many people held such a positive opinion of it. The act of experimenting on another sentient being would always be an evil, and its necessity would never negate that that.

" I'm sure the paper is sorry for whatever it did to you, there's no need to strangle it to death like that." His voice brought me out of my mental rabbit hole.

I relaxed my grip on the paper and looked up to see my boyfriend Nathan smiling down at me.

" Did you get a bad grade or something ?" He craned his neck to get a look at my paper.

I smiled at him and brought my paper to my chest to obscure my grade from him," I'm almost offended you even asked me that."

" Really ?" He straightened his neck," Because if I remember it correctly, you texted me at 2 am last week practically begging me to send you my paper so you could copy it."

" I don't know what you're talking about. You're obviously mistaking me for someone else, because if it was me, then what kind of boyfriend would that make you for neglecting me in my time of need ?" I puffed my cheeks out.

" My deepest apologies, Queen Procrasta." He bowed dramatically.

I shoved my paper into my bag before slinging it over my back again," A manservant who respects his queen would've done as she asked and shared his writing."