Lucas entered his studio apartment, which did not have the most uplifting atmosphere. The apartment complex was owned by the school, and Lucas settled to live there since the school can apply scholarships and tuition payments towards the rent for school-owned residential properties. He took a seat at his desk, shoved aside a pile of papers, and took out his laptop. He checked his inbox and saw that Melanie had already sent him an email.
Hi Lucas,
Please fill these out and send them to me.
Melanie
Lucas didn’t know if he should be glad the email was so short. His mind went through all the possibilities of what could happen to him. Was he going to get kicked out of the class? Or maybe he was going to get kicked out of school? The thoughts made his head and stomach hurt.
That night, Lucas didn’t eat dinner, and he went to bed without doing any homework beforehand.
The next day, Lucas sat with Olivia in lecture. They didn’t make any mentions of the events that had happened the day before. In the middle of class, Lucas got a notification from his phone. He checked, and it was an email from Mr. Smith, his major advisor. The email asked for Lucas to schedule a meeting with him, and Lucas already knew what this was going to be about. Lucas took out his laptop and looked at Mr. Smith’s appointment scheduler, and he saw that all slots for today were available. Lucky me, I guess. Lucas didn’t have anything right after his current class, so he picked the appointment time right after the class end time. When the class ended, Lucas and Olivia packed up their stuff and got up from their seats.
“Where are you headed off to now? Library?” Olivia knew Lucas usually liked to go to the school libraries to do work during the gaps between classes.
“No, I have a meeting with my advisor.”
“Oh. Okay, well, good luck then.” Her voice seemed solemn.
They parted ways and Lucas walked to the College of Agricultural Sciences Student Center, where Mr. Smith’s office was located. He made his way up the stairs and was greeted by the lady at the front desk.
“Who are you here to see?”
“Mr. Smith.”
“Is this a walk-in or do you have an appointment?”
“Appointment.”
“Okay, let me see here…” The lady clicked around on her computer. “Alright, I’ll let Mr. Smith know you’re here. You can have a seat.” She gestured to the chairs aligned against the wall behind Lucas.
Lucas took a seat and he anxiously waited for Mr. Smith to appear. It was already a minute past the appointment time, so he should be showing up at any minute. Mr. Smith was usually a bright and cheery man, but Lucas thought perhaps he would see a new side of him today.
“Lucas?” A voice emerged from the silence. Lucas looked up and saw Mr. Smith standing at a doorway. “It’s nice to see you, come this way.” It was a relief that he wasn’t upset. They walked into Mr. Smith’s office and Lucas sat in a chair across from Mr. Smith. Mr Smith briefly looked at his computer screen before turning to Lucas.
“So how are you? Have things been alright?” Mr. Smith always started off conversations with basic small talk questions like this. However, there was a hint of instability in Mr. Smith’s voice. He knew things were not quite alright.
“Yeah,” Lucas replied dryly. Even if things weren’t alright, it was customary for Lucas to lie for the sake of moving the conversation forward to what really mattered.
“Well, I was notified about the breach of the code of conduct that happened. This was in Dr. Lim’s PLANTBI 154L class?”
Lucas took a deep breath. “Yes.”
“I know you are a smart kid, and I was in disbelief when I heard about this.” Mr. Smith paused for a moment as he looked at Lucas, who was looking at the desk between them. “Unfortunately, this incident will be written in your school records permanently. Additionally, you will be removed from the Nascenshire Scholars Program. This means your scholarship will no longer apply to this semester or your remaining semesters.”
Lucas felt like he was punched in the stomach. He didn’t care about having the incident on his record. But losing his scholarship? Lucas’ parents didn’t know about the incident. How would they react when they find out that their son was in a fight at school, lost his scholarship, and now they suddenly have to fork over thousands of dollars for tuition that used to be covered already? Had the repercussions only included written reports kept within the school, Lucas could have gotten away with never mentioning anything to his parents. But now that money was on the line, Lucas was backed up in a tight spot. If he didn’t tell his parents what happened, letters demanding payments would appear in his parents’ mailbox and reveal the situation to them.
“Lucas? Are you okay?” Lucas didn’t realize that he had spaced out. Mr. Smith’s voice brought him out of his thoughts. “I know this is a lot to process and it must be very tough.” Mr. Smith looked like he was waiting for Lucas to say something.
“I don’t know what to do,” Lucas said meekly. He hated the way his voice wavered when he spoke.
“The most important thing is to apologize to whoever you did wrong. For your integrity’s sake,” Mr. Smith said. “Then, think through how you and your family will work out the tuition payments. You can talk with the financial office about coming up with a payment plan.” Apologize to who? Jonathan? Lucas felt like gagging. He felt like Jonathan didn’t deserve any kind of apology. Jonathan started the whole fight and shouldn’t have expected Lucas to just let himself get walked all over.
The appointment concluded and Lucas walked out of the building. As he went through his classes, he could only think of his parents yelling at him over the whole situation. He already didn’t have the best relationship with his parents, so having them find out their son was in a school violence scandal and lost his scholarship would only make things worse. If only I could just pay off the money on my own. He entertained the idea for a bit, because while wildly unrealistic, it was more positive than dwelling on the idea of being verbally berated by his parents.
The more he thought about paying for the tuition himself, the more feasible it felt to Lucas. It was as if his brain convinced itself that there was hope that with the income of multiple part-time jobs, combined with a generous payment plan that the financial office probably gave no one, he could succeed in surviving this whole ordeal without his parents ever finding out. They would never check his school records or financial files because as long as all payments would be paid in time, everything would be kept between Lucas and the school. The line between delusion and ingenuity blurred the more Lucas thought deeper into the plan.
In a slightly lighter mood, Lucas went to his journal club in the evening, where he was the vice president. The journal article for the week was not anything related to plant biology, so Lucas was not that excited for the meeting. However, he went to the club every week since he was on the leadership team, and also because it was sometimes fun to talk with the other club members. This week was no exception.
“Have you tried the new coffee place down the street?” The club’s treasurer, Irene, spoke so excitedly that it made Lucas turn to her, even though she wasn’t talking to him.
“I saw it on my way to class this morning. Cafe En Gard, right? Is it good?” responded the club president, Maria.
“I think it’s pretty good. I went in the afternoon today! The cafe has this vibe to it. It’s hard to describe. You have to come with me next time!”
“Where’s this place?” Lucas invited himself into the conversation.
“I didn’t know you drank coffee, Lucas! Well, anyway, it’s on 8th Street! It’s the place with the flower logo.” Irene was always excited about coffee and finding new cafes, though the surrounding city was severely lacking coffee shops. Irene would take the bus and travel long distances to different places just for coffee, and no one was ever willing to accompany her. “You should come with us, too! I barely get to use group discounts these days. We’ll all save so much money by going together!”
Lucas thought about where Irene described. 8th Street? He then recalled walking back to his apartment and seeing the empty unit with the lily logo.
“We should get started.” Maria opened up the slide show presentation and the journal article for the week on her laptop and began setting up the projector. As the club discussed the figures and diagrams in the article, Lucas pretended to be intrigued. He read the article beforehand, though he understood very little of it.
On his way back to the apartment, he walked down 8th Street, and saw the cafe that Irene had introduced to him and Maria. It was already past nine P.M. and the lights inside were all off. There was a light above the door that showed Cafe En Gard’s logo. The light was on and illuminated the sidewalk. Lucas figured that if they were new, then they must be hiring. He tried looking for any signs posted on the windows, but all he could find was an antique looking mailbox that was built into the corner of a window. He pressed his face to the glass and looked at the interior of the cafe, but he could barely make out the figures of the furniture and the counter in the darkness. All of a sudden, a thumping noise at the window startled him and he jolted backwards. He moved along and went back to his apartment, feeling a bit frightened. At his desk, he tried looking up Cafe En Gard online to see if there was any information or reviews about it. All he could find was that it was a new business located on 8th Street and that there was one person who rated it five stars. The cafe didn’t have its own website, there was no menu available online, and there was no contact information. It was all so peculiar to him.
Before he went to bed, Lucas sent in a request for an appointment with the school financial office. He thought about his predicament and his mission to earn money and hide everything away from his parents. The memory of the mailbox crossed his mind, so he began writing up a letter to the cafe, inquiring about employment.
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