Chapter 3 Ruined Assignment

Tobias picked up the card between two fingers, glanced down at it, then back at me.

“Huh.”

The single sound was enough to make my stomach tighten.

He tilted the card slightly, pretending to study it.

“I didn’t know mice could write essays.”

The classroom erupted into laughter.

Heat rushed into my face so quickly my ears started burning.

He held the card toward me.

I reached for it.

At the very last second, his fingers loosened just enough for it to slip through mine and flutter back onto the floor.

“Oops.”

Another wave of laughter followed.

“Thomas,” Mrs. Keller warned sharply.

“What?” he asked, looking genuinely confused. “I was helping.”

More laughter. Always more laughter.

I bent down again, picked up the card myself and somehow finished the presentation, though I couldn’t tell you a single word I said after that. 

My mouth kept moving, but my mind had already left the room. When the bell finally rang, everyone filed out still chuckling about something Tobias had said. To them, it had been another joke. Another funny moment to carry into lunch.

To me…

It became another reason to dread hearing the distant rumble of a motorcycle every morning.

Because if Tobias Thomas was already at school…

I knew my day was about to get a little worse.

The memory dissolved slowly, leaving me standing in the middle of the hallway with my history textbook tucked against my chest. Around me, lockers slammed shut one after another, conversations bled into each other until the corridor became one long stream of noise, and somewhere near the stairwell somebody laughed loud enough to make half the students turn their heads. I blinked once, forcing myself back into the present before adjusting the strap of my backpack and making my way toward my locker.

It was strange how ordinary everything looked. 

The same blue lockers. The same faded white floors. The same banners hanging from the ceiling advertising football games and school dances. If someone had walked these halls for the first time, they would have thought Clever High was just another school. 

They wouldn’t know how a single hallway could carry years of memories you wished you could forget.

I reached my locker and spun the combination without thinking. The lock clicked open with its familiar sound, and as I pulled the metal door toward me, my eyes immediately landed on something tucked into the bottom corner of the inside panel.

The word Mouse was still there.

Faded now.

Not as dark as it had been months ago, but stubborn enough that no amount of scrubbing, soap, or determination had managed to erase it completely. Someone had even tried scratching it off with a key at some point, leaving thin silver marks across the locker door, but all it had done was peel away the paint around it. 

The ugly black letters remained, mocking me just as they had the day they first appeared. My fingertips drifted over the word before I could stop myself, tracing each uneven stroke slowly. A quiet breath slipped past my lips. 

Funny. Out of everything Tobias had done to me before the accident, this was somehow the one thing that refused to disappear. Bruises healed. Embarrassment faded. Even cruel words eventually became distant echoes. But this... this stayed. 

Every morning I came to school, the first thing I saw was the name he had given me, staring back at me as though it belonged there. As though it belonged to me.

The memory came again without permission.

It had been a Friday morning, warm enough that students had abandoned the classrooms and crowded the hallways instead, laughing loudly, comparing homework, gossiping about weekend plans while teachers wandered past pretending not to notice the chaos. I had just finished arranging my books inside my locker when panic struck. 

My economics assignment. I had left it on my desk in the previous classroom. Normally I would have waited until lunch, but Mrs. Hayes had spent ten full minutes threatening automatic zeros for anyone who failed to submit it before first period. 

I didn't have the luxury of taking chances. Hugging my notebook against my chest, I hurried back down the hallway, weaving through groups of students, silently praying no one would stop me. 

That was my first mistake. 

My second was believing Tobias Thomas hadn't already seen me.

He stood exactly where he always seemed to stand every morning, leaning lazily against the trophy case with four of his teammates surrounding him. His motorcycle helmet dangled from one hand while the other rested inside the pocket of his varsity jacket. 

They were laughing about something until his grey eyes landed on me. The conversation died instantly. I looked away before our eyes could properly meet and kept walking, repeating the same prayer over and over inside my head. 

Please don't notice me. Just this once, please don't notice me.

"Mouse." His voice wasn't loud. It didn't have to be. 

My feet stopped before my brain even registered I'd obeyed him. 

For one ridiculous second I considered pretending I hadn't heard, but then he called again, calmer this time, almost patient. "Mouse." 

Slowly, I turned. He lifted one finger and crooked it toward himself. It wasn't threatening. If anything, it looked lazy, like he already knew I would come. 

Against every instinct screaming inside me, I walked over. By the time I reached them, every conversation had stopped. Four football players watched me with open curiosity before looking back at Tobias, waiting for whatever entertainment he had planned.

He studied me for a long moment before reaching into his backpack and pulling out a neatly folded stack of papers. 

My breath caught immediately. My assignment. 

Relief crashed into me so suddenly that I actually smiled. "I think this belongs to you," he said, glancing down at the first page. "'Economic Consequences of the Industrial Revolution.'" One brow lifted in mock admiration. "Those are some very big words, Mouse." 

Quiet laughter rippled through the boys beside him. Heat climbed my face, but I ignored it, reaching for the papers. 

“It's due first period," I said softly. "Can I have it?" 

"Of course." He smiled. That smile. The harmless one every teacher adored. The polite one parents praised. The one that made everyone believe Tobias Thomas could never intentionally hurt another person. 

He loosened his fingers. My hand reached forward. Instead of landing in my palm, the assignment slipped neatly into the muddy puddle beside us with a loud wet slap. 

Everything went still. I stared. He stared. 

Then he sighed sympathetically before crouching down. "I've got you." Hope flickered inside me for the briefest moment. Maybe... maybe it had really been an accident. He lifted the papers carefully between two fingers. Muddy water streamed from the pages, ink dissolving into thick blue streaks that swallowed entire paragraphs before my eyes. He clicked his tongue sadly. "That's unfortunate."

"Tobias..." My voice barely came out. 

"You should really be more careful with important things," he said, holding the dripping assignment toward me. 

“I didn't drop it." The words escaped before I could swallow them back. 

His eyes lifted slowly to mine, and for the first time that morning, his smile faded.

"You think I dropped it?" 

The hallway fell strangely quiet. One teammate frowned. Another looked between us uncertainly. My stomach sank. That wasn't what I'd meant. 

Not exactly. But somehow, those had become the only words anyone heard. Tobias glanced back down at the ruined assignment before offering it to me again. "I was only trying to return it," he said quietly, almost sounding hurt. "You reached too quickly." 

One of the boys beside him shook his head. "Damn. Thomas was literally helping her."

"Yeah," another muttered, looking at me with disappointment. "That's kind of messed up." 

My mouth opened before closing again. Because what could I possibly say? He hadn't insulted me. 

He hadn't shoved me. He hadn't raised his voice. All anyone had witnessed was Tobias Thomas trying to return my missing assignment. I was the unreasonable one. The ungrateful one. 

He placed the soaked pages gently into my hands, his fingers brushing mine for only a second before stepping back. "Come on," he said to his teammates. "Practice." 

Then he walked away, laughing with them as though nothing had happened, leaving me standing there while muddy water dripped onto my shoes and students passed by throwing me confused, irritated and pitying glances. 

By lunchtime, the story had spread across the entire school. Not that Tobias Thomas had deliberately ruined my assignment. No. The version everyone believed was far simpler. 

“Lisa accused Tobias Thomas of trying to help her.* 

And somehow... I was the one who ended up apologising to my teacher for handing in ruined work.