Page 2 of Caught in the Middle

'Compare and contrast Queen Victoria's motives for...'She flipped the page again. She didn't even know who Queen Victoria was, let alone be able to write 5,000 words in two hours about her.

Before she turned to the last essay question on the back page, she said a little silent prayer for something easy. Like…the history of Forever21, or... the life of Audrey Hepburn. Something that she could at least string a few sentences together about.

What Lucy should have prayed for, however, was just another exam question.

Any question at all.

Whatever they would have asked would have been indefinitely better than what was actually on the last page. Something that would change her life forever.

Her queasy stomach knotted as her eyes skimmed over the text.

'Lucy, leave exactly after the first hour. Leave your water bottle on the desk. Your life is in danger.'

Her eyes automatically darted around the room, assessing for her peers reactions.

Did anyone else just see this message?

But every single student was hunched over their desk, scribbling away as if their life depended on it.

What on earth was going on? Maybe the message was in their papers too, but because they knew the answer to the first question, they didn't even bother looking at the back page?

She looked down at her paper again.

The text had been carefully cut and glued to the exam paper, over the existed printed question.

Leave your water bottle on the desk.

Lucy stared at the crumpled bottle in front of her. The only thing saving her from hangover dehydration. Was it poisoned? Well, she had been chugging at it like a fish all morning, and she felt fine.

Well, as fine as she could the morning after a heavy night out, and not currently being in bed.

The next hour ticked by incredibly slowly. Lucy's eyes flitted between the obnoxiously loud clock on the front wall of the exam hall, the frantically scribbling students, and the ominous note stuck into the last page of her exam paper.

Was she going to leave? She hadn't decided. What if it was a trick? One of her friends had...broke into the university, drunk, and placed a note in her paper to freak her out?

Sounds a little bit elaborate for a shit joke.

What if she really was in danger? What if someone was plotting to kill her, kidnapping her when she left the exam hall in exactly two hours, so someone had warned her to leave an hour before to avoid it?

Nothing she thought of over the slowest hour of her entire life could be rationalised, but with thirty seconds to spare, Lucy had made her decision.

She was going to get up and leave at exactly 10.08 am.

Why? Well, she fucked on this exam anyway. Regardless of whatever the outcome, the note was there, glued to her paper. It was a blessing in disguise, she didn't have to sit the exam, prank or not, because she could contest that she thought it was real and fled for safety, too distracted and distressed to write anything down in the first hour. And if it was a more sinister trick, and someone was out to get her the second she upped and left? Well, it would be better than having to tell her disappointed parents that she didn't study for three years and has absolutely nothing to show for all the money that they wasted on her degree.

'The first hour is up,' the thin invigilator called, 'anyone who wishes to do so can leave.'

It was now or never, and Lucy knew it.

Cursing herself, she scraped back her chair, to everyone in the exam halls surprise. Nobody left after an hour, especially not on their final exam. Eyebrows raised, glances between friends. She caught Elena's eye, whose jaw was swinging open in shock. This is probably the most exciting thing that has ever happened to her, Lucy mused bitterly.

Although she was only wearing battered Converse, Lucy's footsteps resonated around the spacious hall, making her incredibly aware of every move she made. The invigilator stared at her the whole journey up to the front, and out of the wooden swing doors.

Judgemental bitch.

Lucy wondered what she was thinking. Probably that if Lucy was her own daughter, how disappointed she would be.

With a shaking hand, she pushed open the doors and stepped into the dimly lit corridor.

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