Page 141 of Study Buddies

Which was ridiculous. Kyle had written those papers. I’d sat next to him while he did so, at least most of the time.

Professor Abrams jumped in. “We are aware that those tools aren’t always accurate.”

The co-chair looked as if he disagreed, but then he turned to Kyle. “What do you have to say about these charges?”

“They’re bullshit,” Kyle said. Not with heat—just a statement of fact.

“Language, young man,” Dr. Mitchell said. Had my advisor always been this much of a jerk?

“Coach told me to meet with a tutor. I did. She helped me. I wrote those papers. End of story,” Kyle stated flatly.

“It’s not the end of the story if you didn’t do the work yourself,” Dr. Daniels said.

“He did.” I took the floor, unsure whether it would ever be offered to me again. “We went through all the steps together. From analyzing the assignment to discussing what the professor was looking for. To making an outline. Kyle would work from the outline, show me what he’d written, I’d give suggestions, and then he’d rewrite it. Over and over and over. On that first paper,we spent weeks with multiple drafts. If he’d just used AI, trust me, it wouldn’t have taken anywhere near that long.”

Professor Abrams nodded at me. She knew the process—she’d been the one to teach it to me.

I pulled the papers out of my journal. “I have a list of the time and date of every tutoring session and study group along with what we covered.” The only thing I hadn’t done was to list the locations of each session since some were back at the house. We weren’t sure if the English Department was aware of our living situation. I hadn’t updated my address with the school—it hadn’t made sense when I kept moving from place to place so rapidly.

“The other members of the study group can vouch for the fact that he wrote those papers on his laptop largely during those times,” I concluded.

The co-chair looked skeptical. “Isn’t your cohort made up of your friends? Including his stepbrother.”

Kyle rolled his eyes, while I barely managed not to. If they knew the tense relationship between Kyle and Lucas, they wouldn’t be so quick to assume Lucas would vouch for him.

Professor Abrams glanced through the pages I handed her, a thoughtful expression on her face. She handed them to my advisor, who ignored them and pushed them toward the co-chair of the English department. Who also didn’t look at them. Wonderful.

“Victoria’s records are very thorough,” Professor Abrams said. “And she’s right about the drafting process. If she says that Kyle wrote the bulk of the essays while working with her, then I believe her. I believe both of them.”

Finally, the representative from the Athletics Department spoke up. “There’s no evidence that our star slugger cheated.”

It was clear where his priorities were, but I was glad someone else was defending Kyle anyway.

Then Dr. Daniels sighed. “We do have one more piece of evidence.”

I exchanged a quick glance with Kyle. He looked as baffled as I felt. Dr. Daniels pulled his phone out of the pocket of his suit jacket and placed it on the table in front of him. He flipped through several screens and then pushed his phone toward the middle of the table. “We received this from an anonymous source.”

He pressed play, and a staticky sound filled the little room. I heard the babble of low voices faintly, and the sound of glasses clicking together. Was it recorded in a bar?

Then a voice came through, strong and clear. “Yeah, it was easy.”

My heart sank. That was Kyle. Why did they have a recording of him?

“I recorded her while she was telling me how to fix the paper. Then after, I’d play it for the AI, and it would follow her instructions. Then I’d add a few spelling mistakes and show it to her as my next draft. She’s so fucking gullible—she thought she was actually teaching me.”

Kyle sat straight up in his chair, his posture stiff as he stared at the phone.

And as for me… I sat there, frozen. Why had he said that? I knew it wasn’t true. But… had he done that in the beginning, perhaps? I still didn’t see how. And yes, academics weren’t his strength, but I couldn’t picture him doing that.

So why was he saying he did?

The recording was playing background noise, but now it resumed. “Shit, the department should be glad I made the effort. I could’ve just gotten her to write it for me. Girls like her will do anything I tell them. Write my paper, get on their knees… anything I want.”

The recording ended as my heart stopped. I froze, aware that everyone in the room was staring at me.

Except for Kyle. His eyes were glued to the now silent phone, his face completely blank.

My heart resumed pounding with a frantic, irregular beat. Who had he said that to? And why? None of this made sense.

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