Fourth Down by Kirsten DeMuzio Read Free Book Online

crossed the room to my phone. It was
probably just my mom or Brooke, the only two people who ever called
me, but I couldn’t go to sleep without making sure it wasn’t
something important.
    The number of the missed call wasn’t
one I recognized, although it did look vaguely familiar. The voice
on the voicemail was the absolute last one I expected to hear.
Well, actually the second to last. Ford would be the
last.
    “Hey, Poppy. It’s me, Aiden. Um…I know
we haven’t talked in a while, but can you call me when you get
this? It’s important. My number is 416-555-6389. Call me whenever
you get this, no matter how late.”
    What the hell? It was an
understatement that we hadn’t talked in a while; it had been almost
two years. Two years since I had found out Aiden had been cheating
on me. Two years since I had given up on my naïve thought that a
long distance relationship could work.
    What could he possibly want from me
after all this time? I couldn’t go to sleep now without finding
out, so I dialed his number half expecting to get his voicemail.
Instead he answered on the second ring.
    “Hello?” His voice sounded strained
and unlike I remembered.
    “Hi, Aiden. It’s Poppy.”
    “Oh my God, Poppy. Thank you for
calling me back.”
    “Uh…sure. Is everything okay? I was
surprised to hear from you.”
    I could hear him sigh on the other end
of the line. “No, everything’s not okay.”
    All sorts of awful scenarios started
running through my mind. Did something happen to one of his
parents? Did he want me back? Yuck, I hope not. Was he dying of
some rare and horrible illness?
    “I’m about to flunk out of Cornell,
and I need your help. You’ve taken a philosophy class,
right?”
    Seriously? I held the phone out to
look at it; then looked around the room for hidden cameras, because
surely this was some kind of prank.
    “So, let me get this straight, Aiden.
You called me after not speaking for two years. The reason for us
not speaking is that you cheated on me. And you want to know if
I’ve taken a philosophy class?” Saying it out loud made it sound
even more ridiculous.
    “You’re the smartest person I know,
Poppy. I need you to help me pass Philosophy,” he said in a voice
that had me picturing him pouting.
    Was I dreaming? Had I actually fallen
asleep and this was some weird twisted dream? Unfotunately, no.
Glancing at the clock I saw it was nearing 1:00 am, and I had to
teach a yoga class in eight hours. Normally I only taught on the
weekends, but I was filling in for another instructor
tomorrow.
    “Why don’t you ask someone there? Like
someone who is actually in the class? It’s not really practical for
me to tutor you from almost two hours away.”
    “Well, see that’s the thing. I don’t
need tutoring…I need a paper. It can be on anything really. We
didn’t have to tell the professor what we were writing about, so
whatever you’ve written about would work.”
    Now he was just giving me a headache.
“Whoa, hold on. You want me to give you a paper I wrote so you can
pass it off as your own? You want me to help you cheat?”
    My voice was raising by the
second as I wondered how much of a pushover I must have been for
him to think he could call me after two years and ask me to help
him cheat so he didn’t flunk out of Cornell. That was my dream school,
dammit!
    “I’m really in trouble here, Poppy. If
I don’t pass this class, I’m out. This semester was my last
chance.”
    My aversion to confrontation prevented
me from telling him off like I should have, but I did have enough
sense to hang up on him and turn my phone off. I wanted to throw it
against the wall, but I couldn’t afford to replace it.
    Getting back in bed, I fumed about
Aiden. Sure, I had helped him a lot with homework in high school.
He was my boyfriend. I felt like it was my duty. Maybe I had helped
him too much. Maybe I had helped him all the way to
Cornell.
    I had been accepted too, but my mom
and Rick couldn’t