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Cyber Finals

“You love me, right?”

“I’m not killing you before finals are over. You’re the only thing keeping me from failing Cybersecurity 104.”

“I hate you.”

“Hate me all you want. We both know you’re too busy to plan revenge.”

Adrienne threw a pencil at her roommate and scrubbed a hand though her hair as she focused back on the lines of code that had been her personal nightmare for weeks. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she wasn’t battling neck and neck for top position in the class with a certified genius.

It wasn’t bad enough that he was brilliant, it was that he also thought he was god’s gift to women. Worse, he really was handsome. Too bad his personality was the worst parts of a playboy and a celebrity. His family was rich, he was a genius, and he never let anyone forget it.

Adrienne avoided him at all costs. She was relatively certain he didn’t actually know who exactly he was competing with, given his usual comments about a woman’s proper place. She regularly hacked into his computer to change his desktop background. He still hadn’t figured out how to stop her, not that he even knew it was her doing it.

Now if only he would stop talking about the breast size of every woman in their class, loudly, at lunch.

“Want to help me disappear Patrick?” she called over to Stacy, who laughed but didn’t look over. Like Adrienne, she was battling with a series of code problems, and with the constant discrimination that came with being a woman in a STEM major. “There’s got to be a well around here we could drop him into.”

“Francesca will kill us both if we poison the water table like that,” Stacy replied absently of their third roommate, who was an environmental PhD student, and who had very strong feelings about pollution in the water. “She spends all her time out in that wetland of hers. She could disappear a body just fine.”

Before Stacy could answer, their door opened, and the subject of their discussion stumbled in, arms full of books, and decidedly worse for wear.

“See, she agrees with me,” Stacy pointed as Francesca dropped her books on her desk hand scrambled for the bathroom, trailing muddy water. “Right Fran?”

“Probably not,” Francesca said from the bathroom, and emerged with a towel over her head as she dried her hair enthusiastically. “But to be fair, I didn’t hear you.”

“We’re going to kill Patrick.”

“Never mind. I’m in.”

Adrienne laughed and went to turn on their electric teapot for Fran, who flashed her a relieved smile even as she stripped to the skin and threw her wet clothes into the laundry basket.

“So what did Patrick do this time?” Fran asked, dry, dressed in clean pajamas, and eagerly making tea. “More of the same?”

“Today he was on about some ‘campus beauty contest’ to rate all the girls and find out which were the, and I quote, ‘most worth spending time on.’ So we’re going to kill him.”

Fran stole some of Adrienne’s dried mango strips and chewed thoughtfully while her tea brewed.

“I have a boat,” she said at last, with a smile that reminded Adrienne of Fran’s pet snake right before it bit someone. Said snake was generally very sweet, but a snake bite, even a nonvenomous one, was unpleasant. “You keep saying you’ll help me check samples way way out in the wetlands.”

“Sounds like fun,” Stacy agreed, and traded Fran a mango strip for a handful of pecans. “We haven’t gone on a girl trip since last summer, and nothing brings a dorm together, right?”

“You watch too much TV,” Adrienne told her, but she was laughing too. They had been dorm-mates for the last two years, and she couldn’t imagine living with anyone else for the next four years. A the joys of the masters program. No matter how much she might like to, none of them would actually be committing murder. Even if Patrick deserved it. “No more murder movies for you!”

“This from the nerd who makes time for online gaming even during finals?” Stacy fired back, and spun in her chair as Fran collected her tea and retreated to the safety of her bed. “How is Prince Charming, anyway?”

“Leave off!” Adrienne threw another pencil at her and Stacy ducked. “We’re just friends!”

“Sounds like denial to me,” Fran said sweetly. Adrienne pointed at her, and the environmental student preemptively hid behind her collection of pillows. “You’re always talking about him.”

“Do you know how hard it is to find someone who can keep up with me?” Adrienne protested and waved at her computer. “I was one of the first thousand players to sign on. It’s not like very many people want to play with me. Not when everything scales to my level, not theirs.”

“And that’s totally all true,” Stacy said mischievously even as Adrienne s computer pinged a message. “Except the ‘just friends’ part. You need a real boyfriend!”

“It’s just a game,” Adrienne said, and closed down her homework. She still had time, and she needed a break anyway. “Besides, fictional men don’t disappoint me.”

“We’ll find someone for you,” Stacy muttered, and Adriana rolled her eyes. “Go sign on. Prince Charming awaits.

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