Chapter 15: Six Oh One

The hearing took twenty minutes.

George did not come.

His lawyer came instead and read a statement about "a misunderstanding of digital access."

Then the dean showed him the upload log with George's phone number on it.

The dean suspended George for the rest of the year.

The three friends in matching fleece were expelled from the senior trek program.

They were told to withdraw their names from the graduation list.

None of them looked at Jude on the way out.

The dean thanked Ken for his report from the trail.

"You're welcome, ma'am," Ken said, and Jude had to look at the ceiling.

Finals started Monday.

Jude sat the accounting final in the big hall at the back.

On one side was a girl chewing a pen, and on the other a boy who had brought his own cushion.

He wrote for three hours without once looking at the door.

When he came out, Ken was leaning on the opposite wall, pretending he had not been there since the start.

"How was it?"

"I think I debited the wrong thing in question four."

"Did you notice?"

"Yes."

"Did you fix it?"

"I did. I drew an arrow."

Ken smiled. It was the whole smile, the one that reached his eyes.

"Then you passed," he said.

The grade posted that afternoon, and it was an 88.

Jude read it on his phone in the library lobby, twice, and then sat down on the floor.

"I got an eighty-eight," he told the security guard.

"Good for you, sir."

"On my own."

"Sir, you can't sit there."

Ken hauled him up by the elbow and steered him into the stacks.

It was ten to six.

The back of the library, behind the periodicals, was quiet and dim and smelled of old paper.

Ken stopped between two tall shelves where the aisle ended in a blank wall.

He took out his phone and looked at the screen.

"Not yet," he said.

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