The Annoying Sleepwalker novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Terminal Fourteen

I was at the career center at 8:55 the next morning, forty minutes before it opened.

The recruiter let me in anyway.

She was a short woman with silver glasses, and she had my name on a red folder on her desk.

"I was about to call you," she said. "Sit down."

I sat.

Saskia sat down next to me without being asked.

She had caught me in the hall with a coffee, and she would not leave.

"Your portfolio was submitted to Larkfield last night at 8:38," the recruiter said. "Six of the twelve pieces are copies."

"Copies of what?" I asked.

She turned her monitor around.

On the left was a page from my submitted file.

On the right was a page from a famous designer's public website, with the same layout, the same color blocks, the same typeface.

"Six pieces match this designer pixel for pixel," she said. "Larkfield's system flagged it automatically. They've already sent me the flag."

"I didn't submit that," I said.

"It went through your account with your password."

"I didn't submit it," I said again.

She took her glasses off and rubbed her nose.

"Miss Marlow, I've seen this before. A student panics. She borrows from somebody she admires, she tells herself nobody will notice."

"It isn't mine," I said. "I can show you mine."

I took the flash drive out of my pocket.

I slid it across her desk.

She plugged it in and clicked through twelve folders.

They were my pieces.

A cereal brand redesign. A children's hospital map. A poster series for a jazz club.

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