Lover's Leap

- Chapter 1 -

You probably don't remember me, but I remember you.

That was the first line of the odd, handwritten letter that I found stuffed inside of my P.O. box. The letter was hard to read in the dimly lit mailroom of my run-down apartment. A wall of miniature iron doors loomed before me, each little door a gateway to a person's private correspondence. A sea of letters had spilled out onto the white floor on the mailroom. I hadn't opened my mailbox in two months.

Looking back, I probably would have never found that letter had it not been for the events of the prior two days.

Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz ... Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz ...

I quickly rolled over in my bed and slammed the snooze button. The alarm stopped, and I quickly fell back asleep.

Bzzz Bzzz-

"Ugh ..." I groaned as I hit the snooze button again, squinting at the clock on my phone. It was 8:40 in the morning.

Shit.

I threw off my bed cover and rolled out of bed. Class was in twenty minutes. It didn't really matter if I was late or not, but the professor had sent me an email about meeting me after class. I had never spoken to him before, so I was a bit nervous.

My name is Jacob Quinton. I'm a sophomore college student who goes to Northern Illinois University. I stay in a small apartment that's paid for by my parents. Overall, I'm utterly and completely normal. I go to parties, have a girlfriend, see my parents once a year at Christmas, get straight Cs, and work a dumb part time job delivering pizza. I watch a lot of Netflix; whatever's popular. I like to play Valorant, and I played Fortnite before that.

The car ride to school was a short one. I speeded into class about two minutes before it started, but I made it to my seat okay. I was in Dusable Hall. The grey carpet floors and white walls were consistent across the cookie cutter classrooms.

Class had already ended. I blinked a couple of times and looked down at the piece of paper I had taken out for notes. I had idly scribed circles on it while I was zoning out. Putting away my stuff, I grabbed my backpack and walked over to the front desk, where the teacher was standing.

"Jacob," the teacher said, noticing me, "Thank you for coming to talk with me." I stared blankly at the teacher. It took me a minute to remember his last time. We had so many TAs and I had such a bad memory that I was having trouble recalling it.

"Uh ..." I said, forgoing his name, "what did you want to see me about?"

"I wanted to talk to you about your grades, actually. I haven't handed it back quite yet, but do you recall your persuasive essay you just turned in?"

I nodded without saying anything.

"I see. Well, I wanted to talk to you first about it. I'm afraid I had to give you a failing grade. I think you missed the mark on this one by a lot."

"Uh—" I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I wasn't really surprised. I had written some garbage thirty minutes before it was due. I didn't even read the rubric.

"I've failed a paper before. What's the big deal?" I asked, shrugging.

Sighing and shaking his head, the teacher said, "It IS a big deal. You can't just go around failing papers like this. Look, you can pass my class with a failed paper, but not with two. You've moved from a C- to a D-. The grade hit hard. Do you understand the implication?"

"A D is still passing though, right?" I asked.

"It is, but we have one more paper this semester. If you fail that paper, you will fail this class."