The Teaching Assistant, Part 57

The tutoring session actually wasn’t terrible.

It felt like Evelyn was only there to teach; nothing more, nothing less. Amelia had initially been worried, as Ashley had mentioned that she and Evelyn were friends. Of course, it stood to reason that not everyone would be at Claire’s level. Especially since keeping a secret like the one regarding Amelia’s real age would be easier if only two girls knew about it. Amelia couldn’t know for sure that it was just the duo who were in on all this. She just went with the assumption that Evelyn didn’t know; that, or the girl was as good of an actor as Claire was.

By the time they were done going through the Earth/Physical Science materials the young tutor had brought along, Amelia was ready for a breather. She couldn’t deny that she was much more familiar with the subject than she had been an hour ago, and definitely would do better on the aptitude test if she took it right now; the science section had mostly involved making educated guesses, as well as an embarrassing amount of totally blind guesses. Amelia still didn’t feel ready to dive into the test again, but a silver lining of all this was that she got to brush up on the stuff she would have ended up reviewing herself anyway when dealing with lesson plans.

To Amelia’s surprise, Ashley wasn’t there to escort her somewhere else at the end of the session. It was Saturday. The dark haired girl probably had her own stuff going on, whether it was social or academic. Likely the former.

She wasn’t sure where to go, or what to do. All of her attempts to contact the outside world had backfired spectacularly so far. Before, the only ‘proof’ that she was a troublesome girl was whatever Ashley had included in the file she submitted to the office. But now? Amelia had lost count of how many times she had been written up. It was going to be difficult for anyone to trust her when she was partially responsible for the negative light.

Ashley or Claire wouldn’t be helpful. The two of them were clearly enjoying the way they had tricked a petite young adult into being stuck as a student at a boarding school.

Summer, maybe? While the girl was bad news, she was also a source for that burner phone she had mentioned. Amelia had already invested in that clique via the mortifying hazing earlier. Maybe those efforts weren’t in vain, provided Summer actually intended on letting her in, rather than just stringing her along and then dumping her after everything. That just sounded like too much of a coin toss, especially since Amelia would have to go through the effort of finding the girl somewhere on campus before getting into all that.

After aimlessly wandering down the mostly quiet halls of the academic building, resisting the urge to peek into the taken classrooms and potentially distract the students that were doing whatever extracurricular, Amelia settled on simply going back to her room. That was where her binder was, which presumably had her student ID tucked inside. There was always the chance that Ashley or Claire had thought of that, and removed it while she was in the shower, but Amelia had to try. All she had to do was memorize that number, and then she could access one of the library computers.

Also, it had been a long day. Though it was barely midafternoon, the privacy of her dorm room sounded rather appealing. Obviously her apartment would be the most ideal, yet Amelia had lived in dorms over the last four years and was used to going back there after class to study and/or recharge. There was still the matter of finding a way in. Amelia couldn’t actually remember whether or not one of the two devious seniors had locked the dorm room door; it just seemed unlikely that they would have left it unlocked, whether that was out of habit or just some casual malice.

Luckily, this was a boarding school for teenage girls. There had to be countless instances of students accidentally locking themselves out of their rooms, or losing their keys throughout the day. Surely a prefect would have a master key. It wouldn’t make any sense to make that an office problem, as the majority of girls would probably end up having this kind of problem after regular school hours, or over the weekend. That meant there had to be a system in place to let those girls back into their dorm rooms before curfew.

So that’s where Amelia started. After making her way back to the building itself, without running into any complications on the way, it didn’t take her long to see that someone was working at the front desk. Probably a similar situation to the students at Amelia’s college, where there were jobs available for those that needed some cash but wanted to stay on campus. The desk ‘work’ always seemed like the ideal job–getting paid to sit around and study, save for when little things like this came up.

Sure enough, it sounded like the girl at the desk was going to be able to help her out. The only complication was that Amelia didn’t know either her room number or her ID number. Thankfully, her name was enough; she even remembered to say ‘Roberts;’ Ashley’s last name still sounded unfamiliar when paired with her own, despite how it flowed just fine with ‘Amelia.’ Or ‘Millie,’ for that matter.

The desk girl escorted Amelia upstairs, while informing her that students only had one free pass for stuff like this. Or, in Amelia’s case, two free passes, as the girl said she was going to let this instance slide due to the fact that Amelia had just transferred here and was no doubt getting used to everything.

That was an understatement.

Amelia thanked the teenager for unlocking the door, and proceeded to step into the room and close the door behind her. Alone. Finally.

She let out an enormous sigh of relief, followed by a calming breath for good measure. Then she walked over to her desk and opened the binder that was still sitting there from the previous night.

Maybe Amelia’s student ID would be enough to prove her real identity.