"See you later Twisted Oaks," Reggie my morning Seven Eleven buddy yells out to me as I walk out of the store with a coffee in my left hand and a cup of grapes in my right.

"See ya Reggie," I call back.

Briefly I think of the implications of being on a first name basis with the Seven Eleven clerk should have on my life, but choose not to think too hard about it. I'm too young to have a regular routine.

I walk down the sidewalk and jump up a small incline to reach the small cyber cafe I work in. It's nothing fancy, but it's comfortable and close to my college campus. It offers me convenience, something very important in my life these days.

I'm the first one at the office and juggle my coffee and grapes so that I can reach into my pocket and pull out my keys. It takes a few moments but the keys come out of their prison and I'm able to open the door.

I give it a good pull and plant my foot just enough inside so that it will stop the door from swinging back and hitting me as I enter. I jump through the slight opening and let the door slam shut behind me, and make my hundredth mental note to get someone to fix our door slamming problem.

I make my way over to a counter directly in front of me and lay my Seven Eleven goodies down. I take another quick look around then release a silent sigh. It's 6:00 in the morning, and as usual I'm the only one here on time.

This place has to be ready to open in an hour so I immediately get to work. I turn on all the machines that make this place come alive and start preparing the ridiculous amount of coffee it takes to prepare a pack of college students and their professors for the day.

When I'm almost done making all the preparations, Vance saunters in with his sunglasses on and a Big Gulp of soda in his right hand.

"Hey Twisted," he greets me as he dumps his backpack behind the counter. "Did you finish setting up?"

I cross my arms in front of me. "You're late." I try to be firm but the effect is blown with the smile on my face.

"Only because I knew that you'd be early," he tells me with a boyish grin on his face.

"I'm supposed to be early," I say. "Being the manager means I'm supposed to see who comes in late."

"Manager?" Vance laughs. "That's a good one Twisted. Why don't you tell another?"

"You must have not gotten the memo," I smirk. "Richard gave me the manager position over Christmas. I'm now your boss."

Vance's eyes narrow but then he smiles and runs over to me. "Congratulations girl!" He screams as he picks me up off my feet and spins around. "I knew you'd beat Tessa for the promotion."

It's way too early for me to be spinning around. "Vance, Sweetie, put me down." He gives me one last squeeze then lets my feet touch solid ground again. "And I didn't beat Tessa for the promotion. She got fired."

"Oh my gosh!" Vance sucks in a breath of air and puts both his hands over his mouth. "What happened?"

"She used our network to hack into the school's network so that she could change the grade she got in her abnormal psychology class." I explain quickly. "The disciplinary board kicked her out of school."

Vance's hands drop and he gives me a curious stare. "Aren't you on the disciplinary board as a student representative?"

"Yeah," I sigh. "I didn't sit on the case though, because it wouldn't be ethical."

"Tessa must hate you," Vance replies. "You got her job and you didn't help her out with the board."

Before I can reply the door swings open and Sherri rushes in. "Is Richard here yet?" She asks hurrying over to Vance and me. "He said he'd write me up if I was late again if I didn't have a really good reason for it, and for some reason I don't think waking up late because I was having sex all night is a good reason to give him."

"No," I shake my head. "Richard isn't here. He's not actually going to be here today."

"Oh," Sherri takes a quick look around. "Why?"

"Meet our new manager woman," Vance moves next to me and slides his arm across my shoulders, "Twisted Oaks."

"Oh," Sherri's brain looks like it's working a lot harder than it ever should. "My car broke down?" she says weakly.

Vance looks between Sherri and me and then lets out a bark of laughter. "Yeah right," he snorts.

"Vance," I smile at him. "You were late too."

"Not as late as her," he points to Sherri. "Compared to her I was on time."

"Children," I sigh. "I'm working with children." I put my hands on my hips and put on the best authoritative face I own. "Since today is our first day back from break, you're both officially off the hook." They each smile happily. "But it also means that Sherri gets stuck with cleaning out the bathrooms and Vance gets stuck cleaning out the back while I stay in front and serve the refreshments." They both groan but don't dare say anything since they both know they're getting off easy.

I walk away from them and flip the 'we're closed' sign to the 'we're open' position and move behind the counter. Vance and Sherri watch me for a moment then shuffle off to do their assigned tasks.

This manager thing might actually be kind of cool.

***

It's an hour into my shift and the café is already too busy. I've just finished serving my latest customer and am picking my head up to smile at the next.

"What can I get for?" I start to say but trail off when I realize it's Tessa standing across from me. "What do you want?" I ask instead.

"I don't want anything," she responds sweetly. "I only wanted to tell you that I'm going to make the next semester absolute Hell for you. It's now my life's mission to make sure that your life is very painful and I'm going to do my very best to make you pay for what you did to me."

"Tessa, you did it to yourself," I tell her softly. "It's not my fault."

"You're the one that turned me in!" she yells. "Nothing would have happened if you hadn't done that. I would have been able to graduate this year!"

Oh? so she found out about that did she? I thought that was supposed to be confidential.

"That's right, Twisted, I know your dirty little secret," Tessa smiles at me evilly. "I know it was you. I spent the entire winter break figuring out who turned me in, and quite honestly it wasn't that hard to figure out. You're the only one here who is enough of a nerd to figure out what I was doing."

Grasping desperately for some kind of end to my silence, I think of to say, "Well you're a nerd too."

Tessa looks at me weird then shakes her head, "That's not the point. The point is that I'm going to first find your car and somehow get it towed. Then I'm going to figure out your class schedule and make sure to follow you to every one and sit behind you in the class and tap on your shoulder the entire time so that you can't take any notes and are doomed to fail. Then I'm going to find out where you live and move into the apartment next to yours so that I can blare music all night long so that it'll keep you awake and you'll never sleep again. Then I'm going to-"

"-Can we discuss this some other time when I don't have a long line behind you?" I ask without patience.

Tessa turns to face the woman standing behind her and mutters a quick apology and steps off to the side. I give a mental shake of my head then smile at my next customer and take their order. I fill the order then turn to the next customer and continue this with Tessa yelling out different orders as the paying customer is telling me theirs. She's not able to disrupt my focus even though she is being really annoying.

Eventually it's time for me to leave and go to my first class of the day. I leave Vance in charge and gather my things. Tessa is next to me the entire time not talking but walking a little too close to me for me to be completely comfortable.

Once I reach my class I stop before walking in and turn to Tessa. "You should really give up on this," I tell her. "You're really bad at it and if the campus police catch you on campus then they'll put you in jail."

"Well how would they know I'm here," she replies smugly.

"Because they're walking down the hallway right now staring straight at you," I point to the two officers walking in our direction.

"Shit!" Tessa stands for a moment staring at them then takes off running in the other direction. The two officers take off after her and I'm free to go into my classroom.

There are only three desks left and they're all conveniently situated in the front row and they're all right-handed desks, something I've been plagued with since the beginning of my college days.

I take one of the seats in the front and throw my notebook and pen on the desktop. As soon as I've made myself moderately comfortable the instructor steps in and almost looks like she's had a tougher last couple of hours than I have.

"Good afternoon everyone," she says hurriedly. "I'm sorry but I'm not completely prepared to teach this class today. Unfortunately, I wasn't told that I was going to be teaching this class until a few minutes ago so I don't have a syllabus with me, but I do have the roll sheet." She waves some paper in the air and I'm assuming it's the roll.

"Okay so I'll just call out your names then try to prepare you as much as I can for our next class."

She starts calling out names and since my name usually comes up close to last or last, I lean back in my chair and patiently wait for my name to come up.

"Stacey Winslow?" She takes a quick look around sees the girl's hand behind me raised then turns her attention back to the piece of paper in her hand. "I think there's a mistake on my roll." She looks at the paper for a long time then brings up her pencil to mark on the paper when I decide she's probably getting ready to cross me off the roll.

"Twisted Oaks Woodhaven," I say slowly. "The name is correct."

Her face scrunches up. "Really?"

I nod.

"Well okay," she draws out. "Then I guess everyone is here today."

For the next ten minutes I listen to her prattle on about course requirements and university rules when a campus police officer steps into the room and asks the teacher if they can speak with Twisted for a moment.

Before she replies I stand up from the desk and walk out of the room. Outside is standing one of the officers that ran after Tessa. She's a fairly tall woman, but still slightly shorter than me. Her expression looks quite serious, and I'm curious if Tessa accidentally ran into a car as she was trying to run away.

"Yes Officer," I lean forward to get a look at her badge, "Whitfield, what can I help you with?"

"Well we just arrested Tessa Abbot and she gave us a statement about you." Officer Whitfield flips open a notepad. "She said, and I quote, 'Twisted Oaks is evil and deserves to die. Die. Die. Not that I would kill her or anything, because killing people is a bad thing to do. I only talked to one assassin and I don't even think he was a real one. I just think he wanted to get into my pants'." Officer Whitfield flipped the notepad shut and looked up at me. "Do you want to tell us what's going on?"

"Sure," I groan. "Tessa Abbot was caught by me during finals week altering her grade in abnormal psychology. I'm a student representative of the disciplinary board and didn't do anything to keep Tessa in school. I also got the job promotion at our work that she wanted," I pause to think for a moment. "Oh, and she had to put off her graduation, which I think was supposed to be after this semester. She's a third year senior."

"Third year?" Officer Whitfield asks.

"Yeah. In total, I think she was on her seventh year of undergrad. It took her a while to choose a major and to stick with it," I helpfully explain.

"Did you happen to do anything else to her?" The officer who pulled me out of my class asks from behind me.

Okay I'm a little offended by what his question is implying. I didn't 'do' anything to her. She did this all on her own. I didn't force her to change her grades or change her major like five billion times. "I didn't do anything else to her, no." I answer respectfully.

"Well Tessa wants to see you. We're keeping her detained at the police department." Officer Whitfield tells me curtly, but I still don't get why they pulled me out of class. Do they expect me to go talk to her?

"Well it's good you have her, then." I turn to go back into my classroom but Officer NoName grabs hold of my arm.

"You should really go see her."

"Why?" They can't arrest me for not seeing a person who harassed me all day, can they? That would be a blatant disregard of all my rights as a student.

"Cause ma'am she won't stop crying until she sees you and she's making the entire police department very uncomfortable, ma'am."

They came and got me because Tessa is crying?

***

Ten minutes later I'm sitting across from Tessa who is handcuffed to a chair wiping off her snot on her shirt sleeve talking in a language I can hardly piece together. "I jus dun know wha ta doo. Mah pazents kiked meh oud ze hoise and I'se gut niwere ti goo. I wus hippin I culd stey wif yew, cus I know uves gut roooom."

I think she's asking if I can ever forgive her. "Yeah, sure." I smile not really one to hold any grudges. Forgiveness is a wonderful thing. I nod once then get up out of my chair. "I hope you get everything settled and things work out for you." That's a genuine statement too. I really hope everything works out for her.

Without much thought to it, I walk out of the police station and head home. It's been an incredibly long day. I just want to go home and get some rest before tomorrow starts.