the end

It's a sunny Saturday morning, and I'm in the basement of the Economics building. Fellow students slouch by in basketball shorts or sweats, no makeup on their sullen faces. Crumpled casualties of cramming lie everywhere, sprawled and unmoving in their own notes.

I squat on the floor with my textbook besides a ashen-faced junior. She is eating junky vending machine fare, her free hand twitching as she mutters equations between each grim bite. (I don't judge--I myself had four Oreos for breakfast). Shrill laughter rings from the hysterical study group down the hall and the junior flinches at the sound. My iPod batteries are long dead, but I put my headphones in anyway. I try to focus because my test is in twenty minutes, and it's worth thirty percent of my grade.

Finals are terrible.