I left it in my room

"It's back in my room," I spoke with a hushed voice, trying to remind Jake that this was the library. It suddenly dawned on me that Jake had intended to let me copy the file here. "Can I just borrow the drive? I'll give it back to you on Tuesday."

Jake frowned. "I need it for uh...other work I need to do this weekend. Is your place far?"

"It's just a few blocks away," I whispered without fully thinking through what Jake was asking.

"Good, let's go there and you can copy the file."

"Um...ok, but you'll have to wait in the lobby," I finally replied. I explained how my dorm had a strict guest policy for after-hour visits. Jake seemed surprised by that, but accepted the condition. He tossed his laptop in his pack and we headed out.

The walk across the edge of campus to my dorm was filled with an awkward silence. I had the sense that Jake's mind was on other things, and my attempts at small talk evoked little more than nods and a simple "yeah". Jake walked with a strange gait, stepping awkwardly at times, and continually falling behind my pace. I gave up trying to slowdown to match his speed after a few attempts to do so led to a near collision. Looking down, I noticed that one of his shoes seemed a bit oversized, leading me to wonder if he might suffer from some kind of rare birth defect.

When we finally reached my dorm, I left Jake in the lobby and headed up to my room. Inside, there was no sign of my roommate - her job kept her away most nights. I grabbed my laptop, woke it out of sleep mode and plugged in the jump drive. It paused for a few moments and then showed a message that it need to download and install a driver. I reflexively pressed OK, and waited. It didn't seem to be making progress, and after a while I began to worry that perhaps the drive was damaged or not compatible. After what seemed like an eternity, the setup finally completed and I had access to the drive. It contained a document called "Lab1_TnA.doc" and a folder named "My Stuff". I took a quick look at the lab file and copied it to my drive. I briefly considered taking a look at what was in the My Stuff folder, but that seemed like an invasion of privacy.