Vulnerability

“Alright, time. Everyone, pencils down. I don’t want to see anyone writing any further.”

I had finished scrawling down my last answer not seconds before the proctor announced time. I was about to breathe a sigh of relief now that the exam was over, but, as I prepared to hand my papers forward, I noticed at the last second that I had forgotten to write my name and the date at the top. My heart jumped as I crouched forward, hoping Jordan’s board shoulders in the seat ahead of me would hide my pencil strokes as I hastily jotted down the missing identification information.

“Proctor called time, Ross. Hand it up,” Jordan turned in his seat and reached for my test smugly, but I had already finished by then.

“Nice try, asshole, it was just my name that I almost forgot,” I sneered back, letting Jordan take the papers from my desk and passed them forward along with his own. The disagreeable guy scowled, realizing he hadn’t caught me as off guard as he’d hoped.

I maintained my air of indifference until he had turned away before allowing myself a cringe.

“Realize you made a mistake already?” My friend Ian chuckled as he wandered over to chat now that the test was over. The dark brown skinned young man leaned casually against my desk, his cargo pants bulging as usual with who knew what odds and ends he loved stuffing in the pockets of the retro threads.

I shook my head and grabbed my bag, turning away so that Jordan wouldn’t overhear; Ian followed the short way from my desk to the back of the classroom. “Nah, just wrote 2102 instead of 2103 for the year.”

Ian laughed, snorting slightly. “I’ve done that before. We’re only a month into the new year, so it happens. Luckily most things auto-fill or timestamp these days. Sucks that this course is required for us – it’s one of the few with a professor that still insists on using physical media exams. Oh, here, I grabbed your phone for you while I was up getting mine.”

“Thanks,” I sighed, accepting my phone with one hand and wagging my mechanical pencil at my friend with the other. “Seriously, they make us go out and buy a friggin antique just for this class.”

“If it were all digital like the other classes, everyone would just look up all the answers online, like in other classes,” Jordan asserted, inviting himself into our conversation. He and Ian bumped fists, but he knew better by now than to try offering the same gesture to me. “Why else do we have to surrender our phones before we start?” They were friends, God knows why; bless Ian for being able to get along with anyone.

“I dunno. If the questions are so straightforward that an Internet connection was all that was required to cheat, then maybe it’s not the technology that’s the problem. Despite what you’re implying most other digital classes don’t have an issue with cheating just because we can be online at the same time.” I shot back, unlocking my phone to see a waiting message. It was from my girlfriend, Carole.

I glanced up across the room, spotting Carole herself with her friends. The adorable redhead noticed my look and hid a mischievous smile behind her own phone’s hot pink case. Her blouse today was a creamy off white with a light pink floral pattern and puffy, frilly short sleeves. I caught a glimpse of her knees squirming a little, black dyed denim capris that fit tight to her thin figure. One of her friends, a cute short haired blonde with freckles named Amy if I recalled, said something that drew her attention and she answered them, her cherry glazed lips reappearing in my view as she lowered her phone, but the girls were too far away for me to overhear. I was, however, close enough to hear Jordan still running his mouth.

“Technology has advanced disproportionately in the last hundred years because of industrial lobbying power.” Jordan grumbled. “We have autonomous android servants dressed in advanced skins that make them virtually indistinguishable from normal people, yet science has yet to figure out teleportation and lobbyists have us still using cars with tires because, heaven forbid an antiquated industry like tire production go out of business. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the true disappointment is that modern society has been dealing with the same social issues from hundreds of years ago, like transphobia and homophobia, and those two in particular have somehow gotten worse than they were a hundred years ago!”

“Hate to remind you, but homophobia and transphobia have basically been around for all of recorded history. If we haven’t stamped them out yet, chances are, we won’t ever,” I responded tiredly. It was becoming a stock response when Jordan inevitably steered conversation to these topics.

On principal, “Love-rights” was, blessedly, something Jordan and I agreed on: everyone should just mind their damn business and let other people love who they want. Assuming their partner loves them back, of course. But the way Jordan always managed to bend every conversation to these topics had quickly become tiring. I suspected Ian felt similarly. The otherwise unflappable and chill guy frequently seemed eager to change the subject when Jordan brought it up.

“Oookay. You know, this is a fascinating debate I’ve heard twenty times now, but don’t you suppose we could move on from the classroom?” Ian interjected, sensing things getting heated. I sighed and nodded as we filed out of the classroom.

“Just because it’s always been a problem doesn’t mean we should get complacent and stop fighting it!” Jordan made his usual closing remark on the topic

“Alright,” Ian clapped his hands, drawing our attention. “Regardless of exams or human rights, it’s Ross’s turn to pick a place for dinner tonight. You wanted to go to Arnold’s Diner, right?”

“Wow, that was a transition. Actually, though, sorry guys, something came up. You and Steve can go get dinner without me,” I announced carefully.

Ian blinked. “Hm? Sure, alright, I suppose. I thought you were finally looking forward to getting to pick Arnie’s Diner, but sometimes it do be that way, right? I’ll call Steve and see if he still wants to go there or somewhere else.”

“You guys were getting dinner together?” Jordan piped up, following Ian as the latter dialed up our mutual friend. “I know a place that just opened up…”

With my friends on their way out, I hefted my bag over my shoulder and glanced across the room once again. Carole and her friends had already left. I smiled to myself. Wouldn’t want to keep her waiting.