The blue ink on the sticky note was fading, but the words still felt like a punch to the gut.

“I copied the first three chapters; please don’t hate me. I left it at the front desk.”

Zoe stared at the note in her empty library cubicle, her heart racing. Someone had taken her binder, copied part of it and claimed to have left it at the front desk. But when Zoe went downstairs, there was no sign of it.

It was 8:00 p.m. The final pharmacology exam, which she had studied so hard for, was in exactly 12 hours. Her master study guide — 50 pages of hand-drawn diagrams and colour-coded drug interactions that she had spent three weeks making — was gone.

“What do you mean you don’t have it?” Zoe asked, her voice trembling as she leaned over the library’s front desk.

The worker, a tall guy with headphones around his neck, didn’t even look up from his computer. “If it’s not in the box behind me, nobody turned it in. People leave stuff here all the time. It shows up… eventually,” he muttered, uninterested.

“I don’t have time for ‘eventually’!” Zoe said, trying to keep her voice down. “My exam is at eight tomorrow morning.”

“Sorry,” the worker replied, finally looking up with a sympathetic shrug. “Maybe try the quiet study rooms upstairs?”

Zoe ran up the stairs, her sneakers squeaking loudly on the polished floors. She checked every single desk on the third floor, but there was no sign of her thick, black binder. Just as she was about to sit on the floor and cry, her phone buzzed. A text had come through in her class group chat.

Hey, does anyone have notes on the autonomic nervous system?

An idea clicked in her mind. Zoe quickly typed a message: My black binder was taken from the second-floor library cubicles. If anyone saw someone copying a binder tonight, please let me know! I really need it back.

Two minutes later, her phone vibrated. A classmate named Ryan replied: “I saw a girl with a black binder copying pages at the library printer around 7:30 p.m. She looked really stressed. I think she lives in Dorm B.”

Zoe didn’t waste a second. She grabbed her backpack and ran out of the library into the cool night air, heading straight for Dorm B.

When she arrived, she realised she had a big problem. Dorm B had four floors and over 50 rooms. She couldn’t just knock on every door. Helpless, she sat on the brick steps outside, feeling completely defeated. The clock on her phone read 9:15 p.m.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Zoe looked up. A girl with tired eyes and messy hair was walking up the steps, holding a paper cup of coffee. Under her arm, she was carrying a stack of freshly printed papers.

Zoe gasped. The top page of the stack had a very specific hand-drawn diagram of a heart.

“That’s my diagram,” Zoe said, standing up quickly.

The girl froze, her eyes widening in realisation. “Wait… are you Zoe? The binder owner?”

“Yes! Where is it?” Zoe asked, a mix of anger and relief in her voice.

The girl’s face turned bright red. “I am so, so sorry. My name is Clara. My laptop crashed this afternoon and I lost all my notes. I panicked and then I saw your binder sitting on the desk. It was so perfect, and I… I made a bad choice. I took it to the copier and copied the first three chapters. I even left a note saying I was sorry and that I’d left the binder at the front desk.”

Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “But it wasn’t there.”

“I know,” Clara said. “I went back downstairs, but then I got scared that you’d catch me. I gave the binder to a guy in a red hoodie who said he was working at the front desk. He told me he’d return it for me.”

Zoe felt her stomach drop. “The guy at the front desk wasn’t wearing a red hoodie. He was in a grey T-shirt.”

Clara covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh no. He told me he was taking over the shift.”

“Who was he?” Zoe asked, desperation creeping back into her voice.

“I don’t know his name,” Clara said. “But I think he’s in my chemistry class. He’s always wearing that red hoodie. He usually studies in the 24-hour campus diner,” she quickly added.

Ten minutes later, Zoe and Clara rushed through the diner doors. The smell of grease and cheap coffee hit them. They scanned the booths. Sitting in the very back corner, with a plate of half-eaten fries and a giant black binder open in front of him, was a guy in a red hoodie.

Zoe walked straight up to his table and tapped on the plastic cover of her binder. “I believe this belongs to me,” Zoe said, her voice firm.

The guy jumped, looking guilty. “Uh, sorry. I was just… borrowing it. The front desk was closed.”

“You lied to Clara and you took my work,” Zoe said, pulling the binder towards her. “I worked on this for three weeks.”

“I’m sorry,” the guy mumbled, looking down at his fries. “I was just desperate.”

Zoe hugged the binder tightly. She looked at Clara, who was standing behind her, looking incredibly guilty.

“Look,” Zoe sighed, taking a deep breath. “I got my binder back. That’s all I care about.”

Clara looked up. “I really am sorry, Zoe. I shouldn’t have touched your things.”

Zoe glanced at her notes, then at the clock on the diner wall. It was 9:50 p.m. “Since you already copied my notes, do you want to study together? I could use a partner to quiz me.”

Clara’s face lit up. “Really? I would love that. I’ll buy the coffee.”

They slid into an empty booth across the aisle. For the next seven hours, the two girls drank coffee, pointed at diagrams and memorised terms. By the time the sun had started to rise, they were exhausted, but they knew the material inside and out.

At 8:00 a.m., Zoe walked into the exam hall. She was tired, but as she looked at the questions on the paper, she smiled. She knew the material inside and out — and she was ready for the exam.

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 5th, 2026