Discovering The Real Luke

(Apologies if this chapter isn't up to my usual standard, I've been ill over the past few days so I that you enjoy this chapter again and will make up the lack of sex scene in the next chapter)

Facing Fate

Getting back home, AJ is sitting on the couch playing the PS5 shirtless and looking really good right now, I sit down next to him and check on him “How are you doing this afternoon bro?” I say putting my arm around him as he jumps at me touching his muscled bare back.

“Doing much better, how about you? I thought you were only going to be an hour or so” he says to me as I nod. “That’s what I intended but then I rang Dad to just talk to him and get advice” AJ’s eyes go big as I say that because like me, he is surprised that I’d talk things through with Dad.

“That would’ve been an awkward conversation with your Dad I’m guessing” AJ’s point was how I thought was going to be. “Well, I thought it was but it just felt normal, I think I misjudged him so much during all this” AJ nods and I can see him thinking about what my conversation with Dad would have been like.

“We just talked about what happened with us this morning and Dad gave me some really good advice and it was just nice to talk to him” AJ smiles as he says that because I know he was worried about my relationship with the family.

AJ puts his arm around me “I’m glad you talked to him; I know that it’s been a tough time for you and that you were scared” he says as I nod thinking about it. Sitting there, I start criticising AJ’s playing ability before he shoves the controller into my chest “If you think that you can do better than fucking go for it” he says as I laugh.

Playing through the level that he seemed to fail at multiple times I get through it first go and give him back the controller “I knew I could do better” I say to him as he just rolls his eyes and laughs.

The two of us sitting here already feel more relaxed than what we have done in the past few weeks and especially this morning makes me feel so much better about things. AJ looks at me “I know you wanted a weekend free of the other thing, but I assume you talked to your Dad about the college thing?” he says to me as I nod.

“Yeah, he told me everything that you were probably going to I’m guessing, he said that the first thing I need to do is get in contact with them on Monday and find what the actual issue is because I cannot defend myself to the maximum ability if I don’t know what the issue is,” I say to AJ as he nods at me.

“Honestly, I didn’t even think of that I was just looking at your work and proving a consistent theme in your assignments that show the common build of how they haven’t had plagiarism issues before,” he says as I smile and hug him. “I know I snapped, but I appreciate that you went to all that effort for me” we’re in a good place again as I see AJ smile.

I get up and head to my room for a minute “Call me if you need me to do this next level for you” I call out to AJ as he just throws a cushion at me which misses. Heading to my room, I look at the stuff AJ did for me this morning and try to figure out what could be plagiarised in my report which is interesting because going back through the plagiarism checker the report still only shows up at 2% which is well within the limits”.

AJ comes wandering in a little while later “Do you need my help again?” he shakes his head and says that he has given up playing for the day and instead just wants to spend some time with me. I get up off my bed and head out to the couch with him as now he has the footy on and we sit there as AJ orders pizza, two different ones with extra chilli for him and mine without any chilli at all.

Going next door to invite the boys over, it feels like old times as we all just sit there and chill together about things as we just have a good old-fashioned boys’ night. Sunday is pretty relaxed as we just chill at home before AJ heads out with a few friends.

The next day, I head to the college to see someone from the Academic Review Board because I want to see somebody about what is going to happen so I can defend myself. Putting on a professional-looking business shirt and brown chinos, I head to the offices to see if I can see someone.

My stomach is churning as I walk into the offices and go to reception “I am wondering if I could speak to somebody on the academic review board, it’s a very important matter” I say to the receptionist who just brushes me off.

“The academic review board does not see people without an appointment and they are unavailable for appointments unless they request it,” the receptionist says to me without looking up from her desk.

“Excuse me, they’ve requested to see me on Thursday,” I say as the receptionist looks up at me and claps back “Oh Thursday… did I sleep through the first three days of the week? I thought it was only Monday when I woke up”.

Her tone irritates me significantly as I try hard not to lose my cool with the pompous bitch who thinks that she is superior because she works for the college admin. “Look, this is very important and I need to speak to someone now about Thursday otherwise there will be a few major issues for the college if I cannot speak to someone right now,” I say to the receptionist who groans and after plenty of pleading says that she will see if anybody is available.

Unfortunately, there is nobody available and I ask for the plagiarism policy of the College which I couldn’t get online and to see what the whole process is. In the end, it’s a waste of time because I’m told that it’s not college policy to inform the person of the issue until they face the board which for me feels like it’s already a bit of a guilty before innocent situation.

Heading home, I work on my defence to show that I didn’t plagiarise but I don’t even know whether I’m looking at the right things to protect myself although I’m pretty confident that I’ve covered everything.

I ring Dad who answers it quite weirdly “Hello, this is Greg Munro… oh yes thank you for calling me back this afternoon,” he says as I don’t realise that he’s trying to cover talking to me. “

“Dad it’s me, Luke,” I say as I hear him excusing himself to what I assume must be Mum as he heads outside and I can hear him closing the door. “Of course I know it’s you, Luke, I didn’t want your mother hearing me talking to you right now,” he says as I both roll my eyes and smile.

“How’d you go today?” he asks as my sigh tells him everything that he needed to know about what happened. “Oh, that badly?” he asks as I fill him on the details about being stonewalled.

“Yeah, I turned up there and asked if I could see someone about Thursday which I got the receptionist from hell who was a stuck-up sarcastic bitch who made snide comments and then when I gave the details I got told it was College policy to not to give details until the review board meeting,” I say which Dad goes ballistic about.

“They cannot be serious, that seriously sounds like that it’s just a decision made when they get the first complaint, it would be borderline illegal” I can hear the anger in Dad’s voice as I have him on speaker phone to read through the things with him.

I take a deep breath “Look, I’m confident enough in what I’ve done I can show them that all my work is related to the same topic and the pictures I used were all my own that I took when we came to visit and from before” I say as AJ gets in as I’m talking to Dad.

“Well I know that you can handle this Luke, but I’ve got to head off because your mother is looking for me and I can see her staring in the window,” he says as he goes to leave. “Dad you still keen to come down to the game for my birthday? I just wanna organise everything nice and early” I ask him as he sounds excited.

“Yeah definitely, I just need to find somewhere to stay first,” he says as AJ comes over to me “You can stay with us in the spare room if you want Mr Munro,” AJ says as Dad sounds surprised about the offer and hearing AJ.

Dad’s voice sounds like he’s a kid at Christmas hearing AJ “Oh hi AJ, that would be amazing I’ll work out the details with you later” he says as we agree to talk again later in the week, hopefully, if schedules allow it.

Wandering over to me AJ gives me a quick hug “So how did today go, know what the issue is?” he says as I shake my head as he is talking and he rolls his eyes. “Oh really, so they can’t even tell you what the issue is? How are you supposed to defend it?” he says as I just shrug.

“Beguile them with all this,” I say smiling as AJ shakes his head and goes to organise dinner for us as we just talk about the day. At dinner, AJ looks at me “I don’t want to get negative but have you thought about what you’re going to do if you don’t succeed at defending yourself” he says to me as I have been thinking about it.

“Honestly, I’ve thought about it but I’m just focussing on winning my case so to speak and then studying next semester and beyond,” my attitude tells shows that I’m pretty confident but at the same point I am really not confident given that I only get one chance.

The next few days are totally tense until it gets to Thursday morning when I get up super early and instead of being nervous, I’m actually excited about what is going to happen today. I look at the time and see that it’s only just gone 6 am and I head down to the gym where it’s quite busy but I get a really good workout in for about 2 hours before I head home.

Getting back home, AJ looks a bit panicked as he sees me getting “Morning bro, you alright you look frazzled” I say smiling as he quickly puts a smile onto his face after a sigh of relief. “I told you I was going down to the gym for a while” he looks at me and punches me.

“Yeah, but I thought it was gonna be a quickie, not a full two-hour session,” he says laughing with a sense of relief as I wander and take a shower before AJ gives me one of his expensive suits so that I look amazing for my meeting.

AJ and I do a bit of practice on how I am going to present my case to the Academic Review Board which involves me essentially showing everything is my work and I know what I am talking about so on why would I be plagiarising my report.

I head to the college office and get there about 15 minutes early and wait for the meeting, when I’m sitting there I see a very interesting conclusion to a meeting as I see the acting Dean farewelling a very important person. “Your contribution to the academic foundation is well received and of course, the prize for highest first-year achiever will of course not be in your name,” she says to the gentleman whose face looks familiar but I can’t place it right now which bugs me a lot.

It's about 9:40 when I get called into the meeting room and see the full academic board sitting there as I walk in and sit down. “Mr Munro, thank you for attending this meeting regarding a charge of Academic Dishonesty – Plagiarism”

The secretary of the meeting reads the policy of how the meeting will go down, the charge the board believed happened and then the review process which they tell me can take anywhere from 10 minutes to a couple of hours or even days in some cases.

The acting dean sits there “Mr Munro, you were requested to this meeting because there were claims that your Major report Franklin – A town stuck in the past was not your own work but plagiarised; Do you understand the allegations that have been put forward?” she asks as I give the honest answer.

“Honestly, No I don’t at all because this is an absolute waste of everybody’s time and all a total lot of absolute bullshit,” I say letting my frustration get the better of me before I get admonished for my tone of voice.

The look on the acting dean’s face is one of pure anger “Mr Munro, I remind you that this is a very serious matter and that your behaviour matters a lot in this situation” she says to me as I apologise even though I don’t really mean it.

“Mr Munro, plagiarism detection software that is used when reviewing grading found a very high similarity to another document that was placed online at the website downloadessays.net which is a website where people upload previously created essays and reports as a guide and learning tool going forward,” she says in a tone that is almost saying that I just ripped it off completely that website.

“Do you admit that your essay was taken directly from this website and then minorly edited and placed your name on it?” the acting Dean says to me as I looked surprised. “Mr Munro, admission of guilt goes down a lot better in your circumstance than what it would if eventually you were found guilty”. Her tone of voice tells me that I should be admitting to this “I remind you a finding of guilty will disqualify you from every educational institution in this country” she says basically implying that I am going to be found guilty.

“I absolutely do not and will not admit that any of my document is plagiarised and I believe that there is more than enough evidence in my favour that will prove to you that in fact that this is my own work,” I say very confident in myself as I see the acting dean almost roll her eyes in disgust that I want to fight this.

Sitting there, evidence gets presented that most of the essay is a similar word for word to what I had to say about Franklin in my report although the quotes are quite different which is what they allege that I actually changed in my report.

As they mount the evidence for quite a bit of time, it’s mostly the acting dean who is doing the presenting which bothers me because she is also a jury member so to speak and I don’t think it’s exactly fair if she thinks that I’ve done something how I get a fair hearing.

We take a ten-minute break as I go out to get some fresh air and I text AJ

10:14 am “This is not going well, they won’t listen to a thing I say and the Acting Dean is telling me there can be a deal”.

 I’m sweating up a storm in the few minutes that I’m outside as AJ finally gets back to me as I’m about to head inside to present my case.

10:19 am “You know you’ve got this bro” he replies with a flexing arm emoji to remind me of how strong I am.

I walk into the room and sit down “Acting Dean, members of the academic review board, today I present to you my proof beyond a reasonable doubt that I did not plagiarise my work and that I am the victim of targeted harassment” I say as I get ready to present my evidence.

“I would like to present Page A, this should be enough to prove my case, this is my receipt of submission from the CheckIt Plagiarism system that each piece of work goes through when submitting any course work no matter the subject,” I say quite confident that this should be enough.

I take a deep breath “As you can see, it has returned a 2% plagiarism rate which is well below the 10% leeway that is granted with this project from the class” I think that this might be the winner but I keep going.

I keep presenting small bits of evidence, not everything I have but what I think is enough to overwhelmingly prove that I didn’t plagiarise any work. After presenting, I start to take the questions of the Academic Review Board.

“Luke, you’ve presented plenty of evidence that makes us question these claims of plagiarism but how do you suggest that this essay that was clearly dated in 2019 has such similarity to yours including the pictures that were used?” I say not even knowing that there were pictures to the report as they slide across the piece of paper from me.

I look at the pictures and recognise they are edited versions of my pictures which I know are not taken from anywhere because I used pictures of the collection of photos I still have on my laptop and old phone.

“I cannot explain the similarities between my report and the one that is produced right there” I let out a sigh “Right then is the first time that I have ever seen the work that I have supposedly plagiarised and I have never been on that website ever”. My sigh probably makes them think I’m feeling defeated which I am because I was hoping they’d sit there and just go yep that’s not plagiarised.

After what feels like forever of questions and showing them proof that the photos in the article are actually mine both on the laptop that I brought in with me and I hope that everything is proven to them as I think most of the academic review board have taken my heartfelt explanation as being genuine. Little do I know, the acting Dean has one more question up her sleeve that might swing things away from me.

“Mr Munro, you’ve shown us lovely photos of your hometown of Franklin, but if you’re so adamant that your report is not plagiarised and honestly considering that this essay dated from 2019 was practically the same as yours, how do you suggest that this is the case?”

My mind is stuck in a vortex trying to think how it could happen which is a relatively fair question and probably far-fetched as I remember about my USB being stolen in the library and think could it be the case. “Well Mrs Nolan, I think a big part of the essay might be to look at when it was actually uploaded to the website in regards to when I submitted the essay because that might give you a clue on whether I knew about it,” I say looking at her “And might explain why I had one of my USB’s stolen in the library a couple of weeks back when I was working on it”.

The meeting finishes, I think I finished with the upper hand as I go and get something to eat at the Cafeteria when I run into Cam “Oh… Luke hey man, what are you doing here?’ he says to me as I’m not really feeling in the mood to chat.

“Oh hey, Cam, I had to front the academic review board because supposedly they think that I plagiarised my final report,” I say sitting down across from him as he throws his head back and mutters something under his breath.

I slam my hand down on the table “Should have known that you’d have been on this as well” I say realising that this again was all a conspiracy against me from none other than Amy Walters. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Luke,” he says as I don’t believe anything.

“You know what, I might look like a dumb muscle jock but I’m not, I’m a smart guy and I thought I’d proven that” Cam looks at me trying to make an excuse after I said that. “I don’t know anything about what’s going on,” he says as I just look at him and gesture to take this outside to not create a scene.

We go outside as I look at him “Don’t play that innocent card with me, I know it was you who sent me those messages on my OnlyFans channel that nobody, absolutely nobody here knew about so why?” I say wanting an explanation about what was going on “How did you even know about it?” I ask him as he realises he’s up shit creek without a paddle.

“Alright, it was me sending you those messages it wasn’t my idea it was Amy’s,” he says to me as we sit on the wall together. “I discovered that you had one because I’m gay and I followed your boyfriend or whatever he is and then saw you when he was promoting it,” he says looking quite upset by it.

I know that Cam feels bad but I can’t feel sorry for him yet “Look, I told Amy because she was getting jealous of you and I thought that maybe she leaking your pic out to everyone might be a thing but she told me to start sending you messages threatening to out you… I never was going to do that and I edited the messages so that they weren’t nasty and because I didn’t know you, I thought everything she told me was right about you and with what I needed to do to get a good job… I did it”.

Cam sits there almost crying right now “When you started talking to me, I found that you were a pretty friendly guy and after everything that was said I felt bad but I was between a rock and a hard place and I wanted the messages to not be threatening anymore,” he says as I understand why he changed the tone of the messages but I’m still upset that he did it.

“What do you know about the plagiarism complaint?” I say to him as I look at him “I can keep your name out of the trouble for now, but I need to know what happened because this is not just this subject that I fail and get disqualified from, I get banned from every Educational institution in the country for life” I say to him as Cam gets really upset.

“I don’t know the details, Amy said that she had a plan to knock you down a peg because she realised that you weren’t going to be stopped so she, Jake and Ben were coming up with a plan and I didn’t get included because why would I?” he says to me as I look and nod towards him as he continues with what he knew.

“The three of them used to meet after college and they came up with a plan and I think it was Ben who did it all this time because of course Amy isn’t going to get her hands dirty doing anything the selfish fucking bitch” Cam’s anger really telling although I don’t know whether that’s towards them or the situation that I know it all.

I look across at him “Ben was the guy who borrowed the textbook off my desk at the library wasn’t it?” I ask as he nods. “He came back over as I got sent to get everyone drinks from the machine saying that he got it and the plan could come off,” he says as I look at him.

“This is going to be hard, but I need you to come with me Cam to the main office to the review board, this is something that they need to hear,” I say to him as he shakes his head. “No way, not with the connections Amy and her family have on that board,” he says as I look at him.

I quickly realise that the meeting this morning that I saw was the acting Dean and Geoffrey Walters, who is Amy’s dad and the prize would be going back into his funds which means that he could write it off as a charitable donation so get it back twice. “Cam, this is my whole life at stake, I need you to help me and I know so much that is going to see Amy win at her games and I know that everybody else loses”.

Cam sits there for a while before reluctantly agreeing to him “Yes alright, but I hope that you can forgive me for what I did because I never wanted to hurt you because I like you… really like you” he says embarrassed as I realise he’s attracted to me but I can’t get into that right now.

We head to the academic office, “We would like to see the academic review board now please, it’s regarding the meeting that occurred this morning” the receptionist thinks through and tells us that the board is willing to reconvene in five minutes to listen to what I have to say.

Getting into the room, I stand up “Prior to the completion of our meeting this morning, I was asked how I thought that how my work was uploaded without my knowledge, my classmate Cameron would like to give his story that I did not know about until then to explain the details” I say as I’m asked to leave the room.

It’s about 20 minutes later, I’m sitting there nervous as hell as Cam comes out deathly pale but relieved that it’s over “I’m glad that I did that for you, never been so scared in my life but I guess what happens is what I deserved” he says to me as he looks upset. “I told them about the blackmail threats so when you tell the police, I’ll understand” I follow him outside.

“I’m not taking the blackmail any further and never was once I found it was you” the surprise on his face is enormous as he looks at me. “Wait you’re not?” he says as he thinks that I’m pulling his leg like everybody does to him.

I nod “When I said you’re a good guy, I was right and the fact that you did that for me means the absolute world and whatever happens, I thank you so much for doing that,” I say as he shakes my hand, understanding that I am still annoyed.

I sit in the hallway and it’s only 10 minutes later when I’m called back into the office about to await my fate. I wander in and sit down at the chair as instead of the acting dean talking it’s another member of the Academic Board who I’m not sure what their role actually is.

“Mr Munro, thank you for your attendance here today for what was no doubt a tough day for you and allegations at the most serious of levels,” the man says as he sits there talking through the process of how things will go on from here.

Sitting there, I think that I’m done for with all this formal language about how things can happen and appeals processes which really makes me feel sick. “Mr Munro, I can inform you that the Academic Review Board have not agreed unanimously on the decision but in a strong majority,” he says as I throw my head back anxious about the next words that I am about to hear which will make or break my life and future going forward.