Imagine Getting Caught Texting Neal in Class
           When Neal and Peter had gone undercover at Manhattan Prep, you were one of the students in the poetry class. Amazingly, you were the only one who noticed that they obviously knew each other when they started arguing in the middle of the lesson. Since then, youâd kind of taken to Neal like a prodigy. Maybe it was weird for a high school student to communicate so much with an ex-con more than a decade older than her, but you enjoyed yourself. Neal helped you study â thanks to him, you were pulling As in all of your French assignments.
           It wasnât your fault that this was the dullest class youâd ever had to take. The instructor clearly didnât know what he was doing. There were other kids who were making noise and being problematic, so it was easy to slip out your phone undetected, hide it on the side of your textbook, and start texting.
Please tell me youâre doing something interesting.
           Despite it being the middle of the day, when he shouldâve been working, you got a text back almost immediately. You imagined him jumping at the chance to procrastinate on paperwork.
           You smirked.
Youâre *doing* mortgage fraud, or youâre *solving* mortgage fraud?
           Yelling made you look up. The misbehaving students were back in their seats, and your economics teacher was puffing and red-faced. The glasses perched on his nose had foggy lenses. After taking several deep breaths while staring down furiously at the students, he turned and returned to his desk at the front of the room, cracking his knuckles while he went.
Solving, of course. I would never commit a crime.
           Uh-huh. You didnât buy that for a second, but just in case you had, the winky-face emoticon informed you that you probably shouldnât.
Right. And Peter would never steal a car.
           It was funny, because there was a story that involved Peter actually stealing a sports car to escape a shoot-out.
           Suddenly, a hand shot out from beyond your field of vision and swiped up your phone. âHey-!â You clapped a hand over your mouth before you finished what youâd planned on saying. Your professor stared down at you with arched brows and a very austere, thin line in place of his mouth.
           âHow gracious of you to volunteer to share your conversations with the class,â he stated, holding the phone up and looking down at the screen.
           You quickly thought back to the most recent conversations youâd had with Neal via text. Aside from the one where you literally just strongly implied Neal had committed crimes (not a friendship you wanted to explain to your teacher), there was one from late last night where Neal had a seemingly random but apparently very relevant question for you, and the day before that, there was-
           Oh. Oh, no.
           He kept scrolling the screen up to see the less recent texts, his frown increasing with each message he read. Then he started to share them aloud. You covered your face with your hands and sank into your chair, mortified.
           âNo, the security at the Lampson is too good,â he read after Nealâs words. âThe best way to steal a painting and make it out the door is to wait until the tourists have gone, then slice the canvas out of the frame.â You heard whispers start in the class. Several people started to giggle. He continued on to read your response. âRight, of course. Then we keep it hidden while we fence the forgeries youâve made to buyers overseas. Isnât that what you allegedly did?â And, now seriously concerned, your professor recited the last part of the exchange, which was from Neal. âThe feds never proved anything, but off the record, yes.â
           Your phone was deposited slowly back on your table. Shoulders falling, you closed your textbook quietly and placed it into your backpack. There was really no way to explain that without the context, and you seriously doubted that anyone would believe youâd been planning a hypothetical heist with a convicted forger and art thief to prove a point to an FBI agent.
           The teacher cleared his throat. âY/L/N-â
           âYeah, I know,â you interrupted, resigning yourself to a long hour. âTo the deanâs office.â
I don't have time to write a oneshot today, so since there were no imagine requests, I made my own to celebrate having 20+ published works. This imagine makes 25!