The Group Project Alibi

Milo had told his group exactly three different excuses for why his section of the project wasn't finished. The trouble was that he had told them to three different people, who all happened to be in the same group chat.

米洛为自己那部分项目没做完，给小组编了整整三个不同的借口。麻烦在于，他把这三个借口分别讲给了三个人，而这三个人恰好都在同一个群聊里。

To Astrid, he had explained that his laptop had crashed and taken the whole file with it. To Percy, he had claimed his grandmother was visiting unexpectedly and he couldn't focus. To their teacher, somewhat more ambitiously, he had said he'd been dealing with a family emergency that he would rather not discuss in detail.

对阿斯特丽德，他说自己的笔记本电脑崩溃了，整个文件都跟着丢了。对珀西，他声称外婆突然来访，他没办法集中精神。对他们的老师，他的说法更有野心一些：家里出了急事，他不想细说。

Each excuse, on its own, was plausible enough. The problem, which Milo hadn't considered, was timing.

每个借口单独拿出来看，都足够说得过去。米洛没考虑到的问题是时间。

"Wait," Astrid typed in the group chat, "I thought your grandmother was visiting, not your laptop."

“等一下，”阿斯特丽德在群里打字，“我记得你说的是外婆来了，不是电脑坏了。”

"Different day," Milo typed back quickly, already sensing where this was going.

“不是同一天，”米洛赶紧回复，已经预感到事情会往哪儿发展。

"Also," Percy added, "didn't you tell Ms. Okafor it was a family emergency? Is your grandmother the emergency, or is this a whole separate thing?"

“还有，”珀西补充道，“你不是还跟奥卡福老师说是家里出了急事吗？急事就是你外婆，还是说这完全是另一回事？”

Milo stared at his phone, aware that he had officially run out of ways to make three unrelated lies sound consistent. He considered a fourth excuse to explain the inconsistency in the first three. Then he realized that this was exactly the kind of decision that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

米洛盯着手机，意识到自己已经彻底想不出办法，让三个毫不相干的谎话听起来前后一致了。他考虑过再编第四个借口，来解释前三个借口之间的矛盾。然后他明白了，正是这种决定，一开始就把他弄进了麻烦里。

"Okay," he typed. "None of that happened. I just haven't started my section, and I panicked."

“好吧，”他打字道，“那些事都没发生。我只是还没开始写我那部分，我慌了。”

There was a long pause in the chat.

群里沉默了很久。

"That's honestly more believable than the laptop thing," Astrid replied.

“说实话，这比电脑那个说法可信多了，”阿斯特丽德回复。

"I respect the honesty," Percy added, "but you now have eighteen hours to write four pages, so I hope panic is motivating."

“我尊重你的坦白，”珀西补充道，“不过你现在只有十八个小时来写四页，希望恐慌能给你动力。”

Milo spent that night writing faster than he had ever written anything in his life. He was fueled mostly by the humiliation of being caught in a lie so complicated it had needed a shared timeline to fall apart. He finished with forty minutes to spare and sent it to the group with a single message: "Never doing that again. Any of it."

那天晚上，米洛写得比他这辈子写任何东西都快。推动他的，主要是被人当场拆穿的羞耻，他的谎言复杂到需要一份共同的时间线才能戳破。他提前四十分钟写完，发给了小组，只附了一句话：“再也不这样了。一点都不会。”

"Sure you won't," Percy replied, followed by a laughing emoji that felt entirely deserved.

“你肯定不会啦，”珀西回复，后面跟着一个大笑的表情，这个表情他完全受得起。