"ELSA!"
Elsa opened the door, knowing full well who it would be. Was there really anyone else who would come by, yelling her name at one in the morning? Not that she minded. Besides, it was highly unlikely that anyone was trying to sleep right now. If anything, they might be grateful at being woken up from their accidental dozing while trying to study.
Sure enough, Anna stood there, carrying a mountain of textbooks, folders, and notebooks, her laptop on top. Elsa moved out of the way and motioned that Anna could put them down on the desk. As she tried to do so, the mountain collapsed, things falling off the desk and onto the floor, and Elsa's books and papers being strewn about as well despite their previous neatness. Thankfully she caught her laptop before it hit the ground, and Elsa's hadn't been on the desk.
"Sorry!" Anna said, picking things up. She put them all in a couple of piles on the desk.
Well, they could sort that out later. "Stressed?" Elsa asked.
Anna looked legitimately frightened. "I have two papers due tomorrow, and another one and two exams the next day, and I haven't done any of the readings, and I haven't started on the papers and I haven't studied at all and what am I gonna do?!"
That… was a pretty dire situation, she couldn't deny. "What time are the papers due tomorrow?" she asked, trying to assess the situation a bit more.
"One is at two, and the other's at five, and the one has to be like twelve pages and the other one has to be like seven!"
Okay. So she had ten hours to do a twelve page paper that she hadn't done any of the readings for… that was probably going to require some serious bullshitting. (Elsa cringed mentally at using that expression; it was highly improper of her, and even more so to suggest such an irresponsible technique.) "Can I see the readings?"
Anna pulled out a fairly thick folder full of all the readings for the semester. "And they're all double-sided!"
There was no way she could absorb that much information in one night, let alone be able to then make a paper about it. She opened the folder and took out the final paper guidelines and read them. Yeesh… it was incredibly vague and basically required a rundown of everything that had been learned, asking for evidence from the readings. If Anna hadn't done any of the readings, then… She thought for a moment, then sat on the floor and sorted the readings by category. "Just start writing, and use the titles to guess at what they're about and take the paper in those directions. Skim through the ones that end up being relevant really quickly to find a couple of somewhat specific things so it sounds like you actually read it." She still seriously felt like she shouldn't be suggesting this, but there wasn't really anything else that could be done about it at this point.
Anna nodded, then sat down by the papers and opened her laptop. She started a new document and titled the essay "Final Exam." Double spacing, indent beginning of paragraph… then she stared at the all-but-blank document.
Elsa, who had begun to reorganize the desk, looked to Anna upon not hearing any paper shuffling or typing. Sure enough, she looked like she was stuck.
Out of the corner of her eye, Anna saw Elsa looking at her, so she looked back and said, "I don't know where to start!"
That always was the hardest part, wasn't it. "Just start writing anything. Maybe go back and write the opening paragraph after you've written the rest, so you know what you're actually going to say? But for right now, just start talking about something. If it's awful, you can edit it. For right now, you just have to get started." Of course, all this advice was pretty easy to give to someone else, but in all honesty she had an equally unstarted essay to write, although she had at least done… well, most of the readings. Probably. She took her laptop and textbook and sat next to Anna. "We can do this. We'll finish our finals and then have fun again, okay? We can even build a snowman," she added with a smile.
Anna grinned in response. "Okay! Let's do this thing! This…finals…thing!"
An hour later, Anna put her laptop to the side and flopped on her back. "This is taking so long!"
"I know," Elsa sympathized, "but you'll be done soon. In just a matter of hours, in fact." She tried to make it sound like as little a span of time as possible, and without adding the fact that the deadline necessitated that. Not to mention that she had the other deadline a few hours after that one, and she would probably need more than three hours to write another entire paper. She took Anna's hand and lightly pulled her up. "How about I make us some popcorn?"
Anna sat up excitedly. "Popcorn?"
"Yes. I even have hot chocolate. However, there's just one rule."
"A rule?"
"You can only eat the popcorn while you're writing the essay. You can't get distracted by other things, or I might eat all the popcorn!" She said the last part teasingly. She had no intentions of doing any such thing, but she hoped it would motivate Anna to keep working. It was really tempting to get distracted… As much as she'd like to say otherwise, were Anna not here, she would probably be getting sidetracked with other matters as well.
She went to the kitchen with an armful of packets in tow and returned with a cup of coffee in one hand, a cup of hot chocolate in the other, and the bag of popcorn embarrassingly ungracefully carried in her mouth. She awkwardly put down one of the cups to open the door, then carried the items into the room in that manner.
Anna stifled a giggle. Elsa was so refined and things normally that seeing her do something like this struck her as really cute. Anyway, it was two in the morning the day before final things were due; there probably wasn't a single person on campus who was being elegant right now. "Would you like a hand?"
Elsa held out the cup of hot chocolate, which Anna took, allowing Elsa to hold the bag of popcorn in her hand. She closed the door with her foot, then sat down and placed the popcorn between them and the coffee to her side. Anna didn't like coffee, but even if she did, she definitely did not need anything to make her more energetic or distractible right now. Elsa, on the other hand… she strongly preferred tea, but she was in need of more caffeine than that if she was going to write something at all comprehensible.
It was nine in the morning. Elsa, having finished her essay, was studying the material for her first exam of the next day. She knew that getting enough sleep was important for remembering material and whatnot, but she wanted to stay up for Anna's sake. Besides, she reasoned, she could sleep… tonight or something. Hopefully.
"I finished it!" Anna exclaimed. She stifled a yawn.
"Good job!" Elsa congratulated her sincerely. It hadn't exactly been an easy task.
She looked at the empty bag of popcorn in the trash. "I have my other essay to write, but… I'm really hungry!"
Elsa rummaged through a drawer. "I have… shrimp ramen, vegetable ramen, and Cheerio's with no milk."
Anna just barely… nope, she didn't stop herself from making a face at all. "Tell you what, I'll go over to my dorm real quick and get us some better food!" She stuck her tongue out, and both of them laughed.
"Alright; I'm very curious about this 'better food.'" She was positive it was going to be junk food of some sort. Hopefully it wasn't just candy or something; not that any of her own food exactly qualified as a well-balanced meal, but they did at least have some semblance of being actual food.
She left and returned several minutes later carrying a box of sugary chocolate cereal with marshmallows, two macaroni cups, and Cheetos. Elsa wasn't really surprised in the slightest, actually.
"What do you think?" Anna asked, looking quite happy and even proud of herself.
Elsa couldn't help but to smile. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt me to eat something a bit less nutritious just this once."
"Yay! I'll go make the macaroni!" She sat the other things down near their laptops. Before she headed to the kitchen she added, "By the way, they're super nutritious! They cover all the food groups – chocolate, cheese, and candy!"
Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, but that explanation actually made Elsa laugh quite a bit. Anna beamed at making her sister laugh like that, then skipped to the kitchen.
Although the week leading up to finals, especially the last couple of days, was always quite stressful and chaotic, Elsa definitely could not deny that Anna's presence made it significantly less so.