Steve handed both the homework notebook he wrote and the one Ruby wrote to Ruby, saying, "If the teacher asks you why you wrote in two notebooks, just say that one of them ran out of pages. Got it?"
Ruby hadn't fully recovered from the surprise of her homework being completed so easily and nodded blankly at Steve's words.
Steve frowned at her foolish expression, then took out some tape from his backpack and helped Ruby stick the two notebooks together before stuffing them back into her bag with peace of mind.
Ruby's close call of forgetting to do her homework and almost getting punished by the teacher didn't give her a wake-up call. Instead, her laziness intensified, making her even less inclined to do her homework after school.