Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96178 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
“Okay, well, Gwen—”
“Ren.”
“Great, listen, you’ll have a chance to tell your classmates all of this when you take your vocal performance seminar here.” He made a show of looking at the time again. “I’m gonna grab a bite before my shift at work.”
Ren took a step forward, her palm outstretched. “Well, in that case, Just Fitz.” She giggled and shook his hand firmly. “It’s been very nice meeting you. I hope our paths cross again.”
“They likely will, given that we’re both in Bio 335.”
“That’s right.” And just as he turned to lead her back toward the quad, she asked, “May I sit by you tomorrow?”
He turned back, finding her gaze uncertain, brows furrowed. The question and the wobble in her voice pulled him up short. It was a woman being vulnerable, and if anything was his weakness, it was that. But it was also this pitiful woman in particular, and even a half hour with her had been too long. Fitz couldn’t imagine three class hours and three laboratory hours a week with her beside him, Rensplaining every tiny detail of the course material.
But a deeper truth floated to the surface: She also made him uneasy. Fitz had a perfect record at Corona so far, the top grade in every class he’d ever taken. He got them honestly—well, most of the time—and with charm and wile when the occasion called for it. But he didn’t do it to be valedictorian or for any other reason related to pride. He did it because his father, the biggest living donor to the school, made it clear that neither his money nor his reputation was Fitz’s to enjoy. And he did it because from the moment he was released from juvenile corrections nearly seven years ago, finishing at the very top was his only path to redemption and revenge. The way Ren came in with perfect scores, shooting to the most advanced courses before she’d even started, was the first real threat to his plan. The last thing he needed was a self-schooled farm girl ruining it in the final semester.
So he left her with the only reply he could muster: “Don’t worry, Sweden. Wherever you end up, you’ll be just fine.”
CHAPTER FIVE
REN
On her first official morning as a college freshman, Ren woke without an alarm. Which was good, she supposed, given that she no longer had one. Miriam was still asleep and almost eerily silent on her side of the room, nothing but a tuft of messy black hair peeking out from beneath her fluffy comforter. Briefly, Ren considered holding a hand mirror under her nose to make sure she was breathing, but she didn’t have one of those, either.
After her first meal alone in the overwhelmingly crowded dining hall the night before, she’d walked around campus, learning the paths by heart and planning out her schedule for her first day—when she would need to be up and showered, when she would need to be at the Student Services office to get her student ID, when she would need to be at the dining hall at breakfast to avoid the long and frankly intimidating line like the one at dinner. She felt the yawning chasm between herself and her peers—could sense in their body language how strange she seemed to everyone she tried to speak to—but while wandering, she met Joe, an older man who managed the athletic facilities, when he drove past in a golf cart and asked Ren if she needed any help. She hadn’t, but when she’d asked him about what he did at the school, he gave her a full tour in his cart, as well as a schedule for all the upcoming winter sporting events, a T-shirt for basketball games that said CORONA KENNEL CLUB, a stuffed terrier, and a tiny plush basketball.
Giddy with excitement, Ren had crawled into bed at nine, curling up on her side, but slept fitfully her first night ever away from home.
She was missing the settling-down sounds of her animals in the corral, the uneven cadence of Steve’s snoring down the hall, and the ever-present tick of her clock. Even so, she knew none of it really explained why she couldn’t sleep. Usually when she closed her eyes, she saw sparklers and fireworks exploding in a golden blast overhead. But last night, when she’d closed them, she saw a sprawling campus, and hordes of jeering, impatient students. She saw herself swallowed in a sea of bodies, penned in on every side. Walking too fast or too slow, trying to open the wrong door, asking the wrong questions.
Ren stared up at the textured plaster ceiling; in the bright light of morning, she let her eyes grow unfocused until it became a blank, smooth canvas. She could paint this room, she thought. Paint the sizzle-glow, the bursts of light and color in the deep ocean blue of a sky. Even imagining it soothed her. She reminded herself that friendships would come, that she would learn the routine of school, and that beyond the four walls of this room was the same sky she’d seen every day of her life, the same as back home. It felt different, but she was rooted in exactly the same world, ready for a new adventure.