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)
“I’ve just never needed one,” Ren told her honestly.
“Holy crap, I knew your kind existed, but I’ve never seen one in the wild.”
Ren laughed hard at this, and Britta grinned back just as two other women came in and sat in the back with her. They were soon followed by a hulking blond man, who began to make his way to the back as well before spotting Ren. She smiled politely, and he paused, then redirected, sitting down in the seat just beside her. “Hi.”
“Hello. I’m Ren.”
She reached her hand out, and he stared at it for a beat before clasping it firmly. “I’m Jeb.”
The room was quickly beginning to fill now. Another man came in and Jeb stood, greeting him with a hand-slap-and-hug combination that Ren longed to catalogue in writing because it looked ritualistic and important.
The other man noticed Ren, and a slow grin curled across his mouth. “Who’s your friend, Petrolli?”
“Oh, her?” Jeb said and sat down, looping a heavy arm around Ren’s shoulders. “Yeah. This is my new friend, Jen.”
“Ren,” she corrected quietly.
“Ren,” the second man said with a seductive depth to his voice. “Where’d you come from, sweetheart?”
Britta called out from across the room: “Don’t be gross, Nate.”
Nate looked over in feigned shock. “I’m not being gross, Britta, I’m being friendly.”
“Well, Nate, don’t be too friendly,” Ren warned him with a genuine smile. “I’m new here, so how would you know whether I’m sweet or not?”
She startled when the three women in the back began clapping.
“That was awesome,” said Britta.
“Savage,” Jeb said.
“I’m savage?” Ren asked, surprised, and he grinned over at her.
“Totally.”
A hush fell over the room, and Ren followed everyone’s attention to the doorway, expecting the professor.
But it wasn’t the professor, it was Fitz, and for a strangled moment, Ren’s heart forgot how to function. She understood, on an intellectual level, why everyone fell quiet when he stepped across the threshold and into the room. He was tall without being imposing; his features were beautiful without being too perfect. Ren imagined drawing a portrait of him and knew she wouldn’t be able to get the straight line of his nose right, the correct sharpness to his jaw, the paradoxical teasing softness of his brown eyes. No posture she could draw would capture the way time seemed to slow as he moved through the room with confidence and ease. And though it made sense to her heart why it would stutter, it didn’t make sense to her brain how she was distracted enough by Fitz to miss the entrance of the world-famous Dr. Michel Audran.
Because when Ren finally pulled her eyes away from Fitz and toward the front of the room, there stood the man himself. Tall, thick browed, and with the firm slash of a mouth Ren had seen in countless textbooks, Dr. Audran looked out at the class, waiting for everyone to settle into quiet. Ren felt something vital and solid turn over in her chest.
For so long she’d wondered whether there would be a crystalline moment of transition, one when Ren would know for certain that her life was truly beginning. And it struck her, as Dr. Audran clapped his hands and greeted them with a simple “Well. Let’s begin,” that that delicious, perfect, long-awaited moment was right now.
STUDENT PROFILE: CORONA’S GOLDEN GIRL
by Allison Fukimora
with contributions from Corona Press Staff Writers
She’s unlike anyone you’ve ever met before. Someone your age who has never used an iPhone, laptop, iPad. Who has never set foot in a movie theater. Who has never been on an airplane, walked into a Starbucks, heard of Taylor Swift, or gone swimming in a chlorinated pool. And paradoxically, the reason she agreed to this profile at all is also the same reason she’s unlikely to ever read it: It can only be found online at the Corona Student and Faculty Portal.
“I know it sounds old-fashioned,” she says, “but I don’t use the internet unless it’s for a class. I made a promise.” Her preternaturally enormous green eyes meet mine, and I feel the same visceral protectiveness experienced by many of my peers rocket through me as she very earnestly adds, “Promises mean something, don’t they?”
Her anonymity was a requirement for doing this article, but it was also easy to assure because it is irrelevant. Even without a photo to accompany this profile, anyone who’s walked on campus in the last month and a half knows who the Golden Girl is. She is the streak of blond hair rushing gleefully across Willow Lawn when the sun finally pushes its way through the clouds. She is the tiny ball of hunched-over determination helping Corona’s master landscaper fix the broken irrigation line out near the north shore of Lake Douglas. She is the student with her hand high in the air in every classroom. And she is, without question, one of the most captivating people to ever cast her shadow on the grounds of the school.