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)
“Actually, no need. I have it printed already.” Ren shifted the big coat in her arms, digging into the side pocket to pull a manila envelope free.
He slowly took it from her, staring down at her coat. “You had this whole folder in there?”
“You bet. I can collect the vegetables I need for dinner, shoot a sage grouse, and tuck it all in here to carry it home.”
Fitz’s lip curled, and he loosened his grip on the folder so it was pinched only between the tip of his thumb and index finger. “You carried a dead bird around in that pocket?”
“Oh, loads of them,” she corrected proudly. “We regularly hunt our dinner. I’d say I’m the best shot in the county.” With a laugh, she translated his expression. “I’ve washed the coat since, silly.” Ren took the folder, pulled out the sheet with her course list, and handed it back. “Those are my classes. Don’t worry. That paper is dead-bird-free.”
He scanned the page once, brow furrowing, and then again. “Homeschooled for every grade? For real?”
Ren thought for a moment how to answer without telling him anything too personal. “I’m sure it’s uncommon for you to give a freshman tour to someone older like me who’s never been on a college campus before.” She swallowed. “I’m twenty-two, and I realize most freshmen here begin at eighteen and have been in school with their peers since kindergarten. But I assure you I have spent a lot of time researching the campus maps and schedules, and I mostly understand what’s required of me. What I’m interested in is any advice you might have picked up along the way for how to juggle the demands of different courses, or if there are any small things I should know. Which professors I might need to handle carefully, and the best studying places. Only on campus, of course.”
Slowly, he turned his attention back to her. A hundred questions passed through his eyes before he settled on “You’ve never even been on a college campus?” Ren shook her head. Fitz’s jaw cut a sharp angle as he looked back at the course list. “How do you know these are right? This is a pretty intense course load.”
Ren leaned over to look, too. “I chose classes from a list the registrar recommended.”
“Because you’re older,” he said. “They probably assumed you’re a transfer.”
“I don’t think so…” she hedged. “I took a lot of placement tests.”
“Placement tests? Like what?”
She looked up, thinking. “I think they were the fall semester finals for Calculus, French, Mandarin, Microeconomics, Organic Chemistry II, Molecular—”
“And you passed?”
“Yes, of course.”
He dragged the tip of his index finger down the list. “Why are you taking Intro Mandarin, then?”
“I can only read and write it,” she admitted. “I’ve never had a conversation with anyone. I don’t know if my pronunciation is right because we don’t have a CD player, and the textbooks only write phonetic pronunciation.”
Silence stretched between them, and he chewed his lip, working through something.
“Is…is my schedule okay?” she asked, finally.
Fitz nodded, eyes pinned to the page in his hand. “You’re in my immunology seminar.”
“That’s great!”
He jolted slightly to awareness, his frown replaced with a smile, and there was that shift again, him stepping out of one body and into another. “Yeah, it’s great.” He winked at her, leaning in. “Let’s get to that tour.”
CHAPTER FOUR
FITZ
In all honesty, Fitz thought everyone on campus was a sucker.
Corona students, faculty, and staff looked at him and saw Fitz: campus playboy, soccer captain, teacher’s pet, academic scholarship whiz kid. They saw a soon-to-graduate senior with a 4.0, a rich daddy, and a loving family. They looked at him and saw a golden future.
They assumed he got straight As because he was genetically gifted.
They assumed he grew up playing soccer on the manicured fields of Clyde Hill.
And they assumed he gave tours to new students because Dean Zhou was so charmed by him that he asked Fitz to occasionally welcome incoming students, and he agreed out of the goodness of his heart.
See? Suckers.
In fact, work-study was only one of the many side hustles Fitz needed to keep his head above water and his bank account in the black. He also worked as a bartender at the Night Owl, and, in his free time, helped a group of thick-spectacled octogenarians with their tech issues.
Sweet grannies who got flummoxed when their phone stopped working and didn’t realize the battery had simply died. Pun-loving old grandpops who called Fitz up to help them fix a “broken” desktop computer without realizing they’d just turned the monitor on and off over and over. And all Fitz could think while he watched this girl with the Swedish name skip ahead of him down the campus sidewalks, pointing to buildings and calling out the names of architects and trivia about the granite used in this or that statue, was that Judy, Bev, Dick, and Joyce would love the hell out of this kid.