Page 5 of Rune’s Solace

Bio was at eight, and I was good at it. Really good, actually, which still felt strange enough that I noticed every time. The professor called on me twice that morning and I got both answers right, and nobody in that three-hundred-seat lecture hall knew anything except that the girl with purple hair knew what happened to a cell membrane under whatever condition he was talking about.

They didn’t know where I slept, or who Brenda was, or that motorcycles came and went outside my bedroom window most nights and I knew the sound of half of them without trying. They definitely didn’t know what my last name used to mean in another house.

To them I was Amy.

Purple hair. Good at biology.

I liked being that easy to explain.

“You’re doing the face.”

Sawyer dropped into the seat beside me two minutes after class started, because Sawyer believed arrival times were more of a suggestion than a rule.

“What face?”

“The one where you’re secretly impressed with yourself.”

“I got both questions right.”

“See? That face.”

I tried not to smile. “You’re just jealous.”

“Deeply.” He broke his muffin in half and handed me a piece like he always did.

I took it like I always did. Neither of us mentioned that I hadn’t asked for it.

“I need your notes from Thursday.”

“Of course you do.”

“I was busy.”

“You were asleep.”

“I was busy being asleep. It’s a full activity.” He said it easy, but I caught the thing under it, the little skip, the place where the real answer lived and didn’t come out. Thursday night was one of the ones he didn’t talk about, and I didn’t ask, because I had about nine hundred of those myself and knew exactly what it felt like to have somebody go poking at one.

So I bumped my elbow against his and opened my notebook.

“I’ll send them.”

“See? Best girlfriend ever.”

“Fake girlfriend.”

“Details.”

Half the school thought we were dating, mostly because somewhere around the second week we’d realized correcting people was more work than letting them be wrong. It kept guys from asking me out and then wanting an explanation when I said no. It kept certain questions from following Sawyer around before he was ready to answer them.

Worked for both of us.

The funny part was that we probably knew each other better than half the actual couples on campus. Sawyer knew when I was pretending I’d eaten. I knew when his smile went too bright. He knew which subjects to leave alone without me asking. I knew his too.

No romance involved. That was what made it safe. He was the first person my age I’d ever let close enough to know when I was lying.

“Somebody was looking at your hair in lab,” he said around a bite of muffin. “Tall girl. Third row. She spent ten minutes working up the courage to ask what color you use.”

“They always want to ask.”