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.
With that thought, she sprang from bed.
Years ago, Ren had read somewhere that air travelers should plan to be at the airport at least an hour before their scheduled flight, but apparently the same was not true for students and classes. Even twenty minutes before her immunology seminar began, the hallways were empty.
Ren’s blood was humming, vibrating with excitement. At the locked classroom door, she cupped her hand around the small window and peered in.
“Let me open that.”
Ren turned to find a man in a navy shirt and matching pants with a large set of keys hanging from his belt loop. He sorted through a few before finding the right one.
“Are you a professor?” she asked.
“Oh, God no.” The man laughed, shaking his head. “Name’s Doug. I’m just the custodian.”
“There’s no such thing as just a custodian,” Ren said. “Custody comes from the Latin root custos, which means guardian. That means you take care of this building, and everyone in it should be grateful for what you do.” She held out her hand. “Ren Gylden, student.”
Doug wrapped his thick fingers around her hand and shook, grinning at her. “Nice to meet you, Ren. Have a good class.”
When she turned to look inside the room, every thought fell away. Absently, Ren dropped Doug’s hand. She’d seen a few films that depicted classrooms as huge lecture halls with steep stadium seating—and had mentally prepared herself for that kind of overwhelming introduction to learning—but Hughes Hall room 205 wasn’t like that. Ren hooked the strap of her bag over her shoulder and stepped inside. The room was smaller than she’d expected, with eight long tables organized in a square U shape and all the seats along the outer edge, facing the center. Along one wall was a glimmering sweep of windows looking out on Lake Douglas and the Spokane River beyond. The other three walls were mounted with end-to-end whiteboards, as if the class would collectively be so inspired here that their words and ideas would spill in two hundred and seventy degrees around the room.
Ren wasn’t sure how seating worked, whether it would be assigned or open, but she decided to choose a seat as close to the front as she could get, knowing she might not have the luck—or the seniority—to hold on to it. When the first student entered, Ren made sure to explain, “I’m happy to move if this seat isn’t available for me.”
The woman looked at her and then made a slow show of looking around the rest of the empty room. “I think you’re good,” she said dryly before choosing her own seat in the back corner.
Much like with Miriam the day before, silence gobbled up the space between them, and Ren worked to strangle down every one of the questions she had about what to expect. So far, she’d felt like a walking chatterbox with her peers. Fitz had been sardonic in his silence; Miriam was still borderline hostile in hers. The other college students seemed surprised at Ren’s friendly greetings as they passed on the sidewalk. She was used to others being quiet—Steve was always nonverbal until he’d had at least two full mugs of black coffee, and Gloria was never much of a talker even at her most energetic. Ren might not be street-smart, but she did realize that not everyone was a morning person. But when the other student took her jacket off and revealed two arms covered in the most colorful flowers Ren had ever seen, she couldn’t keep quiet.
“Oh my goodness.”
The woman looked up, startled.
“Your arms,” Ren said, lifting her chin. “They’re beautiful.”
“Oh.” Something hard in the other woman’s gaze eased. “Thanks.”
“They’re the most beautiful tattoos I’ve ever seen,” Ren told her. There were two brothers at the farmers markets with tattoos down their arms and weaving up their necks, but they were nothing like this. “I’ve never seen color like yours.”
“My guy is really good.” The woman looked at one arm, sending the opposite hand softly down the length of it. “I gave him the sketches, and he did them perfectly.”
Ren gaped at this. “You drew those?”
She nodded, and Ren was left speechless. She’d been drawing since she could hold a pencil, but she’d never considered drawing art for her own body before. The way the other woman created the overlapping flowers and foliage to perfectly fit the curve of her bicep, the crook of her elbow, the narrowing of her forearm into her wrist…It was magical.
She broke into Ren’s stunned silence. “What’s your name? I haven’t seen you around before.”
“Ren. Today’s my first day.”
“Transfer?” she asked, and Ren deflected.
“Sort of.”
“I’m Britta. Give me your number. I can AirDrop my tattoo artist’s info.”
With a little grimace, Ren admitted, “I don’t have a phone.”
Britta took this with the expected amount of shock. “How?”
“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.
Captivating now, but almost universally annoying at first. That’s the general consensus, at least. Uncool, naive, overeager—these are some of the descriptions given by students when I asked their initial impression of her, and always with a guilty wince, like they were confessing a sin, owning up to a character flaw simply by not adoring her from the start.
But it makes sense, doesn’t it? She would be uncool—she was born near the debut of the iPhone but has been fully and intentionally unplugged for her entire life. She would be naive—she’s never been to school of any kind before. She would be overeager—it took her months of convincing her parents to let her come to college at all; being here is literally her lifelong dream.
“No, no, everyone here has taught themselves!” she protests when I suggest that she’s done the impossible by learning subjects such as calculus, organic chemistry, physics, European history, and written Mandarin all on her own. “You all were learning complicated rules and logistics about the world. I have to do all of that now, and I feel about as smart as a brick.” That plain vulnerability passes over her face again, but, as always, she’s smiling. “I was overwhelmed just getting in line for dinner that first day! I had no idea how to call the elevator in Hughes Hall. My parents would say I’m self-sufficient, but I think my peers would say I’m book-smart, not street-smart, and that’s okay, because it’s true!” At this, she laughs.
And about those parents. Did they raise her as part of some isolationist cult or religious sect? Are they political extremists, plotting the overthrow of our government? Apparently not; by her own account, Golden Girl’s parents simply prefer to make their own way in the world. They built their own house and barn. They have cows and horses, chickens and pigs. A pond full of fish, several fields of crops to harvest three of the four seasons. A house full of books their daughter used to educate herself beyond what most of us could have wrung from our paltry public-school curricula. That’s all she’ll share about her upbringing, but nothing in what she told me made her parents sound like fringe isolationists. Maybe they just don’t like people very much.
But their daughter does.
She’s everywhere, and after only six weeks on campus, she’s left quite an impression. Ask any student on the quad, and they’re likely to have a story. There’s the story of the night she found Dean Zhou’s cat outside with a broken leg and splinted it until the cat could be taken to a vet the next day. There’s the rumor about how she repaired the Admissions Office copy machine with a toothpick, a piece of aluminum foil, and a bobby pin. And, of course, there was the afternoon barely a week ago when she did the impossible and fixed the campus theater popcorn machine that most of the student body assumed was just a piece of vintage art. She’s a member of the Corona Women’s Choir, the Agricultural Economics Society, Project Climate, School Spirit Council, and several foreign language clubs. So what if it’s a little weird that she never steps foot off campus unless it’s to leave with her parents every Friday promptly at 5 p.m.? She’s allowed to be a little weird because she is otherwise amazing.
And here’s the thing: She’s also truly, deeply nice. Nice in the way that initially makes you worry, like the steel-toed boots of the world will surely stomp it out of her. But when you meet her and spend time with her—good luck finding some; when she’s here during the week she’s got nearly every waking hour scheduled—you’ll realize that in fact she’s the kind of nice that saturates every layer. The kind of nice that immediately shares lunch when yours turns out to have a bug on the lettuce. The kind of nice that makes the interview run nearly an hour over because she has as many questions for you as you do for her. The kind of nice that genuinely means it when she asks the ubiquitous throwaway question, “How are you?”
The world might peel away one or two of those layers—and no doubt it will—but what’s in there deep down is precisely what’s at the surface. “What do I want people to know about me?” she asks, laughing at my final question. “Why would they want to know anything? I’m the least interesting person on this campus! I don’t have any stories yet! I want to hear yours.” She pauses, looking out the window of the dining hall, where it rains, and rains, and rains. Rivers of muddy water make the sidewalks nearly impassable, and the sky hovers overhead a sickly blue-gray. And still, her expression says she’s never seen anything more beautiful. Finally, she turns back to me and nods, satisfied. “I’m so happy to be here. I think that’s enough.”