What A Rebel

I felt panic seize me, felt it rush up and grab hold. I must have looked so absolutely terrified as my head snapped up, eyes wide and staring at the source of the voice. I must have, because Rachel laughed a short sharp bark at my reaction.

"What's going on back there?" boy-Kim asked us.

"Nothing," Rachel and I chimed in perfect sync.

Blinking a few more times I watched as Rachel, as Rachel Patrick the girl of my dreams, actually giggled at our timing. And as we walked she took a step closer to me, close enough that we could whisper without being overheard or spotted by the Kims.

"Maybe I overstated the rebel title a little bit."

I felt the hot rush of a blush in my cheeks, stammering out my words as I struggled to look her in the eye. God she was pretty. She was pretty in a way that I didn't know people could be pretty and prettier, frankly, than I ever remembered her being. But maybe that was just because I don't remember being this close to her, because I don't think I ever was.

"It was my landlord," I finally explained, "Wants to know when I'll be by to pick up the keys."

I left out the part about how he was my dad's friend and the fact that it was a room in his house rather than an apartment. I did it consciously, already uncomfortable about the fact that I was going to be one of the only students in first year not living in the dorms and well aware, from my memory, of how odd that made me seem to everyone else.

It made me stand out. It made me odd.

"You got a place off campus?" Rachel gushed, "Oh I'm so jealous. I'm stuck in the stupid dorms. Met my roommate this morning and I can just tell she's going to spend the whole first month crying about the boyfriend she left behind at home. She was literally on the verge of tears already and I mean I'm sympathetic but to a point."

She looked at me for a response, one that I absolutely did not have. I managed to nod, to stammer out a non-committal answer which she took and kept on talking.

"I mean I'm not asking for her to be my best friend or anything, just someone who isn't going to be a total buzzkill. Plus she kinda looks like someone who'll rat me out to the RA for smuggling booze into my room. You know the type, right? You look like you know the type."

She nodded up at the two Kims who were currently waxing poetic about the noble history of the building we were passing by which, as far as I could tell, was indistinguishable from all the others.

"Someone like them. Someone who is just so thrilled to be filled with the school spirit."

Rachel kicked a foot up and pressed her hands together, pushing them up underneath her chin in an expression clearly meant to evoke the innocence of a character like Little Orphan Annie. She held it for a moment before being so amused by her own joke that she broke down into giggles again.

"You look shocked," she told me when she'd recovered, "What, did you take me for one of them?"

"No," I replied quickly, "No I didn't. I just-"

"I'm not saying I'm going to go out there and get trashed every night or anything else like that. I'm just saying it would be nice to not have to worry about hiding your true self when you're alone at home. You know what I'm talking about right? I think..."

Her voice trailed off and then she shook her head, her smile fixing a little more firmly as her eyes sparkled with a mischievousness that made her look absolutely wickedly enticing.

"I think you should give me your number and we should hang out," she said, "I get this impression that we could be real good friends, you know? And besides which I am totally going to invite myself over to your place for a sleepover if I need to get away from Little Miss Goody Two Shoes."

There are things that you just do not question too hard. When Rachel Patrick asks for your number, you give it. When she offers hers, you take it.

Because even if none of it was happening quite the way I thought it would and even if dating her was entirely off the table, given my new body, that didn't mean that I didn't want to be friends with her. And if she wanted to be friends with me? Well that might just be the first good thing to happen to me in years.

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