Monday morning was awful. I stumbled into History of Shipbuilding at the ripe old hour of 8:07 a.m. with messed up hair and half-open eyes. I’d managed to sneak in a breakfast at the cafeteria after morning track practice before sprinting across campus to get to the first day of class not on time.

Eyes flickered my way as I opened the door, but I was too exhausted to care. Sarah, seated by the window in back, waved me over to a seat next to her.

Coach hadn’t gone easy on us at practice, even though it was our first day back after break. I thought all that extra training with the Red Pathways would’ve made day one a whole lot easier than in past years, but oh boy was I wrong. How had I even survived it for the past three years? Every muscle fiber was throwing its pink slip at me and screaming about the lack of paid time off. Pretty soon I’d have a full-blown mutiny on my hands, and I didn’t have enough depth in my bank account to fund something like that.

“Now that Sawyer’s here, let’s finish introductions.” Professor Bramstad looked a tad disappointed in me, but unfortunately, he was quite accustomed to my arrival time issues after dealing with it for three and a half years. I really should apologize to him someday. Actually, I should apologize to all my professors at some point. It’s not like any of them deserved to have their students show up late. Maybe I’ll write them a hand written letter and hand it to them on the last week of classes before I graduate. That’d be nice.

A shove to my shoulder knocked me out of my daydreaming. I looked up, and everyone’s eyes were on me. Sarah’s whisper off to my right clued me in.

“Oh,” I said, “Sawyer Reyes, History major, Senior.”

“And what was something exciting you did over Christmas break?” Bramstad prodded.

“Oh... um.” My mind went blank. What had I done over break? Not a whole lot of legal things. “Oh! I got to shake hands with one of the raccoons that live behind my apartment complex. That was pretty fun.”

“Sounds nice,” Bramstad said politely. “So, in this class… ” And he kept going while I got my stuff out for class as quietly as possible.

Sarah leaned over and whispered, “Good morning. You look tired, how was practice?”

I leaned towards her slightly, but kept my eyes to the front of the room as I answered, “’Morning. And terrible, you’d think after three years it’d get better.”

She smirked and laughed at my pain. “Well, at least you made it.”

I smiled. “Yeah, if we want to call it that.”

“… and math will be a large part of this class as well, because measurements and such are what can make or break the functionality of a ship. Now—”

“Wait, what?!” I said just a bit too loudly. And for the third time in ten minutes, the entire class had its eyes on me. “Heh, heh. Sorry.”

I smiled sheepishly under Bramstad’s withering look. “Did you have something to add Sawyer?”

“Ah. Um. No, not really.” I breathed out a grimace, my face getting hot from embarrassment.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Sure sounded like you had a question, or at least an objection.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Uh. Well. I guess I was just surprised that math was going to be so important for this class.”

“Ah,” he said, “I see. Well, if you have any problems, you can come see me after class.”

“Okay, thank you,” I said with a charming smile, then ducked my head and bugged my eyes out. No matter the situation, no one wants to hear that last set of words come out of a professor’s mouth. I mean, I wasn’t even in trouble or anything but it still gave me jitters.

Also, I was actually a bit upset and concerned about the whole math thing. Math has never been my thing. I mean, I got passing grades in high school, but it was never something that came easily for me. Gymnastics was the only thing all the numbers in my brain seemed to do. So, the fact that I’d have to be dealing with that was a shock to my frazzled system. 

Why’d my mouth have to move faster than my brain? I thought, sighing for good measure. I leaned my head on my hands, settling in for the rest of class. This week was going to be great.

.                                                     .

“Hey Sawyer?”

I looked up from the textbook I was reading and gazed across the table at Jordan, who was sitting across from me. It was an early Thursday afternoon, and we were not yet free of our first week back at it, but I could’ve fallen asleep at any moment. Whoever said syllabus week was easy was a liar of the highest order, or maybe they were just business majors.

“Yeah, what’s up?” I said softly since we were in the library and didn’t feel like getting glared at.

“You doing okay?” That was real concern in Jordan’s earnestly vibrant green eyes.

I let my book fall to rest the weathered spine on the table, fighting back a yawn. “Yeah… I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. You just seem a little different lately that’s all. Is something wrong?”

Oh boy. What I wish I could tell her. But best not let one of my best friends get involved in illegal underground businesses. One of us was enough. “I’ve just been, ah, real tired lately. I didn’t get much rest over break because of that extra credit project I’ve been working on. The Three Diablos kept me running ragged just about every day.” I chuckled. That part was true.

Jordan’s pursed lips and furrowed brow didn’t reciprocate my attempted humor. “Hm,” was the only response she gave me.

“Really,” I insisted, emphasizing it with some wide arm gestures. “I just didn’t get much rest.”

“Yeah, I mean, I get the tiredness part. It doesn’t take a genius to notice the size of those bags under your eyes.”

My fingers drifted to my cheeks; I hadn’t realized the dark marks were still that apparent.

She kept going, looking off to the side. “But you’re also way more muscular and toned than you were before break.”

I glanced at my arms, turning them back and forth a bit. I couldn’t tell through my sweatshirt. Were they really that different?

She continued, “It takes a lot of work to change your body in such a short period of time, and it’s not like you weren’t already fit before break happened, but now you’ve got even less fat on your body, not a dangerously low amount,” she assured, “but you’d always had a little extra to spare, probably from those vanilla wafers you like so much.”

And now she’s going into physical fitness guru mode. I mean, it’s her major, so I’m not surprised and it’s kind of fun to hear all the stuff she knows. Also I take offense to that vanilla wafer comment. They are gold in food form.

Jordan kept talking like she was stuck in cruise control. “And there’s nothing wrong with having a better physique. It’s really good actually, and you might have the track season of your life, but what is concerning is that you look exhausted, which means that you’re not getting the proper refueling for how much your body is outputting. And that bothers me.” She finally focused her attention on my baffled and guilty face. “So what’s going on, Sawyer? And you better not lie to me.”

Commence internal screaming. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! She’s too observant for her own good.

I was hoping to keep my lying to a minimum when it came to my friends, but it was either, actually graduate college… or not. And I wasn’t putting all this work in for nothing. Okay, I had to come up with a cover, and fast. Think. Think. Think! What would make sense? What’s something I could keep up with and easily avoid messing up? Oo!

“I’ve actually been working with a personal trainer outside of school,” I said nonchalantly.

All that suspicion dissolved from her body at mach speed. “Are you that serious about our final track season? Or are you training for something else?”

Great. Now I’d gotten her curious.

Training for something else, but I did not tell her that. “Um, it’s been mostly track stuff, but also some martial arts too. I thought it’d be a good time to get into that kind of stuff.” Oh this was totally a lie and so painful to say. “So yeah, I guess with the extra credit project, plus not having a whole lot of time to put into getting a full night’s sleep. Not to mention working on my thesis.”

“Oh sure,” she said quietly, gazing down at the table’s surface in thought. “What studio are you working with? Or is it an independent trainer, maybe I’d know their name?”

More internal screaming. “They’re independent,” I said quickly. “They’re a friend of my mom’s, actually, and just starting out, so I’m kinda their guinea pig.” Hoo, that was a good one.

“Oh,” Jordan sat back, genuinely surprised. “That’s cool. Leave it to your mom to have connections everywhere.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said sheepishly. “One of her old work friends.”

“You’ll have to let me meet them sometime, I’d be really interested in their training methods and business.”

“Oh, sure, sure. They have a pretty busy schedule, but I’ll see what I can do,” I agreed easily. Meanwhile I was praying that she would quickly forget that request, better yet, this whole conversation. “So yeah,” I continued. “Sorry if I worried you. I guess I should’ve mentioned it sooner.”

She snapped a wild grin back at me. “Yeah. Yeah, you should’ve.” She leaned forward to give my arm a whap. “What are you doing making me worry about you like that? I’ve got better things to be doing with my time ya know.”

“Yeah, sorry.” I smiled, then smirked. “So sorry to have inconvenienced you, your majesty.”

That got me an even bigger whap on the arm. “Smartass,” she grumbled. “Just be careful, okay? Don’t go burning yourself out before you even graduate. I don’t want to be dragging your corpse across this campus just so you can be buried with your diploma in hand.”

“Aye, aye, captain!” I gave her a smug salute of confirmation. “You got it.”

Her scowl of annoyance was priceless. I burst into laughter.

“SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”

I jumped and froze.

Ms. Lilain, only the most-loveliest librarian (I’m lying! She was awful and a bad representation of librarians worldwide), was glaring at us, fury in her eyes. I gave her a little wave and mouthed the word “sorry” with a guilty smile. Jordan bailed on me, though, shoving her just as guilty nose into her notes. The traitor. The edges of her smug grin was just visible below the shaking brim of her notebook. She could barely contain her giggling.

Once Ms. Lilain had turned back to her computer to continue checking out books for a waiting student, I whisper-mouthed the word, “Coward,” right at Jordan’s guilty face. How come I was always the one getting in trouble with Ms. Lilain? As a history major, I needed as much help from the library and its librarians as I could get, and here I was making enemies.