“Do you ever think it’s kind of funny?” Ellie whispers.

            “Think what’s kind of funny?” you ask while lying on your best friend’s bed again, freshly cleansed and returned to your normal size.  You peer over the expanse of the ceiling, occasionally letting your eyes catch on the glow-in-the-dark stars Ellie taped up as a joke at the start of the year.

            “The way people talk about us,” she responds, reclining prone on her bed as well, though her head is up on the pillow, while yours remains roughly level with her stomach, as the pair of you had to play body Tetris to make room on the relatively narrow mattress in order to lay down.

            “I don’t know.  I guess a little,” you answer.  “You mean how they all think we’re in here just…”

            “Yeah,” she snickers.  “Kaleigh and a couple of the others were on me all day about it.  Trying to make sure I’m not letting you take advantage of me.”

            “And Chris just wanted the juicy details,” you say, eliciting a laugh from the both of you.  “We’re turning into the biggest running joke in the freshman dorms.”

            “More like the biggest running mystery.  But I say we let them think whatever they want,” Ellie shrugs, and you nod, genuinely agreeing with this arrangement.  Building up lies or, even more foolishly, attempting to explain anything to outsiders would afford far more complication than either of you cares to deal with.  Plus, in another unsurprising parallel, neither of you has ever given a damn about public opinion.

            You recognize now that you’ve been synced up with Ellie since that fatefully unassuming conversation in the library months back when you both simultaneously realized what you wanted to do, without any of the uncomfortable fanfare you might’ve expected.

            The idea to register you to Ellie’s PMRD had come less as a hesitant suggestion from one party afraid of rejection and more as a unanimous acceptance of reality, silent and contented.  Since then, everything between the two of you has been unbreakably connected, and these past days have shed light on it like never before.  It’s so bizarrely easy to exist around her.

            It’s like living in some euphoric little dream that you don’t have to wake up from.

            “So this straight-talking thing,” you chuckle.  “I think maybe it’s fair to say we’ve made it into an art form.”

            “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Michelangelo.  I don’t think either of us is even close to there yet,” Ellie corrects with a giggle.

            “Yeah, I know,” you state honestly.  “Still, we’re… further from the last two days than we’ve been since either of us started school here.”

            “That might be an understatement,” she agrees.  “Talking about… me.  It’s not really something I know how to do well.”

            “Me neither.”

            “Yeah, I know.  I’ve heard enough of your crappy jokes to figure out when you’re hiding behind them,” Ellie interjects with a furtive glare further down on the bed at you.  She pats the back of her hand gingerly against your cheek, then turns it around so she can cup her palm against your cheek again.

            “Not like you don’t do the same.”

            “Yeah, except I use science and scintillating conversation to do it.  I’m way more graceful,” she retorts.  “Don’t try to deny it.”

            “I… wasn’t planning on it,” you answer quietly, too incredibly soothed by the feeling of her hand on your face to object.

            “Darn right,” she chuckles, drawing her fingers away from you again at this.  “You give up way too easily, you know that?  You better hope I never get in deep with a loan shark or something and need a massive favor, because all I’ll have to do is pat you on the head and there you’ll be.”

            “There I’ll be,” you repeat with stark sincerity, and Ellie seems to sense it, because her hand returns to your skin, this time caressing your hair again between her fingers like she does so well.

             “You were way wrong about one thing, though,” she says as a few more blissful seconds drag by of nearly lulling you into a secondary consciousness.

            “What was that?”

            “When you were telling me why you… do it.  Why you like our games.”

            “Oh?”

            “Yes,” she sighs.  “You said you do it so you can recharge and pretend like you’re normal again.”

            “And?”

            “I don’t know what you think you’re pretending to be, but it’s not that.  You’re not normal.”

            You go silent.  You’re perfectly aware that the label isn’t inaccurate, but somehow hearing it validated from Ellie makes it sound less like a societal death sentence and more like a simple, colorful fact of your wild reality.

            “Normal isn’t the “in” thing anymore.  Normal doesn’t work.  I wouldn’t call myself that, either.  And I wouldn’t be as close to you if you were any different than you are now,” Ellie declares fluidly.  “So there’s no need to try to be.”

            You bite your lip and find your eyes focusing on a particularly odd plastic star, the dull neon glow of which seems to be bursting through in spite of the evening daylight.  Opening your hand, then, you reach to Ellie further up on the bed and locate her hand hovering an inch away from your face as though she was afraid to touch it again.  The fingers of both your hands clasp together, and for a second, you feel as though you’ve melded with her.

            It’s spectacular and everything you could possibly want in this moment.

            “Thank you,” you breathe quietly.

            “You’re welcome,” she answers, giving your palm a squeeze.

            There’s so much you don’t even understand about yourself now, and even more you don’t understand about this guardian angel of a young woman you’re laying so close to now.  There are a lot of words hovering invisibly above the pair of you, waiting their turns but going ignored for today as the two of you just experience the immaculate silence and the warmth of each other’s company.

            Those other things will wait: a bridge to be crossed when you both reach it.  Today, you allow yourself and your best friend this moment of effortless harmony.

            For now, you can just be.

            For now, this is far more than enough.