I like to think a lot, especially in the mornings when I have some peace and quiet on the bus in to do so. It's way too early for most people to even move their mouths, so it's just me and my head making all the noise. Normally that's how it is inside the school too, which is why an exceptionally loud squeal broke my concentration into little tiny pieces.

"Link! OMGeeee! I'm so glad to see you, it's been forever."

She was a shrill little thing, and she had a body like a model. I'm pretty curvy myself, if I must say, but this chick had big boobs, big butt, swan neck, and she couldn't have been more than a few inches thick in the waist. Body aside, she wasn't pretty. Her skin was very pale and her eyes were a weird color, plus her head seemed a little disproportionate. Worst of all, her hair was blue. Like, blue blue. The color of Link's eyes blue.

Speaking of Link, he wasn't looking for me. I really shouldn't have cared, since we'd broken it off a month ago, but every morning he stood at his locker nearby the front door and scanned the students entering until he found me. He'd meet my eyes if he could and then immediately look away, as if he hadn't intended for me to catch him staring. I was never sure if I liked it or thought it was creepy, but I did know that I felt decidedly put out when he wasn't doing that. Instead, he was looking at Ruto.

"Hey, Ru! Welcome to KAHS," he said to her. He was being loud. Dork. I mean idiot. Dork was too affectionate for the way I regarded Link. Ruto giggled, and I automatically didn't like her. Nobody giggled that much unless they were flirting, which she definitely was. And it pissed me off that it pissed me off that she was flirting with Link.

We hadn't even been officially boyfriend and girlfriend. We'd been dating. That's it. Maybe even less. Like friends with benefits without the benefits. We weren't an item. We hadn't been exclusive. So why had it hurt so much when I told him that I needed to focus on grades instead of him?

But whatever. I wasn't going to bother myself with thinking about them. I wasn't going to imagine Link kissing Ruto the same way he kissed me. I wasn't. Except I already was.

I liked Ruto even less.

-:- -:- -:- -:-

I share second period with Link. I'm a budding genius and he's a baby village idiot, so it was one of the only classes we could share. Art. We'd picked it when we were still just friends, before we got romantically involved with each other and messed everything up. It was great for a while, and then all our emotional baggage hit the fan. I wasn't particularly good at artsy stuff, being more academically inclined, but I still kept an easy A in the class. Link, on the other hand, was spectacular about all manner of doodling and deserved much more than the B he had for not doing homework.

Ruto seemed to be an artist too.

The first thing she did in class was plop herself down right next to Link with excessive enthusiasm and immediately begin playing with the scraps of construction paper on the table. Didn't she ever sit still? I dismissed her for a few minutes before Link made a pleasantly surprised noise and I was forced to look. Somehow she had managed to make the tiny little slivers of color into a dolphin.

Link took out his phone and snapped a photo of it.

I decided Ruto looked like a fish.

-:- -:- -:- -:-

Lunchtime.

It was a small school and everyone had the same lunch hour, so I had resigned myself an hour or so ago to hearing Ruto's excited squeals throughout my meal. I quickly found out that silence wasn't actually preferable, since it meant that she was doing something that required her focus. Namely, painting her nails.

Link looked on pleasantly, his food forgotten on the other side of him as he dutifully held out a nail polish bottle for her. When she had finished with her right hand, she dangled it in front of her face for him to blow on. He huffed and puffed until he was red in the face and Ruto's high-pitched giggles echoed through the cafeteria.

I noticed that her nail polish was blue, and that it matched her hair and eyes. She looked like she had sprung from the ocean, her lungs filled with sea foam. That's why she laughed so much. I was proud of myself for how poetic it sounded, and then I hated myself for admiring her. Then I hated my self-hatred.

I wasn't supposed to be jealous. I had broken up with him. She was just the rebound.

She had the voice of a squirrel.

-:- -:- -:- -:-

Physical Education was one of the handful of other areas that Link could beat me at. He wouldn't let himself act smart, instead preferring a laid-back sort of attitude that demanded nothing from his intellect, but when it came to sports, he was top-tier. Nobody in our school could beat him on his average day, and even when he was hobbling around on a sprained ankle that one time he dominated at badminton.

Ruto couldn't be good at P.E. It genuinely wasn't possible. Besides, I'd seen her doing her nails about an hour before! No girl who cared enough to paint her nails in the middle of the school day would be willing to risk the polish by playing a sport, even one as relaxed as four square.

Of course, she had thwarted my expectations every time I saw her, so I had no doubt that she would turn out to be absolutely friggin fantastic at anything she tried.

Imagine my surprise when I walked out of the locker room to see her handling a basketball with ease.

I was just about done with her. So, so done. Link was mine. He'd always been mine, always would be mine, and I was lying to myself through my teeth about not caring for him anymore. I would never get tired of his sandy hair and crystal eyes, his tan skin and lean-muscled build. No way, not ever. Up until today, turning around and reclaiming him had always been an option. The poor guy pined for me, for Din's sake. But now that this Ruto chick was in the way… I either needed to stop thinking about Link completely and just give up, which was not an option, or get rid of her once and for all.

"Harkinian, get back in line!" our gym teacher shouted at me when I stormed away. I ignored him, of course. I was on a mission, and my directive drove me right toward little-miss-perfect.

"Ruto!" I shouted. She turned around, looking away from her basketball, and then everything was gone. If the clock on the wall was right, I woke up somewhere around two minutes later with a handful of wet paper towels on my face, the gym teacher and all my classmates standing around me, and Link with his coiffed-nailed pet girl on either side of my face.

"Been a long time since I saved you from yourself, Zellie." He grinned. It was good to see his eyes crinkle up like that again. The last few weeks, all I'd seen in his eyes when he looked at me was melancholy. Link's sad eyes were the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. "I can only hope you take this opportunity to thank your great Hero duly."

I groaned and closed my eyes. Cocky butthead. "Yeah, maybe I'll give you a kiss when I don't feel nauseous any more. What even was that?" My head felt like it was being split like a watermelon. Or some other grotesque and painful-sounding metaphor.

"I lost control of the basketball! I'm so sorry!" Ruto interrupted our little chat with her awful voice. Link shot her a look, and I got the impression that they were silently communicating. Boyfriend code. Gag.

But then he corrected her. "Actually, my friend Ruto here just kind of likes to play Cupid."

She blushed and looked away guiltily. I blushed. Link held my gaze.

I decided Ruto wasn't that bad.