Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1)

by Seanan McGuire

There was still something unfinished around her eyes; she wasn’t done yet. She was a story, not an epilogue.

I can show you to your room as soon as I know where you fall on the compass. I’m afraid that really does matter for things like housing; you can’t put a Nonsense traveler in with someone who went walking through Logic, not unless you feel like explaining a remarkable amount of violence to the local police.

She didn’t mind flirting. Flirting was safe, flirting was fun; flirting was a way of interacting with her peers without anyone realizing that there was anything strange about her. She could have flirted forever. It was just the things that came after flirting that she had no interest in.

Believe it or not, she used to be the gregarious one, even if it was a nerdy sort of friendly. She’d run you to ground to tell you about the latest episode of Doctor Who.

This was always the difficult part, back when she’d been at her old school: explaining that “asexual” and “aromantic” were different things.