Fangirl

But Cath didn’t worry about Reagan, not like she worried about Wren. Maybe because Reagan looked like the Big Bad Wolf—and Wren just looked like Cath with a better haircut.

A girl walked through the door wearing a red HUSKER FOOTBALL sweatshirt and ski

“What’s wrong?” Cath asked.

“They all look alike on game days,” Reagan said. “I can’t see their ugly, deformed true selves.…” She turned to Cath. “What are you doing today?”

“Hiding in our room.”

“You look like you need some fresh air.”

“Me?” Cath gagged on her pot roast sandwich. “You look like you need fresh DNA.”

“I look like this because I’m alive,” Reagan said. “Because I’ve had experiences. Do you understand?”

Cath looked back up at Reagan and couldn’t help but smile.

Reagan wore eyeliner all the way around her eyes. Like a hard-ass Kate Middleton. And even though she was bigger than most girls—big hips, big chest, wide shoulders—she carried herself like she was exactly the size everyone else wanted to be. And everyone else went along with it—including Levi, and all the other guys who hung out in their room while Reagan finished getting ready.

“You don’t get to look like this,” Reagan said, pointing at her gray day-after face, “hiding in your room all weekend.”

“So noted,” Cath said.

“Let’s do something today.”

“Game day. The only smart thing to do is stay in our room and barricade the door.”

“Do you have anything red?” Reagan asked. “If we put on some red, we could just walk around campus and get free drinks.”

Cath’s phone rang. She looked down at it. Wren. She pushed Ignore.

“I have to write today,” she said.

*   *   *

When they got back to their room, Reagan took a shower and put on fresh makeup, sitting on her desk, holding a mirror.

She left and came back a few hours later with Target bags and a guy named Eric. Then she left again and didn’t come back until the sun was setting. Alone, this time.

Cath was still sitting at her desk.

“Enough!” Reagan half shouted.

“Jesus,” Cath said, turning toward her. It took a few seconds for Cath’s eyes to focus on something that wasn’t a computer screen.

“Get dressed,” Reagan said. “And don’t argue with me. I’m not playing this game with you.”

“What game?”

“You’re a sad little hermit, and it creeps me out. So get dressed. We’re going bowling.”

Cath laughed. “Bowling?”

“Oh, right,” Reagan said. “Like bowling is more pathetic than everything else you do.”

Cath pushed away from the desk. Her left leg had fallen asleep. She shook it out. “I’ve never been bowling. What should I wear?”

“You’ve never been bowling?” Reagan was incredulous. “Don’t people bowl in Omaha?”

Cath shrugged. “Really old people? Maybe?”

“Wear whatever. Wear something that doesn’t have Simon Snow on it, so that people won’t assume your brain stopped developing when you were seven.”

Cath put on her red CARRY ON T-shirt with jeans, and redid her ponytail.

Reagan frowned at her. “Do you have to wear your hair like that? Is it some kind of Mormon thing?”

“I’m not Mormon.”

“I said some kind.” There was a knock at the door, and Reagan opened it.

Levi was standing there, practically bouncing. He was wearing a white T-shirt, and he’d drawn on it with a Sharpie, adding a collar and buttons down the front, plus a chest pocket with The Strike Out King written above it in fancy script.

“Are we doing this?” he said.

*   *   *

Reagan and Levi were excellent bowlers. Apparently there was a bowling alley in Arnold. Not nearly as nice as this one, they said.

The three of them were the only people under forty bowling tonight, which didn’t stop Levi from talking to absolutely every single person in the whole building. He talked to the guy who was spraying the shoes, the retired couples in the next lane, a whole group of moms in some league who sent him away with ruffled hair and a pitcher of beer.…

Reagan acted like she didn’t notice.

“I think there’s a baby in the corner you forgot to kiss,” Cath said to him.

“Where’s a baby?” His eyes perked up.

“No,” she said. “I was just…” Just.

Levi set down the pitcher. He was balancing three glasses in his other hand; he let them drop on the table, and they landed without falling over.

“Why do you do that?”

“What?” He poured a beer and held it out to her. She took it without thinking, then set it down with distaste.

“Go so far out of your way to be nice to people?”

He smiled—but he was already smiling, so that just meant that he smiled more.

“Do you think I should be more like you?” he asked, then looked fondly over at Reagan, who was scowling (somehow voluptuously) over the ball return. “Or her?”

Cath rolled her eyes. “There’s got to be a happy medium.”

“I’m happy,” he said, “so this must be it.”

Cath bought herself a Cherry Coke from the bar and ignored the beer. Reagan bought two plates of drippy orange nachos. Levi bought three giant dill pickles that were so sour, they made them all cry.

Reagan won the first game. Then Levi won the second. Then, for the third, he talked the guy behind the counter into turning on the kiddie bumpers for Cath. She still didn’t pick up any strikes. Levi won again.

Cath had just enough money left to buy them all ice cream sandwiches from the vending machine.

“I really am the Strike Out King,” Levi said. “Everything I write on my shirt comes true.”

“It’ll definitely come true tonight at Muggsy’s,” Reagan said. Levi laughed and crumpled up his ice cream wrapper to throw at her. The way they smiled at each other made Cath look away. They were so easy together. Like they knew each other inside and out. Reagan was sweeter—and meaner—with Levi than she ever was with Cath.

Someone pulled on Cath’s ponytail, and her chin jerked up.

“You’re coming with us,” Levi asked, “right?”

“Where?”

“Out. To Muggsy’s. The night is young.”

“And so am I,” Cath said. “I can’t get into a bar.”

“You’ll be with us,” he said. “Nobody’ll stop you.”

“He’s right,” Reagan said. “Muggsy’s is for college dropouts and hopeless alcoholics. Freshmen never try to sneak in.”

Reagan put a cigarette in her mouth, but didn’t light it. Levi took it and put it between his lips.

Cath almost said yes.

Instead she shook her head.

*   *   *

When Cath got back up to her room, she thought about calling Wren.

She called her dad instead. He sounded tired, but he wasn’t trying to replace the stairs with a water slide, so that was an improvement. And he’d eaten two Healthy Choice meals for di

“That sounds like a healthy choice,” Cath told him, trying to sound encouraging.

She did some reading for class. Then she stayed up working on Carry On until her eyes burned and she knew she’d fall asleep as soon as she climbed into bed.

“Words are very powerful,” Miss Possibelf said, stepping lightly between the rows of desks. “And they take on more power the more that they’re spoken.…

“The more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations.” She stopped in front of Simon’s desk and tapped it with a short, jeweled staff. “Up, up and away,” she said clearly.

Simon watched the floor move away from his feet. He grabbed at the edges of his desk, knocking over a pile of books and loose papers. Across the room, Basilton laughed.

Miss Possibelf nudged Simon’s trainer with her staff—“Hold your horses”—and his desk hovered three feet in the air.

“The key to casting a spell,” she said, “is tapping into that power. Not just saying the words, but summoning their meaning.…

“Now,” she said, “open your Magic Words books to page four. And Settle down there, Simon. Please.”