Fangirl

She felt Levi lean toward her. “Because I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Cath pinched the top of her nose, wishing she knew where her tear ducts were, so she could hold them closed. “You’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry I upset you,” he said. “I think maybe I was reading you wrong, and I’m sorry about that.”

Her brain tried to come up with something mean to say about Levi and reading. “You didn’t read me wrong,” she said, shaking her head. Just for a second, she felt more angry than pathetic. “I went to your party.”

“What party?”

She turned her head to face him—even though she’d started to cry, and her glasses were fogging up, and she hadn’t officially brushed her hair since yesterday morning. “The party,” she said. “At your house. That Thursday night. I came with Reagan.”

“Why didn’t I see you?”

“You were in the kitchen … preoccupied.”

Levi’s smile faded, and he sat back slowly. Cath set her sandwich down on the chair next to her and clenched her hands in her lap.

“Oh, Cath…,” Levi said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You both seemed pretty happy about it.”

“You didn’t say you were coming.”

She looked over. “So if you’d known I was coming, you wouldn’t have been making out with somebody else in the kitchen?”

For once Levi didn’t have anything to say. He set his sandwich down, too, and pushed both hands through his wispy blond hair. His hair was made of finer stuff than Cath’s. Silk. Down. Blown-out dandelion seeds.

“Cath…,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

She wasn’t quite sure what he was apologizing for. He looked up at her, from the top of his eyes, looking genuinely sorry—and sorry for her. “It was just a kiss,” he said, pleating his forehead.

“Which one?” she asked.

Levi pushed his hands to the back of his head, and his bangs fell loose. “Both of them.”

Cath took a deep, shaky breath and let it break out through her nose. “Right,” she said. “That is, um … good information to have.”

“I didn’t think—”

“Levi.” She cut him off and looked him straight in the eye, trying to look stern despite her tears. “I can’t thank you enough for bringing me here. But I couldn’t mean this more: I’d like it if you left now. I don’t just kiss people. Kisses aren’t … just with me. That’s why I’ve been avoiding you. That’s why I’d like to avoid you now. Okay?”

“Cath—”

The door buzzed, and a nurse stepped through it, wearing flowered scrubs. She smiled at Levi. “You guys want to come back now?”

Cath stood up and grabbed her bag. She looked at Levi. “Please.” And then she followed the nurse.

*   *   *

Levi was gone when Cath came back to the lobby.

She took a cab to her dad’s office to get his car. It was full of fast-food wrappers and crumpled-up ideas. When she got home, she did the dishes and texted Wren.

Cath didn’t feel like calling. She didn’t feel like saying, Hey, you were right. He’s all drugged up and probably won’t come out of it for a few days, and there’s no real reason for you to come home—unless you just can’t stand the idea of him going through this alone. But he won’t be alone, because I’ll be here.

Her dad hadn’t done laundry for a while. The steps to the basement were covered with dirty clothes, like he’d just been throwing stuff down there for a few weeks.

She started a load of laundry.

She threw out pizza boxes with desiccated slices of pizza.

There was a poem painted on the bathroom mirror with toothpaste—maybe it was a poem, maybe it was just words. It was lovely, so Cath took a photo with her phone before she wiped it clean.

Any one of these things would have tipped them off if they’d been at home.

They looked out for him.

They’d find him sitting in his car in the middle of the night, filling page after page with ideas that didn’t quite make sense, and they’d lead him back inside.

They’d see him skip di

And they’d try to rein him back in.

Usually it worked. Seeing that they were scared terrified their dad. He’d go to bed and sleep for fifteen hours. He’d make an appointment with his counselor. He’d try the meds again, even if they all knew it wouldn’t stick.

“I can’t think when I’m on them,” he’d told Cath one night. She was sixteen, and she’d come downstairs to check the front door and found it unlocked—and then she’d inadvertently locked him out. Her dad had been sitting outside on the steps, and it scared her half to death when he rang the doorbell.

“They slow your brain down,” he said, clutching an orange bottle of pills. “They iron out all the wrinkles.… Maybe all the bad stuff happens in the wrinkles, but all the good stuff does, too.…

“They break your brain like a horse, so it takes all your orders. I need a brain that can break away, you know? I need to think. If I can’t think, who am I?”

It wasn’t so bad when he got lots of sleep. When he ate the eggs they made him for breakfast. When he didn’t work straight through three weekends in a row.

A little manic was okay. A little manic made him happy and productive and charismatic. Clients would eat awesome straight out of his hands.

She and Wren had gotten good at watching him. At noticing when a little manic slid into a lot. When charismatic gave way to crazed. When the twinkle in his eyes turned into a burnt-out flash.

Cath stayed up until three o’clock that morning, cleaning up his messes. If she and Wren had been here, they would have seen this coming. They would have stopped it.

*   *   *

The next day, Cath took her laptop to St. Richard’s with her. She had thirty-one hours to write her short story. She could e-mail it to Professor Piper; that would be okay.

Wren finally texted her back. “are you here? psych final tomorrow. right?”

They had the same pychology professor but were in different classes.

“i’ll have to miss it,” Cath typed.

“NOT ACCEPTABLE,” Wren replied.

“NOT LEAVING DAD ALONE,” Cath texted back.

“email the professor, maybe he’ll let you make it up.”

“ok.”

“email him. and i’ll talk to him.”

“ok.” Cath couldn’t bring herself to say thanks. Wren should be missing that final, too.

Her dad woke up around noon and ate mashed potatoes with yellow gravy. She could tell he was angry—angry that he was there and angry that he was too groggy for any of his anger to rise to the top.

There was a TV in his room, and Cath found a Gilmore Girls rerun. Their dad always used to watch Gilmore Girls with them; he had a crush on Sookie. Cath’s computer kept falling asleep in her lap, so she finally set it down, and leaned on his bed to watch TV.

“Where’s Wren?” he asked during a commercial break.

“School.”

“Shouldn’t you be there, too?”

“Christmas break starts tomorrow.”

He nodded. His eyes looked dull and distant. Every time he blinked, it seemed like maybe he wasn’t going to manage to open them again.

A nurse came in at two in the afternoon with more meds. Then came a doctor who asked Cath to wait in the hall. The doctor smiled at her when he left the room. “We’ll get there,” he said in a cheerful, comforting voice. “We had to bring him down pretty fast.”

Cath sat next to her dad’s bed and watched TV until visiting hours were over.

*   *   *

There was no more cleaning to do, and Cath felt uneasy being in the house by herself. She tried sleeping on the couch, but it felt too close to the outside and too close to her dad’s empty room—so she went up to her room and crawled into her own bed. When that didn’t work, she climbed into Wren’s bed, taking her laptop with her.

Their dad had stayed at St. Richard’s three times before. The first time was the summer after their mom left. They’d called their grandma when he wouldn’t get out of bed, and for a while, she’d moved in with them. She filled the freezer with frozen lasagna before she moved out.