Fangirl

Cath was okay with that, she’d made peace with that D. It was the price she’d decided to pay for last semester. For Nick. And Levi. For plagiarism. It was the price for learning that she didn’t want to write books about decline and desolation in rural America, or about anything else.

Cath was ready to take her D and move on.

Inc.

“What am I supposed to do?” she asked Reagan.

“Fuck, Cath. I don’t know. Talk to your professor. You’re giving me lung cancer.”

*   *   *

This was Cath’s third time back in Andrews Hall since she got her grades back.

The first two times, she’d walked in one end of the building and walked straight through to the door on the other side.

This time was already better. This time, she’d stopped to use the bathroom.

She’d walked into the building just as four o’clock classes were getting out, a flash flood of girls with cool hair and boys who looked like Nick. Cath ducked into the bathroom, and now she was sitting in a wooden stall, waiting for the coast to clear. Somebody had taken the time to carve most of “Stairway to Heaven” into the stall door; it was a serious amount of carving. English majors.

Cath didn’t have any English classes this semester, and she was thinking about changing her major. Or maybe she’d just change her concentration from Creative Writing to Renaissance Lit; that would be useful in the real world, a head full of so

She opened the stall door slowly, flushing the toilet for appearances, then ran water in one of the sinks (hot in one faucet, cold in the other) and rinsed her face. She could do this. She just had to find the department office, then ask where Professor Piper’s personal office was. Professor Piper probably wouldn’t even be there.

The hallway was nearly empty now. Cath found the stairs and followed the signs pointing to the main office. Down the hall, around the corner. Maybe if she just walked by the main office, that would be enough progress for the day. She walked slowly, touching each wooden door.

“Cath?”

Even though it was a woman’s voice, Cath’s first panicky thought was Nick.

“Cath!”

She turned toward the voice—and saw Professor Piper in the office across the hall, standing up behind her desk. The professor motioned for Cath to come forward. Cath did.

“I’ve been wondering about you,” Professor Piper said, smiling warmly. “You just disappeared. Come in, come talk to me.”

She motioned for Cath to sit down, so Cath did. (Apparently, Professor Piper could control Cath with simple hand gestures. Like the Dog Whisperer.)

The professor came around to the front of her desk and hopped onto it. Her signature move. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

“I … didn’t go anywhere,” Cath said. She was thinking about going right now. This was too much progress; she hadn’t pla

“But you never turned in your story,” Professor Piper said. “Did something happen?”

Cath took a deepish breath and tried to sound steady. “Sort of. My dad was in the hospital. But that’s not really why—I’d already decided not to write it.”

The professor looked surprised. She held on to the lip of her desk and leaned forward. “But, Cath, why? I was so eager to see what you’d do.”

“I just…,” Cath started again: “I realized that I’m not cut out for fiction-writing.”

Professor Piper blinked and pulled her head back. “What are you talking about? You’re exactly cut out for it. You’re a Butterick pattern, Cath—this is what you were meant to do.”

It was Cath’s turn to blink. “No. I … I kept trying. To start the story. I … look, I know how you feel about fanfiction, but that’s what I want to write. That’s where my passion is. And I’m really good at it.”

“I’m sure you are,” Professor Piper said. “You’re a natural storyteller. But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t finish your final project.”

“Once I realized that it wasn’t right for me, I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. I just wanted to move on.”

Professor Piper regarded Cath thoughtfully, tapping the edge of the desk. This is what it looks like when a sane person taps her fingers.

“Why do you keep saying that it wasn’t right for you?” the professor asked. “Your work last semester was excellent. It was all right. You’re one of my most promising students.”

“But I don’t want to write my own fiction,” Cath said, as emphatically as she could. “I don’t want to write my own characters or my own worlds—I don’t care about them.” She clenched her fists in her lap. “I care about Simon Snow. And I know he’s not mine, but that doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather pour myself into a world I love and understand than try to make something up out of nothing.”

The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it, Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.”

Cath hadn’t expected Professor Piper to be happy about her decision, but she hadn’t expected this either. She didn’t think the professor would push back.

“It just feels like nothing to me,” Cath said.

“You’d rather take—or borrow—someone else’s creation?”

“I know Simon and Baz. I know how they think, what they feel. When I’m writing them, I get lost in them completely, and I’m happy. When I’m writing my own stuff, it’s like swimming upstream. Or … falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.”

“Yes,” the professor said, reaching out and grasping the air in front of Cath, like she was catching a fly. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”

Cath shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. “Well, I hate it.”

“Do you hate it? Or are you just afraid.”

Cath sighed and decided to wipe her eyes on her sweater. Another type of adult would hand her a box of Kleenex about now. Professor Piper just kept pushing.

“You got special permission to be in my class. You must have wanted to write. And your work was delightful—didn’t you enjoy it?”

“Nothing I wrote compared to Simon.”

“Good gracious, Cath, are you really comparing yourself to the most successful author of the modern age?”

“Yes,” Cath said. “Because, when I’m writing Gemma T. Leslie’s characters, sometimes, in some ways, I am better than her. I know how crazy that sounds—but I also know that it’s true. I’m not a god. I could never create the World of Mages; but I’m really, really good at manipulating that world. I can do more with her characters than I could ever do with my own. My characters are just … sketches compared to hers.”

“But you can’t do anything with fanfiction. It’s stillborn.”

“I can let people read it. Lots of people do read it.”

“You can’t make a living that way. You can’t make a career.”

“How many people make a career out of writing anyway?” Cath snapped. She felt like everything inside her was snapping. Her nerves. Her temper. Her esophagus. “I’ll write because I love it, the way other people knit or … or scrapbook. And I’ll find some other way to make money.”

Professor Piper leaned back again and folded her arms. “I’m not going to talk to you any more about the fanfiction.”

“Good.”

“But I’m not done talking to you.”

Cath took another deep breath.

“I’m afraid,” Professor Piper said, “afraid that you’re never going to discover what you’re truly capable of. That you won’t get to see—that I won’t get to see—any of the wonder that’s inside of you. You’re right, nothing you turned in last semester compared to Simon Snow and the Mage’s Heir. But there was so much potential. Your characters quiver, Cath, like they’re trying to evolve right off the page.”