Fangirl

Cath rolled her eyes and wiped her nose on her shoulder.

“Can I ask you something?” the professor asked.

“I’m pretty sure you will anyway.”

The older woman smiled. “Did you help Nick Manter on his final project?”

Cath looked up at the corner of the ceiling and quickly licked her bottom lip. She felt a new wave of tears rushing through her head. Damn. She’d had a solid month now of no crying.

She nodded.

“I thought so,” the professor said gently. “I could hear you. In some of the best parts.”

Cath held every muscle still.

“Nick’s my teaching assistant, he was just here, actually, and he’s in my Advanced Fiction-Writing class. His style has … shifted quite a bit.”

Cath looked at the door.

“Cath,” the professor pressed.

“Yes?” Cath still couldn’t look at her.

“What if I made you a deal?”

Cath waited.

“I haven’t turned in your grade yet; I was hoping you’d come see me. And I don’t have to turn it in—I could give you the rest of this semester to finish your short story. You were headed toward a solid A in my class, maybe even an A-plus.”

Cath thought about her grade point average. And her scholarship. And the fact that she was going to have to get perfect grades this semester if she wanted to keep it. She didn’t have any room for error. “You could do that?”

“I can do whatever I want with my students’ grades. I’m the god of this small thing.”

Cath felt her fingernails in her palms. “Can I think about it?”

“Sure.” Professor Piper’s tone was air-light. “If you decide to do this, I’d like you to meet with me regularly, throughout the semester, just to talk about your progress. It will be like independent study.”

“Okay. I’ll think about it. I’ll, um—thank you.”

Cath picked up her bag and stood up. She was immediately standing too close to the professor, so she looked down and moved quickly toward the door. She didn’t look up again until she was back in her dormitory, stepping out of the elevator.

*   *   *

“This is Art.”

“That’s how you answer the phone?”

“Hey, Cath.”

“No hello?”

“I don’t like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I’ve never heard a phone ring before and I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next. Hello?”

“How are you feeling, Dad?”

“Good.”

“How good?”

“I’m leaving work every day at five. I’m eating di

“That is impressive.”

“He’d just told me that we couldn’t use Frankenstein in our Frankenbeans pitch, because nobody cares about Frankenstein anymore. Kids want zombies.”

“But they’re not called Zombiebeans.”

“They will be if fucking Kelly has his way. We’re pitching ‘Zombeanie Weenies.’”

“Wow, how did you stay grounded through all that?”

“I was fantasizing about eating his brain.”

“I’m still impressed, Dad. Hey—I think I’m go

“If you want … I don’t want you to worry about me, Cath. I do better when I know you’re happy.”

“Well, I’m happy when I’m not worried about you. We have a symbiotic relationship.”

“Speaking of … how’s your sister?”

*   *   *

Her dad was wrong about worrying. Cath liked to worry. It made her feel proactive, even when she was totally helpless.

Like with Levi.

Cath couldn’t control whether she saw Levi on campus. But she could worry about it, and as long as she was worrying about it, it probably wasn’t going to happen. Like some sort of anxiety vaccine. Like watching a pot to make sure it never boiled.

She wore comforting grooves in her head, worrying about seeing Levi, then telling herself all the reasons it wasn’t going to happen:

First, because Reagan had promised to keep him away.

And second, because Levi didn’t have any business on City Campus. Cath told herself that Levi spent all his time either studying buffalo on East Campus, or working at Starbucks, or making out in his kitchen with pretty girls. There was no reason for their paths ever to cross.

Still … she froze every time she saw blond hair and a green Carhartt jacket—or every time she wished she did.

She froze now.

Because there he was, right where he wasn’t supposed to be, sitting outside her door. Proof positive that she hadn’t been worrying enough.

Levi saw Cath, too, and sprang to his feet. He wasn’t smiling. (Thank God. She wasn’t up for any of his smiles.)

Cath stepped warily forward. “Reagan’s in class,” she said when she was still a few doors away.

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

Cath shook her head. It could have meant “no” or it could have meant “I don’t understand”—both were true. She stopped walking. Her stomach hurt so bad, she wanted to bend over.

“I just need to tell you something,” Levi said quickly.

“I really don’t want you to come in,” she said.

“That’s fine. I can tell you out here.”

Cath crossed her arms over her stomach and nodded.

Levi nodded back. He pushed his hands into his coat pockets.

“I was wrong,” he said.

She nodded. Because duh. And because she didn’t know what he wanted from her.

He pushed his hands deeper into his coat. “Cath,” he said earnestly, “it wasn’t just a kiss.”

“Okay.” Cath looked past him to her door. She took a step closer then, toward the door, holding her key up like they were done here.

Levi stepped out of her way. Confused, but still polite.

Cath put her key in the door, then held on to the handle, hanging her head forward. She could hear him breathing and fidgeting behind her. Levi.

“Which one?” she asked.

“What?”

“Which kiss?” Her voice was weak and thin. Wet paper.

“The first one,” Levi said after a few seconds.

“But the second one was? It was just a kiss?”

Levi’s voice got closer: “I don’t want to talk about the second one.”

“Too bad.”

“Then yes,” he said. “It was just a—it was nothing.”

“What about the third one?”

“Is that a trick question?”

Cath shrugged.

“Cath … I’m trying to tell you something here.”

She turned around and immediately regretted it. Levi’s hair was tousled, most of it pushed back, bits of it falling over his forehead. And he wasn’t smiling, so his blue eyes were taking over his whole long face.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“That it wasn’t just a kiss, Cather. There was no just.”

“No just?”

“No.”

“So?” Her voice sounded much cooler than she felt. Inside, her internal organs were grinding themselves into nervous pulp. Her intestines were gone. Her kidneys were disintegrating. Her stomach was wringing itself out, yanking on her trachea.

“So … aahhggch,” Levi said, frustrated, ru

“I wonder…,” she said, “if there was such a thing as time machines, would anyone ever use them to go to the future?”

“Cather.”

“What.”

“What are you thinking?”

What was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking. She was wondering if she could live without her kidneys. She was holding herself up on two feet. “I still don’t know what all this means,” she said.

“It means … I really like you.” His hand was in his hair again. Just the one. Holding it back. “Like, really like you. And I want that kiss to have been the start of something. Not the end.”

Cath looked at Levi’s face. His eyebrows were pulled down in the middle, bunching up the skin above his nose. His cheeks, for once, were absolutely smooth. And his lips were at their most doll-like, not even a quirk of a smile.