Fangirl

“Superior.”

“Yes. Superior. Do you want to arm wrestle?”

“I don’t need superior upper-body strength to carry my own dirty laundry.” She put her fingers on the handles, trying to push his aside.

“You’re deliberately missing the point,” he said.

“No, that’s you.”

“Your face is flushed, did you know that?”

“Well,” she said. “I’m frustrated.”

“Don’t make me angry-kiss you.”

“Give me the laundry.”

“Tempers rising, faces flushed … This is how it happens.”

That made Cath laugh. And that was irritating, too. She used most of her inferior upper-body strength to shove the hamper into his chest.

Levi pushed it back gently, but didn’t let go. “Let’s fight about this the next time I try to do something nice for you, okay?”

She looked up at his eyes. The way he looked back at her made her feel wide open, like every thought must be closed-captioned on her face. She let go of the hamper and picked up her laptop bag, opening the door.

“Finally,” he said. “My triceps are killing me.”

*   *   *

This was the coldest, snowiest winter Cath could remember. It was the middle of March already, technically spring, but it still felt like January. Cath put on her snow boots every morning without thinking about it.

She’d had gotten so used to the snow, to being a pedestrian in the snow, that she hadn’t even thought to check the weather today—she hadn’t thought about road conditions and visibility or the fact that maybe this wasn’t the best afternoon for Levi to drive her home.

She was thinking about it now.

It felt like they were the only car on the interstate. They couldn’t see the sun; they couldn’t see the road. Every ten minutes or so, red taillights would emerge out of the static ahead of them, and Levi would ease onto the brakes.

He’d stopped talking almost an hour ago. His mouth was straight, and he was squinting at the windshield like he needed glasses.

“We should go back,” Cath whispered.

“Yeah…,” he said, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand, then clenching a fist around the gearshift. “But I think it might be easier now to keep going. It’s worse behind us. I thought we’d beat it to Omaha.”

There was a metallic ringing as a car passed them on the left.

“What’s that noise?” she asked.

“Tire chains.” Levi didn’t sound scared. But he was being so awfully quiet.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about the weather.”

“My fault,” he said, sparing a second to smile at her. “I didn’t want to let you down. Think I’ll feel worse if I actually kill you.…”

“That would not be chivalrous.”

Levi smiled again. She reached out to the gearshift and touched his hand, ru

They were quiet again for a few minutes—maybe not that long. It was hard to judge time with everything so tense and gray.

“What are you thinking about?” Levi asked.

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing. You’ve seemed thinky and weird ever since I got to your room. Is this about me meeting your dad?”

“No,” Cath said quickly. “I kind of forgot about that.”

More quiet.

“What then?”

“Just … something that happened with a professor. I can tell you when we’re not in mortal peril.”

Levi felt on the seat for her hand, so she gave it to him. He clutched it. “You’re not in mortal peril.” He moved his hand back to the gearshift. “Maybe … stranded-in-a-ditch-for-a-few-hours peril. Tell me. I can’t really talk right now, but I can listen. I’d like to listen.”

Cath turned away from the window and faced him. It was nice to look at Levi when he couldn’t look back. She liked his profile. It was very … flat. A straight line from his long forehead into his longish nose—his nose veered out a bit at the tip, but not much—and another straight line from his nose to his chin. His chin went soft sometimes when he smiled or when he was feigning surprise, but it never quite mushed away. She was going to kiss him there someday, right at the edge of his jaw where his chin was most vulnerable.

“What happened in class?” he asked.

“After class, I went … Well, okay, so you know how last semester, I was taking Fiction-Writing?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I didn’t turn in my final project. I was supposed to write a short story, and I didn’t.”

“What?” His chin tucked back in surprise. “Why?”

“I … lots of reasons.” This was more complicated than Cath thought. She didn’t want to tell Levi how unhappy she’d been last semester—how she hadn’t wanted to come back to school, how she hadn’t wanted to see him. She didn’t want him to think he had that much power over her.

“I didn’t want to write it,” she said. “I mean, there’s more to it than that, but … mostly I didn’t want to. I had writer’s block. And my dad, you know, I didn’t come back to school, finals week, after he had his breakdown.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well. It’s true. So I decided not to finish my final project. But my Fiction-Writing professor didn’t turn in my grade. She wants to give me a second chance—she said I could write the story this semester. And I sort of said that I would.”

“Wow. That’s awesome.”

“Yeah…”

“It’s not awesome?”

“No. It is. Just … it was nice to have it behind me. To feel like I was through with that whole idea. Fiction-Writing.”

“You write fiction all the time.”

“I write fanfiction.”

“Don’t be tricky with me right now. I’m driving through a blizzard.” A car materialized ahead of them, and Levi’s face tensed.

Cath waited until he relaxed again. “I don’t want to make up my own characters, my own world—I don’t have that inside of me.”

Neither of them spoke. They were moving so slowly.… Something caught Cath’s eye through Levi’s window; a semi truck had jackknifed in the median. She took a stuttering breath, and Levi found her hand again.

“Only fifteen miles,” he said.

“Does he need help?”

“There was a State Patrol car.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“I’m so sorry about this,” Levi said.

“Stop,” she said. “You didn’t make it snow.”

“Your dad’s going to hate me.”

She raised his hand to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. His forehead wrinkled, almost like it hurt.

Cath listened to the windshield wipers and watched the front window for whatever was coming next.

“Are you sure?” Levi asked after a few miles. “About the fiction-writing? Are you sure you don’t have that inside you? You’re fathomless when it comes to Simon and Baz—”

“They’re different. They already exist. I just move them around.”

He nodded. “Maybe you’re like Frank Sinatra. He didn’t write his own songs—but he was a genius interpreter.”

“I hate Frank Sinatra.”

“Come on, nobody hates Frank Sinatra.”

“He treated women like things.”

“Okay—” Levi adjusted himself in the seat, shaking his neck out. “—not Frank Sinatra, then … Aretha Franklin.”

“Blech. Diva.”

“Roy Acuff?”

“Who?”

Levi smiled, and it made Cath kiss his fingers again. He gave her a quick, questioning look.

“The point is…,” he said softly. Something about the storm made them both talk softly. “There are different kinds of talent. Maybe your talent is in interpretation. Maybe you’re a stylist.”

“And you think that counts?”

“Tim Burton didn’t come up with Batman. Peter Jackson didn’t write Lord of the Rings.”

“In the right light, you are such a nerd.”

His smile opened up. The truck hit a slick spot, and he pulled his hand away, but the smile lingered. A coffeepot-shaped water tower slowly moved past his window. They were on the edge of town now; there were more cars here, on the road and in the ditches.

“You still have to write that story,” Levi said.

“Why?”

“To bring your grade up. Don’t you need to keep your GPA up for your scholarship?”