Fangirl

“Your dad’s a Mad Man,” he said.

Cath laughed, and Levi looked sheepish. “That’s not what I meant.”

They ate at the dining room table, and by the middle of di

Her eggs were perfect.

The only sour note was when her dad asked about Wren. Cath shrugged and changed the subject. He didn’t seem to notice. He was a little twitchy and tappy tonight, a little distant, but Cath decided he was just lost in work. His color was good, and he told her he’d been jogging every morning. Every once in a while, he seemed to surface enough to give Levi an appraising look.

After di

“For how long?”

“A month,” Cath said. “Sort of. Longer. I don’t know.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-one.”

“He looks older.…”

“It’s the hair.”

Her dad nodded. “He seems nice.”

“He’s the nicest,” Cath said as sincerely as she could, wanting him to believe her. “He’s a good guy, I swear.”

“I didn’t know you’d broken up with Abel.”

Once the dishes were done—Cath dried—she and Levi were going to watch a movie, but her dad winced when she started moving his papers off the couch.

“Do you guys mind watching TV upstairs? I promise, Cath, I’m all yours tomorrow. I just—”

“Sure,” she said. “Not too late, okay?”

He smiled, but he was already turning back to his notebook.

Cath looked at Levi and motioned her head toward the stairs. She felt him on the steps behind her, her stomach tightening all the way. When they got to the top, Levi touched the back of her arm, and she stepped away from him into her bedroom.

It looked like a kid’s room now that she was imagining it through his eyes. It was big, a half story, with a slanted roof, deep-pink carpet, and two matching, cream-colored canopy beds.

Every inch of the walls and ceiling was covered with posters and pictures; she and Wren never really took things down as they got older. They just put new things up. Shabby Simon Snow chic.

When Cath looked up at Levi, his eyes were sparkling, and he was biting his bottom lip. She pushed him and he burst into laughter.

“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

She sighed. “Okay…”

“No, seriously. I feel like this room should be preserved so that people of the future know what it was like to be a teenage girl in the twenty-first century.”

“I get it—”

“Oh God,” Levi said, still giggling. “I can’t take it—” He started walking back down the stairs, and then, after a second, he walked back up and re-burst into laughter.

“Okay,” Cath said, walking over to her bed and sitting down against the headboard. Her comforter was pink and green plaid. She had Simon Snow pillowcases. There was a Sanrio mobile hanging over her head like a dream-catcher.

Levi strolled over to her bed and sat down in the middle. “You look so blindingly cute right now, I feel like I need to make a pinhole in a piece of paper just to look at you.”

She rolled her eyes, and Levi swung his feet up, pushing them through hers so their legs crossed at the shins. “I still can’t believe your dad sent me up to your room the first time he met me. All he knows about me is that I took you out into a blizzard.”

“He’s just like that,” Cath said. “He’s never kept us on much of a leash.”

“Never? Not even when you were kids?”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “He trusts us. Plus, you saw him—his mind wanders.”

“Well, when you meet my parents, don’t expect my mom to let us out of her sight.”

“I’ll bet Reagan loved that.”

Levi’s eyes widened. “There is no love lost between my mom and Reagan, believe me. Reagan’s older sister got pregnant her senior year, and my mom was pretty sure it ran in families. She had her whole prayer circle working on us. When she found out we broke up, she actually raised her hands to heaven.”

Cath smiled uncomfortably and pulled a pillow into her lap, picking at the fabric.

“Does it bother you when I talk about Reagan?” he asked.

“I’m the one who brought her up.”

“Does it?”

“A little,” Cath said. “Tell me more about your mom.”

“I finally get you up to a room, and now we’re talking about my ex-girlfriend and my mom.”

Cath smiled down at the pillow.

“Well…,” he said. “My mom grew up on a ranch. She quilts. She’s active in her church.”

“What kind?”

“Baptist.”

“What’s her name?”

“Marlisse,” he said. “What’s your mom’s name?”

“Laura.”

“What’s she like?”

Cath raised her eyebrows and shrugged. “She was an artist. I mean, maybe she still is. She and my dad met at an ad agency right out of college.”

He knocked one of his knees against hers. “And…”

Cath sighed. “And she didn’t want to get married or get pregnant or anything like that. They weren’t even dating seriously, she was trying to get a job in Mi

“How do you know all that? Did your dad tell you?”

“She told us. She thought we should know who she really was and how she’d ended up in such a lamentable situation, I guess so that we wouldn’t make the same mistakes.”

“What did she expect you to learn?”

“I don’t know,” Cath said. “Stay away from men? Maybe just ‘use a condom.’ Or ‘stay away from men who don’t know how to work a condom.’”

“You’re making me appreciate the prayer circle.”

Cath laughed for half a breath.

“When did she leave?” he asked. He already knew that her mom had left. Cath had told him once in a way that let him know she didn’t want to elaborate. But now …

“When we were eight,” she said.

“Did you see it coming?”

“No.” Cath looked up at him. “I don’t think anyone would ever see that coming. I mean, when you’re a kid, you don’t expect your mom to leave, no matter what, you know? Even if you think she doesn’t like you.”

“I’m sure she liked you.”

“She left,” Cath said, “and she never came back. Who does that?”

“I don’t know … someone who’s missing a piece.”

Cath felt tears in her eyes, and tried to blink them away.

“Do you miss her?” Levi asked.

“No,” Cath said quietly, “I couldn’t care less about her. I miss Wren.”

Levi pulled his legs back and leaned forward, crawling up Cath’s bed until he was sitting next to her. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his chest. “Okay?”

She nodded and leaned into him hesitantly, like she wasn’t sure how she’d fit. He traced circles on her shoulder with his thumb.

“You know,” he said, “I keep wanting to say that it’s like Simon Snow threw up in here … but it’s more like someone else ate Simon Snow—like somebody went to an all-you-care-to-eat Simon Snow buffet—and then threw up in here.”

Cath laughed. “I like it.”

“Never said I didn’t like it.”

*   *   *

As long as they were talking, it was easy. And Levi was always talking.

He told her about 4-H.

“What do the H’s stand for?”

“Head, heart, hands, health. They don’t have 4-H in South Omaha?”

“They do, but it stands for hard, hip-hop and Homey-don’t-play-that.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. You missed out on a lot of competitive rabbit breeding.”

“You raised rabbits?”

“Prize-wi