Fangirl

“It’s like you grew up on a different planet.”

“Head, heart, hands, health … that’s really nice, don’t you think?”

“Are there photos of you somewhere with rabbits?”

“And blue ribbons,” he said.

“I might have to make a pinhole camera just to look at them.”

“Are you kidding? I was so cute, you’ll have to wear special glasses. Oh, hey, I just remembered the 4-H pledge—‘I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living, for my club, my community, my country and my world.’”

Cath closed her eyes. “Where are those glasses?”

Then he told her about the state fair—more rabbits, more sows, plus a year of serious brownie-making—and he showed her photos of his four blond sisters on his phone.

Cath couldn’t keep track of their names. They were all from the Bible. “Old Testament,” Levi said. He had one sister Cath’s age and one who was still in high school.

“Doesn’t this creep you out?”

“What?”

“Dating someone as young as your little sister?”

“Dating my little sister would creep me out—”

“I’m still a teenager.”

He shrugged. “You’re legal.”

She shoved him.

“Cath, I’m only two and a half years older than you.”

“College years,” she said. “That’s like a decade.”

He rolled his eyes.

“My dad thought you were thirty.”

He pulled back his chin. “He did not.… Did he really?”

She giggled. “No.”

Levi saw that she had Simon Snow Scene It? and insisted that they play. Cath thought she’d cream him, but his memory was insane, and all the questions were about the movies, not the books.

“Too bad for you that there aren’t any questions about homosexual subtext,” Levi said. “I want you to make me a blue ribbon when I win this.”

At midnight, Cath started thinking about her dad downstairs and how he should really be getting some sleep.

“Are you tired?” she asked Levi.

“Do I get my own tent bed?”

“It’s called a canopy, and no. You get your own couch. If I tell my dad you’re tired, it’ll force him to stop working.”

Levi nodded.

“Do you need pajamas or something?”

“I can sleep in my clothes. It’s only one night.”

She found an extra toothbrush for him, dug out a clean sheet, and grabbed one of her pillows.

When they got downstairs, the papers had multiplied—but her dad gamely cleared off the couch and kissed Cath on the forehead. She made him promise not to keep working in his bedroom—“Don’t make me yell at you in front of company.” Cath made up the couch, and when Levi got out of the bathroom, his face and the front of his hair damp, she handed him the pillow. He set it on the couch and gri

“Do you need anything else?” she asked.

He shook his head. Cath took a step backwards and he caught her hand. She ran her fingers along his palm, pulling away.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night, sweetheart.”

*   *   *

Cath woke up at three, her head too clear and her heart beating too fast.

She tiptoed down the stairs, but she knew they’d still creak.

She walked through the kitchen, made sure the stove was turned off, that the back door was locked, that everything was okay.…

Her dad’s door was open; she stood in the doorway until she could hear him breathe. Then she walked as quietly as she could past the couch. The front door was locked. The curtains were drawn. A snowplow was crawling up their street.

When she turned around, Levi had raised himself up on his elbow and was watching her.

He’d taken off his sweater and had on a loose white T-shirt. His hair was wild, and his lips and eyes were thick with sleep.

Head, heart, hands …

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

Cath shook her head and hurried back upstairs.

*   *   *

Levi had to leave before breakfast; he had to get to Starbucks. Jim Flowers, her dad’s favorite weatherman, said that the roads were much better, but that everybody should “take it slow out there.”

Her dad said he’d drive Cath back to school on Sunday, but Levi looked at the snowed-in Honda and said it was no trouble to come back.

“So…,” her dad said. They were standing on the porch, watching Levi’s truck turn the corner. “That’s your new boyfriend.”

She nodded.

“Still dying to move home? Transfer to UNO? Spend your whole life taking care of your mentally unstable father?”

Cath pushed past him into the living room. “Breakfast?”

*   *   *

It was a good weekend. Five thousand words of Carry On. Fish tacos with radish and shredded cabbage. Only two more conversations about Wren. And Sunday afternoon brought Levi back, taking her front steps two at a time.

The Humdrum bounced a small red ball in its hand.

Simon had carried that ball everywhere, for at least a year. He’d lost it when he came to Watford—he hadn’t needed it anymore.

“You’re lying,” Simon said. “You’re not me. You’re no part of me.”

“I’m what’s left of you,” the Humdrum said. And Simon would swear his own voice was never so high and so sweet.

—from chapter 23, Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak, copyright © 2010 by Gemma T. Leslie

TWENTY-EIGHT

“Geez, Cather, if you need a break, just tell me.”

Levi was lying on her dorm-room bed, and he’d just told her that he was going home for a few days for his sister’s birthday party—and instead of saying I’ll miss you or even Have fun, Cath had said, “Oh, that’s perfect.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she apologized. “It’s just, my dad’s going to Tulsa this weekend, so he doesn’t need me. And if you’re going home, you won’t need me, and that means I have all weekend to write; I’m so far behind on Carry On.…”

So far behind. And so out of rhythm.

If she didn’t work on her fic, at least a little bit, every day, Cath lost the thread of it, the momentum. She ended up writing long, go-nowhere conversations—or scenes where Baz and Simon memorized the planes in each other’s faces. (These scenes were weirdly popular with commenters, but they didn’t help the story along.)

“I’ll still need you,” Levi said, teasing.

There followed a long go-nowhere conversation during which she tried to memorize the planes of his face. (It was harder than you’d think; they were constantly shifting.) She’d almost kissed him then.…

She’d almost kissed him again this afternoon, when he’d stopped by her dormitory to say good-bye on his way out of town. Cath had stood on the sidewalk, and Levi had leaned out of the cab of his truck, and it would have been so easy to just meet him halfway. It would have been safe, too, because he was trapped in the truck and also leaving the city. So no cascade effect. No one-thing-leads-to-another. No another.

If Cath had kissed him—if she’d let Levi know that he could kiss her—she wouldn’t still be living off that half-asleep kiss from November.…

It had been six hours since Levi left for Arnold, and Cath had already written two thousand words of Simon. She’d made so much progress tonight, she was thinking about taking a break tomorrow to start her Fiction-Writing assignment—maybe she’d even finish it. It would be awesome to tell Levi she was done when he came home on Sunday.

Cath was leaning back in her chair, stretching her arms, when the door flew open and Reagan barged in. (Cath didn’t even jump.)

“Well, look who we have here,” Reagan said. “All by her lonesome. Shouldn’t you be off bonding somewhere with the pride of Arnold?”

“He went home for his sister’s birthday.”

“I know.” Reagan walked over to her closet and stood there, deliberating. “He tried to get me to ride with him. That boy’s allergic to solitude.”