Fangirl

“Don’t argue with me. You’re beautiful.”

*   *   *

Taking off Levi’s shirt had been such an inspired idea, Cath was thinking about losing her own. Levi was thinking about it, too. He was playing with the hem, sliding his fingers just underneath it while they kissed. Kissed. Cath loved that word. She used it sparingly in her fic, just because it felt so powerful. It felt like kissing to say it. Well done, English language.

Levi kissed with his jaw and his bottom lip. She hadn’t done this with enough people to know whether that was distinctive, but she felt like it was. He kissed her, and ran his fingers under her hem; and if she just raised her arms now, he’d probably take care of her shirt. She could count on him to pitch in. Cath couldn’t remember what she was waiting for, what she was so scared of.…

Was she waiting for marriage? At the moment, it was hard to think beyond Levi … whom she was nowhere near marrying. That fact only made her want him more. Because if she didn’t end up marrying Levi, she wouldn’t have lifetime access to his chest and his lips and whatever might be happening in his lap. What if they married other people? She should probably have sex with him now, while she still could.

Flawed logic, her brain was shouting. Miserably flawed.

How do you even know when you’re anywhere near marrying someone? she wondered. Is that question about time? Or distance?

Cath’s phone chimed.

Levi licked her mouth like he was trying to get the last bit of jam off the back of her throat.

Her phone chimed again.

It probably wasn’t important. Wren. Complaining about their dad. Or their dad complaining about Wren. Or one of them being rushed to a hospital …

Cath pulled away, catching Levi’s hands and trying to catch her breath.

“Let me check,” she said. “Wren—”

He nodded and pulled his hands away from her shirt. Cath resisted the urge to slide down his legs like he was a hobby horse. (It would feel good, but she might never recover her dignity.) Instead she climbed drunkenly off him, reaching off the bed for her phone.

He crawled after her, trying to read over her shoulder.

Wren. “hey, you should come to omaha. jandro’s here, we’re going dancing later at guaca maya. fun! come!”

“can’t,” Cath texted back. “levi time.”

She threw her phone on the floor, then tried to find her way back to Levi’s lap. But he’d already leaned back against the headboard with his knees up. Lap unavailable.

She tried to move his knees out of the way, but he wouldn’t let her. He was looking at her like he was still trying to figure out what color her eyes were.

“Is everything okay?” she asked, kneeling in front of him.

“Yeah. Everything okay on your end?” He moved his chin toward her phone.

Cath nodded. “Perfectly.”

Levi nodded.

Cath nodded again.

Then she lifted her arms up over her head.

Agatha wrung her fingers in her cape miserably. (But still prettily. Even Agatha’s tear-stained face was a thing of beauty.) Simon wanted to tell her it was all right, to forget the whole scene with Baz in the forest.… Agatha standing in the moonlight, holding both of Baz’s pale hands in her own …

“Just tell me,” Simon said, his voice shaking.

“I don’t know what to say,” she wept. “There’s you. And you’re good. And you’re right. And then there’s him.… And he’s different.”

“He’s a monster.” Simon clenched his square jaw.

Agatha just nodded. “Perhaps.”

—from chapter 18, Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak, copyright © 2010 by Gemma T. Leslie

THIRTY-FOUR

They stepped into the elevator, and Cath pressed 9.

“I can’t believe we’ve been arguing for fifteen minutes about whether Simon Snow should reach for his sword or his wand in a lame piece of fanfiction.”

And by “I can’t believe,” Cath meant “I can’t believe how happy I am.” Wren was coming up to her room, and they were going to work on Carry On until Levi was done with work. This was the routine now. Cath liked routines. She felt flushed with serotonin.

Wren shoved her. “It’s not lame. It’s important.”

“Only to me.”

“And me. And everyone else who’s reading. And besides, you by yourself should be enough. You’ve been working on this for almost two years. This is your life’s work.”

“God, that’s pathetic.”

“I meant your life’s work so far—and it’s extremely impressive. It would be, even if you didn’t have thousands of fans. Jandro can’t believe how many readers you have. He thinks you should try to monetize it.… He doesn’t really get the whole fanfiction thing. We tried to watch The Mage’s Heir, and he fell asleep.”

Cath gasped, only partly in jest. “You never told me he was a nonbeliever.”

“I wanted you to get to know him first. What about Levi?”

The elevator doors opened, and they got off on Cath’s floor. “He loves it,” she said. “Simon Snow. Fanfiction, everything. He makes me read my stuff out loud to him.”

“Isn’t he squicked by the slash?”

“No, he’s Zen. Why? Is Jandro?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Is he squicked by gay people?”

“No … Well, maybe. It’s more the idea of straight girls writing about gay boys; he thinks it’s deviant.”

That made Cath giggle. Then Wren started giggling with her.

“He thinks I’m the deviant one,” Cath said.

“Shut up.” Wren shoved her again.

Cath stopped—there was a boy standing outside her room.

The wrong boy.

“What’s up?” Wren stopped, too. “Did you forget something?”

“Cath,” Nick said, taking a few steps forward. “Hey. I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Hey,” Cath said. “Hey, Nick.”

“Hey,” he said again.

Cath was still six feet away from her room. She didn’t want to come any closer. “What are you doing here?”

Nick’s eyebrows were low, and his mouth was open. She could see his tongue sliding along his teeth. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Is this your library guy?” Wren asked, looking at him like he was a photo on Facebook, not a human being.

“No,” Cath said, reacting more to the “your” than to anything else.

Nick glanced at Wren, then decided to ignore her. “Look, Cath—”

“You couldn’t just call?” Cath asked.

“I didn’t have your cell number. I tried to call your room phone—you’re in the student directory—I left a bunch of voice mails.”

“We have voice mail?”

The door to her room opened abruptly, and Reagan looked out. “Is this yours?” she asked Cath, nodding at Nick.

“No,” Cath said.

“I didn’t think so. I told him he had to wait outside.”

“You were right,” Wren said, not very quietly. “He does look very Old World.…”

Reagan and Wren didn’t know what happened with Nick, how he’d used Cath. All they knew was that she didn’t want to talk about him anymore—and that she refused to go to Love Library. She’d been too embarrassed to tell anyone the details.

Cath didn’t feel embarrassed now, now that she was looking right at him. She felt angry. Robbed. She’d written some good stuff with Nick, and now she’d never get it back. If she tried to use any of those lines, any of those jokes, people could say she stole them from him. Like she’d ever steal anything from Nick—except for the paisley scarf he was wearing; she’d always liked that scarf. But Nick could keep his shitty second-person, present-tense. And all his ski

“Look, I just need to talk to you,” he said. “It won’t take long.”

“So talk,” Wren said.

“Yeah,” Reagan said, leaning against the doorjamb. “Talk.”

Nick looked like he was waiting for Cath to bail him out, but she wasn’t in the mood. She thought about walking away and leaving him here to deal with Reagan and Wren, who were difficult and unpleasant a lot of the time even if they liked you.