Fangirl

“I don’t want to talk about this,” she said.

“You don’t want to talk at all.”

“You’re right. I don’t have time right now to argue with you.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Levi looked up at her, stricken. Cath fumbled for something else to say, but everything in her reach was wrong. “Maybe I should just stay here tonight.”

His eyes swept over her, more coolly than she would have thought possible. There were two deep lines between his eyebrows.

“Right,” he said, standing up. “See you in nine days.”

He was out the door before she could stutter out, “What?”

Cath wasn’t trying to pick a nine-day fight; she’d just wanted to escape from tonight—she didn’t have time to feel guilty about Fiction-Writing. Even thinking about that stupid story made Cath feel clawed up and open.

She lay down on her bed and started to cry. Her pillow didn’t smell like Levi. It didn’t smell like either of them.

He didn’t understand.

When the last Simon Snow book came out, it was over. Everything. All these years of imagining and reimagining. Gemma T. Leslie would get the last word, and that would be it; everything Cath had built in the last two years would become alternate universe. Officially noncompliant …

The thought made her giggle wetly, pathetically, into her pillow.

As if beating GTL to the punch made any difference.

As if Cath could actually make Baz and Simon live happily ever after just by saying it was so. Sorry, Gemma, I appreciate what you’ve done here, but I think we can all agree that it was supposed to end like this.

It wasn’t a race. Gemma T. Leslie didn’t even know Cath existed. Thank God.

And yet … when Cath closed her eyes, all she could see was Baz and Simon.

All she could hear was them talking in her head. They were hers, the way they’d always been hers. They loved each other because she believed they did. They needed her to fix everything for them. They needed her to carry them through.

Baz and Simon in her head. Levi in her stomach.

Levi somewhere, gone.

In nine days, it would be over. In twelve days, Cath wouldn’t be a freshman anymore. And in fourteen …

God, she was an idiot.

Was she always going to be this stupid? Her whole miserable life?

Cath cried until it felt pointless, then stumbled off the bed to get a drink of water. When she opened her door, Levi was sitting in the hallway, his legs bent in front of him, hunched forward on his knees. He looked up when she stepped out.

“I’m such an idiot,” he said.

Cath fell between his knees and hugged him.

“I can’t believe I said that,” he said. “I can’t even go nine hours without seeing you.”

“No, you’re right,” Cath said. “I’ve been acting crazy. This whole thing is crazy. It isn’t even real.”

“That’s not what I meant—it is real. You have to finish.”

“Yeah,” she said, kissing his chin, trying to remember where she’d left off. “But not today. You were right. There’s time. They’ll wait for me.” She pushed her hands inside his jacket.

He held her by her shoulders. “You do what you have to,” he said. “Just let me be there. For the next two weeks, okay?”

She nodded. Fourteen days. With Levi. And then curtains closed on this year.

“Maybe fighting him isn’t the answer,” Simon said.

“What?” Baz was leaning against a tree, trying to catch his breath. His hair was hanging in slimy tendrils, and his face was smeared with muck and blood. Simon probably looked even worse. “You’re not giving up now,” Baz said, reaching for Simon’s chest and pulling him forward, fiercely, by the buckled straps of his cape. “I won’t let you.”

“I’m not giving up,” Simon said. “I just … Maybe fighting isn’t the answer. It wasn’t the answer with you.”

Baz arched an elegant brow. “Are you going to snog the Humdrum—is that your plan? Because he’s eleven. And he looks just like you. That’s both vain and deviant, Snow, even for you.”

Simon managed a laugh and raised a hand to the back of Baz’s neck, holding him firmly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m done fighting, Baz. If we go on like this, there won’t be anything left to fight for.”

—from Carry On, Simon, posted April 2012 by FanFixx.net author Magicath

THIRTY-SEVEN

“Cather.”

“Mmmm.”

“Hey. Wake up.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I have to go to work. If we don’t leave soon, I’ll be late.”

Cath opened her eyes. Levi had already showered and put on his gothy Starbucks clothes. He smelled like an actual Irish spring.

“Can I stay?” she asked.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll be stuck here all day.”

“I like here. And anyway, I’m just writing.”

He gri

She thought she might go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. She got up and took a shower (now she smelled like Levi), glad not to see anyone else in the hall. At least one of his roommates was home. She could hear music.

Cath climbed back to Levi’s room. It had been warm last night, and they’d fallen asleep with the windows open. But the weather had shifted—it was too cold in here now, especially for someone with wet hair. She grabbed her laptop and crawled under his quilt, doubling it up on top of her; she didn’t want to close the windows.

She pressed the Power button and waited for her computer to wake up. Then she opened a Word document and watched the cursor blink at her—she could see her face in the blank screen. Ten thousand words, and none of them had to be good; only one other person would ever read them. It didn’t even matter where Cath started, as long she finished. She started typing.…

I sat on the back steps.

No …

She sat on the back steps.

Every word felt heavy and hurt, like Cath was chipping them one by one out of her stomach.

A plane flew overhead, and that was wrong, all wrong, and her sister knew it, too, because she squeezed her hand like they’d both disappear if she didn’t.

This wasn’t good, but it was something. Cath could always change it later. That was the beauty in stacking up words—they got cheaper, the more you had of them. It would feel good to come back and cut this when she’d worked her way to something better.

The plane was flying so low, moving so sluggishly through the sky, you’d think it was just choosing the perfect rooftop to land on. They could hear the engine; it sounded closer than the voices shouting inside the house. Her sister reached up like she might touch it. Like she might grab on.

The girl squeezed her sister’s other hand, trying to anchor her to the steps. If you leave, she thought, I’m going with you.

*   *   *

Sometimes writing is ru

Cath fell and fell, leaving a trail of messy words and bad similes behind her. Sometimes her chin was trembling. Sometimes she wiped her eyes on her sweater.

When she took a break, she was starving, and she had to pee so bad, she barely made it down to the third-floor bathroom. She found a protein bar in Levi’s backpack, climbed back into his bed, then kept writing until she heard him ru

She closed the laptop before the door opened—and the sight of him smiling made her eyes burn right down to her throat.

*   *   *

“Stop bouncing,” Wren snapped. “You’re making us look like nerds.”

“Right,” Reagan said. “That’s what’s making us look like nerds. The bouncing.”

Levi smiled down at Cath. “Sorry. The atmosphere is getting to me.” He was wearing her red CARRY ON T-shirt over a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and for some reason, the sight of Baz and Simon facing off across his chest was disturbingly hot.