“Oh, sorry…” Cath dug for the seat belt.
She buckled up. The truck still didn’t move.
“You did the right thing, you know.”
Levi.
“No,” Cath said. “I don’t know.”
“You had to go check on her. Nine-one-one is nine-one-one.”
“And then I left her—completely wasted—with a stranger and a moron.”
“That guy didn’t seem like a stranger,” Levi said.
Cath almost laughed. Because he hadn’t argued with the moron part. “I’m her sister. I’m supposed to look out for her.”
“Not against her will.”
“What if she passes out?”
“Does that happen a lot?”
Cath looked over at him. His hair was wet, and you could see the tracks where he’d pushed his fingers through it.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said.
“Okay … Are you hungry?”
“No.” She looked down at her lap.
The truck still didn’t move.
“Because I’m hungry,” he said.
“Aren’t you supposed to meet up with Reagan?”
“Yep. Later.”
Cath rubbed her face again. The ice in her hair was melting and dripping into her eyes. “I’m wearing pajamas.”
Levi put the truck into reverse. “I know just the place.”
* * *
The pajama pants weren’t a problem.
Levi took her to a twenty-four-hour truck stop near the edge of town. (Nothing in Lincoln was too far from the edge of town.) The place felt like it hadn’t been redecorated ever, like maybe it had been built sixty years ago out of materials that were already worn and cracking. The waitress started pouring them coffee without even asking if they wanted any.
“Perfect,” Levi said, smiling at the waitress and shuffling out of his coat. She set the cream on the table and brushed his shoulder fondly.
“Do you come here a lot?” Cath asked, when the waitress left.
“More than I go other places, I guess. If you order the corned beef hash, you don’t have to eat for days.… Cream?”
Cath didn’t usually order coffee, but she nodded anyway, and he topped off her cup. She pulled her saucer back and stared down at it. She heard Levi exhale.
“I know how you feel right now,” he said. “I have two little sisters.”
“You don’t know how I feel.” Cath dumped in three packs of sugar. “She’s not just my sister.”
“Do people really do that to you guys all the time?”
“Do what?” Cath looked up at him, and he looked away.
“The twin thing.”
“Oh. That.” She stirred her coffee, clacking the spoon too hard against her cup. “Not all the time. Only if we’re around drunks or, like, walking down the street.…”
He made a face. “People are depraved.”
The waitress came back, and Levi lit up for her. Predictably. He ordered corned beef hash. Cath stuck with coffee.
“She’ll grow out of it,” he said when the waitress walked away from their booth. “Reagan’s right. It’s a freshman thing.”
“I’m a freshman. I’m not out getting wasted.”
Levi laughed. “Right. Because you’re too busy throwing dance parties. What was the emergency anyway?”
Cath watched him laugh and felt the sticky black pit yawn open in her stomach. Professor Piper. Simon. Baz. Neat, red F.
“Were you anticipating an emergency?” he asked, still smiling. “Or maybe summoning one? Like a rain dance?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Cath said.
“Do what?”
“Try to make me feel better.” She felt the tears coming on, and her voice wobbled. “I’m not one of your little sisters.”
Levi’s smile fell completely. “I’m sorry,” he said, all the teasing gone. “I … I thought maybe you’d want to talk about it.”
Cath looked back at her coffee. She shook her head a few times, as much to tell him no as to shake away the stinging in her eyes.
His corned beef hash came. A whole mess of it. He moved Cath’s coffee cup to the table and scooped hash onto her saucer.
Cath ate it—it was easier than arguing. She’d been arguing all day, and so far, no one had listened. And besides, the corned beef hash was really good, like they made it fresh with real corned beef, and there were two sunny-side-up eggs on top.
Levi piled more onto her plate.
“Something happened in class,” Cath said. She didn’t look up at him. Maybe she could use a big brother right now—she was currently down a twin sister. Any port in a storm, and all that …
“What class?” he asked.
“Fiction-Writing.”
“You take Fiction-Writing? That’s an actual class?”
“That’s an actual question?”
“Does this have something to do with your Simon Snow thing?”
Cath looked up now and flushed. “Who told you about my Simon Snow thing?”
“Nobody had to tell me. You’ve got Simon Snow stuff everywhere. You’re worse than my ten-year-old cousin.” Levi grinned; he looked relieved to be smiling again. “Reagan told me you write stories about him.”
“So Reagan told you.”
“That’s what you’re always working on, right? Writing stories about Simon Snow?”
Cath didn’t know what to say. It sounded absolutely ridiculous when Levi said it.
“They’re not just stories…,” she said.
He took a giant bite of hash. His hair was still wet and falling (wetly, blondly) into his eyes. He pushed it back. “They’re not?”
Cath shook her head. They were just stories, but stories weren’t just anything. Simon wasn’t just.
“What do you know about Simon Snow?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Everybody knows about Simon Snow.”
“You’ve read the books?”
“I’ve seen the movies.”
Cath rolled her eyes so hard, it hurt. (Actually.) (Maybe because she was still on the edge of tears. On the edge, period.) “So you haven’t read the books.”
“I’m not really a book person.”
“That might be the most idiotic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Levi said, grinning some more. “You write stories about Simon Snow.…”
“You think this is funny.”
“Yes,” Levi said. “But also sort of cool. Tell me about your stories.”
Cath pressed the tines of her fork into her place mat. “They’re just, like … I take the characters, and I put them in new situations.”
“Like deleted scenes?”
“Sometimes. More like what-ifs. Like, what if Baz wasn’t evil? What if Simon never found the five blades? What if Agatha found them instead? What if Agatha was evil?”
“Agatha couldn’t be evil,” Levi argued, leaning forward and pointing at Cath with his fork. “She’s ‘pure of heart, a lion of dawn.’”
Cath narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that?”
“I told you, I’ve seen the movies.”
“Well, in my world, if I want to make Agatha evil, I can. Or I can make her a vampire. Or I can make her an actual lion.”
“Simon wouldn’t like that.”
“Simon doesn’t care. He’s in love with Baz.”
Levi guffawed. (You don’t get many opportunities to use that word, Cath thought, but this is one of them.)
“Simon isn’t gay,” he said.
“In my world, he is.”
“But Baz is his nemesis.”
“I don’t have to follow any of the rules. The original books already exist; it’s not my job to rewrite them.”
“Is it your job to make Simon gay?”
“You’re getting distracted by the gay thing,” Cath said. She was leaning forward now, too.
“It is distracting.…” Levi giggled. (Did guys “giggle” or “chuckle”? Cath hated the word “chuckle.”)
“The whole point of fanfiction,” she said, “is that you get to play inside somebody else’s universe. Rewrite the rules. Or bend them. The story doesn’t have to end when Gemma Leslie gets tired of it. You can stay in this world, this world you love, as long as you want, as long as you keep thinking of new stories—”
“Fanfiction,” Levi said.
“Yes.” Cath was embarrassed by how sincere she sounded, how excited she felt whenever she actually talked about this. She was so used to keeping it a secret—used to assuming people would think she was a freak and a nerd and a pervert.…