“Yeah,” Cath said, “see ya.” She got out her phone and started dialing 911 before he’d disappeared into the shadows.
* * *
“Dad? It’s Cath. I was just calling to say hi. I was thinking about coming home this weekend. Give me a call.”
___
“Dad, I’m calling you at work now. It’s Thursday. I think I’m gonna come home tomorrow. Call me back, okay? Or e-mail me? Love you.”
___
“Hey, honey, it’s your dad. Don’t come home this weekend. I’m going to be gone all weekend at the Gravioli shoot. In Tulsa. I mean, come home if you want to. Throw a big party. Like Tom Cruise in … God, what is that movie? Not Top Gun—Risky Business! Have a big party. Invite a bunch of people over to watch Risky Business. I don’t have any booze, but there’s still some green bean casserole left. I love you, Cath. Are you still fighting with your sister? Don’t.”
* * *
Love Library was busier than normal that weekend; it was the week before finals, and everybody seemed to be digging in. Cath had to roam deeper and deeper into the library to find an empty study carrel. She thought of Levi and his theory that the library invented new rooms the more that you visited. Tonight she walked by a half-sized door in a stairwell. The sign said SOUTH STACKS, and Cath would swear she’d never seen it before.
She opened the door, and there was an immediate step down into a normal-sized hallway. Cath ended up in another siloish room, the mirror image of Nick’s; the wind was even blowing in the opposite direction.
She found an empty cubicle and set down her bag, taking off her coat. A girl sitting on the other side of the gray partition was watching her.
The girl sat up a little, so that Cath could see she was smiling. She looked quickly around the room, then leaned forward, holding on to the cubicle wall. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I love your shirt.”
Cath glanced down. She was wearing her KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON shirt from Etsy, the one with Baz and Simon’s faces.
“Oh,” Cath said, “thanks.”
“It’s always so cool to meet somebody else who reads fanfiction in real life.…”
Cath must have looked surprised. “Oh my God,” the girl said, “do you even know what I’m talking about?”
“Yeah,” Cath said. “Of course. I mean, I think so. Carry On, Simon?”
“Yes!” The girl laughed quietly and looked around the room again. “That was almost embarrassing. I mean, it’s like having a secret life sometimes. People think it’s so weird.… Fanfiction. Slash. You know.”
Cath nodded. “Do you read a lot of fic?”
“Not as much anymore,” the girl said. “I was an addict in high school.” Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing a sweatshirt that read VERDIGRE FOOTBALL—FIGHT, HAWKS, FIGHT! She didn’t look like a creepy shut-in.… “What about you?” she asked.
“I still read a lot…,” Cath said.
“Magicath is my absolute favorite,” the girl interrupted, like she couldn’t hold it back. “I’m obsessed with Carry On. Have you been keeping up?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s been posting so much lately. Every time there’s a new chapter, I have to stop everything to read it. And then read it again. My roommate thinks I’m crazy.”
“Mine, too.”
“But it’s just so good. Nobody writes Simon and Baz like Magicath. I’m in love with her Baz. Like, in love. And I used to be a major Simon/Agatha shipper.”
Cath wrinkled her nose. “No.”
“I know, I was young.”
“If Agatha actually cared about either of them,” Cath said, “she’d pick one.”
“I know, right? When Simon broke it off with her in Carry On—such a good scene.”
“You didn’t think it was too long?”
“No,” the girl said, “did you?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“I never think the chapters are too long. I just want more and more and more.” The girl waved her hands in front of her mouth like she was Cookie Monster eating cookies. “I’m telling you, I’m obsessed with Carry On. I feel like something big is about to happen soon.”
“Me, too,” Cath said. “I think the Mage might turn on Simon.”
“No! You think?”
“I’ve just got a feeling about it.”
“It killed me how long it took Simon and Baz to get together. And now I’m dying for them to have a big love scene. That’s my only complaint about Carry On—not enough Simon/Baz action.”
“She almost never writes love scenes,” Cath said, feeling her cheeks pink.
“Yeah, but when she does, they’re hot.”
“You think?”
“Um,” the girl laughed. “Yes.”
“This is why people think we’re crazy perverts,” Cath said.
The girl just giggled some more. “I know. Sometimes I forget that there’s still a real book coming out—like, it’s hard for me to imagine that the story is going to end any other way than the way Magicath writes it.”
“Sometimes…,” Cath said, “when I’m reading canon, I forget that Simon and Baz aren’t in love.”
“Right? I love Gemma T. Leslie, I always will—I feel like she was this major force in my childhood—and I know that Magicath wouldn’t exist without GTL. But now, I think I love Magicath more. Like she might be my favorite author. And she’s never even written a book.…”
Cath’s jaw was hanging slightly open, and she was shaking her head. “That’s crazy.”
“I know,” the girl said, “but I think it’s true.… Oh my God, I’m sorry. I’m talking your ear off. I just never get to talk about this stuff in real life. Except to my boyfriend. He knows what a freak I am about it.”
“Don’t apologize,” Cath said. “This was cool.”
The girl sat down, and so did Cath. She opened up her laptop and thought for a minute about Professor Piper, then opened up the latest chapter of Carry On. Something big was about to happen soon.
* * *
“Dad, it’s Cath. Are you back from Tulsa? Just checking in. Call me.”
___
“Dad? It’s Cath. Call me.”
___
“Hey, Cath, it’s your dad. I’m back. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Worry about school. No, scratch that, don’t worry at all. Try not worrying, Cath—it’s an amazing way to be. Like flying. Love you, honey, tell your sister hi.”
___
“Dad? I know you don’t want me to worry. But I would worry less if you called me back. And not at three A.M.”
* * *
“Ten days…,” Professor Piper said.
Instead of sitting in her usual spot on her desk, she was striking a pose at the windows. It was snowing outside—it had already snowed so much this year, and it was only early December—and the professor cut a dramatic figure against the icy glass.
“I’d like to believe that you’re all finished with your short stories,” she said, turning her blue eyes on them. “That you’re just tweaking and tinkering now, tugging every last loose thread—”
She walked back toward their desks and smiled at a few of them one by one. Cath felt a thrill when their eyes met.
“—but I’m a writer, too,” the professor said. “I know what it’s like to be distracted. To seek out distractions. To exhaust yourself doing every other little thing rather than face a blank page.” She smiled at one of the boys. “A blank screen …
“So if you haven’t finished—or if you haven’t started—I understand, I do. But I implore you … start now. Lock yourself away from the world. Turn off the Internet, barricade the door. Write as if your life depended on it.
“Write as if your future depended on it.
“Because I can promise you this one small thing.…” She let her eyes rest on another one of her favorites and smiled. “If you’re planning to take my advanced course next semester, you won’t get in unless you get a B in this class. And this short story is half your final grade.
“This class is for writers,” she said. “For people who are willing to set aside their fears and move past distractions.