Cath didn’t have much to pack or not to pack. All she’d really brought home with her was her computer. For the last few weeks she’d been wearing clothes that she and Wren hadn’t liked well enough to take to college with them.
“You look ridiculous,” Wren said.
“What?”
“That shirt.” It was a Hello Kitty shirt from eighth or ninth grade. Hello Kitty dressed as a superhero. It said SUPER CAT on the back, and Wren had added an H with fabric paint. The shirt was cropped too short to begin with, and it didn’t really fit anymore. Cath pulled it down self-consciously.
“Cath!” her dad shouted from downstairs. “Phone.”
Cath picked up her cell phone and looked at it.
“He must mean the house phone,” Wren said.
“Who calls the house phone?”
“Probably 2005. I think it wants its shirt back.”
“Ha-bloody-ha,” Cath muttered, heading downstairs.
Her dad just shrugged when he handed her the phone.
“Hello?” Cath said.
“Do we want a couch?” someone asked.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Reagan. Who else would it be? Who else would need to get your permission before they brought home a couch?”
“How’d you get this number?”
“It’s on our housing paperwork. I don’t know why I don’t have your cell, I guess I usually don’t have to look very far to find you.”
“I think you’re the first person to call our house phone in years. I didn’t even remember where it was.”
“That’s fascinating, Cath. Do we want a couch?”
“Why would we want a couch?”
“I don’t know. Because my mom is insisting that we need one.”
“Who would sit on it?”
“Exactly. It might have been useful last semester to keep Levi from shedding all over our beds, but that’s not even an issue anymore. And if we have a couch, we’ll literally have to climb over it to get to the door. She’s saying no, Mom.”
“Why isn’t Levi an issue anymore?”
“Because. It’s your room. It’s stupid for you to be hiding in the library all the time. And he and I only have one class together next semester anyway.”
“It doesn’t matter—,” Cath said.
Reagan cut her off: “Don’t be stupid. It does matter. I feel really shitty about what happened. I mean, it’s not my fault you kissed him and that he kissed that idiot blonde, but I shouldn’t have encouraged you. It won’t happen again, ever, with anyone. I’m fucking done with encouragement.”
“It’s okay,” Cath said.
“I know that it’s okay. I’m just saying, that’s the way it’s gonna be. So no to the couch, right? My mom is standing right here, and I don’t think she’ll leave me alone until she hears you say no.”
“No,” Cath said. Then raised her voice: “No to the couch.”
“Fuck, Cath, my eardrum … Mom, you’re pushing me to swear with this stupid furniture.… All right, I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll probably have an ugly lamp with me and maybe a rug. She’s pathological.”
Cath’s dad was standing in the kitchen watching her. Her dad, who actually was pathological.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“My roommate.”
“She sounds like Kathleen Turner.”
“Yeah. She’s something.” Cath pulled her shirt down and turned away.
“Taco truck?” he asked. “For dinner?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you change—you can ride with me.”
“Sure.”
SPRING SEMESTER, 2012
Fried tomatoes at breakfast. Every lump in his bed. Being able to do magic without worrying whether anyone was watching. Agatha, of course. And Penelope. Getting to see the Mage—not often, but still. Simon’s uniform. His school tie. The football pitch, even when it was muddy. Fencing. Raisin scones every Sunday with real clotted cream …
What didn’t Simon miss about Watford?
—from chapter 1, Simon Snow and the Selkies Four, copyright © 2007 by Gemma T. Leslie
TWENTY-TWO
“There are already four light fixtures in here,” Reagan said. “What are we supposed to do with a lamp?”
The lamp was black and shaped like the Eiffel Tower.
“Just leave it in the hall,” Cath said. “Maybe somebody’ll take it.”
“She’ll just ask where it is the next time she’s here.… She’s insane.” Reagan shoved the lamp into the back of her closet and kicked it. “What brand of crazy is your mom?”
Cath’s gut pitched reliably. “I don’t know. She left when I was eight.”
“Fuck,” Reagan said, “that is crazy. Are you hungry?”
“Yeah,” Cath said.
“They’re doing a back-to-school luau downstairs. They roast a pig on a spit. It’s disgusting.”
Cath grabbed her ID and followed Reagan to the dining hall.
* * *
In the end, Cath hadn’t decided to come back.
She’d just decided to pack up her laptop.
And then she’d decided to ride along with Wren and her dad to Lincoln.
And then, after they dropped Wren off outside Schramm Hall, her dad asked if Cath wanted to go to her own dorm, and Cath decided that she did. If nothing else, she could get her stuff.
And then they just sat there in the fire lane, and Cath felt wave after wave of anxiety pound against her. If she stayed, she’d see Levi again. She’d have to deal with the Psych final she’d missed. She’d have to register for classes, and who even knew what would still be available. And she’d see Levi again. And everything about that that would feel good—his smiling face, his long lines—would also feel like getting shot in the stomach.
Cath didn’t really decide to get out of the car.
She just looked over at her dad in the driver’s seat, tapping his two middle fingers on the steering wheel; and as scared as she was to leave him, Cath couldn’t bear to think about letting him down.
“One more semester,” she said. She was crying; that’s how bad it felt to say this.
His chin jerked up. “Yeah?”
“I’ll try.”
“Me, too,” he said.
“Promise?”
“Yeah. Cath, yeah. I promise.… Do you want me to come up with you?”
“No. That’ll just make it worse.”
He laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just flashed back to your first day of kindergarten. You cried. And your mom cried. It felt like we were never gonna see you guys again.”
“Where was Wren?”
“God, I don’t know, probably anointing her first boyfriend.”
“Mom cried?”
Her dad looked sad again and smiled ruefully. “Yeah…”
“I really hate her,” Cath said, shaking her head, trying to imagine what kind of mother cried on the first day of kindergarten, then walked out in the middle of third grade.
Her dad nodded. “Yeah…”
“Answer your phone,” Cath said.
“I will.”
* * *
“Somebody else got Ugg boots for Christmas,” Reagan said, watching the dinner line empty into the dining room. “If we had whiskey, this is when we’d take a shot.”
“I find Ugg boots really comforting,” Cath said.
“Why? Because they’re warm?”
“No. Because they remind me that we live in a place where you can still get away with, even get excited about, Ugg boots. In fashionable places, you have to pretend that you’re over them, or that you’ve always hated them. But in Nebraska, you can still be happy about new Ugg boots. That’s nice. There’s no end of the innocence.”
“You’re such a weirdo…,” Reagan said. “I kinda missed you.”
“I just don’t want to,” Simon said.
“Don’t want to what?” Baz asked. He was sitting on his desk, eating an apple. He left the apple in his teeth and started tying his green and purple school tie. Simon still had to use a mirror for that. Even after seven years.
“Anything,” Simon said, pressing his head back into his pillow. “I don’t want to do anything. I don’t even want to start this day because then I’ll just be expected to finish it.”