Reagan smiled tightly. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a good/bad feeling about this. Shake.”
Cath reached out and shook her hand.
“Now, get up,” Reagan said. “I’m hungry.”
* * *
As soon as Reagan left for work that afternoon, Cath jumped up from her desk and started going through her closet to figure out what to wear. Probably a T-shirt with a cardigan and jeans. There was nothing in Cath’s closet that wasn’t a T-shirt, a cardigan, or jeans. She laid her options out on the bed. Then she went looking for something she’d bought at a flea market last year—a little green knit collar that fastened with an antique pink button.
She wondered where Levi would take her.
Her first date with Abel had been to a movie. Wren and some of their other friends had come, too. After that, going out with Abel usually just meant hanging out at the bakery or studying up in Cath’s room. Swim meets during swim season. Math contests. Those probably weren’t dates, come to think of it. She wasn’t going to tell Levi that her last date had been at a math contest.
Cath looked at the clothes she’d laid out and wished that Wren were here to help. She wished that she’d talked to Wren about Levi before they’d started fighting.… Which would have been last year, before Cath had even met him.
What would Wren say if she were here? Pretend that he likes you more than you like him. It’s like buying a car—you have to be willing to walk away.
No … that was the kind of advice Wren gave herself. What would she say to Cath? Stop frowning. We’re prettier when we smile. Are you sure you don’t want to do a shot?
God, thinking about Wren was just making Cath feel worse. Now she felt nervous and sad. And lonely.
It was a relief when Reagan kicked in the door and started talking about dinner.
* * *
“Wear your hair down,” Reagan said, tearing a piece of pizza in half. “You have good hair.”
“That comment is definitely against the ground rules,” Cath said, taking a bite of cottage cheese. “Number three, I think.”
“I know.” Reagan shook her head. “But you’re so helpless sometimes. It’s like watching a kitten with its head trapped in a Kleenex box.”
Cath rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to feel like I have to look different for him all of a sudden. It’ll seem lame.”
“It’s lame to want to look nice on a date? Levi is shaving right now, I promise you.”
Cath winced. “Stop. No insider Levi information.”
“That’s insider guy information. That’s how dates work.”
“He already knows what I look like,” Cath said. “There’s no point in being tricky about it now.”
“How is doing your hair—and maybe putting on some lip gloss—being tricky?”
“It’s like I’m trying to distract him with something shiny.” Cath circled her spoon hand in front of her face, accidentally flicking cottage cheese on her sweater. “He already knows about all this. This is what I look like.” She tried to scrape the cottage cheese off without rubbing it in.
Reagan leaned across the table and grabbed the clip out of Cath’s hair. It slumped over her ears and into her eyes.
“There,” Reagan said. “Now that’s what you look like. Presto chango.”
“Oh my God,” Cath said, grabbing her clip out of Reagan’s hand and immediately twisting her hair back up. “Was that a Simon Snow reference?”
Now Reagan rolled her eyes. “Like you’re the only one who’s read Simon Snow. Like it isn’t a global phenomenon.”
Cath started giggling.
Reagan scowled at her. “What are you eating anyway? Are those peaches in your cottage cheese?”
“Isn’t it disgusting?” Cath said. “You kinda get used to it.”
* * *
When they turned down the hallway, they could see Levi sitting against their door. In no circumstances would Cath ever run squealing down the hall into his arms. But she did her version of that—she smiled tensely and looked away.
“Hey,” Levi said, sliding up the door to his feet.
“Hey,” Reagan said.
Levi ruffled the top of his hair sheepishly, like he wasn’t sure which one of them to smile at. “You ready?” he asked Cath while Reagan opened the door.
Cath nodded. “Just … my coat.” She found her coat and slipped it on.
“Scarf,” Levi said. So she grabbed it.
“See you later,” she said to Reagan.
“Probably not,” Reagan said, shaking her hair out in front of her mirror.
Cath felt herself blushing. She didn’t look over at Levi again until they were standing together in front of the elevator. (Condition: smiling, stable.) When it opened, he put his hand on her back and she practically jumped in.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
He grinned. “My plan is to do things that make you want to hang out with me again tomorrow. What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to try not to make an ass of myself.”
He grinned. “So we’re all set.”
She smiled back at him. In his general direction.
“I thought I’d show you East Campus,” Levi said.
“At night? In February?”
The elevator doors opened, and he waited for her to step out. “I got a great deal on an off-season tour. Besides, it’s not that cold out tonight.”
Levi led the way outside and started walking away from the parking lot.
“Don’t we have to drive?” Cath asked.
“I thought we’d take the shuttle.”
“There’s a shuttle?”
He shook his head. “City folk.”
The shuttle was a bus, and it rolled up almost immediately. “After you,” Levi said.
Inside, the bus was lit up brighter than daylight and nearly empty. Cath chose a seat and sat down sideways with one knee up, so that there wasn’t room to sit down right next to her. Levi didn’t seem to mind. He swung sideways into the seat in front of her and rested his arm on the back.
“You have very nice manners,” she said.
“My mother would be thrilled to hear that.” He smiled.
“So you have a mother.”
He laughed. “Yes.”
“And a father?”
“And four sisters.”
“Older or younger?”
“Older. Younger.”
“You’re in the middle?”
“Smack-dab. What about you? Are you the older or younger twin?”
She shrugged. “It was a C-section. But Wren was bigger. She was stealing my juice or something. I had to stay in the hospital for three weeks after she went home.”
Cath didn’t tell him that sometimes she felt like Wren was still taking more than her fair share of life, like she was siphoning vitality off Cath—or like she was born with a bigger supply.
Cath didn’t tell him that, because it was dark and depressing. And because, for the moment, she wouldn’t trade places with Wren, even if it meant getting the better umbilical cord.
“Does that mean she’s more dominant?” Levi asked.
“Not necessarily. I mean, I guess she is. About most things. My dad says we used to share the bossiness when we were kids. Like I’d decide what we were gonna wear, and she’d decide what we were playing.”
“Did you dress alike?”
“When we were little. We liked to.”
“I’ve helped deliver twins before,” he said. “Calves. It almost killed the cow.”
Cath’s eyes got big. “How did that happen?”
“Sometimes when a bull meets a cow, they decide to spend more time together—”
“How did you end up being there for the delivery?”
“It happens a lot on a ranch. Not twins, but births.”
“You worked on a ranch?”
He raised an eyebrow, like he wasn’t sure whether she was serious. “I live on a ranch.”
“Oh,” Cath said. “I didn’t know people lived on ranches. I thought it was like a factory or a business, someplace where you go to work.”
“You’re sure you’re from Nebraska?”
“I’m starting to feel like Omaha doesn’t count.…”
“Well”—he smiled—“I live on a ranch.”
“Like on a farm?”
“Sort of. Farms are for crops. Ranches are for grazing livestock.”