“I don’t know,” Cath said. “Stay away from men? Maybe just ‘use a condom.’ Or ‘stay away from men who don’t know how to work a condom.’”
“You’re making me appreciate the prayer circle.”
Cath laughed for half a breath.
“When did she leave?” he asked. He already knew that her mom had left. Cath had told him once in a way that let him know she didn’t want to elaborate. But now …
“When we were eight,” she said.
“Did you see it coming?”
“No.” Cath looked up at him. “I don’t think anyone would ever see that coming. I mean, when you’re a kid, you don’t expect your mom to leave, no matter what, you know? Even if you think she doesn’t like you.”
“I’m sure she liked you.”
“She left,” Cath said, “and she never came back. Who does that?”
“I don’t know … someone who’s missing a piece.”
Cath felt tears in her eyes, and tried to blink them away.
“Do you miss her?” Levi asked.
“No,” Cath said quietly, “I couldn’t care less about her. I miss Wren.”
Levi pulled his legs back and leaned forward, crawling up Cath’s bed until he was sitting next to her. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into his chest. “Okay?”
She nodded and leaned into him hesitantly, like she wasn’t sure how she’d fit. He traced circles on her shoulder with his thumb.
“You know,” he said, “I keep wanting to say that it’s like Simon Snow threw up in here … but it’s more like someone else ate Simon Snow—like somebody went to an all-you-care-to-eat Simon Snow buffet—and then threw up in here.”
Cath laughed. “I like it.”
“Never said I didn’t like it.”
* * *
As long as they were talking, it was easy. And Levi was always talking.
He told her about 4-H.
“What do the H’s stand for?”
“Head, heart, hands, health. They don’t have 4-H in South Omaha?”
“They do, but it stands for hard, hip-hop and Homey-don’t-play-that.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. You missed out on a lot of competitive rabbit breeding.”
“You raised rabbits?”
“Prize-winning rabbits,” he said. “And one year, a sow.”
“It’s like you grew up on a different planet.”
“Head, heart, hands, health … that’s really nice, don’t you think?”
“Are there photos of you somewhere with rabbits?”
“And blue ribbons,” he said.
“I might have to make a pinhole camera just to look at them.”
“Are you kidding? I was so cute, you’ll have to wear special glasses. Oh, hey, I just remembered the 4-H pledge—‘I pledge my head to clearer thinking, my heart to greater loyalty, my hands to larger service, and my health to better living, for my club, my community, my country and my world.’”
Cath closed her eyes. “Where are those glasses?”
Then he told her about the state fair—more rabbits, more sows, plus a year of serious brownie-making—and he showed her photos of his four blond sisters on his phone.
Cath couldn’t keep track of their names. They were all from the Bible. “Old Testament,” Levi said. He had one sister Cath’s age and one who was still in high school.
“Doesn’t this creep you out?”
“What?”
“Dating someone as young as your little sister?”
“Dating my little sister would creep me out—”
“I’m still a teenager.”
He shrugged. “You’re legal.”
She shoved him.
“Cath, I’m only two and a half years older than you.”
“College years,” she said. “That’s like a decade.”
He rolled his eyes.
“My dad thought you were thirty.”
He pulled back his chin. “He did not.… Did he really?”
She giggled. “No.”
Levi saw that she had Simon Snow Scene It? and insisted that they play. Cath thought she’d cream him, but his memory was insane, and all the questions were about the movies, not the books.
“Too bad for you that there aren’t any questions about homosexual subtext,” Levi said. “I want you to make me a blue ribbon when I win this.”
At midnight, Cath started thinking about her dad downstairs and how he should really be getting some sleep.
“Are you tired?” she asked Levi.
“Do I get my own tent bed?”
“It’s called a canopy, and no. You get your own couch. If I tell my dad you’re tired, it’ll force him to stop working.”
Levi nodded.
“Do you need pajamas or something?”
“I can sleep in my clothes. It’s only one night.”
She found an extra toothbrush for him, dug out a clean sheet, and grabbed one of her pillows.
When they got downstairs, the papers had multiplied—but her dad gamely cleared off the couch and kissed Cath on the forehead. She made him promise not to keep working in his bedroom—“Don’t make me yell at you in front of company.” Cath made up the couch, and when Levi got out of the bathroom, his face and the front of his hair damp, she handed him the pillow. He set it on the couch and grinned at her.
“Do you need anything else?” she asked.
He shook his head. Cath took a step backwards and he caught her hand. She ran her fingers along his palm, pulling away.
“Good night,” she said.
“Good night, sweetheart.”
* * *
Cath woke up at three, her head too clear and her heart beating too fast.
She tiptoed down the stairs, but she knew they’d still creak.
She walked through the kitchen, made sure the stove was turned off, that the back door was locked, that everything was okay.…
Her dad’s door was open; she stood in the doorway until she could hear him breathe. Then she walked as quietly as she could past the couch. The front door was locked. The curtains were drawn. A snowplow was crawling up their street.
When she turned around, Levi had raised himself up on his elbow and was watching her.
He’d taken off his sweater and had on a loose white T-shirt. His hair was wild, and his lips and eyes were thick with sleep.
Head, heart, hands …
“What’s wrong?” he whispered.
Cath shook her head and hurried back upstairs.
* * *
Levi had to leave before breakfast; he had to get to Starbucks. Jim Flowers, her dad’s favorite weatherman, said that the roads were much better, but that everybody should “take it slow out there.”
Her dad said he’d drive Cath back to school on Sunday, but Levi looked at the snowed-in Honda and said it was no trouble to come back.
“So…,” her dad said. They were standing on the porch, watching Levi’s truck turn the corner. “That’s your new boyfriend.”
She nodded.
“Still dying to move home? Transfer to UNO? Spend your whole life taking care of your mentally unstable father?”
Cath pushed past him into the living room. “Breakfast?”
* * *
It was a good weekend. Five thousand words of Carry On. Fish tacos with radish and shredded cabbage. Only two more conversations about Wren. And Sunday afternoon brought Levi back, taking her front steps two at a time.
The Humdrum bounced a small red ball in its hand.
Simon had carried that ball everywhere, for at least a year. He’d lost it when he came to Watford—he hadn’t needed it anymore.
“You’re lying,” Simon said. “You’re not me. You’re no part of me.”
“I’m what’s left of you,” the Humdrum said. And Simon would swear his own voice was never so high and so sweet.
—from chapter 23, Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak, copyright © 2010 by Gemma T. Leslie
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Geez, Cather, if you need a break, just tell me.”
Levi was lying on her dorm-room bed, and he’d just told her that he was going home for a few days for his sister’s birthday party—and instead of saying I’ll miss you or even Have fun, Cath had said, “Oh, that’s perfect.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she apologized. “It’s just, my dad’s going to Tulsa this weekend, so he doesn’t need me. And if you’re going home, you won’t need me, and that means I have all weekend to write; I’m so far behind on Carry On.…”