Her dad nodded, his eyes full of some dense feeling.
“Can I borrow your laptop?” she asked.
“Yeah. Of course. It’s in—”
“I know. Thanks.” Cath went to the living room and picked up her dad’s silver laptop. She’d lusted over this thing, but he always said she didn’t need an eighteen-hundred-dollar word processor.
When Cath got upstairs, Wren was on the phone, crying. She got up off her bed and walked into the closet, sitting on the floor and closing the door behind her. This wasn’t strange behavior, except for the crying—it’s what they always did when they needed privacy. They had a big closet.
Cath opened her FanFixx account and paged idly through the comments. There were too many to respond to individually, so she posted a general, “Hey, everybody, thanks—too busy writing to write back!” then opened up the draft of her most recent chapter.…
She’d left off with Baz kneeling at his mother’s gravestone. He was trying to explain to her why he was turning against his father, why he was turning his back on the house of Pitch to fight by Simon’s side.
“It’s not just for him,” Baz said, running his long fingers over his mother’s name. “It’s for Watford. It’s for the World of Mages.”
After a while, Wren came out of the closet and crawled onto Cath’s bed. Cath scooted over and kept typing.
After another while, Wren got under the covers and fell asleep.
And after that, a while later, their dad peeked up over the top of the stairs. He looked at Cath and mouthed, Good night. Cath nodded.
She wrote a thousand words.
She wrote five hundred more.
The room was dark, and Cath wasn’t sure how long Wren had been awake or how long she’d been reading over Cath’s elbow.
“Is the Mage really going to betray Simon, or is it a red herring?” Wren was whispering, even though there was nobody to wake up.
“I think he really is,” Cath said.
“That chapter where he had Simon burn the dragon eggs made me cry for three days.”
Cath stopped typing. “You read that?”
“Of course I did. Have you seen your hits lately? They’re through the roof. Nobody’s bailing on Carry On now.”
“I thought you had,” Cath said. “A long time ago.”
“Well, you were wrong.” Wren propped her head up on her hand. “Add that to the towering stack of important things you’re wrong about.”
“I think the Mage is going to kill Baz.” Cath hadn’t told anyone else that yet, not even her beta.
Wren sat up, her face actually aghast. “Cath,” she whispered, “no…”
“Did Alejandro break up with you?”
Wren shook her head. “No … he’s just upset. Cath. You can’t kill Baz.”
Cath couldn’t think of what to say.
Wren took the laptop and slid it mostly into her own lap. “Jesus Christ, consider this an intervention.…”
* * *
When Cath woke up the next morning, Sunday, she was alone in the bedroom. She could smell coffee. And food.
She went downstairs and found her dad sitting at the table with a notebook. She handed him his laptop. “Ah. Good,” he said. “Wren said we had to wait for you.”
“For what?”
“For my verdict. I’m about to go all King Solomon on your asses.”
“Who’s King Solomon?”
“It was your mother who wanted to raise you without religion.”
“She also thought you should raise us without a mother.”
“Solid point, my dear. Wren? Come on. Your sister’s awake.”
Wren walked into the dining room, holding a saucepan and a trivet. “You were asleep,” she said, setting it on the table, “so I made breakfast.”
“Oh, Christ,” their dad said. “Is that Gravioli?”
“No,” Wren said, “it’s new Cheese Gravioli.”
“Sit down,” he said. “We’re talking.” He was in running clothes again. He looked tense and nervous.
Wren sat down. She was acting playful, but she was nervous, too—Cath could tell by the way she was squeezing her fists. Cath wanted to reach out and unclench them.
“Okay,” their dad said, pushing the Gravioli away, so that it wasn’t right between them on the table. “Here are my terms: You can go back to school.” Wren and Cath both exhaled. “But you don’t drink. At all. Not in moderation, not with your boyfriend, not at parties—never. You see a counselor every week, starting this week, and you start attending AA meetings.”
“Dad,” Wren said. “I’m not an alcoholic.”
“Good. It’s not contagious. You’re going to meetings.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cath offered.
“I’m not done,” their dad said.
“What more do you want?” Wren whined. “Blood tests?”
“You come home every weekend.”
“Dad.”
“Or you can just move home. It’s your choice, really.”
“I have a life,” Wren said. “In Lincoln.”
“Don’t talk to me about your life, kid. You’ve shown complete disregard for your life.”
Wren’s hands were tight fists, lumps of coal, in her lap. Cath kicked her ankle. Wren’s head dropped. “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”
“Good,” their dad said, then took a deep breath and held on to it for a second. “I’ll drive you back later, if you think you’re ready.” He stood up and looked at the Gravioli. “I’m not eating that.”
Cath pulled the pan closer and picked up a spoon. “I’ll eat it.” She took a bite. The noodly parts dissolved immediately in her mouth. “I like how soft it is,” she said. “I like how I don’t have to use my teeth.”
Wren watched Cath for a few seconds, then took the spoon and scooped up a bite. “It tastes like regular Gravioli—”
Cath took it back. “But cheesier.”
“It’s three comfort foods in one,” Wren said.
“They’re like pizza pillows.”
“They’re like wet Cheetos.”
“That’s terrible,” Cath said. “We can’t use that.”
“I’m starting to feel like you don’t want me around.”
“I’ve never wanted you around,” Simon said, trying to push past his roommate.
“Point.” Baz moved to block the door. “That was true. Until you decided that you always wanted me around—that life is just a hollow shell of itself unless you know my heart is beating somewhere in the very local vicinity.”
“Have I decided that?”
“Maybe it was me who decided. Never mind. Same difference.”
Simon took a deep, obviously unnerved, breath.
“Snow. Are you unnerved?”
“Slightly.”
“Aleister almighty, I never thought I’d see the day.”
—from Carry On, Simon, posted February 2012 by FanFixx.net author Magicath
THIRTY-ONE
Alejandro was waiting for them when they got to Schramm Hall. He shook hands with Cath formally. “Frat boy manners,” Wren said, “they all have them.” Jandro was in a fraternity on East Campus, she said, called FarmHouse. “That’s actually its name.”
Most of the FarmHouse guys were Ag majors from outstate Nebraska. Jandro was from Scottsbluff, which was practically Wyoming. “I didn’t even know there were Mexicans out there,” Wren said, “but he claims there’s this huge community.”
Jandro didn’t say much besides, “It’s nice to finally meet you, Cath. Wren talks about you all the time. When you post your Simon Snow stories, I’m not allowed to talk to her until she’s finished.” He looked like most of Wren’s boyfriends—short hair, clean-cut, built to play football—but Cath couldn’t remember Wren looking at any of them the way she looked at Alejandro. Like she’d been converted.
* * *
It was ten o’clock by the time Levi got back from Arnold.
Cath had already showered and put on pajamas. She felt like the weekend had been two years long, not two days. Freshman days, she could hear Levi say.
He called to tell her he was back. Knowing they were in the same city again made the missing him flare up inside her. In her stomach. Why were people always going on and on about the heart? Almost everything Levi happened in Cath’s stomach.