“Reagan’s running late, and I’ve already been sitting here half an hour.” His voice dropped to a whisper: “Your neighbor with the pink Ugg boots keeps coming out to talk to me. Have mercy.”
Cath frowned at him.
“I won’t bother you,” he said. “I’ll just wait quietly for Reagan.”
She rolled her eyes and walked in, leaving the door open behind her.
“I can see why you and Reagan hit it off.” He got up to follow her. “You can both be extremely brusque sometimes.”
“We didn’t hit it off.”
“That’s not what I heard.… Hey, now that you’re eating in the dining hall, can I eat your protein bars?”
“You were already eating my protein bars,” Cath said indignantly, sitting at her desk and opening her laptop.
“I felt bad about doing it behind your back.”
“Good.”
“But aren’t you happier now?” He sat at the end of her bed and leaned against the wall, crossing his long legs at the ankles. “You look better nourished already.”
“Um, thank you?”
“So?”
“What?”
He grinned. “Can I have a protein bar?”
“You’re unbelievable.”
Levi leaned over and reached under the bed. “The Blueberry Bliss are my favorite.…”
Cath actually was happier now. (Not that she was going to admit that to Levi.) So far, being Reagan’s charity case didn’t require much—just going down to the dining hall together and helping Reagan ridicule everyone who walked by their table.
Reagan liked to sit next to the kitchen door, right where the buffet line dumped into the dining room. She called it parade seating, and no one was spared. “Look,” she’d said last night, “it’s Gimpy. How do you think he broke his leg?”
Cath looked up at the guy, a dangerously hip-looking character with shaggy hair and oversized glasses. “Probably tripped over his beard.”
“Ha!” Reagan said. “His girlfriend is carrying his tray. Just look at her—that is one shiny unicorn. Do you think they actually met in an American Apparel ad?”
“I’m pretty sure they met in New York City, but it took them five years to get here.”
“Oh, Wolf Girl at three o’clock,” Reagan said excitedly.
“Is she wearing her clip-on tail?”
“I don’t know, wait for it.… No. Damn.”
“I kinda like her tail.” Cath smiled fondly at the chubby girl with dyed black hair.
“If God put me into your life to keep you from wearing a fucking tail,” Reagan said, “I accept the assignment.”
As far as Reagan was concerned, Cath was already problematically weird. “It’s bad enough that you have homemade Simon Snow posters,” Reagan had said last night while she was getting ready for bed. “Do you have to have gay homemade Simon Snow posters?”
Cath had looked up at the drawing over her desk of Simon and Baz holding hands. “Leave them alone,” she said. “They’re in love.”
“Pretty sure I don’t remember that from the books.”
“When I write them,” Cath said, “they’re in love.”
“What do you mean when you write them?” Reagan stopped, pulling her T-shirt down over her head. “No, you know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. It’s already hard enough to make eye contact with you.”
Levi was right, they must be hitting it off, because now when Reagan said stuff like that, it made Cath want to laugh. If Reagan missed dinner, Cath would go down to the dining hall anyway and sit at their table. Then, when Reagan came back to the room later—if Reagan came back to the room later—Cath would tell her everything she’d missed.
“Soccer Sandals finally talked to Venezuelan Lindsay Lohan,” Cath would say.
“Thank God,” Reagan would answer, flopping down onto her bed. “The sexual tension was killing me.”
Cath wasn’t sure where Reagan went on the nights when she didn’t come back to the dorms. Maybe to Levi’s. Cath looked over at Levi now.…
Still sitting on Cath’s bed, eating what must be his second Blueberry Bliss bar. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. Maybe Levi worked at the Olive Garden, too.
“Are you a waiter?” she asked.
“Presently? No.”
“Do you work at the Lancôme counter?”
He laughed. “What?”
“I’m trying to figure out why you wear all black sometimes.”
“Maybe I’m really gothy and dark”—he smiled—“but only on certain days.” Cath couldn’t imagine Levi ever being gothy and dark; he had the smilingest face she’d ever seen. He smiled all the way from his chin to his receding hairline. His forehead wrinkled up, his eyes twinkled. Even his ears got into the action—they twitched, like a dog’s.
“Or maybe I work at Starbucks,” he said.
She snorted. “Really?”
“Really,” he said, still smiling. “Someday you’ll need health insurance, and you won’t think working at Starbucks is funny.”
Levi and Reagan were always doing that to Cath—reminding her how young and naïve she was. Reagan was only two years older than Cath. She wasn’t even old enough to drink yet. Not legally. (Not that it mattered on campus; there was booze everywhere. Wren already had a fake ID. “You can borrow it,” she’d told Cath. “Say you got hair extensions.”)
Cath wondered how old Levi was. He looked old enough to drink, but maybe that was just his hair.…
It’s not that Levi was bald. Or anywhere near bald. (Yet.)
But his hairline came to a peak on his forehead, then retreated, dramatically, above his temples. And instead of letting his hair hang down or forward, to minimize it—or instead of giving up and wearing it really short, like most guys would—Levi swept it straight up and back in a sloppy blond wave. And he was always messing with it, drawing even more attention to his wide, lined forehead. He was doing it now.
“What are you working on?” he asked, pushing his fingers through his hair and scrubbing at the back of his head.
“Studying in silence,” she said.
* * *
Cath had only posted one chapter of Carry On, Simon this week, and it was half as long as usual.
She usually posted something to her FanFixx page every night—if not a full chapter, at least a blog entry.
The comments on her page all week had been friendly.… “How are you?” “Just checking in.” “Can’t wait for the next post!” “Gah! I need my daily Baz.” But to Cath, they felt like demands.
She used to read and respond to every comment on her stories—comments were like gold stars, like May Day bouquets—but ever since Carry On, Simon took off last year, it had all gotten too big for Cath to manage. She went from getting around five hundred hits per chapter to five thousand. Regularly.
Then one of the heavies on the biggest fansite, Fic-sation, called Carry On “the eighth-year fic”—and Cath’s FanFixx page got thirty-five thousand hits in one day.
She still tried to keep up with comments and questions as much she could. But it wasn’t the same anymore.
She wasn’t just writing for Wren and the friends they’d made in the old Snowflakes forums. It wasn’t just a bunch of girls trading birthday fics and cheer-up fics and cracked-out “I wrote this to make you laugh” stories.…
Cath had an audience now, a following. All these people she didn’t know, who expected things from her and questioned her decisions. Sometimes they even turned against her. They’d trash her on other fansites, saying that Cath used to be good, but she’d lost the magic—that her Baz was too canon or not canon enough, that her Simon was a prude, that she overwrote Penelope.…
“You don’t owe them anything,” Wren would say, crawling onto Cath’s bed at three in the morning and pulling Cath’s laptop away. “Go to sleep.”
“I will. I’m just … I want to finish this scene. I think Baz is finally going to tell Simon he loves him.”
“He’ll still love him tomorrow.”
“It’s a big chapter.”
“It’s always a big chapter.”
“It’s different this time.” Cath had been saying this for the last year. “It’s the end.”
Wren was right: Cath had written this story, Baz and Simon in love, dozens of times before. She’d written this scene, this line—“Snow … Simon, I love you”—fifty different ways.