Fangirl (2 page)

Her dad held up his slice of pizza. “Soylent Green.”

Cath laughed.

“I’m not old, you know.” He was tapping the table with the two middle fingers of his left hand. “Forty-one. The other guys my age at work are just starting to have kids.”

“That was good thinking,” Cath said, “getting us out of the way early. You can start bringing home chicks now—the coast is clear.”

“All my chicks…,” he said, looking down at his plate. “You guys are the only chicks I’m worried about.”

“Ugh. Dad. Weird.”

“You know what I mean. What’s up with you and your sister? You’ve never fought like this before.…”

“We’re not fighting
now,
” Cath said, taking a bite of bacon-cheeseburger pizza. “Oh, geez.” She spit it out.

“What’s wrong, did you get an eyelid?”

“No. Pickle. It’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting it.”

“You
seem
like you’re fighting,” he said.

Cath shrugged. She and Wren weren’t even talking much, let alone fighting. “Wren just wants more … independence.”

“Sounds reasonable,” he said.

Of course it does,
Cath thought,
that’s Wren’s specialty.
But she let it drop. She didn’t want her dad to worry about this right now. She could tell by the way he kept tapping the table that he was already wearing thin. Way too many normal-dad hours in a row.

“Tired?” she asked.

He smiled at her, apologetically, and put his hand in his lap. “Big day. Big, hard day—I mean, I knew it would be.” He raised an eyebrow. “Both of you, same day.
Whoosh.
I still can’t believe you’re not coming home with me.…”

“Don’t get too comfortable. I’m not sure I can stick this out a whole semester.” She was only slightly kidding, and he knew it.

“You’ll be fine, Cath.” He put his hand, his less twitchy hand, over hers and squeezed. “And so will I. You know?”

Cath let herself look in his eyes for a moment. He looked tired—and, yes, twitchy—but he was holding it together.

“I still wish you’d get a dog,” she said.

“I’d never remember to feed it.”

“Maybe we could train it to feed you.”

*   *   *

When Cath got back to her room, her roommate—Reagan—was still gone. Or maybe she was gone again; her boxes looked untouched. Cath finished putting her own clothes away, then opened the box of personal things she’d brought from home.

She took out a photo of herself and Wren, and pinned it to the corkboard behind her desk. It was from graduation. Both of them were wearing red robes and smiling. It was before Wren cut her hair.…

Wren hadn’t even told Cath she was going to do that. Just came home from work at the end of the summer with a pixie cut. It looked awesome—which probably meant it would look awesome on Cath, too. But Cath could never get that haircut now, even if she could work up the courage to cut off fifteen inches. She couldn’t single-white-female her own twin sister.

Next Cath took out a framed photo of their dad, the one that had always sat on their dresser back home. It was an especially handsome photo, taken on his wedding day. He was young and smiling, and wearing a little sunflower on his lapel. Cath set it on the shelf above her desk.

Then she set out a picture from prom, of her and Abel. Cath was wearing a shimmering green dress, and Abel had a matching cummerbund. It was a good picture of Cath, even though her face looked naked and flat without her glasses. And it was a good picture of Abel, even though he looked bored.

He always looked kind of bored.

Cath probably should have texted Abel by now, just to tell him that she’d made it—but she wanted to wait until she felt more breezy and nonchalant. You can’t take back texts. If you come off all moody and melancholy in a text, it just sits there in your phone, reminding you of what a drag you are.

At the bottom of the box were Cath’s Simon and Baz posters. She laid these out on her bed carefully—a few were originals, drawn or painted just for Cath. She’d have to choose her favorites; there wasn’t room for them all on the corkboard, and Cath had already decided not to hang any on the walls, out where God and everybody would notice them.

She picked out three.…

Simon raising the Sword of Mages. Baz lounging on a fanged black throne. The two of them walking together through whirling gold leaves, scarves whipping in the wind.

There were a few more things left in the box—a dried corsage, a ribbon Wren had given her that said
CLEAN PLATE CLUB
, commemorative busts of Simon and Baz that she’d ordered from the Noble Collection.…

Cath found a place for everything, then sat in the beat-up wooden desk chair. If she sat right here, with her back to Reagan’s bare walls and boxes, it almost felt like home.

There was a boy in Simon’s room.

A boy with slick, black hair and cold, grey eyes. He was spinning around, holding a cat high in the air while a girl jumped and clutched at it. “Give it
back,
” the girl said. “You’ll hurt him.”

The boy laughed and held the cat higher—then noticed Simon standing in the doorway and stopped, his face sharpening.

“Hullo,” the dark-haired boy said, letting the cat drop to the floor. It landed on all four feet and ran from the room. The girl ran after it.

The boy ignored them, tugging his school jacket neatly into place and smiling with the left side of his mouth. “I know you. You’re Simon Snow … the Mage’s Heir.” He held out his hand smugly. “I’m Tyrannus Basilton Pitch. But you can call me Baz—we’re going to be roommates.”

Simon scowled and ignored the boy’s pale hand. “What did you think you were doing with her cat?”

—from chapter 3,
Simon Snow and the Mage’s Heir,
copyright © 2001 by Gemma T. Leslie

TWO

In books, when people wake up in a strange place, they always have that disoriented moment when they don’t know where they are.

That had never happened to Cath; she always remembered falling asleep.

But it still felt weird to hear her same-old alarm going off in this brand-new place. The light in the room was strange, too yellow for morning, and the dorm air had a detergenty twang she wasn’t sure she’d get used to. Cath picked up her phone and turned off the alarm, remembering that she still hadn’t texted Abel. She hadn’t even checked her e-mail or her FanFixx account before she went to bed.

“first day,”
she texted Abel now.
“more later. x, o, etc.”

The bed on the other side of the room was still empty.

Cath could get used to this. Maybe Reagan would spend all her time in her boyfriend’s room. Or at his apartment. Her boyfriend looked older—he probably lived off campus with twenty other guys, in some ramshackle house with a couch in the front yard.

Even with the room to herself, Cath didn’t feel safe changing in here. Reagan could walk in at any minute, Reagan’s boyfriend could walk in at any minute … And either one of them could be a cell phone–camera pervert.

Cath took her clothes to the bathroom and changed in a stall. There was a girl at the sinks, desperately trying to make friendly eye contact. Cath pretended not to notice.

She finished getting ready with plenty of time to eat breakfast but didn’t feel up to braving the dining hall; she still didn’t know where it was, or how it worked.…

In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can’t google.) Like, where does the line start? What food can you take? Where are you supposed to stand, then where are you supposed to sit? Where do you go when you’re done, why is everyone watching you?…
Bah.

Cath broke open a box of protein bars. She had four more boxes and three giant jars of peanut butter shoved under her bed. If she paced herself, she might not have to face the dining hall until October.

She flipped open her laptop while she chewed on a carob-oat bar and clicked through to her FanFixx account. There were a bunch of new comments on her page, all people wringing their hands because Cath hadn’t posted a new chapter of
Carry On
yesterday.

Hey, guys,
she typed.
Sorry about yesterday. First day of school, family stuff, etc. Today might not happen either. But I promise you I’ll be back in black on Tuesday, and that I have something especially wicked planned. Peace out, Magicath.

*   *   *

Walking to class, Cath couldn’t shake the feeling that she was pretending to be a college student in a coming-of-age movie. The setting was perfect—rolling green lawns, brick buildings, kids everywhere with backpacks. Cath shifted her bag uncomfortably on her back.
Look at me—I’m a stock photo of a college student.

She made it to American History ten minutes early, which still wasn’t early enough to get a desk at the back of the class. Everybody in the room looked awkward and nervous, like they’d spent way too much time deciding what to wear.

(
Start as you mean to go on,
Cath had thought when she laid out her clothes last night. Jeans. Simon T-shirt. Green cardigan.)

The boy sitting in the desk next to her was wearing earbuds and self-consciously bobbing his head. The girl on Cath’s other side kept flipping her hair from one shoulder to the other.

Cath closed her eyes. She could feel their desks creaking. She could smell their deodorant. Just knowing they were there made her feel tight and cornered.

If Cath had slightly less pride, she could have taken this class with her sister—she and Wren both needed the history credits. Maybe she should be taking classes with Wren while they still had a few in common; they weren’t interested in any of the same subjects. Wren wanted to study marketing—and maybe get a job in advertising like their dad.

Cath couldn’t imagine having any sort of job or
career.
She’d majored in English, hoping that meant she could spend the next four years reading and writing. And maybe the next four years after that.

Anyway, she’d already tested out of Freshman Comp, and when she met with her adviser in the spring, Cath convinced him she could handle Intro to Fiction-Writing, a junior-level course. It was the only class—maybe the only thing about college—Cath was looking forward to. The professor who taught it was an actual novelist. Cath had read all three of her books (about decline and desolation in rural America) over the summer.

“Why are you reading that?” Wren had asked when she noticed.

“What?”

“Something without a dragon or an elf on the cover.”

“I’m branching out.”

“Shh,” Wren said, covering the ears on the movie poster above her bed. “Baz will hear you.”

“Baz is secure in our relationship,” Cath had said, smiling despite herself.

Thinking about Wren now made Cath reach for her phone.

Wren had probably gone out last night.

It had sounded like the whole campus was up partying. Cath felt under siege in her empty dorm room. Shouting. Laughing. Music. All of it coming from every direction. Wren wouldn’t have been able to resist the noise.

Cath dug her phone out of her backpack.

“you up?”
Send.

A few seconds later, her phone chimed.
“isn’t that my line?”

“too tired to write last night,”
Cath typed,
“went to bed at 10.”

Chime.
“neglecting your fans already…”

Cath smiled.
“always so jealous of my fans…”

“have a good day”

“yeah - you too”

A middle-aged Indian man in a reassuring tweed jacket walked into the lecture hall. Cath turned down her phone and slid it into her bag.

*   *   *

When she got back to her dorm, she was starving. At this rate, her protein bars wouldn’t last a week.…

There was a boy sitting outside her room. The same one. Reagan’s boyfriend? Reagan’s cigarette buddy?

“Cather!” he said with a smile. He started to stand up as soon as he saw her—which was more of a production than it should have been; his legs and arms were too long for his body.

“It’s Cath,” she said.

“Are you sure?” He ran a hand through his hair. Like he was confirming that it was still messy. “Because I really like Cather.”

“I’m sure,” she said flatly. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

He stood there, waiting for her to open the door.

“Is Reagan here?” Cath asked.

“If Reagan were here”—he smiled—“I’d already be inside.”

Cath pinched her key but didn’t open the door. She wasn’t up for this. She was already overdosing on
new
and
other
today. Right now she just wanted to curl up on her strange, squeaky bed and inhale three protein bars. She looked over the boy’s shoulder. “When is she getting here?”

He shrugged.

Cath’s stomach clenched. “Well, I can’t just let you in,” she blurted.

“Why not?”

“I don’t even know you.”

“Are you kidding?” He laughed. “We met yesterday. I was
in the room
when you met me.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know you. I don’t even know Reagan.”

“Are you going to make her wait outside, too?”

“Look…” Cath said. “I can’t just let strange guys into my room. I don’t even know your name. This whole situation is too rapey.”

“Rapey?”

“You understand,” she said, “right?”

He dropped an eyebrow and shook his head, still smiling. “Not really. But now I don’t want to come in with you. The word ‘rapey’ makes me uncomfortable.”

“Me, too,” she said gratefully.

He leaned against the wall and slid back onto the floor, looking up at her. Then he held up his hand. “I’m Levi, by the way.”

Cath frowned and took his hand lightly, still holding her keys. “Okay,” she said, then opened the door and closed it as quickly as possible behind her.

She grabbed her laptop and her protein bars, and crawled into the corner of her bed.

*   *   *

Cath was trying to pace her side of the room, but there wasn’t enough floor. It already felt like a prison in here, especially now that Reagan’s boyfriend, Levi, was standing guard—or sitting guard, whatever—out in the hall. Cath would feel better if she could just talk to somebody. She wondered if it was too soon to call Wren.…