Fangirl (3 page)

She called her dad instead. And left a voice mail.

She texted Abel.
“hey. one down. what up?”

She opened her sociology book. Then opened her laptop. Then got up to open a window. It was warm out. People were chasing each other with Nerf guns outside a fraternity house across the street. Pi-Kappa-Weird-Looking O.

Cath pulled out her phone and dialed.

“Hey,” Wren answered, “how was your first day?”

“Fine. How was yours?”

“Good,” Wren said. Wren
always
managed to sound breezy and nonchalant. “I mean, nerve-racking, I guess. I went to the wrong building for Statistics.”

“That sucks.”

The door opened, and Reagan and Levi walked in. Reagan gave Cath an odd look, but Levi just smiled.

“Yeah,” Wren said. “It only made me a few minutes late, but I still felt so stupid—Hey, Courtney and I are on our way to dinner, can I call you back? Or do you just want to meet us for lunch tomorrow? I think we’re going to start meeting at Selleck Hall at noon. Do you know where that is?”

“I’ll find it,” Cath said.

“Okay, cool. See you then.”

“Cool,” Cath said, pressing End and putting her phone in her pocket.

Levi had already unfurled himself across Reagan’s bed.

“Make yourself useful,” Reagan said, throwing a crumpled-up sheet at him. “Hey,” she said to Cath.

“Hey,” Cath said. She stood there for a minute, waiting for some sort of conversation to happen, but Reagan didn’t seem interested. She was going through all her boxes, like she was looking for something.

“How was your first day?” Levi asked.

It took a second for Cath to realize he was talking to her. “Fine,” she said.

“You’re a freshman, right?” He was making Reagan’s bed. Cath wondered if he was planning to stay the night—that would
not
be on. At all.

He was still looking at her, smiling at her, so she nodded.

“Did you find all your classes?”

“Yeah…”

“Are you meeting people?”

Yeah,
she thought,
you people.

“Not intentionally,” she said.

She heard Reagan snort.

“Where are your pillowcases?” Levi asked the closet.

“Boxes,” Reagan said.

He started emptying a box, setting things on Reagan’s desk as if he knew where they went. His head hung forward like it was only loosely connected to his neck and shoulders. Like he was one of those action figures that’s held together inside by worn-out rubber bands. Levi looked a little wild. He and Reagan both did.
People tend to pair off that way,
Cath thought,
in matched sets.

“So, what are you studying?” he asked Cath.

“English,” she said, then waited too long to say, “What are you studying?”

He seemed delighted to be asked the question. Or any question. “Range management.”

Cath didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t want to ask.

“Please don’t start talking about range management,” Reagan groaned. “Let’s just make that a rule, for the rest of the year. No talking about range management in my room.”

“It’s Cather’s room, too,” Levi said.

“Cath,” Reagan corrected him.

“What about when you’re not here?” he asked Reagan. “Can we talk about range management when you’re not actually in the room?”

“When I’m not actually in the room…,” she said, “I think you’re going to be waiting out in the hall.”

Cath smiled at the back of Reagan’s head. Then she saw Levi watching her and stopped.

*   *   *

Everyone in the classroom looked like
this
was what they’d been waiting for all week. It was like they were all waiting for a concert to start. Or a midnight movie premiere.

When Professor Piper walked in, a few minutes late, the first thing Cath noticed was that she was smaller than she looked in the photos on her book jackets.

Maybe that was stupid. They were just head shots, after all. But Professor Piper really filled them up—with her high cheekbones; her wide, watered-down blue eyes; and a spectacular head of long brown hair.

In person, the professor’s hair was just as spectacular, but streaked with gray and a little bushier than in the pictures. She was so small, she had to do a little hop to sit on top of her desk.

“So,” she said instead of “hello.” “Welcome to Fiction-Writing. I recognize a few of you—” She smiled around the room at people who weren’t Cath.

Cath was clearly the only freshman in the room. She was just starting to figure out what marked the freshmen.… The too-new backpacks. Makeup on the girls. Jokey Hot Topic T-shirts on the boys.

Everything
on Cath, from her new red Vans to the dark purple eyeglasses she’d picked out at Target. All the upperclassmen wore heavy black Ray-Ban frames. All the professors, too. If Cath got a pair of black Ray-Bans, she could probably order a gin and tonic around here without getting carded.

“Well,” Professor Piper said. “I’m glad you’re all here.” Her voice was warm and breathy—you could say “she purred” without reaching too far—and she talked just softly enough that everyone had to sit really still to hear her.

“We have a lot to do this semester,” she said, “so let’s not waste another minute of it. Let’s dive right in.” She leaned forward on the desk, holding on to the lip. “Are you ready? Will you dive with me?”

Most people nodded. Cath looked down at her notebook.

“Okay. Let’s start with a question that doesn’t really have an answer.… Why do we write fiction?”

One of the older students, a guy, decided he was game. “To express ourselves,” he offered.

“Sure,” Professor Piper said. “Is that why you write?”

The guy nodded.

“Okay … why else?”

“Because we like the sound of our own voices,” a girl said. She had hair like Wren’s, but maybe even cooler. She looked like Mia Farrow in
Rosemary’s Baby
(wearing a pair of Ray-Bans).

“Yes,” Professor Piper laughed. It was a fairy laugh, Cath thought. “That’s why I write, definitely. That’s why I
teach.
” They all laughed with her. “Why else?”

Why do I write?
Cath tried to come up with a profound answer—knowing she wouldn’t speak up, even if she did.

“To explore new worlds,” someone said.

“To explore old ones,” someone else said. Professor Piper was nodding.

To be somewhere else,
Cath thought.

“So…,” Professor Piper purred. “Maybe to make sense of ourselves?”

“To set ourselves free,” a girl said.

To get free of ourselves.

“To show people what it’s like inside our heads,” said a boy in tight red jeans.

“Assuming they want to know,” Professor Piper added. Everyone laughed.

“To make people laugh.”

“To get attention.”

“Because it’s all we know how to do.”

“Speak for yourself,” the professor said. “I play the piano. But keep going—I love this. I love it.”

“To
stop
hearing the voices in our head,” said the boy in front of Cath. He had short dark hair that came to a dusky point at the back of his neck.

To stop,
Cath thought.

To stop being anything or anywhere at all.

“To leave our mark,” Mia Farrow said. “To create something that will outlive us.”

The boy in front of Cath spoke up again: “Asexual reproduction.”

Cath imagined herself at her laptop. She tried to put into words how it felt, what happened when it was good, when it was working, when the words were coming out of her before she knew what they were, bubbling up from her chest, like rhyming, like rapping,
like jump-roping,
she thought, jumping just before the rope hits your ankles.

“To share something true,” another girl said. Another pair of Ray-Bans.

Cath shook her head.

“Why do we write fiction?” Professor Piper asked.

Cath looked down at her notebook.

To disappear.

He was so focused—and frustrated—he didn’t even see the girl with the red hair sit down at his table. She had pigtails and old-fashioned pointy spectacles, the kind you’d wear to a fancy dress party if you were going as a witch.

“You’re going to tire yourself out,” the girl said.

“I’m just trying to do this right,” Simon grunted, tapping the two-pence coin again with his wand and furrowing his brow painfully. Nothing happened.

“Here,” she said, crisply waving her hand over the coin.

She didn’t have a wand, but she wore a large purple ring. There was yarn wound round it to keep it on her finger.
“Fly away home.”

With a shiver, the coin grew six legs and a thorax and started to scuttle away. The girl swept it gently off the desk into a jar.

“How did you do that?” Simon asked. She was a first year, too, just like him; he could tell by the green shield on the front of her sweater.

“You don’t
do
magic,” she said, trying to smile modestly and mostly succeeding. “You
are
magic.”

Simon stared at the 2p ladybird.

“I’m Penelope Bunce,” the girl said, holding out her hand.

“I’m Simon Snow,” he said, taking it.

“I know,” Penelope said, and smiled.

—from chapter 8,
Simon Snow and the Mage’s Heir,
copyright © 2001 by Gemma T. Leslie

THREE

It was impossible to write like this.

First of all, their dorm room was way too small. A tiny little rectangle, just wide enough on each side of the door for their beds—when the door opened, it actually hit the end of Cath’s mattress—and just deep enough to squeeze in a desk on each side between the beds and the windows. If either of them had brought a couch, it would take up all the available space in the middle of the room.

Neither of them had brought a couch. Or a TV. Or any cute Target lamps.

Reagan didn’t seem to have brought anything personal, besides her clothes and a completely illegal toaster—and besides Levi, who was lying on her bed with his eyes closed, listening to music while Reagan banged at her computer. (A crappy PC, just like Cath’s.)

Cath was used to sharing a room; she’d always shared a room with Wren. But their room at home was almost three times as big as this one. And Wren didn’t take up nearly as much space as Reagan did. Figurative space. Head space. Wren didn’t feel like company.

Cath still wasn’t sure what to make of Reagan.…

On the one hand, Reagan didn’t seem interested in staying up all night, braiding each other’s hair, and becoming best friends forever. That was a relief.

On the other hand, Reagan didn’t seem interested in Cath
at all
.

Actually, that was a bit of a relief, too—Reagan was scary.

She did everything so forcefully. She swung their door open; she slammed it shut. She was bigger than Cath, a little taller and a lot more buxom (seriously,
buxom
). She just
seemed
bigger. On the inside, too.

When Reagan was in the room, Cath tried to stay out of her way; she tried not to make eye contact. Reagan pretended Cath wasn’t there, so Cath pretended that, too. Normally this seemed to work out for both of them.

But right at the moment, pretending not to exist was making it really hard for Cath to write.

She was working on a tricky scene—Simon and Baz arguing about whether vampires could ever truly be considered good and also whether the two of them should go to the graduation ball together. It was all supposed to be very funny and romantic and thoughtful, which were usually Cath’s specialties. (She was pretty good with treachery, too. And talking dragons.)

But she couldn’t get past, “Simon swept his honey brown hair out of his eyes and sighed.” She couldn’t even get Baz to
move.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Reagan and Levi sitting behind her. Her brain was stuck on
INTRUDER ALERT
!

Plus she was starving. As soon as Reagan and Levi left the room for dinner, Cath was going to eat an entire jar of peanut butter.
If
they ever left for dinner—Reagan kept banging on like she was going to type right through the desk, and Levi kept
not leaving,
and Cath’s stomach was starting to growl.

She grabbed a protein bar and walked out of the room, thinking she’d just take a quick walk down the hall to clear her head.

But the hallway was practically a meet-and-greet. Every door was propped open but theirs. Girls were milling around, talking and laughing. The whole floor smelled like burnt microwave popcorn. Cath slipped into the bathroom and sat in one of the stalls, unwrapping her protein bar and letting nervous tears dribble down her cheeks.

God,
she thought.
God. Okay. This isn’t that bad. There’s actually nothing wrong, actually. What’s wrong, Cath? Nothing.

She felt tight everywhere. Snapping. And her stomach was on fire.

She took out her phone and wondered what Wren was doing. Probably choreographing dance sequences to Lady Gaga songs. Probably trying on her roommate’s sweaters. Probably
not
sitting on a toilet, eating an almond-flaxseed bar.

Cath could call Abel … but she knew he was leaving for Missouri Tech tomorrow morning. His family was throwing him a huge party tonight with homemade tamales and his grandmother’s coconut
yoyos
—which were so special, they didn’t even sell them in the family bakery. Abel worked in the
panadería,
and his family lived above it. His hair always smelled like cinnamon and yeast.… Jesus, Cath was hungry.

She pushed her protein-bar wrapper into the feminine-hygiene box and rinsed off her face before she went back to her room.

Reagan and Levi were walking out, thank God. And
finally.

“See ya,” Reagan said.

“Rock on.” Levi smiled.

Cath felt like collapsing when the door closed behind them.

She grabbed another protein bar, flopped onto the old wooden captain’s chair—she was starting to like this chair—and opened a drawer to prop up her foot.