Fangirl

They were a package deal, period. Since always.

  They’d even gone to therapy together after their mom left. Which seemed weird, now that Cath thought about it. Especially considering how differently they’d reacted—Wren acting out, Cath acting in. (Violently, desperately in. Journey to the Center of the Earth in.)

  Their third-grade teacher—they were always in the same class, all through elementary school—thought they must be upset about the terrorists.…

  Because their mom left on September 11th.

  The September 11th.

  (Cath still found this incredibly embarrassing; it was like their mom was so self-centered, she couldn’t be trusted not to desecrate a national tragedy with her own issues.)

  Cath and Wren had been sent home from school early that day, and their parents were already fighting when they got there. Her dad was upset, and her mom was crying.… And Cath thought at first that it was because of the World Trade Center; their teacher had told them about the airplanes. But that wasn’t it, not exactly.…

  Her mom kept saying, “I’m done, Art. I’m just done. I’m living the wrong life.”

  Cath went out and sat on the back steps, and Wren sat beside her, holding her hand.

  The fight went on and on. And when the president flew over their heads that afternoon on the way to the air force base, the only plane in the sky, Cath thought maybe the whole world was going to end.

  Her mom left for good a week later, hugging both of the girls on the front porch, kissing their cheeks again and again, and promising that she’d see them both soon, that she just needed some time to feel better, to remember who she really was. Which didn’t make any sense to Cath and Wren. You’re our mom.

  Cath couldn’t remember everything that happened next.

  She remembered crying a lot at school. Hiding with Wren in the bathroom during recess. Holding hands on the bus. Wren scratching a boy who said they were gay in the eye.

  Wren didn’t cry. She stole things and hid them under her pillow. When their dad changed their sheets for the first time—not until after Valentine’s Day—he found Simon Snow pencils and Lip Smackers and a Britney Spears CD.

  Then, in one week, Wren cut some other girl’s dress with safety scissors, and Cath wet her pants during Social Studies because she was scared to raise her hand to ask for a bathroom pass; their teacher called their dad in and gave him a business card for a child psychologist.

  Their dad didn’t tell the therapist their mom was gone. He didn’t even tell Grandma until summer break. He was so sure she was going to come back.… And he was such a disaster.

  They were all three such a disaster.

  It had taken years to put themselves back together, and so what if some things didn’t get put back in the right place? At least they could hold themselves up.

  Most of the time.

  Cath closed her biology book and reached for her laptop. Reading was too quiet—she needed to write.

  It startled her when the phone rang. She stared at it for a second before she answered, trying to recognize the number. “Hello?”

  “Hey. It’s Levi.”

  “Hi?”

  “There’s a party at my house tonight.”

  “There’s always a party at your house.”

  “So you’ll come? Reagan’s coming.”

  “What would I do at your party, Levi?”

  “Have fun,” he said, and she could hear that he was smiling.

  Cath tried not to. “Not drink. Not smoke. Not get high.”

  “You could talk to people.”

  “I don’t like to talk to drunk people.”

  “Just because people will be drinking doesn’t mean they’ll be drunk. I won’t be drunk.”

  “I don’t need to go to a party to talk to you. Did Reagan tell you to invite me?”

  “No. Not exactly. Not like that.”

  “Have fun at your party, Levi.”

  “Wait—Cath.”

  “What?” She said it like she was hassled, but she wasn’t. Not really.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to write. What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just got off work. Maybe you should finish reading me that story.…”

  “What story?” She knew what story.

  “The Simon Snow story. Vampire Baz was just about to attack Simon.”

  “You want me to read to you over the phone?”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not going to read to you over the phone.”

  There was a knock at the door. Cath eyed it suspiciously.

  More knocking.

  “I know that’s you,” she said into the phone. Levi laughed.

  She got up and opened the door, ending the call. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “I brought you coffee,” he said. He was wearing all black—black jeans, black sweater, black leather work boots—and holding two Christmassy red cups.

  “I don’t really drink coffee.” Their previous encounters notwithstanding.

  “That’s okay. These are more like melted candy bars. Which do you want, gingerbread latte or eggnog?”

  “Eggnog reminds me of mucus,” she said.

  “Me, too. But in a good way.” He held out his hand. “Gingerbread.”

  Cath took the cup and smiled in resignation.

  “You’re welcome,” Levi said. He sat on her bed and smiled expectantly.

  “You’re serious?” She sat down at her desk.

  “Come on, Cath, don’t you write these stories so that people can enjoy them?”

  “I write them so that people will read them. I’ll send you a link.”

  “Don’t send me a link. I’m not much of an Internet person.”

  Cath felt her eyes get big. She was about to take a sip of her coffee, but stopped. “How do you not like the Internet? That’s like saying, ‘I don’t like things that are convenient. And easy. I don’t like having access to all of mankind’s recorded discoveries at my fingertips. I don’t like light. And knowledge.’”

  “I like knowledge,” he said.

  “You’re not a book person. And now you’re not an Internet person? What does that leave you?”

  Levi laughed. “Life. Work. Class. The great outdoors. Other people.”

  “Other people,” Cath repeated, shaking her head and taking a sip. “There are other people on the Internet. It’s awesome. You get all the benefits of ‘other people’ without the body odor and the eye contact.”

  Levi kicked her chair. He could reach it without stretching. “Cath. Read me your fanfiction. I want to know what happens next.”

  She opened her computer slowly, as if she were still thinking about it. As if there were any way she was going to say no. Levi wanted to know what happened next. That question was Cath’s Achilles’ heel.

  She opened the story she’d been reading to him. It was something she’d written last year for a Christmas-fic festival (“Deck the Hols with Baz and Simon”). Cath’s fic had won two awards: “Tastes Like Canon” and “Best in Snow.”

  “Where did we leave off?” she said, mostly to herself.

  “Baz’s teeth were bared, and his face with filled with disgust and decision.”

  Cath found the spot in the story. “Wow,” she said. “Good memory.”

  Levi was smiling. He kicked her chair again.

  “Okay,” she said, “so they’re in the boat, and Simon is leaning over, looking at the tiles on the moat wall.…”

  Levi closed his eyes.

  Cath cleared her throat.

  When he looked back, Baz had stepped toward him in the punt. He was curled above Simon, washed blue by his own conjured fire, his teeth bared and his face thick with decision and disgust.…

  Baz held the pole just over Simon’s face, and before Simon could reach his wand or whisper a spell, Baz was driving the pole forward over Simon’s shoulder. The boat shook, and there was a gurgling howl—a frenzied splash—from the water. Baz raised th
e pole and drove it down again, his face as cold and cruel as Simon had ever seen it. His wide lips were shining, and he was practically growling.

  Simon held himself still while the boat rocked. When Baz stepped back again, Simon slowly sat up. “Did you kill it?” he asked quietly.

  “No,” Baz said. “I should have. It should know better than to bother the boats—and you should know better than to lean into the moat.”

  “Why are there merwolves in the moat anyway?” Simon flushed. “This is a school.”

  “A school run by a madman. Something I’ve been trying to explain to you for six years.”

  “Don’t talk that way about the Mage.”

  “Where’s your Mage now, Simon?” Baz asked softly, looking up at the old fortress. He looked tired again, his face blue and shadowed in the moonlight, his eyes practically ringed in black. “And what are you looking for anyway?” he asked waspishly, rubbing his eyes. “Maybe if you told me, I could help you find it, and then we could both go inside and avoid death by drowning, freezing, or torn jugular.”

  “It’s…” Simon weighed the risks.

  Usually when Simon was this far along on a quest, Baz had already sniffed out his purpose and was setting a trap to foil him. But this time Simon hadn’t told anyone what he was doing. Not even Agatha. Not even Penelope.

  The anonymous letter had told Simon to seek out help; it said that the mission was too dangerous to carry out on his own—and that’s exactly why Simon hadn’t wanted to involve his friends.

  But putting Baz at risk … Well, that wasn’t so distasteful.

  “It’s dangerous,” Simon said sternly.

  “Oh, I’m sure—danger is your middle name, etc. Simon Oliver Danger Snow.”

  “How do you know my middle name?” Simon asked warily.

  “Great Crimea, what part of ‘six years’ is lost on you? I know which shoe you put on first. I know that your shampoo smells like apples. My mind is fairly bursting with worthless Simon Snow trivia.… Don’t you know mine?”

  “Your what?”

  “My middle name,” Baz said.

  Morgan’s tooth, he was stroppy. “It’s … it’s Basilton, right?”

  “Quite right, you great thumping idiot.”

  “That was a trick question.” Simon turned back to the mosaic.

  “What are you looking for!” Baz demanded again, snarling through his teeth like an animal.

  This was something Simon had learned about Baz in six years: He could turn from peevish to dangerous in half a heartbeat.

  But Simon still hadn’t learned not to rise to the bait. “Rabbits!” he blurted out. “I’m looking for rabbits.”

  “Rabbits?” Baz looked confused, caught mid-snarl.

  “Six white hares.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!” Simon shouted. “I just am. I got a letter. There are six white hares on school grounds, and they lead to something—”

  “To what?”

  “I. Don’t. Know. Something dangerous.”

  “And I don’t suppose,” Baz said, leaning against the pole, resting his forehead on the wood, “that you know who sent it.”

  “No.”

  “It could be a trap.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” Simon wished he could stand and face Baz without tipping the boat; he hated the way Baz was talking down to him.

  “You really think that,” Baz scoffed, “don’t you? You really think that the only way to sort out whether something is dangerous it to barrel right into it.”

  “What else would you suggest?”

  “You could ask your precious Mage, for starters. You could run it past your swotty friend. Her brain is so enormous, it pushes her ears out like a monkey’s—maybe she could shed some light.”

  Simon yanked on Baz’s cloak and made him lose his balance. “Don’t talk about Penelope like that.”

  The punt wobbled, and Baz recovered his cool stance. “Have you talked to her? Have you talked to anyone?”

  “No,” Simon said.

  “Six hares, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many have you found so far?”

  “Four.”

  “So you’ve got the one in the cathedral and the one on the drawbridge—”

  “You know about the hare on the drawbridge?” Simon sat back, startled. “That took me three weeks to find.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Baz said. “You’re not very observant. Do you even know my first name?” He started pushing them through the water again—pushing them toward the dock, Simon hoped.

  “It’s … it begins with a T.”

  “It’s Tyrannus,” Baz said. “Honestly. So the cathedral, the drawbridge, and the nursery—”

  Simon clambered to his feet, pulling himself up by Baz’s cloak. The punt bobbed. “The nursery?”

  Baz lowered an eyebrow. “Of course.”

  This close, Simon could see the purple bruises under Baz’s eyes, the web of dark blood vessels in his eyelids. “Show me.”

  Baz shrugged—practically shuddered—away from Simon and out of the boat. Simon jerked forward and grabbed a post on the dock to keep the boat from floating away.

  “Come on,” Baz said.

  Cath realized that she’d started doing Simon and Baz’s voices—at least doing the version of their voices that she heard in her head. She glanced over at Levi to see if he’d noticed. He was holding his cup with both hands against his chest and resting his chin on top, like it was keeping him warm. His eyes were open but unfocused. He looked like a little kid watching TV.

  Cath turned back to her computer before he caught her watching him.

  It took longer to put the boat away than it had to get it out, and by the time it was tied up, Simon’s hands were wet and freezing.

  They hurried back into the fortress, side by side, both of them pushing their fists into their pockets.

  Baz was taller, but their strides matched exactly.

  Simon wondered whether they’d ever walked like this before. In six years—six years of always walking in the same direction—had they ever once fallen into step?

  “Here,” Baz said, catching Simon’s arm and stopping at a closed door. Simon would have walked right past this door. He must have a thousand times—it was on the main floor, near the professors’ offices.

  Baz tried the handle. It was locked. He pulled his wand out of his pocket and started murmuring. The door came open suddenly, almost as if the knob were reaching for Baz’s pale hand.

  “How did you do that?” Simon asked.

  Baz just sneered and strode forward. Simon followed. The room was dark, but he could see that it was a place for children. There were toys and pillows, and train tracks that wound around the room in every direction.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s the nursery,” Baz said in a hushed voice. As if children might be sleeping in the room right now.

  “Why does Watford need a nursery?”

  “It doesn’t,” Baz said. “Not anymore. It’s too dangerous here now for children. But this used to be the place where the faculty brought their children while they worked. And other magical children could come, too, if they wanted to get an early start on their development.”

  “Did you come here?”

  “Yes, from the time I was born.”

  “Your parents must have thought you needed a lot of extra help.”

  “My mother was the headmaster, you idiot.”

  Simon turned to look at Baz, but he couldn’t quite see the other boy’s face in the dark. “I didn’t know that.”

  He could hear Baz roll his eyes. “Shocking.”

  “But I’ve met your mother.”

  “You’ve met my stepmother,” Baz said. He stood very still.

  Simon matched his stillness. “The last headmaster,” he said, watching Baz’s profile. “Before the Mage came, the one who was killed by vampires.”

  Baz’s he
ad fell forward like it was weighted with stones. “Come on. The hare is this way.”

  The next room was wide and round. Cribs lined the walls on each side, with small, low futons placed in a circle in the middle. At the far end was a huge fireplace—half as tall as the high, curved ceiling. Baz whispered into his hand and sent a ball of fire blazing through the grate. He whispered again, twisting his hand in the air, and the blue flames turned orange and hot. The room came to life a bit around them.

  Baz walked toward the fireplace, holding his hands up to the heat. Simon followed.

  “There it is,” Baz said.

  “Where?” Simon looked into the fire.

  “Above you.”

  Simon looked up, then turned back to face the room. On the ceiling above him was a richly painted mural of the night sky. The sky was deep blue and dominated by the moon—a white rabbit curled tightly in on itself, eyes pressed closed, fat and full and fast asleep.

  Simon walked out into the middle of the room, his chin raised high. “The fifth hare…,” he whispered. “The Moon Rabbit.”

  “Now what?” Baz asked, just behind him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, now what?”

  “I don’t know,” Simon said.

  “Well, what did you do when you found the others?”

  “Nothing. I just found them. The letter just said to find them.”

  Baz brought his hands to his face and growled, dropping into a frustrated heap on the floor. “Is this how you and your dream team normally operate? It’s no wonder it’s always so easy to get in your way.”

  “But not so easy to stop us, I’ve noticed.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Baz said, his face hidden in his knees. “Just—no more. No more of your drippy voice until you’ve got something worth saying. It’s like a drill you’re cranking between my eyes.”

  Simon sat down on the floor near Baz, near the fire, looking up at the sleeping rabbit. When his neck started to cramp, he leaned back on the rug.

  “I slept in a room like this,” Simon said. “In the orphanage. Nowhere near this nice. There was no fireplace. No Moon Rabbit. But we all slept together like this, in one room.”

  “Crowley, Snow, was that when you joined the cast of Annie?”

  “There are still places like that. Orphanages. You wouldn’t know.”

  “Quite right,” Baz said. “My mother didn’t choose to leave me.”