Fangirl

  “Why do you want to help?” Baz asked, turning back to Simon, who was close enough now to feel the soft heat of Baz’s breath on his chin. “You’d keep a secret from your mentor to help your enemy?”

  “You’re not my enemy,” Simon said. “You’re just … a really bad roommate.”

  Levi laughed, and Cath felt it on her neck.

  Baz laughed, and Simon felt it on his eyelashes.

  “You hate me,” Baz argued. “You’ve hated me from the moment we met.”

  “I don’t hate this,” Simon said. “What you’re doing—denying your most powerful urges, just to protect other people. It’s more heroic than anything I’ve ever done.”

  “They’re not my most powerful urges,” Baz said under his breath.

  “Do you know,” Simon said, “that half the time we’re together, you’re talking to yourself?”

  “Ah, Snow, I didn’t think you noticed.”

  “I notice,” Simon said, feeling six years of irritation and anger—and twelve hours of exhaustion—coming to a dizzy peak between his ears. He shook his head, and he must have leaned forward because it was enough to bump his nose and chin against Baz’s.… “Let me help you,” Simon said.

  Baz held his head perfectly still. Then he nodded, gently thudding his forehead against Simon’s.

  “I notice,” Simon said, letting his mouth drift forward. He thought of everything that had passed over the other boy’s lips. Blood and bile and curses.

  But Baz’s mouth was soft now, and he tasted of apples.

  And Simon didn’t care for the moment that he was changing everything.

  Cath closed her eyes and felt Levi’s chin track the back of her collar.

  “Keep reading,” he whispered.

  “I can’t,” she said, “it’s over.”

  “It’s over?” He pulled his face away. “But what happens? Do they fight the other rabbits now? Are they together? Does Simon break up with Agatha?”

  “That’s up to you. It doesn’t say.”

  “But you could say. You wrote it.”

  “I wrote it two years ago,” Cath said. “I don’t know what I was thinking then. Especially about that last paragraph. It’s pretty weak.”

  “I liked the whole thing,” Levi said. “I liked ‘the thirst of the ancients.’”

  “Yeah, that was an okay line.…”

  “Read something else,” he whispered, kissing the skin below her ear.

  Cath took a deep breath. “What?”

  “Anything. More fanfiction, the soybean report … You’re like a tiger who loves Brahms—as long as you’re reading, you let me touch you.”

  He was right: As long as she was reading, it was almost like he was touching someone else. Which was kind of messed up, now that she thought about it.…

  Cath let her phone drop to the floor.

  She slowly turned toward Levi, feeling her waist twist in his arms, looking up as far as his chin and shaking her head. “No,” she said. “No. I don’t want to be distracted. I want to touch you back.”

  Levi’s chest rose steeply, just as she set both hands on his flannel shirt.

  His eyes were wide. “Okay…”

  Cath focused on her fingertips. Feeling the flannel, feeling it slide against the T-shirt he wore underneath—feeling Levi underneath that, the ridges of muscle and bone. His heart beat in the palm of Cath’s hand, right there, like her fingers could close around it.…

  “I really like you,” Levi whispered.

  She nodded and spread out her fingers. “I really like you, too.”

  “Say it again,” he said.

  She laughed. There should be a word for a laugh that ends as soon as it starts. A laugh that’s more a syllable of surprise and acknowledgment than it is anything else. Cath laughed like that, then hung her head forward, pushing her hands into his chest. “I really like you, Levi.”

  She felt his hands on her waist and his mouth in her hair.

  “Keep saying it,” he said.

  Cath smiled. “I like you,” she said, touching her nose to his chin.

  “I would’ve shaved if I’d known I was going to see you tonight.”

  His chin moved when he talked. “I like you like this,” she said, letting it scrape her nose and her cheek. “I like you.”

  He lifted a hand to the back of her neck and held her there. “Cath…”

  She swallowed and set her lips on his chin. “Levi.”

  Right about then, Cath realized just how close she was to the edge of Levi’s jaw—and remembered what she’d promised herself to do there. She closed her eyes and kissed him below his chin, behind his jaw, where he was soft and almost chubby, like a baby. He arched his neck, and it was even better than she’d hoped.

  “I like you,” she said. “So much. I like you here.”

  Cath brought her hands up to his neck. God, he was warm—skin so warm and thick, a heavier ply than her own. She slid her fingers into his hair, cradling the back of his head.

  His hands mimicked hers, pulling her face up to his. “Cath, if I kiss you now, are you going to leap away from me?”

  “No.”

  “Are you going to panic?

  She shook her head. “Probably no.”

  He bit the side of his bottom lip, and smiled. His bowed lips didn’t quite reach the corners.

  “I like you,” she whispered.

  He pulled her forward.

  Right. There was this. Kissing Levi.

  So much better when she was awake and her mouth wasn’t muddy from reading out loud all night. She nodded and nodded and kissed him back.

  When Baz and Simon kissed, Cath always made a big deal out of the moment when one of them opened his mouth. But when you’re actually kissing someone, it’s hard to keep your mouth closed. Cath’s mouth was open before Levi even got there. It was open now.

  Levi’s mouth was open, too, and he kept pulling back a little like he was going to say something; then his chin would jut forward again, back into hers.

  God, his chin. She wanted to make an honest woman of his chin. She wanted to lock it down.

  The next time Levi pulled back, Cath went back to kissing his chin, pressing her face up under his jaw. “I just like you so much here.”

  “I just like you so much,” he said, his head falling back against the couch. “Even more than that, you know?”

  “And here,” she said, pushing her nose up against his ear. Levi’s earlobes were attached to his head. Which made Cath think of Punnett squares. And Mendel. And made her try to pull his earlobe away with her teeth. “You’re really good here,” she said. He brought his shoulders up, like it tickled.

  “C’mere, c’mere,” he said, pulling at her waist. She was sitting just beside him, and he seemed to want her in his lap.

  “I’m heavy,” she said.

  “Good.”

  Cath always knew that she’d make a spectacle of herself if she ever got Levi alone, and that’s just what she was doing. She was mauling his ear. She wanted to feel it on every part of her face.

  It was okay…, she could imagine him telling Reagan or one of his eighteen roommates tomorrow. She wouldn’t stop licking my ear—I think she might have an ear fetish. And you don’t even want to know what she did to my chin.

  Levi was still holding her waist, too tight, like he was getting ready for a figure-skating lift. “Cath…,” he said, and swallowed. The knot in his throat dipped, and she tried to catch it with her mouth.

  “Here, too,” she said. Her voice sounded pained. He was too lovely, too good, too much. “So much here. Really … your whole head. I like your whole head.”

  Levi laughed, and she tried to kiss everything that moved. His throat, his lips, his cheeks, the corner of his eyes.

  Baz would never kiss Simon this chaotically.

  Simon would never crush his nose against Baz’s widow’s peak the way Cath was about to.

  She gave in to Levi’s hands and climbed onto his lap, he
r knees on either side of his hips. He craned his neck to gaze up at her, and Cath held his face by his temples. “Here, here, here,” she said, kissing his forehead, letting herself touch his feather-light hair. “Oh God, Levi … you drive me crazy here.”

  She smoothed his hair back with her hands and her face, and she kissed the top of his head the way he always kissed her (the only kisses she’d allowed for so many weeks).

  Levi’s hair didn’t smell like shampoo—or freshly mown clover. It smelled like coffee mostly, and like Cath’s pillow the week after he spent the night. Her mouth settled on his hairline, where his hair was the lightest and finest; her own hair was nowhere this soft. “Like you,” she said, feeling weird and tearful. “Like you so much, Levi.”

  And then she kissed my receding hairline and cried, she imagined him saying. In her imagination, Levi was Danny Zuko, and his roommates were the rest of the T-Birds. Tell me more, tell me more.

  His face felt hot in her hands.

  “Come here,” he said, catching her jaw with one hand, chinning his mouth up to hers.

  Right.

  There was this. Kissing Levi.

  This and this and this.

  * * *

  “You’re not all hands…,” he whispered later. He was tucked back into the corner of the love seat, and she was resting on top of him. She’d spent hours on top of him. Curled over him like a vampire. Even exhausted, she couldn’t stop rubbing her numb lips into his flannel chest. “You’re all mouth,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Cath said, biting her lips.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said, pulling her lips free of her teeth with his thumb. “And don’t be sorry … ever again.”

  He hitched her up, so her face was above his. Her eyes wandered down to his chin, out of habit. “Look at me,” he said.

  Cath looked up. At Levi’s pastel-colored face. Too lovely, too good.

  “I like you here,” he said, squeezing her. “With me.”

  She smiled, and her eyes started to drift downward.

  “Cather…”

  Back up to his eyes.

  “You know that I’m falling in love with you, right?”

  “You knew all along?”

  “Not all along,” Penelope said. “But a long. At least since fifth year, when you insisted we follow Baz around the castle every other day. You made me go to all of his football games.”

  “To make sure he wasn’t cheating,” Simon said, out of habit.

  “Right,” Penelope said. “I was starting to wonder whether you’d ever figure it out. You have figured it out, haven’t you?”

  Simon felt himself smiling and blushing, not for first time this week. Not for the fiftieth. “Yeah…”

  —from Carry On, Simon, posted March 2011 by FanFixx.net author Magicath

  THIRTY-TWO

  Wren was back, and it felt like someone had turned Cath’s world right side up. Like she’d been hanging from the floor all year long, trying not to drop through the ceiling.

  Cath could call Wren now whenever she wanted. Without thinking or worrying. They met for lunch and for dinner. They wrapped their schedules around each other’s, filling in all the small spaces.

  “It’s like you got your lost arm back or something,” Levi said. “Like you’re a happy starfish.” The way he was beaming, you’d think he was the one who got his sister back. “That was some bad medicine. Not talking to your mom. Not talking to your sister. That was some Jacob-and-Esau business.”

  “I’m still not talking to my mom,” Cath said.

  She had talked to Wren about their mom. A lot, actually.

  Wren wasn’t surprised that Laura hadn’t stayed at the hospital. “She doesn’t do heavy stuff,” Wren said. “I can’t believe she even came.”

  “She probably thought you were dying.”

  “I wasn’t dying.’”

  “How do you not do the heavy stuff?” Cath said, indignant. “Being a parent is all heavy stuff.”

  “She doesn’t want to be a parent,” Wren said. “She wants me to call her ‘Laura.’”

  Cath decided to start calling Laura “Mom” again in her head. Then she decided to stop calling Laura anything at all in her head.…

  Wren still talked to her (She Who Would Not Be Named). She said they texted mostly and that they were friends on Facebook. Wren was okay with that amount of involvement; she seemed to think it was better than nothing and safer than everything.

  Cath didn’t get it. Her brain just didn’t work that way. Her heart didn’t.

  But she was done fighting with Wren about it.

  Now that Cath and Wren were Cath and Wren again, Levi thought they should all be hanging out all the time. The four of them. “Did you know that Jandro’s in the Ag School?” he asked. “We’ve even had classes together.”

  “Maybe we should go on lots of double dates,” Cath said, “and then we can get married on the same day in a double ceremony, in matching dresses, and the four of us will light the unity candle all at the same time.”

  “Pfft,” Levi said, “I’m picking out my own dress.”

  The four of them had all hung out together once or twice, incidentally. When Jandro was coming to get Wren. When Levi was coming to get Cath.

  “You don’t want to hang out with Wren and me,” Cath had tried to tell him. “All we do is listen to rap music and talk about Simon.”

  There were only six weeks left until The Eighth Dance came out, and Wren was more stressed out about it than Cath was. “I just don’t know how you’re going to wrap everything up,” she’d say.

  “I’ve got an outline,” Cath kept telling her.

  “Yeah, but you’ve got classes, too. Let me see your outline.”

  Usually, they huddled over the laptop in Cath’s room. It was closer to campus.

  “Don’t expect me to tell you apart,” Reagan said when this became a routine.

  “I have short hair,” Wren said, “and she wears glasses.”

  “Stop,” Reagan groaned, “don’t make me look at you. It’s like The Shining in here.”

  Wren cocked her head and squinted. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Cath said. “Ignore her.”

  Reagan scowled at Cath. “Are you Zack, or are you Cody?”

  Today they were in Wren’s room, just to give Reagan a break. They were sitting on Wren’s bed, the laptop resting on both their knees. Courtney was there, too, getting ready to go out; she was studying with the Sigma Chis tonight.

  “You can’t kill Baz,” Wren said, pressing the down-arrow key and skimming Cath’s Carry On outline. They kept coming back to this point; Wren was adamant.

  “I never thought I would kill Baz,” Cath said. “Ever. But it’s the ultimate redemption, you know? If he sacrifices himself for Simon, after all their years of fighting, after this one precious year of love … it makes everything they’ve been through together that much sweeter.”

  “I’ll have to kill you if you kill Baz,” Wren said. “And I’ll be first in a long line.”

  “I totally think Basil’s going to die in the last movie,” Courtney said, putting on her jacket. “Simon has to kill him—he’s a vampire.”

  “He’ll have to die in the last book first,” Cath said. She still couldn’t tell whether Courtney was actually stupid or whether she just couldn’t be bothered to think before she talked. Wren shook her head at Cath and rolled her eyes, like, Don’t waste your time with her.

  “Don’t work too hard, ladies,” Courtney said, waving on her way out. Only Cath waved back.

  Something had happened between Wren and Courtney. Cath wasn’t sure if it was the emergency room or something else. They were still friends; they still ate lunch together. But even small things seemed to irritate Wren—the way Courtney wore heels with jeans, or the way she thought “boughten” was the past participle of “bought.” Cath had tried to ask about it, but Wren always shrugged her off.

  “She
’s wrong,” Cath said now. “I don’t think GTL could ever kill off Baz.”

  “And you can’t either,” Wren said.

  “But it makes him the ultimate romantic hero. Think of Tony in West Side Story or Jack in Titanic—or Jesus.”

  “That’s horseshit,” Wren said.

  Cath giggled. “Horseshit?”

  Wren elbowed her. “Yes. The ultimate act of heroism shouldn’t be death. You’re always saying you want to give Baz the stories he deserves. To rescue him from Gemma—”

  “I just don’t think she realizes his potential as a character,” Cath said.

  “So you’re going to kill him off? Isn’t the best revenge supposed to be a life well-lived? The punk-rock way to end Carry On would be to let Baz and Simon live happily ever after.”

  Cath laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Wren said. “They’ve been through so much together—not just in your story, but in canon and in all the hundreds of fics we’ve read about them.… Think of your readers. Think about how good it’ll feel to leave us with a little hope.”

  “But I don’t want it to be cheesy.”

  “Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.”

  Cath studied Wren’s face. It was like looking at a lightly warped mirror. Through a glass, darkly. “Are you in love?”

  Wren blushed and looked down at the laptop. “This isn’t about me. It’s about Baz and Simon.”

  “I’m making it about you,” Cath said. “Are you in love?”

  Wren pulled the computer fully onto her lap and started scrolling back up to the top of Cath’s outline. “Yes,” she said coolly. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “I didn’t say there was.” Cath grinned. “You’re in love.”

  “Oh shut up, so are you.”

  Cath started to argue.

  “Give it up,” Wren said, pointing at Cath’s face. “I’ve seen you look at Levi. What’s that thing you wrote about Simon once, that his eyes followed Baz ‘like he was the brightest thing in the room, like he cast everything else into shadow’? That’s you. You can’t look away from him.”