Cath was keeping up in her classes, but just barely. All her other assignments felt like the hoops she had to jump through to get to Simon and Baz.
One thing about writing this much … her brain never really shifted out of the World of Mages. When she sat down to write, she didn’t have to wade back into the story slowly, waiting to get used to the temperature. She was just there, all the time. All day. Real life was something happening in her peripheral vision.
Her laptop snapped shut, and Cath pulled back her fingers just in time. She hadn’t even noticed Levi moving over to the love seat. He took her computer and gingerly set it on the floor. “Commercial break.”
“Books don’t have commercials.”
“I’m not much of a book person,” he said, pulling her into his lap. “Intermission, then?”
Cath climbed onto him reluctantly, still thinking about the last thing she’d typed, not sure she wanted to leave it behind. “Books don’t have intermissions either.”
“What do they have?”
“Endings.”
His hands were on her hips. “You’ll get there,” he said, nosing at the collar of her T-shirt. His hair tickled her chin, and it broke the spell in Cath’s head. Or cast a new one.
“Okay,” she sighed, kissing his head and rocking into his stomach. “Okay. Intermission.”
* * *
“You’ve got to give Penelope her own chapter,” Wren said. They were walking back to the dorms, sloshing through puddles. Wren had yellow rubber boots, and she kept jumping into puddles, soaking Cath’s legs and ankles.
“Where would I put it?” Cath puffed. The snow was melting, but she could still see her breath. “I should have written it two weeks ago. Now it’ll seem forced.… This is why real authors wait until they’ve got a whole book before they show anybody; I’d kill to go back to the beginning and rewrite.”
“You’re a real author,” Wren said, splashing. “You’re like Dickens. He wrote in installments, too.”
“I’m going to destroy those boots.”
“Jealous.” Wren stepped in another puddle.
“I’m not jealous. They’re gross. I bet they make your feet sweat.”
“Who cares, nobody can tell.”
“I’ll be able to tell when you get back to my room and take them off. They’re disgusting.”
“Hey,” Wren said, “I sort of want to talk to you about that.”
“What.”
“Your room. Rooms. Roommates … I was thinking that next year we could room together. We could live in Pound, if you want; I don’t care.”
Cath stopped and turned to her sister. Wren kept walking for a second before she noticed and stopped, too.
“You want to be roommates?” Cath asked.
Wren was nervous. She shrugged. “Yeah. If you want to. If you’re not still mad about … everything.”
“I’m not mad,” Cath said. She remembered the day last summer when Wren told her she didn’t want to live together. Cath had never felt so betrayed. Almost never. “I’m not mad,” she said again, this time really meaning it.
Wren’s lips quirked up, and she stamped a puddle between them. “Good.”
“But I can’t,” Cath said.
Wren’s face fell. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I already told Reagan I’d live with her again.”
“But Reagan hates you.”
“What? No, she doesn’t. Why would you say that?”
“She’s so mean to you.”
“That’s just her way. I think I’m her best girl friend, actually.”
“Oh,” Wren said. She looked small and wet. Cath wasn’t sure what to say.…
“You’re my best friend,” Cath said awkwardly. “You know. Built-in. For life.”
Wren nodded. “Yeah … No, it’s okay. I should have thought of that, of you guys living together again.” She started walking and Cath followed.
“What about Courtney?”
“She’s moving into the Delta Gamma house.”
“Oh,” Cath said. “I forgot she was a pledge.”
“But that’s not why I asked you,” Wren said, like it was important to say so.
“You should move to Pound. You could live on our floor—I’m serious.”
Wren smiled and squared her shoulders, already recovering herself. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. Why not? It’s closer to campus.”
Cath leapt into the next big puddle, soaking Wren up to her thighs. Wren jumped and screamed, and it was totally worth it. Cath’s feet were already soaked.
“Morgan’s grace, Simon—slow down.” Penelope held an arm out in front of his chest and glanced around the weirdly lit courtyard. “There’s more than one way through a flaming gate.”
—from chapter 11, Simon Snow and the Third Gate, copyright © 2004 by Gemma T. Leslie
THIRTY-SIX
Cath had been writing for four hours, and when she heard someone knocking at her door, it felt like she was standing at the bottom of a lake, looking up at the sun.
It was Levi.
“Hey,” she said, putting on her glasses. “Why didn’t you text? I would have come down.”
“I did,” he said, kissing her forehead. She took her phone out of her pocket. She’d missed two texts and a call. Her ringer was turned off.
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “Let me just pack up.”
Levi fell onto her bed and watched. Seeing him there, leaning against the wall, brought back so many memories and so much tenderness, she climbed onto the bed and started kissing his face all over.
He grinned and draped his long arms around her. “Do you have much writing to do?”
“Yeah,” she said, rubbing her chin into his. “‘Miles to go before I sleep.’”
“Have you shown anything to your professor yet?”
Cath had just started to bite his chin and she pulled away, looking at the teeth marks. “What do you mean?”
“Have you been turning stuff in piece by piece, or are you waiting until the whole story is done?”
“I’m … I’ve been working on Carry On.”
“No, I know,” he said, smiling and smoothing his hand over her hair. “But I was wondering about your Fiction-Writing project. I want you to read it to me when you’re done.”
Cath sat back on the bed. Levi’s hands didn’t leave her head and her hip. “I’m … I’m not doing that,” she said.
“You don’t want to read it to me? Is it too personal or something?”
“No. I’m not. I’m just … I’m not going to do it.”
Levi’s smile faded. He still didn’t understand.
“I’m not writing it,” she said. “It was a mistake to say that I would.”
His hands tightened on her. “No, it wasn’t. What do you mean? You haven’t started?”
Cath sat back farther, stepping off the bed and going to pack her laptop. “I was wrong when I told my professor I could do it—I can’t. I don’t have an idea, and it’s just too much. I’m not sure I’m even going to finish Carry On.”
“Of course you’ll finish.”
She looked up at him sharply. “I’ve only got nine days left.”
Levi still seemed confused. And maybe a little hurt. “You’ve got twelve days left until the end of the semester. And about fourteen before I go back to Arnold, but as far as I can tell, you’ve got the rest of your life to finish Carry On.”
Cath felt her face go hard. “You don’t understand,” she said. “At all.”
“So explain it to me.”
“Simon Snow and the Eighth Dance comes out in nine days.”
Levi shrugged. “So?”
“So I’ve been working two years toward this.”
“Toward finishing Carry On?”
“Yes. And I have to finish before the series ends.”
“Why? Did Gemma Leslie challenge you to a race?”
Cath jammed the knotted power cord into her bag. “You don’t underst
and.”
Levi sighed harshly and ran his fingers through his hair. “You’re right. I don’t.”
Cath’s hands were trembling as she pushed them through the arms of her jacket, a thick cable-knit sweater lined with fleece.
“I don’t understand how you could throw this class away twice,” Levi said, frowning and flustered. “I have to fight for every grade I get—I’d kill for a second chance at most of my classes. And you’re just walking away from this assignment because you don’t feel like it, because you’ve got this arbitrary deadline, and it’s all you can see.”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she said.
“You don’t want to talk at all.”
“You’re right. I don’t have time right now to argue with you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Levi looked up at her, stricken. Cath fumbled for something else to say, but everything in her reach was wrong. “Maybe I should just stay here tonight.”
His eyes swept over her, more coolly than she would have thought possible. There were two deep lines between his eyebrows.
“Right,” he said, standing up. “See you in nine days.”
He was out the door before she could stutter out, “What?”
Cath wasn’t trying to pick a nine-day fight; she’d just wanted to escape from tonight—she didn’t have time to feel guilty about Fiction-Writing. Even thinking about that stupid story made Cath feel clawed up and open.
She lay down on her bed and started to cry. Her pillow didn’t smell like Levi. It didn’t smell like either of them.
He didn’t understand.
When the last Simon Snow book came out, it was over. Everything. All these years of imagining and reimagining. Gemma T. Leslie would get the last word, and that would be it; everything Cath had built in the last two years would become alternate universe. Officially noncompliant …
The thought made her giggle wetly, pathetically, into her pillow.
As if beating GTL to the punch made any difference.
As if Cath could actually make Baz and Simon live happily ever after just by saying it was so. Sorry, Gemma, I appreciate what you’ve done here, but I think we can all agree that it was supposed to end like this.
It wasn’t a race. Gemma T. Leslie didn’t even know Cath existed. Thank God.
And yet … when Cath closed her eyes, all she could see was Baz and Simon.
All she could hear was them talking in her head. They were hers, the way they’d always been hers. They loved each other because she believed they did. They needed her to fix everything for them. They needed her to carry them through.
Baz and Simon in her head. Levi in her stomach.
Levi somewhere, gone.
In nine days, it would be over. In twelve days, Cath wouldn’t be a freshman anymore. And in fourteen …
God, she was an idiot.
Was she always going to be this stupid? Her whole miserable life?
Cath cried until it felt pointless, then stumbled off the bed to get a drink of water. When she opened her door, Levi was sitting in the hallway, his legs bent in front of him, hunched forward on his knees. He looked up when she stepped out.
“I’m such an idiot,” he said.
Cath fell between his knees and hugged him.
“I can’t believe I said that,” he said. “I can’t even go nine hours without seeing you.”
“No, you’re right,” Cath said. “I’ve been acting crazy. This whole thing is crazy. It isn’t even real.”
“That’s not what I meant—it is real. You have to finish.”
“Yeah,” she said, kissing his chin, trying to remember where she’d left off. “But not today. You were right. There’s time. They’ll wait for me.” She pushed her hands inside his jacket.
He held her by her shoulders. “You do what you have to,” he said. “Just let me be there. For the next two weeks, okay?”
She nodded. Fourteen days. With Levi. And then curtains closed on this year.
“Maybe fighting him isn’t the answer,” Simon said.
“What?” Baz was leaning against a tree, trying to catch his breath. His hair was hanging in slimy tendrils, and his face was smeared with muck and blood. Simon probably looked even worse. “You’re not giving up now,” Baz said, reaching for Simon’s chest and pulling him forward, fiercely, by the buckled straps of his cape. “I won’t let you.”
“I’m not giving up,” Simon said. “I just … Maybe fighting isn’t the answer. It wasn’t the answer with you.”
Baz arched an elegant brow. “Are you going to snog the Humdrum—is that your plan? Because he’s eleven. And he looks just like you. That’s both vain and deviant, Snow, even for you.”
Simon managed a laugh and raised a hand to the back of Baz’s neck, holding him firmly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I’m done fighting, Baz. If we go on like this, there won’t be anything left to fight for.”
—from Carry On, Simon, posted April 2012 by FanFixx.net author Magicath
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Cather.”
“Mmmm.”
“Hey. Wake up.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I have to go to work. If we don’t leave soon, I’ll be late.”
Cath opened her eyes. Levi had already showered and put on his gothy Starbucks clothes. He smelled like an actual Irish spring.
“Can I stay?” she asked.
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll be stuck here all day.”
“I like here. And anyway, I’m just writing.”
He grinned. “Okay—sure. I’ll bring back dinner.… You write all the words,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Give Simon and Baz my best.”
She thought she might go back to sleep, but she couldn’t. She got up and took a shower (now she smelled like Levi), glad not to see anyone else in the hall. At least one of his roommates was home. She could hear music.
Cath climbed back to Levi’s room. It had been warm last night, and they’d fallen asleep with the windows open. But the weather had shifted—it was too cold in here now, especially for someone with wet hair. She grabbed her laptop and crawled under his quilt, doubling it up on top of her; she didn’t want to close the windows.
She pressed the Power button and waited for her computer to wake up. Then she opened a Word document and watched the cursor blink at her—she could see her face in the blank screen. Ten thousand words, and none of them had to be good; only one other person would ever read them. It didn’t even matter where Cath started, as long she finished. She started typing.…
I sat on the back steps.
No …
She sat on the back steps.
Every word felt heavy and hurt, like Cath was chipping them one by one out of her stomach.
A plane flew overhead, and that was wrong, all wrong, and her sister knew it, too, because she squeezed her hand like they’d both disappear if she didn’t.
This wasn’t good, but it was something. Cath could always change it later. That was the beauty in stacking up words—they got cheaper, the more you had of them. It would feel good to come back and cut this when she’d worked her way to something better.
The plane was flying so low, moving so sluggishly through the sky, you’d think it was just choosing the perfect rooftop to land on. They could hear the engine; it sounded closer than the voices shouting inside the house. Her sister reached up like she might touch it. Like she might grab on.
The girl squeezed her sister’s other hand, trying to anchor her to the steps. If you leave, she thought, I’m going with you.
* * *
Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.
Cath fell and fell, leaving a trail of messy words and bad similes behind her. Sometimes her chin was trembling. Sometimes she wiped her eyes on her swe
ater.
When she took a break, she was starving, and she had to pee so bad, she barely made it down to the third-floor bathroom. She found a protein bar in Levi’s backpack, climbed back into his bed, then kept writing until she heard him running up the stairs.
She closed the laptop before the door opened—and the sight of him smiling made her eyes burn right down to her throat.
* * *
“Stop bouncing,” Wren snapped. “You’re making us look like nerds.”
“Right,” Reagan said. “That’s what’s making us look like nerds. The bouncing.”
Levi smiled down at Cath. “Sorry. The atmosphere is getting to me.” He was wearing her red CARRY ON T-shirt over a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and for some reason, the sight of Baz and Simon facing off across his chest was disturbingly hot.
“S’okay,” she said. The atmosphere was getting to her, too. They’d been waiting in line for more than two hours. The bookstore was playing the Simon Snow movie soundtracks, and there were people everywhere. Cath recognized a few of them from past midnight releases; it was like they were all part of a club that met every couple years.
11:58.
The booksellers started setting out big boxes of books—special boxes, dark blue with gold stars. The manager of the store was wearing a cape and an all-wrong pointed witch’s hat. (Nobody at Watford wore pointy hats.) She stood on a chair and tapped one of the cash registers with a magic wand that looked like something Tinker Bell would carry. Cath rolled her eyes.
“Spare me the theater,” Reagan said. “I’ve got a final tomorrow.”
Levi was bouncing again.
The manager rang up the first person in line with great ceremony, and everyone in the store started applauding. The line jerked forward—and a few minutes later, Cath was there at the register, and the clerk was handing her a book that was at least three inches thick. The dust jacket felt like velvet.
Cath stepped away from the register, trying to get out of the way, clutching the book with both hands. There was an illustration of Simon on the front, holding up the Sword of Mages under a sky full of stars.
“Are you okay?” she heard someone—Levi?—ask. “Hey … are you crying?”