THIRTY
“We don’t need to talk about this,” Wren said.
“You were just hospitalized for alcohol poisoning,” their dad said. “We’re talking about it.”
Cath set a stack of foil-wrapped burritos on the table between them, then sat down at the head of the table.
“There’s nothing to say,” Wren insisted. She still looked terrible. There were circles under her eyes, and her skin was waxy and yellow. “You’re just going to say that I shouldn’t drink that much, and then I’m going to say that you’re right—”
“No,” their dad interrupted, “I’m going to say that you shouldn’t drink at
all.”
“Well, that’s not very realistic.”
He smacked his fist on the table. “Why the hell not?”
Wren sat back in her chair and took a second to recover. He’d never cursed at either of them. “Everybody drinks,” she said calmly. The Only Rational
One.
“Your sister doesn’t.”
Wren rolled her eyes. “Forgive me, but I’m not going to spend my college years sitting soberly in my dorm room, writing about gay magicians.“ “Objection,” Cath said, reaching for a burrito.
“Sustained,” their dad said. “Your sister has a four-point-oh, Wren. And a very polite boyfriend. She’s doing just fine with her college years.”
Wren’s head whipped around. “You have a boyfriend?”
“You haven’t met Levi?” Their dad sounded surprised—and sad. “Are you
guys even talking?”
“You stole your roommate’s boyfriend?” Wren’s eyes were big.
“It’s a long story,” Cath said.
Wren kept staring at her. “Have you kissed him?”
“Wren,” their dad said. “I’m serious about this.”
“What do you want me to say? I drank too much.”
“You’re out of control,” he said.
“I’m fine. I’m just eighteen.”
“Exactly,” he said. “You’re coming back home.”
Cath almost spit out her carnitas.
“I am not,” Wren said.
“You are.”
“You can’t make me,” she said, managing to sound at least twelve.
“I can, actually.” He was tapping his fingers so hard on the table, it looked painful. “I’m your father. I’m pulling rank. I should have done this a long time ago, but better late than never, I guess—I’m your father.”
“Dad,” Cath whispered.
“No,” he said, staring at Wren. “I am not letting this happen to you. I’m not taking a call like that again. I’m not spending every weekend from now on, wondering where you are and who you’re with, and whether you’re even sober enough to know when you’ve landed in the gutter.”
Cath had seen her dad this mad before—heard him rant, watched him wave his arms around, cursing, steam pouring out of his ears—but it was never about them. It was never at them.
“This was a warning,” he said, stabbing his finger at Wren, nearly shouting. “This was your canary in the goddamn coal mine. And you’re trying to ignore it. What kind of father would I be if I sent you back to that school, knowing you hadn’t learned your lesson?”
“I’m eighteen!” Wren shouted. Cath thought this was probably a bad strategy.
“I don’t care!” he shouted back. “You’re still my daughter.”
“It’s the middle of the semester. I’ll fail all my classes.”
“You weren’t worried about school or your future when you were
poisoning yourself with tequila.”
She cocked her head. “How did you know I was drinking tequila?”
“Christ, Wren,” he sighed bitterly. “You smelled like a margarita blender.”
“You kinda still do,” Cath muttered.
Wren planted her elbows on the table and hid her face in her hands.
“Everybody drinks,” she said stubbornly.
Their dad pushed his chair back. “If that’s all you have to say for yourself, then all I have to say is—you’re coming home.”
He got up and went into his room, slamming the door.
Wren let her head and her hands fall to the table.
Cath scooted her chair closer. “Do you want some aspirin?”
Wren was quiet for a few seconds. “Why aren’t you mad at me?”
“Why should I be mad at you?” Cath asked.
“You’ve been mad at me since November. Since July.”
“Well, I’m done now. Does your head hurt?”
“You’re done?” Wren turned her head toward Cath, her cheek lying on the table.
“You scared me last night,” Cath said. “And I decided that I never want to drift that far away from you again. What if you’d died? And I hadn’t talked to you for three months?”
“I wasn’t going to die.” Wren rolled her eyes again.
“Dad’s right,” Cath said. “You sound like a moron.”
Wren looked down, rubbing her face in her wrist. “I’m not going to stop drinking.”
Why not? Cath wanted to ask. Instead she said, “Just pause, then. For the rest of the year. Just to show him that you can.”
“I can’t believe you have a boyfriend,” Wren whispered, “and I didn’t even know about it.” Her shoulders started to shake. She was crying again.
Cath had never seen Wren cry this much.
“Hey…,” Cath said, “it’s okay.”
“I wasn’t going to die,” Wren said.
“Okay.”
“I just … I’ve really missed you.…”
“Are you still drunk?” Cath asked.
“I don’t think so.”
Cath leaned over, on the edge of her chair, and tugged at Wren’s hair. “It’s okay. I miss you, too. Not all this drunk stuff, but you.”
“I’ve been a jerk to you,” Wren whispered into the table.
“I was a jerk back.”
“That’s true,” Wren said, “but … God, will you forgive me?”
“No,” Cath said.
Wren looked up pathetically.
“I don’t have to forgive you,” Cath said. “It’s not like that with you.
You’re just in with me. Always. No matter what happens.”
Wren lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her thumbs.
“Yeah?”
Cath nodded her head. “Yeah.”
* * *
Their dad went for a run.
Wren ate a burrito and went back to bed.
Cath finally read all her texts from Levi.
“turning round rite now .. be there by 3”
“cather .. i really care about you. seemed like maybe a good time to tell you that. hour a way now.”
“in the waiting room, not family, cant come back, handros here to. here .. ok? if you need me”
“back in arnold. gorgous day. did you know arnold has loess canyons and sand hills? the biological diversaty would make you weep Cather Avery. call me sweetheart. and by that i mean that you should call me .. not that you should call me sweetheart tho you can if you want. call me call me call me.”
Cath did. Levi was having dinner with his family. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “it’s just tense. My dad’s mad at Wren, but he doesn’t really know how to be mad at either of us—and Wren is acting like a huge brat. I don’t think she knows how to be wrong.”
“I wish I could talk more,” Levi said, “but my mom’s weird about phone
calls during family time. I’ll call you tomorrow from the road, okay?”
“Only if the road is straight and flat, and there’s no other traffic.”
“Will you be back tomorrow?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I miss you.”
“That’s stupid,” she said. “I saw you this morning.”
“It’s not the time,” Levi said, and she could hear that he was smiling. “It’s the distance.”
A few minutes later he texted her: “IDEA .. if your bored and you miss me you should write some dirty fan fiction about us. you can read it to me later.
great idea right?”
Cath smiled down at the phone stupidly.
She tried to imagine what it would be like to move back home now, to leave Levi behind. She couldn’t even think about what it was going to be like this summer without him.
Their dad wouldn’t really do this. Make Wren drop out of school. That would be crazy.… But their dad was crazy. And maybe he was right: Wren was out of control. She was the worst kind of out of control—the kind that thinks it’s just fine, thanks.
Cath liked the idea of Wren here. Wren and her dad, all in one place, where Cath could take care of them. If only Cath could break off a piece of herself and leave it here to keep watch.
The front door opened and her dad huffed in from his run, still breathing hard, dropping his keys and his phone on the table. “Hey,” he said to Cath, taking off his glasses to wipe his face, then putting them back on.
“Hey,” she said. “I put your burrito in the oven.”
He nodded and walked past her into the kitchen. Cath followed.
“Are you coming to plead her case?” he asked.
“No.”
“She could have died, Cath.”
“I know. And … I think it’s been bad for a long time. I think she’s just been lucky.”
“As far as we know,” her dad said.
“I just … dropping out of school?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Cath shook her head. “Maybe she should talk to a counselor or something.”
Her dad made a face like Cath had thrown something wet at him. “God, Cath, how would you feel if somebody forced you to talk to a counselor?”
Somebody has, she thought. “I’d hate it,” she said.
“Yeah…” He had the burrito out of the oven and onto a plate, and he was pouring himself a glass of milk. He looked tired still and completely
miserable.
“I love you,” she said.
He looked up, holding the carton of milk over the glass. Some of the strain disappeared from his forehead. “I love you, too,” he said, like it was a question.
“It just seemed like a good time to tell you,” she said.
Her dad nodded, his eyes full of some dense feeling.
“Can I borrow your laptop?” she asked.
“Yeah. Of course. It’s in—”
“I know. Thanks.” Cath went to the living room and picked up her dad’s silver laptop. She’d lusted over this thing, but he always said she didn’t need an eighteen-hundred-dollar word processor.
When Cath got upstairs, Wren was on the phone, crying. She got up off her bed and walked into the closet, sitting on the floor and closing the door behind her. This wasn’t strange behavior, except for the crying—it’s what they always did when they needed privacy. They had a big closet.
Cath opened her FanFixx account and paged idly through the comments.
There were too many to respond to individually, so she posted a general, “Hey, everybody, thanks—too busy writing to write back!” then opened up the draft of her most recent chapter.… She’d left off with Baz kneeling at his mother’s gravestone. He was trying to explain to her why he was turning against his father, why he was turning his back on the house of Pitch to fight by Simon’s side.
“It’s not just for him,” Baz said, running his long fingers over his mother’s name. “It’s for Watford. It’s for the World of Mages.”
After a while, Wren came out of the closet and crawled onto Cath’s bed.
Cath scooted over and kept typing.
After another while, Wren got under the covers and fell asleep.
And after that, a while later, their dad peeked up over the top of the stairs.
He looked at Cath and mouthed, Good night. Cath nodded.
She wrote a thousand words.
She wrote five hundred more.
The room was dark, and Cath wasn’t sure how long Wren had been awake or how long she’d been reading over Cath’s elbow.
“Is the Mage really going to betray Simon, or is it a red herring?” Wren was whispering, even though there was nobody to wake up.
“I think he really is,” Cath said.
“That chapter where he had Simon burn the dragon eggs made me cry for
three days.”
Cath stopped typing. “You read that?”
“Of course I did. Have you seen your hits lately? They’re through the roof.
Nobody’s bailing on Carry On now.”
“I thought you had,” Cath said. “A long time ago.”
“Well, you were wrong.” Wren propped her head up on her hand. “Add that to the towering stack of important things you’re wrong about.”
“I think the Mage is going to kill Baz.” Cath hadn’t told anyone else that yet, not even her beta.
Wren sat up, her face actually aghast. “Cath,” she whispered, “no…”
“Did Alejandro break up with you?”
Wren shook her head. “No … he’s just upset. Cath. You can’t kill Baz.”
Cath couldn’t think of what to say.
Wren took the laptop and slid it mostly into her own lap. “Jesus Christ, consider this an intervention.…”
* * *
When Cath woke up the next morning, Sunday, she was alone in the
bedroom. She could smell coffee. And food.
She went downstairs and found her dad sitting at the table with a notebook.
She handed him his laptop. “Ah. Good,” he said. “Wren said we had to wait
for you.”
“For what?”
“For my verdict. I’m about to go all King Solomon on your asses.”
“Who’s King Solomon?”
“It was your mother who wanted to raise you without religion.”
“She also thought you should raise us without a mother.”
“Solid point, my dear. Wren? Come on. Your sister’s awake.”
Wren walked into the dining room, holding a saucepan and a trivet. “You were asleep,” she said, setting it on the table, “so I made breakfast.”
“Oh, Christ,” their dad said. “Is that Gravioli?”
“No,” Wren said, “it’s new Cheese Gravioli.”
“Sit down,” he said. “We’re talking.” He was in running clothes again. He looked tense and nervous.
Wren sat down. She was acting playful, but she was nervous, too—Cath could tell by the way she was squeezing her fists. Cath wanted to reach out and unclench them.
“Okay,” their dad said, pushing the Gravioli away, so that it wasn’t right between them on the table. “Here are my terms: You can go back to school.”
Wren and Cath both exhaled. “But you don’t drink. At all. Not in moderation, not with your boyfriend, not at parties—never. You see a counselor every week, starting this week, and you start attending AA meetings.”
“Dad,” Wren said. “I’m not an alcoholic.”
“Good. It’s not contagious. You’re going to meetings.”
“I’ll go with you,” Cath offered.
“I’m not done,” their dad said.
“What more do you want?” Wren whined. “Blood tests?”
“You come home every weekend.”
“Dad.”
“Or you can just move home. It’s your choice, really.”
“I have a life,” Wren said. “In Lincoln.”
“Don’t talk to me about your life, kid. You’ve shown complete disregard for your life.”
Wren’s hands were tight fists, lumps of coal, in her lap. Cath kicked her ankle. Wren’s head dropped. “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”
“Good,” their dad said, then took a deep breath and held on to it for a second. “I’ll drive you back later, if you think you’re ready.” He stood up and looked at the Gravioli. “I’m not eating that.”
Cath pulled the pan closer and picked up a spoon. “I’ll eat it.” She took a bite. The noodly parts dissolved immediately in her mouth. “I like how soft it is,” she said. “I like how I don’t have to use my teeth.”
Wren watched Cath for a few seconds, then took the spoon and scooped up a bite. “It tastes like regular Gravioli—”
Cath took it back. “But cheesier.”
“It’s three comfort foods in one,” Wren said.
“They’re like pizza pillows.”
“They’re like wet Cheetos.”
“That’s terrible,” Cath said. “We can’t use that.”
“I’m starting to feel like you don’t want me around.”
“I’ve never wanted you around,” Simon said, trying to push past his roommate.
“Point.” Baz moved to block the door. “That was true. Until you decided that you always wanted me around—that life is just a hollow shell of itself unless you know my heart is beating somewhere in the very local vicinity.”
“Have I decided that?”
“Maybe it was me who decided. Never mind. Same difference.”
Simon took a deep, obviously unnerved, breath.
“Snow. Are you unnerved?”
“Slightly.”
“Aleister almighty, I never thought I’d see the day.”
—from Carry On, Simon, posted February 2012 by FanFixx.net author Magicath
