FOUR
The squirrels on campus were beyond domestic; they were practically domestically abusive. If you were eating anything at all, they’d come right up to you and chit-chit-chit in your space.
“Take it,” Cath said, tossing a chunk of strawberry-soy bar to the fat red squirrel at her feet. She took a photo of it with her phone and sent it to Abel.
“bully squirrel,” she typed.
Abel had sent her photos of his room—his suite—at MoTech, and of him standing with all five of his nerdy Big Bang Theory roommates. Cath tried to imagine asking Reagan to pose for a photo and laughed a little out loud. The squirrel froze but didn’t run away.
On Wednesdays and Fridays, Cath had forty-five minutes between Biology and Fiction-Writing, and lately she’d been killing it right here, sitting in a shadowy patch of grass on the slow side of the English building. Nobody to deal with here. Nobody but the squirrels.
She checked her text messages, even though her phone hadn’t chimed.
She and Abel hadn’t actually talked since Cath left for school three weeks ago, but he did text her. And he e-mailed every once in a while. He said he was fine and that the competition at Missouri was already intense.
“Everybody here was the smartest kid in their graduating class.”
Cath had resisted the urge to reply, “Except for you, right?”
Just because Abel got a perfect score on the math section of the SATs didn’t mean he was the smartest kid in their class. He was crap in American History, and he’d limped through Spanish. Through Spanish, for Christ’s sake.
He’d already told Cath that he wasn’t coming back to Omaha until Thanksgiving, and she hadn’t tried to convince him to come home any
sooner.
She didn’t really miss him yet.
Wren would say that was because Abel wasn’t really Cath’s boyfriend. It was one of their recurring conversations: “He’s a perfectly good boyfriend,” Cath would say.
“He’s an end table,” Wren would answer.
“He’s always there for me.”
“… to set magazines on.”
“Would you rather I dated someone like Jesse? So we can both stay up crying every weekend?”
“I would rather you dated someone you’d actually like to kiss.”
“I’ve kissed Abel.”
“Oh, Cath, stop. You’re making my brain throw up.”
“We’ve been dating for three years. He’s my boyfriend.”
“You have stronger feelings for Baz and Simon.”
“Duh, they’re Baz and Simon, like that’s even fair—I like Abel. He’s steady.”
“You just keep describing an end table.…”
Wren had started going out with boys in the eighth grade (two years before Cath was even thinking about it). And until Jesse Sandoz, Wren hadn’t stayed with the same guy for more than a few months. She kept Jesse around so long because she was never really sure that he liked her—at least that was Cath’s theory.
Wren usually lost interest in a guy as soon as she’d won him over. The conversion was her favorite part. “That moment,” she told Cath, “when you realize that a guy’s looking at you differently—that you’re taking up more space in his field of vision. That moment when you know he can’t see past you anymore.”
Cath had liked that last line so much, she gave it to Baz a few weeks later.
Wren was annoyed when she read it.
Anyway, Jesse never really converted. He never had eyes only for Wren,
not even after they had sex last fall. It threw off Wren’s game.
Cath was relieved when Jesse got a football scholarship to Iowa State. He didn’t have the attention span for a long-distance relationship, and there were at least ten thousand fresh guys at the University of Nebraska for Wren to convert.
Cath tossed another hunk of protein bar to the squirrel, but someone in a pair of periwinkle wingtips took a step too close to them, and the squirrel startled and lumbered away. Fat campus squirrels, Cath thought. They lumber.
The wingtips took another step toward her, then stopped. Cath looked up.
There was a guy standing in front of her. From where she was sitting—and where he was standing, with the sun behind his head—he seemed eight feet tall. She squinted up but didn’t recognize him.
“Cath,” he said, “right?”
She recognized his voice; it was the boy with the dark hair who sat in front
of her in Fiction-Writing—Nick.
“Right,” she said.
“Did you finish your writing exercise?”
Professor Piper had asked them to write a hundred words from the perspective of an inanimate object. Cath nodded, still squinting up at him.
“Oh, sorry,” Nick said, stepping out of the sun and sitting on the grass next to her. He dropped his bag between his knees. “So what’d you write about?”
“A lock,” she said. “You?”
“Ballpoint pen.” He grimaced. “I’m worried that everyone is going to do a pen.”
“Don’t be,” she said. “A pen is a terrible idea.”
Nick laughed, and Cath looked down at the grass.
“So,” he asked, “do you think she’ll make us read them out loud?”
Cath’s head snapped up. “No. Why would she do that?”
“They always do that,” he said, like it was something Cath should already know. She wasn’t used to seeing Nick from the front; he had a boyish face with hooded blue eyes and blocky, black eyebrows that almost met in the middle. He looked like someone with a steerage ticket on the Titanic.
Somebody who’d be standing in line at Ellis Island. Undiluted and old- blooded. Also, cute.
“But there wouldn’t be time in class for all of us to read,” she said.
“We’ll probably break up into groups first,” he said, again like she should
know this.
“Oh … I’m kind of new around here.”
“Are you a freshman?”
She nodded and rolled her eyes.
“How did a freshman get into Professor Piper’s three-hundred-level
class?”
“I asked.”
Nick raised his furry eyebrows and pushed out his bottom lip, impressed.
“Do you really think a pen is a terrible idea?”
“I’m not sure what you want me to say now,” Cath answered.
* * *
“Do you have an eating disorder?” Reagan asked.
Cath was sitting on her bed, studying.
Reagan was holding on to her closet door, hopping, trying to pull on a black heeled boot. She was probably on her way to work—Reagan was always on her way somewhere. She treated their room like a way station, a place she stopped between class and the library, between her job at the Student Union and her job at the Olive Garden. A place to change clothes, dump books, and pick up Levi.
Sometimes there were other guys, too. Already in the last month, there’d been a Nathan and a Kyle. But none of them seemed to be a permanent part of Reagan’s solar system like Levi was.
Which made Levi part of Cath’s solar system, too. He’d seen her on campus today and walked with her all the way to Oldfather Hall, talking about some mittens he’d bought outside the Student Union. “Hand-knit. In Ecuador. Have you ever seen an alpaca, Cather? They’re like the world’s most adorable llamas. Like, imagine the cutest llama that you can, and then just keep going. And their wool—it’s not really wool, it’s fiber, and it’s
hypoallergenic.…”
Reagan was staring at Cath now, frowning. She was wearing tight black jeans and a black top. Maybe she was going out, not to work.
“Your trash can is full of energy bar wrappers,” Reagan said.
“You were looking through my trash?” Cath felt a rush of anger.
“Levi was looking for a place to spit out his gum.… So? Do you have an eating disorder?”
“No,” Cath said, pretty sure it was exactly what she’d say if she did have
an eating disorder.
“Then why don’t you eat real food?”
“I do.” Cath clenched her fists. Her skin felt drawn and tight. “Just. Not
here.”
“Are you one of those freaky eaters?”
“No. I—” Cath looked up at the ceiling, deciding that this was one of those times when the truth would be simpler than a lie. “—I don’t know where the dining hall is.”
“You’ve been living here more than a month.”
“I know.”
“And you haven’t found the dining hall?”
“I haven’t actually looked.”
“Why haven’t you asked someone? You could have asked me.”
Cath rolled her eyes and looked at Reagan. “Do you really want me asking you stupid questions?”
“If they’re about food, water, air, or shelter—yes. Jesus, Cath, I’m your roommate.”
“Okay,” Cath said, turning back to her book, “so noted.”
“So, do you want me to show you where the dining hall is?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“You can’t keep living off diet bars. You’re running out.”
“I’m not running out.…”
Reagan sighed. “Levi might have eaten a few.”
“You’re letting your boyfriend steal my protein bars?” Cath leaned over her bed to check on her stash—all the boxes were open.
“He said he was doing you a favor,” Reagan said. “Forcing the issue. And he’s not my boyfriend. Exactly.”
“This is a violation,” Cath said angrily, forgetting for a moment that Reagan was probably the most intimidating person she’d ever met.
“Get your shoes,” Reagan said. “I’m showing you where the dining hall is.”
“No.” Cath could already feel the anxiety starting to tear her stomach into nervous little pieces. “It’s not just that.… I don’t like new places. New situations. There’ll be all those people, and I won’t know where to sit—I don’t want to go.”
Reagan sat at the end of her own bed, folding her arms. “Have you been
going to class?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“Class is different,” Cath said. “There’s something to focus on. It’s still
bad, but it’s tolerable.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should be.…”
Cath pushed her fists into her bed. “This isn’t any of your business. You don’t even know me.”
“This,” Reagan said. “This is why I didn’t want a freshman roommate.”
“Why do you even care? Am I bothering you?”
“We’re going to dinner right now.”
“No. We’re not.”
“Get your student ID.”
“I’m not going to dinner with you. You don’t even like me.”
“I like you fine,” Reagan said.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Jesus Christ, aren’t you hungry?”
Cath was squeezing her fists so hard, her knuckles were going white.
She thought about chicken-fried steak. And scalloped potatoes. And strawberry-rhubarb pie. And wondered whether the Pound dining hall had an
ice cream machine like Selleck did.
And she thought about winning. About how she was letting this win, whatever this was—the crazy inside of her. Cath, zero. Crazy, one million.
She leaned over, compressing the knot in her stomach.
Then she stood up with as much dignity as she could scavenge and put on her Vans.
“I have been eating real food…,” she muttered. “I eat lunch at Selleck with my sister.”
Reagan opened the door. “Then why don’t you eat here?”
“Because I waited too long. I built up a block about it. It’s hard to explain.
…”
“Seriously, why aren’t you on drugs?”
Cath walked past her out of the room. “Are you a licensed psychiatrist? Or do you just play one on TV?”
“I’m on drugs,” Reagan said. “They’re a beautiful thing.”
* * *
There was no awkward moment in the dining hall, no standing at the doorway with a tray, trying to decide on the most innocuous place to sit.
Reagan sat at the first half-empty table she came across. She didn’t even nod to the other people sitting there.
“Aren’t you going to be late for work?” Cath asked.
“I’m going out. But I was gonna eat dinner here first anyway. We pay for all these meals; may as well eat them.”
Cath’s tray had a plate of baked macaroni and two bowls of Brussels sprouts. She was ravenous.
Reagan took a big bite of pasta salad. Her long hair fell over her shoulders.
It was a dozen shades of red and gold, none of them quite natural. “Do you really think that I don’t like you?” she asked with her mouth full.
Cath swallowed. She and Reagan had never had a conversation before today, never mind a serious one. “Um … I get the feeling that you don’t want a roommate.”
“I don’t want a roommate.” Reagan frowned. She frowned as much as
Levi smiled. “But that has nothing to do with you.”
“Why live in the dorms, then? You’re not a freshman, right? I didn’t think upperclassmen lived on campus.”
“I have to,” Reagan said. “It’s part of my scholarship. I was supposed to get my own room this year—I was on the list—but all the residence halls are
over capacity.”
“Sorry,” Cath said.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I didn’t want a roommate either,” Cath said. “I mean … I thought I was
going to live with my sister.”
“You have a sister who goes here?”
“Twin.”
“Ew. Weird.”
“Why is that weird?” Cath asked.
“It just is. It’s creepy. Like having a doppelgänger. Are you identical?”
“Technically.”
“Ew.” Reagan shuddered melodramatically.
“It’s not creepy,” Cath said. “What is wrong with you?”
Reagan grimaced and shuddered again. “So why aren’t you living with your sister?”
“She wanted to meet new people,” Cath said.
“You make it sound like she broke up with you.”
Cath speared another Brussels sprout. “She lives in Schramm,” she said to her tray. When she looked up, Reagan was scowling at her.
“You’re making me feel sorry for you again,” Reagan said.
Cath turned her fork on Reagan. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”
“I can’t help it,” Reagan said. “You’re really pathetic.”
“I am not.”
“You are. You don’t have any friends, your sister dumped you, you’re a freaky eater … And you’ve got some weird thing about Simon Snow.”
“I object to every single thing you just said.”
Reagan chewed. And frowned. She was wearing dark red lipstick.
“I have lots of friends,” Cath said.
“I never see them.”
“I just got here. Most of my friends went to other schools. Or they’re
online.”
“Internet friends don’t count.”
“Why not?”
Reagan shrugged disdainfully.
“And I don’t have a weird thing with Simon Snow,” Cath said. “I’m just
really active in the fandom.”
“What the fuck is ‘the fandom’?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Cath sighed, wishing she hadn’t used that word, knowing that if she tried to explain herself any further, it would just make it worse. Reagan wouldn’t believe—or understand—that Cath wasn’t just a Simon fan. She was one of the fans. A first-name-only fan with fans of her own.
If she told Reagan that her Simon fics regularly got twenty thousand hits … Reagan would just laugh at her.
Plus, saying all that out loud would make Cath feel like a complete asshole.
“You’ve got Simon Snow heads on your desk,” Reagan said.
“Those are commemorative busts.”
“I feel sorry for you, and I’m going to be your friend.”
“I don’t want to be your friend,” Cath said as sternly as she could. “I like that we’re not friends.”
“Me, too,” Reagan said. “I’m sorry you ruined it by being so pathetic.”
Welcome to FanFixx.net—where the story never ends.
We are a volunteer-run archive and forum, accepting quality fiction from all fandoms.
Volunteer or make a donation here. Set up a FanFixx.net author profile here. You must be 13 years old or older to submit or comment at FanFixx.net.
—FanFixx.net homepage welcome message, retrieved July 1, 2011
