“And the law school,” he said. “And there are dormitories and a perfectly adequate bowling alley. And a dairy. Seriously, none of this is ringing any bells?”
Cath let her head rest on the glass. The truck’s heater was still blowing cold air. It had been a half hour now since the text. A half hour past 911. “How far is it?”
“A few miles. Ten minutes from here, maybe longer with the weather. East Campus is where most of my classes are.…”
Cath wondered if Wren was alone. Where was Courtney? Weren’t they supposed to be skinny-bitching together?
“There’s a tractor museum,” Levi said. “And an international quilt education center. And the food in the residence halls is outstanding.…”
It wasn’t right. Having a twin sister was supposed to be like having your own watcher. Your own guardian. BUILT-IN BEST FRIEND—their dad had bought them shirts that said that for their thirteenth birthday. They still wore them sometimes (though never at once) just to be funny. Or ironic or whatever.
What’s the point of having a twin sister if you won’t let her look out for you? If you won’t let her fight at your back?
“East Campus is just so much better than City Campus in every way. And you don’t even know that it exists.”
The light ahead turned red, and Cath felt the tires spin beneath them. Levi shifted gears, and the truck rolled to a perfect stop.
* * *
They had to park quite a ways from the bar. This whole street was bars, block after block of them.
“They’re not going to let me in,” Cath said, wishing Levi would walk faster. “I’m underage.”
“Muggsy’s never checks.”
“I’ve never even been in a bar.”
A dozen girls spilled out of the doorway ahead of them. Levi grabbed Cath’s sleeve and pulled her out of the way. “I have,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Cath said, more to herself than to Levi. “If it was fine, she wouldn’t need me.”
Levi pulled on her sleeve again and opened a heavy, black, windowless door. Cath glanced up at the neon sign over their heads. Only the UGGSY and a four-leaf clover lit up. There was a big guy sitting just inside on a stool, reading a Daily Nebraskan with a flashlight. He flipped the light up at Levi and smiled. “Hey, Levi.”
Levi smiled back. “Hey, Yackle.”
Yackle held a second door open with one hand—he didn’t even look at Cath. Levi patted him on the arm as they walked past.
It was dark inside the bar and crowded, people pressed shoulder to shoulder. There was a band playing on a couch-sized stage near the door. Cath looked around, but she couldn’t see past the crush of bodies.
She wondered where Wren was.
Where had Wren been forty-five minutes ago?
Hiding in the bathroom? Crouched against a wall?
Had she been sick, had she passed out? She did that sometimes.… Who had been here to help her? Who had been here to hurt her?
Cath felt Levi’s hand on her elbow. “Come on,” he said.
They squeezed by a high-top table full of people doing shots. One of the guys fell back into Cath, and Levi propped him back up with a smile.
“You hang out here?” Cath asked when they were past the table.
“It’s only douchey like this when there’s a band playing.”
She and Levi moved farther from the stage, closer to the bar. A movement near the wall caught Cath’s eye—the way someone flipped back her hair. “Wren,” Cath said, surging forward. Levi held her arm and pushed in front of her, trying to clear the way.
“Wren!” Cath shouted over the crowd, before she was even close enough for Wren to hear. Cath’s heart was pounding. She was trying to make out the situation around Wren—a big guy was standing in front of her, his arms caging Wren against the carpeted wall.
“Wren!” Cath knocked one of the guy’s arms away, and he pulled back, nonplussed. “Are you okay?”
“Cath?” Wren was holding a bottle of dark beer halfway up to her mouth like her arm was stuck there. “What are you doing here?”
“You told me to come.”
Wren huffed. Her face was flushed, and she had drunk, droopy eyelids. “I didn’t tell you anything.”
“You sent me a text,” Cath said, glowering up at the big guy until he took another step back. “‘Come to Muggsy’s. Nine-one-one.’”
“Shit.” Wren pulled her phone out of her jeans and looked down at it. She had to stare at it for a second before she could focus. “That was for Courtney. Wrong C.”
“Wrong C?” Cath froze, then threw her hands into the air. “Are you kidding me?”
“Hey,” somebody said.
They both turned. A fratty-looking guy was standing a foot away, nodding his head at them. He curled his lip and grinned. “Twins.”
“Fuck off,” Wren said, turning back to her sister. “Look, I’m sorry—”
“Are you in trouble?” Cath asked.
“No,” Wren said. “No, no, no…”
“Pretty hot,” the guy said.
“Then why the nine-one-one?” Cath demanded.
“Because I wanted Courtney to come quick.” Wren waved her beer bottle toward the stage. “The guy she likes is here.”
“Dude, check it out. Hot twins.”
“Nine-one-one is for emergencies!” Cath shouted. It was so loud in here, you had to shout; it made it way too easy to lose your temper.
“Do you really think that’s appropriate?” Cath heard Levi say in his smiling-for-strangers voice.
“Fucking twins, man. That’s the fantasy, right?”
“Take a pill, Cath,” Wren said, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s not like I actually called nine-one-one.”
“You realize that they’re sisters, right?” Levi said, his voice getting tighter. “You’re talking about incest.”
The guy laughed. “No, I’m talking about buying them drinks until they start making out.”
“Is that what happens with you and your sister?” Levi stepped away from Cath, toward the guy and his friend. “Who f**king raised you?”
“Levi, don’t.” Cath pulled on his jacket. “This happens all the time.”
“This happens all the time?” His eyebrows jerked up in the middle, and he turned on the guy.…
“These two girls have parents. They have a father. And he should never have to worry that they’re going to end up in a bar, debasing themselves for some pervert who still jerks off to Girls Gone Wild videos. That’s not something a father should ever have to think about.”
The pervy guy wasn’t paying attention. He leered drunkenly over Levi’s shoulder at Cath and Wren. Wren flipped him off, and he arched his lip again.
Levi stepped closer to the guy’s table. “You don’t get to look at them that way, just because they look alike. You f**king pervert.”
Another fratty guy stepped up, carrying three beers, and glanced over. He grinned when he saw Cath and Wren. “Twins.”
“Fucking fantasy,” the first guy said.
Then, before anyone saw him coming, the guy standing next to Wren—the big one who had been caging her in—stepped past Levi and plowed the drunk pervert right in the chin.
Levi looked up at the big guy and grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. Wren grabbed his arm—“Jandro!”
The pervy guy’s friends were already helping him off the floor.
Levi took Cath’s sleeve and started pushing Jandro into the crowd. Jandro dragged Wren behind him. “Come on,” Levi said, “out, out, out.”
Cath could hear the perv shouting curses behind them.
“Oh, f**k you, Flowers in the Attic!” Levi shouted back.
They practically fell through the front door. The bouncer stood up. “Everything cool, Levi?”
“Drunks,” Levi said, shaking his head. Yackle headed back into the bar.
Wren was already out on the sidewalk, shouting at the big guy. At Jandro. Was he her date, Cath wondered, or was he just somebody who threw a punch for her?
“I can’t believe you did that,” Wren said. “You could get arrested.” She hit his arm, and he let her.
Levi hit Jandro’s other arm in a kind of salute. They were about the same height, but Jandro was broader, a dark-haired guy—probably Mexican, Cath thought—wearing a red Western shirt.
“Who’s going to get arrested?” someone asked. Cath spun around. Courtney. Clomping toward them in five-inch pink heels. “Why are you guys standing outside in this shit?”
“We’re not,” Cath said, “we’re leaving.”
“But I just got here,” Courtney whined. She looked at Wren, “Is Noah in there?”
“We’re leaving,” Cath said to Wren. “You’re drunk.”
“Yes—” Wren held up her beer bottle. “—finally.”
“Whoa, there,” Levi said, snagging the bottle and dropping it into a trash can behind her. “Open container.”
“That was my beer,” Wren objected.
“A little louder there, jailbait. I don’t think every cop on the street heard you.” He was smiling.
Cath wasn’t. “You’re drunk,” she said. “You’re going home.”
“No. Cath. I’m not. I’m drunk, and I’m staying out. That’s the whole f**king point of being out.” She swayed, and Courtney giggled and put her arm around her. Wren looked at her roommate and started giggling, too.
“Everything’s ‘the whole f**king point’ with you,” Cath said quietly. The sleet was hitting her cheeks like gravel. Wren had tiny pieces of ice in her hair. “I’m not leaving you alone like this,” Cath said.
“I’m not alone,” Wren replied.
“It’s okay, Cath.” Courtney’s smile couldn’t be more patronizing. Or more coated in pink lipstick. “I’m here, Han Solo’s here—” She smiled up flirtily at Jandro. “—the night is young.”
“The night is young!” Wren sang, laying her head against Courtney’s arm.
“I can’t just…” Cath shook her head.
“It’s f**king freezing out here.” Courtney hugged Wren again. “Come on.”
“Not Muggsy’s,” Jandro said, starting to walk away. He glanced back at Cath, and for a second she thought he was going to say something, but he kept on walking. Wren and Courtney followed him. Courtney clomped. Wren didn’t look back.
Cath watched them walk up the block and disappear under another broken neon sign. She wiped the ice off her cheeks.
“Hey,” she heard someone say after a cold, wet minute. Levi. Still standing behind her.
“Let’s go,” Cath said, looking down at the sidewalk. On top of everything else that was going wrong right this minute, Levi must think she was an idiot. Cath’s pajama pants were soaked, and the wind was blowing right through them. She shivered.
Levi walked past her, taking her hood and pulling it up over her head on his way. She followed him to his truck. Now that she realized how cold she was, her teeth were starting to chatter.
“I’ve got it,” she said when Levi tried to help her in. She waited for him to walk away before heaving herself up onto the seat. Levi slid behind the wheel and started the truck, cranking up the heat and the windshield wipers, and holding his hands up to the vents. “Seat belt,” he said after a minute.
“Oh, sorry…” Cath dug for the seat belt.
She buckled up. The truck still didn’t move.
“You did the right thing, you know.”
Levi.
“No,” Cath said. “I don’t know.”
“You had to go check on her. Nine-one-one is nine-one-one.”
“And then I left her—completely wasted—with a stranger and a moron.”
“That guy didn’t seem like a stranger,” Levi said.
Cath almost laughed. Because he hadn’t argued with the moron part. “I’m her sister. I’m supposed to look out for her.”
“Not against her will.”
“What if she passes out?”
“Does that happen a lot?”
Cath looked over at him. His hair was wet, and you could see the tracks where he’d pushed his fingers through it.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she said.
“Okay … Are you hungry?”
“No.” She looked down at her lap.
The truck still didn’t move.
“Because I’m hungry,” he said.
“Aren’t you supposed to meet up with Reagan?”
“Yep. Later.”
Cath rubbed her face again. The ice in her hair was melting and dripping into her eyes. “I’m wearing pajamas.”
Levi put the truck into reverse. “I know just the place.”
* * *
The pajama pants weren’t a problem.
Levi took her to a twenty-four-hour truck stop near the edge of town. (Nothing in Lincoln was too far from the edge of town.) The place felt like it hadn’t been redecorated ever, like maybe it had been built sixty years ago out of materials that were already worn and cracking. The waitress started pouring them coffee without even asking if they wanted any.
“Perfect,” Levi said, smiling at the waitress and shuffling out of his coat. She set the cream on the table and brushed his shoulder fondly.
“Do you come here a lot?” Cath asked, when the waitress left.
“More than I go other places, I guess. If you order the corned beef hash, you don’t have to eat for days.… Cream?”
Cath didn’t usually order coffee, but she nodded anyway, and he topped off her cup. She pulled her saucer back and stared down at it. She heard Levi exhale.