“What?”
“Making little comments about Simon and Baz.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were,” Cath said. “You are.”
“Whatever.”
“She left us. She didn’t love us.”
“It isn’t that simple,” Wren said, watching the buildings go by.
“It is for me.” Cath turned back around in her seat and folded her arms. Her dad’s face was red, and he was tap-tap-tapping on the steering wheel.
* * *
When they got home, Cath didn’t want to be the one to go upstairs. She knew that if she went upstairs, she’d just feel trapped and miserable, and like the Crazy One. Like the little kid who’d been sent to her room.
Instead she went to the kitchen. She stood next to the counter and looked out into the backyard. Their dad still hadn’t taken down their swing set. She wished he would; it was a death trap now, and the neighbor kids liked to sneak into the yard and play on it.
“I thought you guys were talking about all this.” He was standing behind her.
Cath shrugged.
He put his hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t turn around. “Wren’s right,” he said. “It isn’t that simple.”
“Stop,” Cath said. “Just stop, okay? I can’t believe you’re taking her side.”
“I’m on both your sides.”
“I don’t mean Wren’s side.” Cath whipped around. She felt a new wave of tears. “Hers. Her side. She left you.”
“We weren’t good together, Cath.”
“Is that why she left us, too? Because we weren’t good together?”
“She needed some time. She couldn’t handle being a parent—”
“And you could?”
Cath saw the hurt in his eyes and shook her head. “I didn’t mean it that way, Dad.”
He took a deep breath. “Look,” he said, “to be honest? I don’t love this either. It would be so much easier for me if I never had to think about Laura, ever again … but she’s your mother.”
“Everybody needs to stop saying that.” Cath turned back to the window. “You don’t get to be the mother if you show up after the kids are already grown up. She’s like all those animals who show up at the end of the story to eat the Little Red Hen’s bread. Back when we needed her, she wouldn’t even return our phone calls. When we started our periods, we had to google the details. But now, after we’ve stopped missing her, after we’ve stopped crying for her—after we’ve got shit figured out—now she wants to get to know us? I don’t need a mother now, thanks. I’m good.”
Her dad laughed.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The bread thing, I think. Also … did you really google your period? You could have asked me about that—I know about periods.”
Cath exhaled. “It’s okay. We googled everything back then.”
“You don’t have to talk to her,” he said softly. “Nobody’s gonna make you.”
“Yeah, but Wren has already—she’s already let down the drawbridge.”
“Wren must have some shit she still needs to figure out.”
Cath clenched her fists and pushed them into her eyes. “I just … don’t like this.… I don’t like thinking about her, I don’t want to see her. I don’t want her in this house, thinking about how it used to be her house, about how we used to be hers, too.… I don’t want her brain touching us.”
Her dad pulled Cath into his arms. “I know.”
“I feel like everything’s upside down.”
He took another deep breath. “Me, too.”
“Did you freak out when she called?”
“I cried for three hours.”
“Oh, Dad…”
“Your grandmother gave her my cell phone number.”
“Have you seen her?”
“No.”
Cath shuddered, and her dad squeezed her tight. “When I think about her coming here,” she said, “it’s like that scene in Fellowship of the Ring when the hobbits are hiding from the Nazgûl.”
“Your mother isn’t evil, Cath.”
“That’s just how I feel.”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “Me, too.”
* * *
Wren didn’t get back in time for Thanksgiving dinner; she ended up staying the night.
“I feel like if we set the table and pretend everything’s normal,” Cath said to her dad, “it’s just going to be worse.”
“Agreed,” he said.
They ate in the living room, turkey and mashed potatoes, and watched the History Channel. The green bean casserole sat in the kitchen and got cold because Wren was the only person who ever ate it.
Baz. “Have you ever done this before?”
Simon. “Yes. No.”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes. Not like this.”
Baz. “Not with a boy?”
Simon. “Not when I really wanted it.”
FIFTEEN
When Cath saw it was Levi standing outside the door, she was so happy to see his always-friendly face, she just let him in. She didn’t even bother telling him that Reagan wasn’t there.
“Is Reagan here?” he asked as soon as he was in the room. Levi’s face wasn’t friendly. His forehead was furrowed, and his little bow lips were drawn tight.
“No,” Cath said. “She went out hours ago.” She didn’t add: With a giant guy named Chance who plays lots of intramural football and looks like he could play John Henry in the movie version of John Henry.
“Fuck,” Levi said, leaning back against the door. Even angry, he was a leaner.
“What’s wrong?” Cath asked. Was he finally jealous? Didn’t he know about the other guys? Cath always figured he and Reagan had an arrangement.
“She was supposed to study with me,” he said.
“Oh…,” Cath said, not understanding. “Well, you can still study here if you want.”
“No.” Angry. “I need her help. We were supposed to study last night and she put me off, and the test is tomorrow and—” He hurled a book down on Reagan’s bed, then sat at the end of Cath’s, looking away from her but still hiding his face. “She said she’d study with me.”
Cath walked over and picked up the book. “The Outsiders?”
“Yeah.” He looked up. “Have you read it?”
“No. Have you?”
“No.”
“So read it,” she said. “Your test is tomorrow? You have time. It doesn’t look very long.”
Levi shook his head and looked at the floor again. “You don’t understand. I have to pass this test.”
“So read the book. Were you just gonna let Reagan read it for you?”
He shook his head again—not in answer, more like he was shaking his head at the very idea of reading the book.
“I told you,” he said. “I’m not much of a book person.”
Levi always said that. I’m not a book person. Like books were rich desserts or scary movies.
“Yeah, but this is school,” she said. “Would you let Reagan take the test for you?”
“Maybe,” he huffed. “If that was an option.”
Cath dropped the book next to him on her bed and went to her desk. “You may as well watch the movie,” she said distastefully.
“It’s not available.”
Cath made a noise like hunh in her throat.
“You don’t understand,” Levi said. “If I don’t get a C in this class, I get kicked out my program.”
“So read the book.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple,” Cath said. “You have a test tomorrow, your girlfriend isn’t here to do your work—read the book.”
“You don’t understand … anything.”
Levi was standing now; he’d walked to the door, but Cath wouldn’t turn to face him. She was tired of fighting. This fight wasn’t even hers.
“Okay,” she said, “I don’t understand. Whatever. Reagan isn’t here, and I have a ton of reading to do—and nobody to do it for me—so…” She heard him jerk open the door.
“I tried to read it,” he said roughly. “I’ve been trying for the last two hours. I just, I’m not a reader. I’ve … I’ve never finished a book.”
Cath turned to look at him, feeling a sudden guilty grab in her stomach. “Are you trying to tell me you can’t read?”
Levi pushed his hair back violently. “Of course I can read,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”
“Well, then, what are you trying to tell me? That you don’t want to?”
“No. I—” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose. “—I don’t know why I’m trying to tell you anything. I can read. I just can’t read books.”
“So pretend it’s a really long street sign and muddle through it.”
“Jesus,” he said, surprised. Hurt. “What have I ever done to make you be this mean to me?”
“I’m not being mean,” Cath said, knowing that she probably was. “I just don’t know what you want me to say—that I approve? What you and Reagan do isn’t any of my business.”
“You think I’m lazy.” His eyes were on the ground. “And I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“It’s like I can’t focus,” he said, turning away from her in the doorway. “Like I read the same paragraph over and over, and I still don’t know what it says. Like the words go right through me and I can’t hold on to them.”
“Okay,” she said.
He looked back, just far enough to face her. Levi’s eyes were too big in his face when he wasn’t smiling. “I’m not a cheater,” he said.
Then he walked away, letting the door close behind him.
Cath exhaled. Then inhaled. Her chest was so tight, it hurt both ways. Levi shouldn’t get to make her feel this way—he shouldn’t even have access to her chest.
Levi wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t family. She didn’t choose him. She was stuck with him because she was stuck with Reagan. He was a roommate-in-law.
The Outsiders was still sitting on her bed.
Cath grabbed it and ran out the door. “Levi!” She ran down the hall. “Levi!”
He was standing in front of the elevator with his hands shoved into his coat pockets.
Cath stopped running when she saw him. He turned to look at her. His eyes were still too big.
“You forgot your book.” She held it up.
“Thanks,” he said, holding out his hand.
Cath ignored it. “Look … why don’t you come back? Reagan’s probably on her way.”
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said.
“Did you yell at me?”
“I raised my voice.”
She rolled her eyes and took a step backwards toward her room. “Come on.”
Levi looked in her eyes, and she let him.
“Are you sure?”
“Come on.” Cath turned toward her room and waited for him to fall into step beside her. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t realize we were having a serious conversation until we were.”
“I’m just really stressed about this test,” he said.
They stopped at her door, and Cath suddenly brought her wrists up to her temples. “Crap.” She held her hands on top of her head. “Crap, crap, crap. We’re locked out. I don’t have my keys.”
“I got ya.” Levi grinned and pulled out his key ring.
Her jaw dropped. “You have a key to our room?”
“Reagan gave me her spare, for emergencies.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her.
“Then why are you always sitting in the hall?”
“That’s never an emergency.”
Cath walked in, and Levi followed. He was smiling again, but he was still obviously operating at thirty degrees below regular Levi. They might be done fighting, but he was still going to fail his test.
“So you couldn’t find the movie?” she asked. “Even online?”
“No. And the movie’s no good anyway. Teachers can always tell when you watch the movie.” He flopped down at the head of her bed. “Normally, I listen to the audiobook.”
“That counts as reading,” Cath said, sitting at her desk.
“It does?”
“Of course.”
He kicked one of the legs of her chair playfully, then rested his feet there, on the rail. “Well, then, never mind. I guess I have read lots of books.… This one wasn’t available.” He unzipped his jacket, and it fell open. He was wearing a green and yellow plaid shirt underneath.
“So, what? Was Reagan going to read it to you?”
“Usually we just go over the highlights. It helps her, too, to review it.”
Cath looked down at the paperback. “Well, I’ve got nothing for you. All I know about The Outsiders is ‘Stay gold, Ponyboy.’”
Levi sighed and pushed back his hair. Cath shuffled the pages with her thumb.… It really was a short book. With tons of dialogue.
She looked up at Levi. The sun was setting behind her, and he was sitting in a wash of orange light.
Cath turned her chair toward the bed, knocking his feet without warning to the ground. Then she rested her own feet on the bed frame and took off her glasses, tucking them in her hair. “‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house—’”