“You don’t get to look like this,” Reagan said, pointing at her gray day-after face, “hiding in your room all weekend.”
“So noted,” Cath said.
“Let’s do something today.”
“Game day. The only smart thing to do is stay in our room and barricade the door.”
“Do you have anything red?” Reagan asked. “If we put on some red, we could just walk around campus and get free drinks.”
Cath’s phone rang. She looked down at it. Wren. She pushed Ignore.
“I have to write today,” she said.
* * *
When they got back to their room, Reagan took a shower and put on fresh makeup, sitting on her desk, holding a mirror.
She left and came back a few hours later with Target bags and a guy named Eric. Then she left again and didn’t come back until the sun was setting. Alone, this time.
Cath was still sitting at her desk.
“Enough!” Reagan half shouted.
“Jesus,” Cath said, turning toward her. It took a few seconds for Cath’s eyes to focus on something that wasn’t a computer screen.
“Get dressed,” Reagan said. “And don’t argue with me. I’m not playing this game with you.”
“What game?”
“You’re a sad little hermit, and it creeps me out. So get dressed. We’re going bowling.”
Cath laughed. “Bowling?”
“Oh, right,” Reagan said. “Like bowling is more pathetic than everything else you do.”
Cath pushed away from the desk. Her left leg had fallen asleep. She shook it out. “I’ve never been bowling. What should I wear?”
“You’ve never been bowling?” Reagan was incredulous. “Don’t people bowl in Omaha?”
Cath shrugged. “Really old people? Maybe?”
“Wear whatever. Wear something that doesn’t have Simon Snow on it, so that people won’t assume your brain stopped developing when you were seven.”
Cath put on her red CARRY ON T-shirt with jeans, and redid her ponytail.
Reagan frowned at her. “Do you have to wear your hair like that? Is it some kind of Mormon thing?”
“I’m not Mormon.”
“I said some kind.” There was a knock at the door, and Reagan opened it.
Levi was standing there, practically bouncing. He was wearing a white T-shirt, and he’d drawn on it with a Sharpie, adding a collar and buttons down the front, plus a chest pocket with The Strike Out King written above it in fancy script.
“Are we doing this?” he said.
* * *
Reagan and Levi were excellent bowlers. Apparently there was a bowling alley in Arnold. Not nearly as nice as this one, they said.
The three of them were the only people under forty bowling tonight, which didn’t stop Levi from talking to absolutely every single person in the whole building. He talked to the guy who was spraying the shoes, the retired couples in the next lane, a whole group of moms in some league who sent him away with ruffled hair and a pitcher of beer.…
Reagan acted like she didn’t notice.
“I think there’s a baby in the corner you forgot to kiss,” Cath said to him.
“Where’s a baby?” His eyes perked up.
“No,” she said. “I was just…” Just.
Levi set down the pitcher. He was balancing three glasses in his other hand; he let them drop on the table, and they landed without falling over.
“Why do you do that?”
“What?” He poured a beer and held it out to her. She took it without thinking, then set it down with distaste.
“Go so far out of your way to be nice to people?”
He smiled—but he was already smiling, so that just meant that he smiled more.
“Do you think I should be more like you?” he asked, then looked fondly over at Reagan, who was scowling (somehow voluptuously) over the ball return. “Or her?”
Cath rolled her eyes. “There’s got to be a happy medium.”
“I’m happy,” he said, “so this must be it.”
Cath bought herself a Cherry Coke from the bar and ignored the beer. Reagan bought two plates of drippy orange nachos. Levi bought three giant dill pickles that were so sour, they made them all cry.
Reagan won the first game. Then Levi won the second. Then, for the third, he talked the guy behind the counter into turning on the kiddie bumpers for Cath. She still didn’t pick up any strikes. Levi won again.
Cath had just enough money left to buy them all ice cream sandwiches from the vending machine.
“I really am the Strike Out King,” Levi said. “Everything I write on my shirt comes true.”
“It’ll definitely come true tonight at Muggsy’s,” Reagan said. Levi laughed and crumpled up his ice cream wrapper to throw at her. The way they smiled at each other made Cath look away. They were so easy together. Like they knew each other inside and out. Reagan was sweeter—and meaner—with Levi than she ever was with Cath.
Someone pulled on Cath’s ponytail, and her chin jerked up.
“You’re coming with us,” Levi asked, “right?”
“Where?”
“Out. To Muggsy’s. The night is young.”
“And so am I,” Cath said. “I can’t get into a bar.”
“You’ll be with us,” he said. “Nobody’ll stop you.”
“He’s right,” Reagan said. “Muggsy’s is for college dropouts and hopeless alcoholics. Freshmen never try to sneak in.”
Reagan put a cigarette in her mouth, but didn’t light it. Levi took it and put it between his lips.
Cath almost said yes.
Instead she shook her head.
* * *
When Cath got back up to her room, she thought about calling Wren.
She called her dad instead. He sounded tired, but he wasn’t trying to replace the stairs with a water slide, so that was an improvement. And he’d eaten two Healthy Choice meals for dinner.
“That sounds like a healthy choice,” Cath told him, trying to sound encouraging.
She did some reading for class. Then she stayed up working on Carry On until her eyes burned and she knew she’d fall asleep as soon as she climbed into bed.
“Words are very powerful,” Miss Possibelf said, stepping lightly between the rows of desks. “And they take on more power the more that they’re spoken.…
“The more that they’re said and read and written, in specific, consistent combinations.” She stopped in front of Simon’s desk and tapped it with a short, jeweled staff. “Up, up and away,” she said clearly.
Simon watched the floor move away from his feet. He grabbed at the edges of his desk, knocking over a pile of books and loose papers. Across the room, Basilton laughed.
Miss Possibelf nudged Simon’s trainer with her staff—“Hold your horses”—and his desk hovered three feet in the air.
“The key to casting a spell,” she said, “is tapping into that power. Not just saying the words, but summoning their meaning.…
“Now,” she said, “open your Magic Words books to page four. And Settle down there, Simon. Please.”
SEVEN
When Cath saw Abel’s name pop up on her phone, she thought at first that it was a text, even though the phone was obviously ringing.
Abel never called her.
They e-mailed. They texted—they’d texted just last night. But they never actually talked unless it was in person.
“Hello?” she answered. She was waiting in her spot outside Andrews Hall, the English building. It was really too cold to be standing outside, but sometimes Nick would show up here before class, and they’d look over each other’s assignments or talk about the story they were writing together. (It was turning into another love story; Nick was the one turning it that way.)
“Cath?” Abel’s voice was gravelly and familiar.
“Hey,” she said, feeling warm suddenly. Surprisingly. Maybe she had missed Abel. She was still avoiding Wren—Cath hadn’t even eaten lunch at Selleck since Wren drunked at her. Maybe Cath just missed home. “Hey. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I just told you last night that I was fine.”
“Well. Yeah. I know. But it’s different on the phone.”
He sounded startled. “That’s exactly what Katie said.”
“Who’s Katie?”
“Katie is the reason I’m calling you. She’s, like, every reason I’m calling you.”
Cath cocked her head. “What?”
“Cath, I’ve met someone,” he said. Just like that. Like he was in some telenovela.
“Katie?”
“Yeah. And it’s, um, she made me realize that … well, that what you and I have isn’t real.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean our relationship, Cath—it isn’t real.” Why did he keep saying her name like that?
“Of course it’s real. Abel. We’ve been together for three years.”
“Well, sort of.”
“Not sort of,” Cath said.
“Well … at any rate”—his voice sounded firm—“I met somebody else.”
Cath turned to face the building and rested the top of her head against the bricks. “Katie.”
“And it’s more real,” he said. “We’re just … right together, you know? We can talk about everything—she’s a coder, too. And she got a thirty-four on the ACT.”
Cath got a thirty-two.
“You’re breaking up with me because I’m not smart enough?”
“This isn’t a breakup. It’s not like we’re really together.”
“Is that what you told Katie?”
“I told her we’d drifted apart.”
“Yes,” Cath spat out. “Because the only time you ever call is to break up with me.” She kicked the bricks, then instantly regretted it.
“Right. Like you call me all the time.”
“I would if you wanted me to,” she said.
“Would you?”
Cath kicked the wall again. “Maybe.”
Abel sighed. He sounded more exasperated than anything else—more than sad or sorry. “We haven’t really been together since junior year.”
Cath wanted to argue with him, but she couldn’t think of anything convincing. But you took me to the military ball, she thought. But you taught me how to drive. “But your grandma always makes tres leches cake for my birthday.”
“She makes it anyway for the bakery.”
“Fine.” Cath turned and leaned back against the wall. She wished she could cry—just so that he’d have to deal with it. “So noted. Everything is noted. We’re not broken up, but we’re over.”
“We’re not over,” Abel said. “We can still be friends. I’ll still read your fic—Katie reads it, too. I mean, she always has. Isn’t that a coincidence?”
Cath shook her head, speechless.
Then Nick rounded the corner of the building and acknowledged her the way he always did, looking her in the eye and quickly jerking up his head. Cath lifted her chin in answer.
“Yeah,” she said into the phone. “Coincidence.”
Nick had set his backpack on a stone planter, and he was digging through his books and notebooks. His jacket was unbuttoned, and when he leaned over like that, she could kind of see down his shirt. Sort of. A few inches of pale skin and sparse black hair.
“I’ve got to go,” she said.
“Oh,” Abel said. “Okay. Do you still want to hang out over Thanksgiving?”
“I’ve got to go,” she said, and pressed End.
Cath took a slow breath. She felt lightheaded and strained, like something too big was hatching inside her ribs. She pushed her shoulders back into the bricks and looked down at the top of Nick’s head.
He looked up at her and smiled crookedly, holding out a few sheets of paper. “Will you read this? I think maybe it sucks. Or maybe it’s awesome. It’s probably awesome. Tell me it’s awesome, okay? Unless it sucks.”
* * *
Cath texted Wren just before Fiction-Writing started, hiding her phone behind Nick’s broad shoulders.
“abel broke up with me.”
“oh god. sorry. want me to come over?”
“yeah. at 5?”
“yeah. you OK?”
“think so. end tables end.”
* * *
“Have you cried yet?”
They were sitting on Cath’s bed, eating the last of the protein bars.
“No,” Cath said, “I don’t think I’m going to.”
Wren bit her lip. Literally.
“Say it,” Cath said.
“I don’t feel like I have to. I never thought that not saying it would be this satisfying.”
“Say it.”
“He wasn’t a real boyfriend! You never liked him like that!” Wren pushed Cath so hard, she fell over.
Cath laughed and sat back up, drawing her legs up into her arms. “I really thought I did, though.”
“How could you think that?” Wren was laughing, too.
Cath shrugged.
It was Thursday night, and Wren was already dressed to go out. She was wearing pale green eyeshadow that made her eyes look more green than blue, and her lips were a shiny red. Her short hair was parted on one side and swept glamorously across her forehead.
“Seriously,” Wren said, “you know what love feels like. I’ve read you describe it a thousand different ways.”
Cath pulled a face. “That’s different. That’s fantasy. That’s … ‘Simon reached out for Baz, and his name felt like a magic word on his lips.’”
“It’s not all fantasy…,” Wren said.
Cath thought of Levi’s eyes when Reagan teased him.