Fangirl

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