Fangirl

of beauty.) Simon wanted to tell her it was all right, to forget the whole scene with Baz in the forest.… Agatha standing in the moonlight, holding both of Baz’s pale hands in her own …
    “Just tell me,” Simon said, his voice shaking.
    “I don’t know what to say,” she wept. “There’s you. And you’re good. And you’re right. And then there’s him.… And he’s different. ”
    “He’s a monster.” Simon clenched his square jaw.
    Agatha just nodded. “Perhaps.”

    —from chapter 18, Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak, copyright © 2010 by Gemma T. Leslie

 
    THIRTY-FOUR
    They stepped into the elevator, and Cath pressed 9.
    “I can’t believe we’ve been arguing for fifteen minutes about whether Simon Snow should reach for his sword or his wand in a lame piece of fanfiction.”
    And by “I can’t believe,” Cath meant “I can’t believe how happy I am.” Wren was coming up to her room, and they were going to work on Carry On until Levi was done with work. This was the routine now. Cath liked routines. She felt flushed with serotonin.
    Wren shoved her. “It’s not lame. It’s important.”
    “Only to me.”
    “And me. And everyone else who’s reading. And besides, you by yourself should be enough. You’ve been working on this for almost two years. This is your life’s work.”
    “God, that’s pathetic.”
    “I meant your life’s work so far—and it’s extremely impressive. It would be, even if you didn’t have thousands of fans. Jandro can’t believe how many readers you have. He thinks you should try to monetize it.… He doesn’t really get the whole fanfiction thing. We tried to watch The Mage’s Heir, and he fell asleep.”
    Cath gasped, only partly in jest. “You never told me he was a nonbeliever.”
    “I wanted you to get to know him first. What about Levi?”
    The elevator doors opened, and they got off on Cath’s floor. “He loves it,” she said. “Simon Snow. Fanfiction, everything. He makes me read my stuff out loud to him.”
    “Isn’t he squicked by the slash?”
    “No, he’s Zen. Why? Is Jandro?”
    “Oh yeah.”
    “Is he squicked by gay people?”
    “No … Well, maybe. It’s more the idea of straight girls writing about gay boys; he thinks it’s deviant.”
    That made Cath giggle. Then Wren started giggling with her.
    “He thinks I’m the deviant one,” Cath said.
    “Shut up.” Wren shoved her again.
    Cath stopped—there was a boy standing outside her room.
    The wrong boy.
    “What’s up?” Wren stopped, too. “Did you forget something?”
    “Cath,” Nick said, taking a few steps forward. “Hey. I’ve been waiting for you.”
    “Hey,” Cath said. “Hey, Nick.”
    “Hey,” he said again.
    Cath was still six feet away from her room. She didn’t want to come any closer. “What are you doing here?”
    Nick’s eyebrows were low, and his mouth was open. She could see his tongue sliding along his teeth. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
    “Is this your library guy?” Wren asked, looking at him like he was a photo on Facebook, not a human being.
    “No,” Cath said, reacting more to the “your” than to anything else.
    Nick glanced at Wren, then decided to ignore her. “Look, Cath—”
    “You couldn’t just call?” Cath asked.
    “I didn’t have your cell number. I tried to call your room phone—you’re in the student directory—I left a bunch of voice mails.”
    “We have voice mail?”
    The door to her room opened abruptly, and Reagan looked out. “Is this yours?” she asked Cath, nodding at Nick.
    “No,” Cath said.
    “I didn’t think so. I told him he had to wait outside.”
    “You were right,” Wren said, not very quietly. “He does look very Old World.…”
    Reagan and Wren didn’t know what happened with Nick, how he’d used Cath. All they knew was that she didn’t want to talk about him anymore—and that she refused to go to Love Library. She’d been too embarrassed to tell anyone the details.
    Cath didn’t feel embarrassed now, now that she was looking right at him. She felt angry. Robbed. She’d written some good stuff with Nick, and now she’d never get it back. If she tried to use any of those lines, any of those jokes, people could say she stole them from him. Like she’d ever steal anything from Nick—except for the paisley scarf he was wearing; she’d always liked that scarf. But Nick could keep his shitty second-person, present-tense. And all his skinny girl characters