Fangirl

around when she’s there.”
    Cath pushed against his chest, away, and went back to the stove, quickly grating the cheese over the eggs. “It has nothing to with you.”
    Levi tried to move into her line of sight, leaning against the counter next to the stove. “How do you figure?”
    “It’s just … nothing, it’s weird,” she said. “It’d be different if you’d grown up with us, or if you’d met us both at the same time—”
    “What would be different?”
    Cath shrugged and scraped at the omelette with a wooden spatula. “Then I would know that you had enough information to choose me.”
    Levi leaned over the stove, trying again to catch her eye.
    “Get back,” Cath said, “you’re going to burn yourself.”
    He backed up, but only few inches. “Of course I chose you.”
    “But you didn’t know Wren.”
    “Cath…”
    She wished there was more to do with omelettes than watch them. “I know you think she’s pretty—”
    “You know that because I think you’re pretty.”
    “You said she was hot.”
    “When?”
    “When you met her.” Levi looked confused for a second, one eyebrow arched beautifully. “You called her Superman,” Cath said.
    “Cather,” he said, remembering, “I was trying to get your attention. I was trying to say that you were hot without actually saying it.”
    “Well, it sucked.”
    “I’m sorry.” He reached out for her waist again. She kept looking down at the eggs.
    “I know that you like me,” she said.
    “You know that I love you.”
    Cath kept staring at the pan. “But she’s a lot like me. Some of our best friends couldn’t even tell us apart. And then, when they could, it would be because Wren was the better one. Because she talked more or smiled more—or just flat-out looked better.”
    “I can tell you apart just fine.”
    “Long hair. Glasses.”
    “Cath … come on, look at me.” He pulled at her belt loops, and she flipped the omelette before she let herself turn toward him. “I can tell you apart,” he said.
    “We sound the same. We kind of talk the same. We have all the same gestures.”
    “True,” he said, nodding, holding her chin up, “but it’s almost like that makes your differences more dramatic.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It means, sometimes your sister will say something, and it will sort of shock me to hear her saying it with your voice.”
    Cath looked up to his eyes, unsure. They were big and earnest. “Like what?”
    “I can’t think of anything specific,” he said. “It’s like … she smiles more than you. But she’s harder somehow. Closed up.”
    “I’m the one who never leaves my room.”
    “I’m not explaining this right.… I like Wren,” he said, “what I know of her. But she’s more … forceful than you.”
    “Confident.”
    “Partly. Maybe. More like—she takes what she wants from a situation.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
    “No, I know,” Levi said. “But it’s not you. You don’t push through every moment. You pay attention. You take everything in. I like that about you—I like that better.”
    Cath closed her eyes and felt tears catch on her cheeks.
    “I like your glasses,” he said. “I like your Simon Snow T-shirts. I like that you don’t smile at everyone, because then, when you smile at me.… Cather. ” He kissed her mouth. “Look at me.”
    She did.
    “I choose you over everyone.”
    Cath took a painful breath and reached up with one hand to touch his chin. “I love you,” she said. “Levi.”
    Levi’s face broke open just before he kissed her.
    He pulled away again a few seconds later.…
    “Say it again.”
    *   *   *
    She had to make him another omelette.
     
    “Do you know what the most disappointing thing is about being a magician?”
    Penelope shook her head and rolled her eyes, a combination she’d gotten terribly good at over the years. “Don’t be silly, Simon. There’s nothing disappointing about magic.”
    “There is,” he argued, only partly just to tease her. “I always figured we’d learn a way to fly by now.”
    “Oh, pish,” Penelope said. “Anyone can fly. Anyone with a friend.”
    She held her ringed hand out to him and grinned— “Up, up and away!”
    Simon felt the steps drift away from him and laughed his way through a slow somersault. When he was upright again, he leveled his wand at Penelope.

    —from chapter 11, Simon Snow and the Five Blades, copyright © 2008 by Gemma T.