Fangirl

say, crawling onto Cath’s bed at three in the morning and pulling Cath’s laptop away. “Go to sleep.”
    “I will. I’m just … I want to finish this scene. I think Baz is finally going to tell Simon he loves him.”
    “He’ll still love him tomorrow.”
    “It’s a big chapter.”
    “It’s always a big chapter.”
    “It’s different this time.” Cath had been saying this for the last year. “It’s the end.”
    Wren was right: Cath had written this story, Baz and Simon in love, dozens of times before. She’d written this scene, this line—“Snow … Simon, I love you”—fifty different ways.
    But Carry On was different.
    It was the longest fic she’d written so far; it was already longer than any of Gemma T. Leslie’s books, and Cath was only two-thirds of the way through.
    Carry On was written as if it were the eighth Simon Snow book, as if it were Cath’s job to wrap up all the loose ends, to make sure that Simon ascended to Mage, to redeem Baz (something GTL would never do), to make both boys forget about Agatha … To write all the good-bye scenes and graduation scenes and last-minute revelations … And to stage the final battle between Simon and the Insidious Humdrum.
    Everyone in fandom was writing eighth-year fics right now. Everyone wanted to take a crack at the big ending before the last Simon Snow book was released in May.
    But for thousands of people, Carry On was already it.
    People were always telling Cath that they couldn’t look at canon the same way after reading her stuff. (“Why does Gemma hate Baz?”)
    Somebody had even started selling T-shirts on Etsy that said KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON with a photo of Baz and Simon glaring at each other. Wren bought Cath one for her eighteenth birthday.
    Cath tried not to let it all go to her head. These characters belong to Gemma T. Leslie, she wrote at the beginning of every new chapter.
    “You belong to Gemma,” she’d say to the Baz poster over her bed at home. “I’m just borrowing you.”
    “You didn’t borrow Baz,” Wren would say. “You kidnapped him and raised him as your own.”
    If Cath stayed up too late writing, too many nights in a row—if she was obsessing over the comments or the criticism—Wren would climb into Cath’s bed and steal her laptop, holding it like a teddy bear while she slept.
    On nights like that, Cath could always go downstairs and keep writing on her dad’s computer if she really wanted to—but she didn’t like to cross Wren. They listened to each other when they wouldn’t listen to anyone else.
    Hey, guys, Cath started typing now into her FanFixx journal. She wished Wren were here, to read this before she posted it.
    So I guess it’s time for me to admit that college is hard— College is hard! Or, at least, time consuming! —and I’m probably not going to be updating Carry On as much as I used to, as much as I’d like to.…
    But I’m not disappearing, I promise. And I’m not giving it up. I already know how this all ends, and I’m not going to rest ’til I get there.
    *   *   *
    Nick turned around in his desk as soon as class was dismissed. “You’ll be my partner, right?”
    “Right,” Cath said, noticing a girl in the next aisle glance at them disappointedly. Probably because she wanted to work with Nick.
    They were each supposed to find a partner and write a story together outside of class, trading paragraphs back and forth. The point of the exercise, Professor Piper said, was to make them extra-conscious of plot and voice—and to lead their brains down pathways they’d never find on their own.
    Nick wanted to meet on campus at Love Library. (That was the actual name; thank you for your donation, Mayor Don Lathrop Love.) Nick worked there a few nights a week, shelving books down in the stacks.
    Reagan looked suspicious when Cath started packing up her laptop after dinner. “You’re leaving the dorm after dark? Do you have a date ?” She said it like it was a joke. The idea of Cath on a date.
    “I’m meeting someone to study.”
    “Don’t walk home by yourself if it’s late,” Levi said. He and Reagan had class notes spread all over Reagan’s side of the room.
    “ I walk home by myself all the time,” Reagan snapped at him.
    “That’s different.” Levi smiled at her warmly. “You don’t rock that Little Red Riding Hood vibe. You’re scary.”
    Reagan grinned like the Big Bad Wolf.
    “I don’t think rapists actually care about