Fangirl

self-confidence,” Cath said.
    “You don’t?” Levi looked over at her seriously. “I think they’d go for easy prey. The young and the lame.”
    Reagan snorted. Cath hung her scarf on her neck. “I’m not lame…,” she mumbled.
    Levi heaved himself up off Reagan’s bed and slid into a heavy, green canvas jacket. “Come on,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “I’m walking you to the library.”
    “You don’t have to,” Cath argued.
    “I haven’t moved in two hours. I don’t mind.”
    “No, really…”
    “Just go, Cath,” Reagan said. “It’ll take five minutes, and if you get raped now, it’ll be our fault. I haven’t got time for the pain.”
    “You coming?” Levi asked Reagan.
    “Fuck no. It’s cold out.”
    It was cold out. Cath walked as quickly as she could. But Levi, long as his legs were, never broke an amble.
    He was trying to talk to Cath about buffalo. As far as she could tell, Levi had a whole class that was just about buffalo. He seemed like he’d major in buffalo if that were an option. Maybe it was an option.…
    This school was constantly reminding Cath how rural Nebraska was—something she’d never given any thought to before, growing up in Omaha, the state’s only real city. Cath had driven through Nebraska a few times on the way to Colorado—she’d seen the grass and the cornfields—but she’d never thought much past the view. She’d never thought about the people who lived there.
    Levi and Reagan were from some town called Arnold, which Reagan said smelled and looked “like manure.”
    “God’s country,” Levi called it. “All the gods. Brahma and Odin would love it there.”
    Levi was still talking about buffalo even though they were already at the library. Cath climbed the first stone step, hopping up and down to stay warm. Standing on the step, she was practically as tall as him.
    “Do you see what I mean?” he asked.
    She nodded. “Cows bad. Buffalo good.”
    “Cows good,” he said. “Bison better. ” Then he gave her a lazy, lopsided grin. “This is all really important, you know—that’s why I’m telling you.”
    “Vital,” she said. “Ecosystems. Water tables. Shrews going extinct.”
    “Call me when you’re done, Little Red.”
    No, Cath thought, I don’t even know your number.
    Levi was already walking away. “I’ll be in your room,” he said over his shoulder. “Call me there.”
    *   *   *
    The library had six levels aboveground and two levels below.
    The sublevels, where the stacks were, were shaped strangely and accessible only from certain staircases; it almost felt like the stacks were tucked under other buildings around campus.
    Nick worked in the north stacks in a long white room—it was practically a missile silo with bookshelves. There was a constant hum no matter where you were standing, and even though Cath couldn’t see any vents, parts of the room had their own wind. At the table where they were sitting, Nick had to set a pen on his open notebook to keep the pages from riffling.
    Nick wrote in longhand.
    Cath was trying to convince him that they’d be better off taking turns on her laptop.
    “But then we won’t see ourselves switching,” he said. “We won’t see the two different hands at work.”
    “I can’t think on paper,” she said.
    “Perfect,” Nick said. “This exercise is about stepping outside of yourself.”
    “Okay,” she sighed. There was no use arguing anymore—he’d already pushed her computer away.
    “Okay.” Nick picked up his pen and pulled the cap off with his teeth. “I’ll start.”
    “Wait,” Cath said. “Let’s talk about what kind of story we’re writing.”
    “You’ll see.”
    “That’s not fair.” She leaned forward, looking at the blank sheet of paper. “I don’t want to write about, like, dead bodies or … naked bodies.”
    “So what I’m hearing is, no bodies.”
    Nick wrote in a scrawling half cursive. He was left-handed, so he smeared blue ink across the paper as he went. You need a felt tip, Cath thought, trying to read his handwriting upside down from across the table. When he handed her the notebook, she could hardly read it, even right side up.
    “What’s this word?” she asked, pointing.
    “Retinas.”
    She’s standing in a parking lot. And she’s standing under a streetlight. And her hair’s so blond, it’s flashing at you. It’s burning out your retinas one fucking cone at a time. She leans forward and grabs your T-shirt. And