Fangirl

around them now, like he was looking for something.
    “Bed?” she said.
    It took a few seconds for his eyes to rest on her.
    “Bed,” he answered, smiling gently.
    When she came back down at five, he was in his room. She could hear him snoring.
    *   *   *
    Her dad was gone when she came downstairs later that morning.
    Cath decided to survey the damage. The papers in the living room had been sorted into sections. “Buckets,” he called them. They were taped to the walls and the windows. Some pieces had other papers taped around them, as if the ideas were exploding. Cath looked over all his ideas and found a green pen to star her favorites. (She was green; Wren was red.)
    The sight of it—chaotic, but still sorted—made her feel better.
    A little manic was okay. A little manic paid the bills and got him up in the morning, made him magic when he needed it most.
    “I was magic today, girls,” he’d say after a big presentation, and they’d both know that meant Red Lobster for dinner, with their own lobsters and their own candle-warmed dishes of drawn butter.
    A little manic was what their house ran on. The goblin spinning gold in the basement.
    Cath checked the kitchen: The fridge was empty. The freezer was full of Healthy Choice meals and Marie Callender’s pot pies. She loaded the dishwasher with dirty glasses, spoons, and coffee cups.
    The bathroom was fine. Cath peeked into her dad’s bedroom and gathered up more glasses. There were papers everywhere in there, not even in piles. Stacks of mail, most of it unopened. She wondered if he’d just swept everything into his room before she got home. She didn’t touch anything but the dishes.
    Then she microwaved a Healthy Choice meal, ate it over the sink, and decided to go back to bed.
    Her bed at home was so much softer than she’d ever appreciated. And her pillows smelled so good. And she’d missed all their Simon and Baz posters. There was a full-size cutout of Baz, baring his fangs and smirking, hanging from the rail of Cath’s canopy bed. She wondered if Reagan would tolerate it in their dorm room. Maybe it would fit in Cath’s closet.
    *   *   *
    She and her dad ate every meal that weekend at a different taco truck. Cath had carnitas and barbacoa, al pastor and even lengua. She ate everything drenched in green tomatillo sauce.
    Her dad worked. So Cath worked with him, logging more words on Carry On, Simon than she’d written in weeks. On Saturday night, she was still wide awake at one o’clock, but she made a big show of going to bed, so that her dad would, too.
    Then she stayed up an hour or two more, writing.
    It felt good to be writing in her own room, in her own bed. To get lost in the World of Mages and stay lost. To not hear any voices in her head but Simon’s and Baz’s. Not even her own. This was why Cath wrote fic. For these hours when their world supplanted the real world. When she could just ride their feelings for each other like a wave, like something falling downhill.
    By Sunday night, the whole house was covered in onionskin sketch paper and burrito foil. Cath started another load of drinking glasses and gathered up all the delicious-smelling trash.
    She was supposed to meet her ride out in West Omaha. Her dad was waiting by the door to take her, rattling his car keys against his leg.
    Cath tried to take a mental picture of him to reassure herself with later. He had light brown hair, just Cath and Wren’s color. Just their texture, too—thick and straight. A round nose, just wider and longer than theirs. Every/no-color eyes, just like theirs. It was like he’d had them by himself all along. Like the three of them had just split their DNA evenly.
    It would be a much more reassuring picture if he didn’t look so sad. His keys were hitting his leg too hard.
    “I’m ready,” she said.
    “Cath…” The way he said it made her heart sink. “Sit down, okay? There’s something I need to tell you real quick.”
    “Why do I have to sit down? I don’t want to have to sit down.”
    “Just”—he motioned toward the dining room table—“please.”
    Cath sat at the table, trying not to lean on his papers or breathe them into disorder.
    “I didn’t mean to save this…,” he said.
    “Just say it,” Cath said. “You’re making me nervous.” Worse than nervous; her stomach was twisted up to her trachea.
    “I’ve been talking to your mom.”
    “What?” Cath would have been less shocked if he told her