Fangirl

home from class late one afternoon, and he was sitting on Reagan’s bed while Reagan typed.
    “Cather,” he said, grinning, pulling his earphones out of his head. He was listening to a lecture; she knew that now. Reagan said he listened to them all the time, and that he even saved the ones he really liked.
    “Hey,” he said. “I owe you a beverage. Your choice, hot or fermented. I rocked that Outsiders quiz. Did Reagan tell you? I got an A.”
    “That’s great,” Cath said, trying not to let her face show how much she wanted to kiss and kill him.
    She’d thought Reagan had to work tonight. That was the only reason Cath had come home. But she didn’t have to stay here. She was going to meet Nick at the library later anyway.…
    Cath pretended to get something she needed out of her desk. A pack of gum.
    “Okay,” she said, “I’m taking off.”
    “But you just got here,” Levi said. “Don’t you want to stay and talk about the symbolism of Johnny’s relationship with Ponyboy? And the struggle between Sodapop and Darry? Hey, do you think there’s such a thing as Outsiders fanfiction?”
    “I’ve gotta go,” Cath said, trying to say it to Reagan. “Meeting somebody.”
    “Who are you meeting?” Levi asked.
    “Nick. My writing partner.”
    “Oh. Right. Do you want me to walk you home later?”
    “Nick’ll probably walk me home,” she said.
    “Oh.” Levi brought his eyebrows together, but still smiled. “Cool. Later.”
    She couldn’t get away from him fast enough. She got to the library and wrote a thousand words of Carry On before Nick showed up.
    *   *   *
    “Shut that thing down,” Nick said. “You’re corrupting my creative centers with static.”
    “That’s what she said,” Cath said, closing her laptop.
    Nick looked dubious.
    “It was sort of a metaphysical ‘that’s what she said.’”
    “Ah.” He set down his backpack and pulled out their notebook. “You working on your final project?”
    “Indirectly,” Cath said.
    “What does that mean?”
    “Have you ever heard sculptors say that they don’t actually sculpt an object; they sculpt away everything that isn’t the object?”
    “No.” He sat down.
    “Well, I’m writing everything that isn’t my final project, so that when I actually sit down to write it, that’s all that will be left in my mind.”
    “Clever girl,” he said, pushing the open notebook toward her. She flipped through it. Nick had filled five pages, front and back, since they’d last met.
    “What about you?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “I might turn in a story I worked on this summer.”
    “Isn’t that cheating?”
    “I don’t think so. It’s more like being really ahead of schedule.… All I can think about right now is this story.” He nudged the notebook toward Cath again. “I want you to read what I did.”
    This story. Their story. Nick kept trying to call it an anti-love story. “But it’s not anti-love,” she’d argued.
    “It’s anti- everything you usually find in a love story. Gooey eyes and ‘you complete me.’”
    “‘You complete me’ is a great line,” Cath said. “You wish you came up with ‘you complete me.’”
    Cath didn’t tell him that she’d been writing love stories—rewriting the same love story—every day for the last five years. That she’d written love stories with and without the goo, love-at-first-sight stories, love-before-first-sight stories, love-to-hate-you stories.…
    She didn’t tell Nick that writing love stories was her thing. Her one true thing. And that his anti-love story read like somebody’s very first fanfic—Mary Sue to the tenth power. That the main character was obviously Nick and that the girl was obviously Winona Ryder plus Natalie Portman plus Selena Gomez.
    Instead Cath fixed it. She rewrote his dialogue. She reined in the quirk.
    “Why’d you cross that out?” Nick said tonight, leaning over her left shoulder. He smelled good. (Breaking news: Boys smell good.) “I liked that part,” he said.
    “Our character just stopped her car in a parking lot to wish on a dandelion.”
    “It’s refreshing,” Nick said. “It’s romantic.”
    Cath shook her head. Her ponytail brushed Nick’s neck. “It makes her seem like a douche.”
    “You have something against dandelions?”
    “I have something against twenty-two-year-old women wishing on dandelions. Stopping the car to wish on dandelions. Also, the car? No. No to vintage