Fangirl

¡Niño!”
    “Did you get the tres leches cake?” Cath asked.
    “They were out.”
    “Qué lástima.”
    Normally, Cath would have a present from Abel and one from his family under the tree. The pile of presents this year was especially thin. Mostly envelopes.
    Cath gave Wren a pair of Ecuadorian mittens that she’d bought outside of the Union. “It’s alpaca,” she said. “Warmer than wool. And hypoallergenic.”
    “Thanks,” Wren said, smoothing out the mittens in her lap.
    “So I want my gloves back,” Cath said.
    Wren gave Cath two T-shirts she’d bought online. They were cute and would probably be flattering, but this was the first time in ten years that Wren hadn’t given her something to do with Simon Snow. It made Cath feel tearful suddenly, and defensive. “Thanks,” she said, folding the shirts back up. “These are really cool.”
    iTunes gift certificates from their dad.
    Bookstore gift certificates from their grandma.
    Aunt Lynn had sent them underwear and socks, just to be funny.
    After their dad opened his gifts (everybody gave him clothes), there was still a small, silver box under the Christmas tree photo. Cath reached for it. There was a fancy tag hanging by a burgundy ribbon— Cather, it said in showy, black script. For a second Cath thought it was from Levi. (“Cather,” she could hear him say, everything about his voice smiling.)
    She untied the ribbon and opened the box. There was a necklace inside. An emerald, her birthstone. She looked up at Wren and saw a matching pendant hanging from her neck.
    Cath dropped the box and stood up, moving quickly, clumsily toward the stairs.
    “Cath,” Wren called after her, “let me explain—”
    Cath shook her head and ran the rest of the way to her room.
    *   *   *
    Cath tried to picture her mom.
    The person who had given her this necklace. Wren said she was remarried now and lived in a big house in the suburbs. She had stepkids, too. Grown ones.
    In Cath’s head, Laura was still young.
    Too young , everyone always said, to have two big girls. That always made their mom smile.
    When they were little and their mom and dad would fight, Wren and Cath worried their parents were going to get divorced and split them up, just like in The Parent Trap. “I’ll go with Dad,” Wren would say. “He needs more help.”
    Cath would think about living alone with her dad, spacey and wild, or alone with her mom, chilly and impatient. “No,” she said, “I’ll go with Dad. He likes me more than Mom does.”
    “He likes both of us more than Mom does,” Wren argued.
    “Those can’t be yours,” people would say, “you’re too young to have such grown-up girls.”
    “I feel too young,” their mom would reply.
    “Then we’ll both stay with Dad,” Cath said.
    “That’s not how divorce works, dummy.”
    When their mom left without either of them, in a way it was a relief. If Cath had to choose between everyone, she’d choose Wren.
    *   *   *
    Their bedroom door didn’t have a lock, so Cath sat against it. But nobody came up the stairs.
    She sat on her hands and cried like a little kid.
    Too much crying , she thought. Too many kinds. She was tired of being the one who cried.
     
    “You’re the most powerful magician in a hundred ages.” The Humdrum’s face, Simon’s own boyhood face, looked dull and tired. Nothing glinted in its blue eyes.… “Do you think that much power comes without sacrifice? Did you think you could become you without leaving something, without leaving me, behind?”

    —from chapter 23, Simon Snow and the Seventh Oak, copyright © 2010 by Gemma T. Leslie

 
    TWENTY-ONE
    Their dad got up to jog every morning. Cath woke up when she heard his coffeemaker beep. She’d get up and make him breakfast, then fall back to sleep on the couch until Wren woke up. They’d pass on the staircase without a word.
    Sometimes Wren went out. Cath never went with her.
    Sometimes Wren didn’t come home. Cath never waited up.
    Cath had a lot of nights alone with her dad, but she kept putting off talking to him, really talking to him; she didn’t want to be the thing that made him lose his balance. But she was running out of time.… He was supposed to drive them back to school in three days. Wren was even agitating to go back a day early, on Saturday, so they could “settle in.” (Which was code for “go to lots of frat parties.”)
    On Thursday night, Cath made huevos rancheros, and her dad washed the dishes