Fangirl

don’t want to talk about the second one.”
    “Too bad.”
    “Then yes,” he said. “It was just a—it was nothing.”
    “What about the third one?”
    “Is that a trick question?”
    Cath shrugged.
    “Cath … I’m trying to tell you something here.”
    She turned around and immediately regretted it. Levi’s hair was tousled, most of it pushed back, bits of it falling over his forehead. And he wasn’t smiling, so his blue eyes were taking over his whole long face.
    “What are you trying to tell me?”
    “That it wasn’t just a kiss, Cather. There was no just.”
    “No just?”
    “No.”
    “So?” Her voice sounded much cooler than she felt. Inside, her internal organs were grinding themselves into nervous pulp. Her intestines were gone. Her kidneys were disintegrating. Her stomach was wringing itself out, yanking on her trachea.
    “So … aahhggch, ” Levi said, frustrated, running both hands through his hair. “So I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that at the hospital. I mean, I know why I said it, but I was wrong. Really wrong. And I wish I could go back to that morning, when I woke up here, and have a stern talk with myself, so that the rest of this crap wouldn’t have happened.”
    “I wonder…,” she said, “if there was such a thing as time machines, would anyone ever use them to go to the future?”
    “Cather.”
    “What.”
    “What are you thinking?”
    What was she thinking? She wasn’t thinking. She was wondering if she could live without her kidneys. She was holding herself up on two feet. “I still don’t know what all this means,” she said.
    “It means … I really like you.” His hand was in his hair again. Just the one. Holding it back. “Like, really like you. And I want that kiss to have been the start of something. Not the end.”
    Cath looked at Levi’s face. His eyebrows were pulled down in the middle, bunching up the skin above his nose. His cheeks, for once, were absolutely smooth. And his lips were at their most doll-like, not even a quirk of a smile.
    “It felt like the start of something,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and swayed forward a little bit. Like he wanted to bump into her. Cath backed up flat against the door.
    She nodded. “Okay.”
    “Okay?”
    “Okay.” She turned around and unlocked the door. “You can come in. I’m not sure yet about all the other stuff.”
    “Okay,” Levi said. She heard the very beginning of a smile in his voice—a fetal smile—and it very nearly killed her.
     
    “I don’t trust you,” Simon said, grasping Basil’s forearm.
    “Well, I don’t trust you,” Basil spat at him. Actually spat at him, bits of wet landing on Simon’s cheeks.
    “Why do you need to trust me ?” Simon asked. “I’m the one hanging off a cliff!”
    Basil looked down at him distastefully, his arm shaking from Simon’s weight. He swung his other arm down and Simon grabbed at it.
    “Douglas J. Henning,” Basil cursed breathlessly, his body inching forward. “Knowing you, you’ll bring the both of us down just to spite me.”

    —from Carry On, Simon, posted November 2010 by FanFixx.net author Magicath

 
    TWENTY-FOUR
    Levi sat on her bed.
    Cath tried to pretend that he wasn’t watching while she took off her coat and threaded her scarf out from under her hair. She felt weird taking her snow boots off in front of him, so she left them on.
    She sat on her chair.
    “How’d you do in YA Lit?” she asked.
    Levi just looked at her for a few seconds. “I got a B-minus.”
    “That’s good, right?”
    “It’s great.…”
    She nodded.
    “How’s your dad?” he asked.
    “Better,” she said. “It’s complicated.”
    “How’s your sister?”
    “I don’t know, we’re not really talking.”
    He nodded.
    “I’m not very good at this,” Cath said, looking down at her lap.
    “What?”
    “Whatever this is. Boy–girl stuff.”
    Levi laughed, lightly.
    “What?” she asked.
    “You’re a lot better at boy–boy, aren’t you?”
    “Ha.”
    They were both quiet again. Levi eventually broke the silence. She was pretty sure he could be counted on in every silence-breaking scenario. “Cath?”
    “Yeah?”
    “Is this—? Are you giving me another chance?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, watching her hands clench and unclench in her lap.
    “Do you want to?”
    “What do you mean?” She let her eyes stumble up to his face. His cheeks were pale, and he was chewing on his bottom lip.
    “I