Fangirl

Reagan opened the door.
    Cath nodded. “Just … my coat.” She found her coat and slipped it on.
    “Scarf,” Levi said. So she grabbed it.
    “See you later,” she said to Reagan.
    “Probably not,” Reagan said, shaking her hair out in front of her mirror.
    Cath felt herself blushing. She didn’t look over at Levi again until they were standing together in front of the elevator. ( Condition: smiling, stable. ) When it opened, he put his hand on her back and she practically jumped in.
    “What’s the plan?” she asked.
    He grinned. “My plan is to do things that make you want to hang out with me again tomorrow. What’s your plan?”
    “I’m going to try not to make an ass of myself.”
    He grinned. “So we’re all set.”
    She smiled back at him. In his general direction.
    “I thought I’d show you East Campus,” Levi said.
    “At night? In February?”
    The elevator doors opened, and he waited for her to step out. “I got a great deal on an off-season tour. Besides, it’s not that cold out tonight.”
    Levi led the way outside and started walking away from the parking lot.
    “Don’t we have to drive?” Cath asked.
    “I thought we’d take the shuttle.”
    “There’s a shuttle?”
    He shook his head. “City folk.”
    The shuttle was a bus, and it rolled up almost immediately. “After you,” Levi said.
    Inside, the bus was lit up brighter than daylight and nearly empty. Cath chose a seat and sat down sideways with one knee up, so that there wasn’t room to sit down right next to her. Levi didn’t seem to mind. He swung sideways into the seat in front of her and rested his arm on the back.
    “You have very nice manners,” she said.
    “My mother would be thrilled to hear that.” He smiled.
    “So you have a mother.”
    He laughed. “Yes.”
    “And a father?”
    “And four sisters.”
    “Older or younger?”
    “Older. Younger.”
    “You’re in the middle?”
    “Smack-dab. What about you? Are you the older or younger twin?”
    She shrugged. “It was a C-section. But Wren was bigger. She was stealing my juice or something. I had to stay in the hospital for three weeks after she went home.”
    Cath didn’t tell him that sometimes she felt like Wren was still taking more than her fair share of life, like she was siphoning vitality off Cath—or like she was born with a bigger supply.
    Cath didn’t tell him that, because it was dark and depressing. And because, for the moment, she wouldn’t trade places with Wren, even if it meant getting the better umbilical cord.
    “Does that mean she’s more dominant?” Levi asked.
    “Not necessarily. I mean, I guess she is. About most things. My dad says we used to share the bossiness when we were kids. Like I’d decide what we were gonna wear, and she’d decide what we were playing.”
    “Did you dress alike?”
    “When we were little. We liked to.”
    “I’ve helped deliver twins before,” he said. “Calves. It almost killed the cow.”
    Cath’s eyes got big. “How did that happen?”
    “Sometimes when a bull meets a cow, they decide to spend more time together—”
    “How did you end up being there for the delivery?”
    “It happens a lot on a ranch. Not twins, but births.”
    “You worked on a ranch?”
    He raised an eyebrow, like he wasn’t sure whether she was serious. “I live on a ranch.”
    “Oh,” Cath said. “I didn’t know people lived on ranches. I thought it was like a factory or a business, someplace where you go to work.”
    “You’re sure you’re from Nebraska?”
    “I’m starting to feel like Omaha doesn’t count.…”
    “Well”—he smiled—“I live on a ranch.”
    “Like on a farm?”
    “Sort of. Farms are for crops. Ranches are for grazing livestock.”
    “Oh. That sounds … are there just cows wandering around?”
    “Yeah.” He laughed, then shook his head. “No. There are cattle in designated areas. They need a lot of space.”
    “Is that what you want to do when you’re done with school? Work on a ranch?”
    Something passed over Levi’s face. His smile faded a bit, and he scrunched his eyebrows together. “It’s … not that simple. My mom shares the ranch with my uncles, and nobody really knows what’s going to happen to it when they all retire. There are twelve cousins, so we can’t just split it. Unless we sell it. Which … nobody really wants. Um…” He shook his head again quickly and smiled back up at her. “I’d like to work on a ranch or with