He took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead. “Not that well. I saw what she was doing.… I thought she’d, I don’t know, self-correct. That she’d get it out of her system.”
His necktie had worked its way almost completely out of his pocket. “You should sleep,” Cath said. “Take a shower, then sleep.”
Wren walked out of the bathroom wearing their dad’s robe and smiled feebly at them. Cath patted her dad’s arm, then followed Wren upstairs. When Cath got up to their room, Wren was standing at her dresser, impatiently riffling through a mostly empty drawer. “We don’t have any pajamas.”
“Calm down, Junie B. Jones,” Cath said, walking over to her own dresser. “Here.” She handed Wren a T-shirt and a pair of shorts left over from high school gym.
Wren changed and climbed into her bed. Cath crawled on top of the comforter beside her.
“You smell like puke,” Wren said.
“Yours,” Cath said. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired.” Wren closed her eyes.
Cath tapped softly on Wren’s forehead. “Was that your boyfriend?”
“Yes,” Wren whispered. “Alejandro.”
“Alejandro,” Cath said, breathing the j and rolling the r. “Have you been dating since last semester?”
“Yes.”
“Were you out with him last night?”
Wren shook her head. Tears were starting to pool between her eyelashes.
“Who’d you go out with?”
“Courtney.”
“How’d you bruise your face?”
“I don’t remember.”
“But it wasn’t Alejandro.”
Wren’s eyes flew open. “God, Cath. No.” She squeezed her eyes shut again and flinched. “He’s probably going to break up with me. He hates it when I get drunk. He says it’s unbecoming.”
“He didn’t look like he was going to break up with you this morning.”
Wren took a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t think about it right now.”
“Don’t,” Cath said. “Sleep.”
Wren slept. Cath went downstairs. Her dad was already asleep. He’d skipped the shower.
Cath felt inexplicably peaceful. The last thing Levi had said to her, when they’d parted in the hospital lobby, was, “Plug in your phone.” So Cath did. Then she started some laundry.
“We can’t be friends,” Baz said, passing Simon the ball.
“Why not?” Simon asked, kicking the ball up and bouncing it on his knee.
“Because we’re already enemies.”
“It’s not like we have to stay that way. There isn’t a rule.”
“There is a rule,” Baz said. “I made it myself. Don’t be friends with Snow. He already has too many.” He shouldered Simon out of the way and caught the ball on his own knee.
“You’re infuriating,” Simon said.
“Good. I’m fulfilling my role as your nemesis.”
“You’re not my nemesis. The Humdrum is.”
“Hmmm,” Baz said, letting the ball drop and kicking it back to Simon. “We’ll see. The story’s not over yet.”
—from “Baz, You Like It,” posted September 2008 by FanFixx.net authors Magicath and Wrenegade
THIRTY
“We don’t need to talk about this,” Wren said.
“You were just hospitalized for alcohol poisoning,” their dad said. “We’re talking about it.”
Cath set a stack of foil-wrapped burritos on the table between them, then sat down at the head of the table.
“There’s nothing to say,” Wren insisted. She still looked terrible. There were circles under her eyes, and her skin was waxy and yellow. “You’re just going to say that I shouldn’t drink that much, and then I’m going to say that you’re right—”
“No,” their dad interrupted, “I’m going to say that you shouldn’t drink at all.”
“Well, that’s not very realistic.”
He smacked his fist on the table. “Why the hell not?”
Wren sat back in her chair and took a second to recover. He’d never cursed at either of them. “Everybody drinks,” she said calmly. The Only Rational One.
“Your sister doesn’t.”
Wren rolled her eyes. “Forgive me, but I’m not going to spend my college years sitting soberly in my dorm room, writing about gay magicians.“
“Objection,” Cath said, reaching for a burrito.
“Sustained,” their dad said. “Your sister has a four-point-oh, Wren. And a very polite boyfriend. She’s doing just fine with her college years.”
Wren’s head whipped around. “You have a boyfriend?”
“You haven’t met Levi?” Their dad sounded surprised—and sad. “Are you guys even talking?”
“You stole your roommate’s boyfriend?” Wren’s eyes were big.
“It’s a long story,” Cath said.
Wren kept staring at her. “Have you kissed him?”
“Wren,” their dad said. “I’m serious about this.”
“What do you want me to say? I drank too much.”
“You’re out of control,” he said.
“I’m fine. I’m just eighteen.”
“Exactly,” he said. “You’re coming back home.”
Cath almost spit out her carnitas.
“I am not,” Wren said.
“You are.”