People were always telling Cath that they couldn’t look at canon the same way after reading her stuff. (“Why does Gemma hate Baz?”)
Somebody had even started selling T-shirts on Etsy that said KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON with a photo of Baz and Simon glaring at each other. Wren bought Cath one for her eighteenth birthday.
Cath tried not to let it all go to her head. These characters belong to Gemma T. Leslie, she wrote at the beginning of every new chapter.
“You belong to Gemma,” she’d say to the Baz poster over her bed at home. “I’m just borrowing you.”
“You didn’t borrow Baz,” Wren would say. “You kidnapped him and raised him as your own.”
If Cath stayed up too late writing, too many nights in a row—if she was obsessing over the comments or the criticism—Wren would climb into Cath’s bed and steal her laptop, holding it like a teddy bear while she slept.
On nights like that, Cath could always go downstairs and keep writing on her dad’s computer if she really wanted to—but she didn’t like to cross Wren. They listened to each other when they wouldn’t listen to anyone else.
Hey, guys, Cath started typing now into her FanFixx journal. She wished Wren were here, to read this before she posted it.
So I guess it’s time for me to admit that college is hard—College is hard! Or, at least, time consuming!—and I’m probably not going to be updating Carry On as much as I used to, as much as I’d like to.…
But I’m not disappearing, I promise. And I’m not giving it up. I already know how this all ends, and I’m not going to rest ’til I get there.
*
Nick turned around in his desk as soon as class was dismissed. “You’ll be my partner, right?”
“Right,” Cath said, noticing a girl in the next aisle glance at them disappointedly. Probably because she wanted to work with Nick.
They were each supposed to find a partner and write a story together outside of class, trading paragraphs back and forth. The point of the exercise, Professor Piper said, was to make them extra-conscious of plot and voice—and to lead their brains down pathways they’d never find on their own.
Nick wanted to meet on campus at Love Library. (That was the actual name; thank you for your donation, Mayor Don Lathrop Love.) Nick worked there a few nights a week, shelving books down in the stacks.
Reagan looked suspicious when Cath started packing up her laptop after dinner. “You’re leaving the dorm after dark? Do you have a date?” She said it like it was a joke. The idea of Cath on a date.
“I’m meeting someone to study.”
“Don’t walk home by yourself if it’s late,” Levi said. He and Reagan had class notes spread all over Reagan’s side of the room.
“I walk home by myself all the time,” Reagan snapped at him.
“That’s different.” Levi smiled at her warmly. “You don’t rock that Little Red Riding Hood vibe. You’re scary.”
Reagan grinned like the Big Bad Wolf.
“I don’t think rapists actually care about self-confidence,” Cath said.
“You don’t?” Levi looked over at her seriously. “I think they’d go for easy prey. The young and the lame.”
Reagan snorted. Cath hung her scarf on her neck. “I’m not lame…,” she mumbled.
Levi heaved himself up off Reagan’s bed and slid into a heavy, green canvas jacket. “Come on,” he said.
“Why?”
“I’m walking you to the library.”
“You don’t have to,” Cath argued.
“I haven’t moved in two hours. I don’t mind.”
“No, really…”
“Just go, Cath,” Reagan said. “It’ll take five minutes, and if you get raped now, it’ll be our fault. I haven’t got time for the pain.”
“You coming?” Levi asked Reagan.
“Fuck no. It’s cold out.”
It was cold out. Cath walked as quickly as she could. But Levi, long as his legs were, never broke an amble.
He was trying to talk to Cath about buffalo. As far as she could tell, Levi had a whole class that was just about buffalo. He seemed like he’d major in buffalo if that were an option. Maybe it was an option.…
This school was constantly reminding Cath how rural Nebraska was—something she’d never given any thought to before, growing up in Omaha, the state’s only real city. Cath had driven through Nebraska a few times on the way to Colorado—she’d seen the grass and the cornfields—but she’d never thought much past the view. She’d never thought about the people who lived there.
Levi and Reagan were from some town called Arnold, which Reagan said smelled and looked “like manure.”
“God’s country,” Levi called it. “All the gods. Brahma and Odin would love it there.”
Levi was still talking about buffalo even though they were already at the library. Cath climbed the first stone step, hopping up and down to stay warm. Standing on the step, she was practically as tall as him.
“Do you see what I mean?” he asked.
She nodded. “Cows bad. Buffalo good.”