Then she stayed up an hour or two more, writing.
It felt good to be writing in her own room, in her own bed. To get lost in the World of Mages and stay lost. To not hear any voices in her head but Simon’s and Baz’s. Not even her own. This was why Cath wrote fic. For these hours when their world supplanted the real world. When she could just ride their feelings for each other like a wave, like something falling downhill.
By Sunday night, the whole house was covered in onionskin sketch paper and burrito foil. Cath started another load of drinking glasses and gathered up all the delicious-smelling trash.
She was supposed to meet her ride out in West Omaha. Her dad was waiting by the door to take her, rattling his car keys against his leg.
Cath tried to take a mental picture of him to reassure herself with later. He had light brown hair, just Cath and Wren’s color. Just their texture, too—thick and straight. A round nose, just wider and longer than theirs. Every/no-color eyes, just like theirs. It was like he’d had them by himself all along. Like the three of them had just split their DNA evenly.
It would be a much more reassuring picture if he didn’t look so sad. His keys were hitting his leg too hard.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“Cath…” The way he said it made her heart sink. “Sit down, okay? There’s something I need to tell you real quick.”
“Why do I have to sit down? I don’t want to have to sit down.”
“Just”—he motioned toward the dining room table—“please.”
Cath sat at the table, trying not to lean on his papers or breathe them into disorder.
“I didn’t mean to save this…,” he said.
“Just say it,” Cath said. “You’re making me nervous.” Worse than nervous; her stomach was twisted up to her trachea.
“I’ve been talking to your mom.”
“What?” Cath would have been less shocked if he told her he’d been talking to a ghost. Or a yeti. “Why? What?”
“Not for me,” he said quickly, like he knew that the two of them getting back together was a horrifying prospect. “About you.”
“Me?”
“You and Wren.”
“Stop,” she said. “Don’t talk to her about us.”
“Cath … she’s your mother.”
“There is no evidence to support that.”
“Just listen, Cath, you don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
Cath was starting to cry. “I don’t care what you’re going to say.”
Her dad decided to just keep talking. “She’d like to see you. She’d like to know you a little better.”
“No.”
“Honey, she’s been through a lot.”
“No,” Cath said. “She’s been through nothing.” It was true. You name it, Cath’s mom wasn’t there for it. “Why are we talking about her?”
Cath could hear her dad’s keys banging against his leg again, hitting the bottom of the table. They needed Wren here now. Wren didn’t twitch. Or cry. Wren wouldn’t let him keep talking about this.
“She’s your mother,” he said. “And I think you should give her a chance.”
“We did. When we were born. I’m done talking about this.” Cath stood up too quickly, and a pile of papers fluttered off the table.
“Maybe we can talk about it more at Thanksgiving,” he said.
“Maybe we can not talk about it at Thanksgiving, so that we don’t ruin Thanksgiving—are you going to tell Wren?”
“I already did. I sent her an e-mail.”
“What did she say?”
“Not much. She said she’d think about it.”
“Well, I’m not thinking about it,” Cath said. “I can’t even think about this.”
She got up from the table and started gathering her things; she needed something to hang on to. He shouldn’t have talked to them about this separately. He shouldn’t have talked to them about it at all.
*
The drive to West Omaha with her dad was miserable. And the drive back to Lincoln without him was worse.
Nothing was going right.
They’d been attacked by a venomous crested woodfoul.
And then they’d hidden in the cave with the spiders and the whatever-that-thing-was that had bitten Simon’s tennis shoe, possibly a rat.
And then Baz had taken Simon’s hand. Or maybe Simon had taken Baz’s hand.… Anyway, it was totally forgivable because woodfoul and spiders and rats.
And sometimes you held somebody’s hand just to prove that you were still alive, and that another human being was there to testify to that fact.
They’d walked back to the fortress like that, hand in hand. And it would have been okay—it would have been mostly okay—if one of them had just let go.
If they hadn’t stood there on the edge of the Great Lawn, holding this little bit of each other, long after the danger had passed.
—from “The Wrong Idea,” posted January 2010 by FanFixx.net author Magicath
TEN