The pajama pants weren’t a problem.
Levi took her to a twenty-four-hour truck stop near the edge of town. (Nothing in Lincoln was too far from the edge of town.) The place felt like it hadn’t been redecorated ever, like maybe it had been built sixty years ago out of materials that were already worn and cracking. The waitress started pouring them coffee without even asking if they wanted any.
“Perfect,” Levi said, smiling at the waitress and shuffling out of his coat. She set the cream on the table and brushed his shoulder fondly.
“Do you come here a lot?” Cath asked, when the waitress left.
“More than I go other places, I guess. If you order the corned beef hash, you don’t have to eat for days.… Cream?”
Cath didn’t usually order coffee, but she nodded anyway, and he topped off her cup. She pulled her saucer back and stared down at it. She heard Levi exhale.
“I know how you feel right now,” he said. “I have two little sisters.”
“You don’t know how I feel.” Cath dumped in three packs of sugar. “She’s not just my sister.”
“Do people really do that to you guys all the time?”
“Do what?” Cath looked up at him, and he looked away.
“The twin thing.”
“Oh. That.” She stirred her coffee, clacking the spoon too hard against her cup. “Not all the time. Only if we’re around drunks or, like, walking down the street.…”
He made a face. “People are depraved.”
The waitress came back, and Levi lit up for her. Predictably. He ordered corned beef hash. Cath stuck with coffee.
“She’ll grow out of it,” he said when the waitress walked away from their booth. “Reagan’s right. It’s a freshman thing.”
“I’m a freshman. I’m not out getting wasted.”
Levi laughed. “Right. Because you’re too busy throwing dance parties. What was the emergency anyway?”
Cath watched him laugh and felt the sticky black pit yawn open in her stomach. Professor Piper. Simon. Baz. Neat, red F.
“Were you anticipating an emergency?” he asked, still smiling. “Or maybe summoning one? Like a rain dance?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Cath said.
“Do what?”
“Try to make me feel better.” She felt the tears coming on, and her voice wobbled. “I’m not one of your little sisters.”
Levi’s smile fell completely. “I’m sorry,” he said, all the teasing gone. “I … I thought maybe you’d want to talk about it.”
Cath looked back at her coffee. She shook her head a few times, as much to tell him no as to shake away the stinging in her eyes.
His corned beef hash came. A whole mess of it. He moved Cath’s coffee cup to the table and scooped hash onto her saucer.
Cath ate it—it was easier than arguing. She’d been arguing all day, and so far, no one had listened. And besides, the corned beef hash was really good, like they made it fresh with real corned beef, and there were two sunny-side-up eggs on top.
Levi piled more onto her plate.
“Something happened in class,” Cath said. She didn’t look up at him. Maybe she could use a big brother right now—she was currently down a twin sister. Any port in a storm, and all that …
“What class?” he asked.
“Fiction-Writing.”
“You take Fiction-Writing? That’s an actual class?”
“That’s an actual question?”
“Does this have something to do with your Simon Snow thing?”
Cath looked up now and flushed. “Who told you about my Simon Snow thing?”
“Nobody had to tell me. You’ve got Simon Snow stuff everywhere. You’re worse than my ten-year-old cousin.” Levi grinned; he looked relieved to be smiling again. “Reagan told me you write stories about him.”
“So Reagan told you.”
“That’s what you’re always working on, right? Writing stories about Simon Snow?”
Cath didn’t know what to say. It sounded absolutely ridiculous when Levi said it.
“They’re not just stories…,” she said.
He took a giant bite of hash. His hair was still wet and falling (wetly, blondly) into his eyes. He pushed it back. “They’re not?”
Cath shook her head. They were just stories, but stories weren’t just anything. Simon wasn’t just.
“What do you know about Simon Snow?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Everybody knows about Simon Snow.”
“You’ve read the books?”
“I’ve seen the movies.”
Cath rolled her eyes so hard, it hurt. (Actually.) (Maybe because she was still on the edge of tears. On the edge, period.) “So you haven’t read the books.”
“I’m not really a book person.”
“That might be the most idiotic thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Levi said, grinning some more. “You write stories about Simon Snow.…”
“You think this is funny.”
“Yes,” Levi said. “But also sort of cool. Tell me about your stories.”
Cath pressed the tines of her fork into her place mat. “They’re just, like … I take the characters, and I put them in new situations.”