“Like deleted scenes?”
“Sometimes. More like what-ifs. Like, what if Baz wasn’t evil? What if Simon never found the five blades? What if Agatha found them instead? What if Agatha was evil?”
“Agatha couldn’t be evil,” Levi argued, leaning forward and pointing at Cath with his fork. “She’s ‘pure of heart, a lion of dawn.’”
Cath narrowed her eyes. “How do you know that?”
“I told you, I’ve seen the movies.”
“Well, in my world, if I want to make Agatha evil, I can. Or I can make her a vampire. Or I can make her an actual lion.”
“Simon wouldn’t like that.”
“Simon doesn’t care. He’s in love with Baz.”
Levi guffawed. (You don’t get many opportunities to use that word, Cath thought, but this is one of them.)
“Simon isn’t gay,” he said.
“In my world, he is.”
“But Baz is his nemesis.”
“I don’t have to follow any of the rules. The original books already exist; it’s not my job to rewrite them.”
“Is it your job to make Simon gay?”
“You’re getting distracted by the gay thing,” Cath said. She was leaning forward now, too.
“It is distracting.…” Levi giggled. (Did guys “giggle” or “chuckle”? Cath hated the word “chuckle.”)
“The whole point of fanfiction,” she said, “is that you get to play inside somebody else’s universe. Rewrite the rules. Or bend them. The story doesn’t have to end when Gemma Leslie gets tired of it. You can stay in this world, this world you love, as long as you want, as long as you keep thinking of new stories—”
“Fanfiction,” Levi said.
“Yes.” Cath was embarrassed by how sincere she sounded, how excited she felt whenever she actually talked about this. She was so used to keeping it a secret—used to assuming people would think she was a freak and a nerd and a pervert.…
Maybe Levi thought all those things. Maybe he just found freaks and perverts amusing.
“Emergency dance party?” he asked.
“Right.” She sat back in the booth again. “Our professor asked us to write a scene with an untrustworthy narrator. I wrote something about Simon and Baz.… She didn’t get it. She thought it was plagiarism.” Cath forced herself to use that word, felt the tar wake up with a twist in her stomach.
“But it was your story,” Levi said.
“Yes.”
“That’s not exactly plagiarism.…” He smiled at her. She needed to come up with more words for Levi’s smiles; he had too many of them. This one was a question. “They were your words, right?”
“Right.”
“I mean, I can see why your professor wouldn’t want you to write a Simon Snow story—the class isn’t called Fanfiction-Writing—but I wouldn’t call it plagiarism. Is it illegal?”
“No. As long as you don’t try to sell it. GTL says she loves fanfiction—I mean, she loves the idea of it. She doesn’t actually read it.”
“Is your professor reporting you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is she reporting you to the Judicial Board?”
“She didn’t even mention that.”
“She would have mentioned it,” he said. “So … okay.” He waved his fork in a straight line between them, holding it like a pencil. “This isn’t a big deal. You just don’t turn in any more fanfiction.”
It still felt like a big deal. Cath’s stomach still hurt.
“She just … she made me feel so stupid and … deviant.”
Levi laughed again. “Do you really expect an elderly English professor to be down with gay Simon Snow fanfiction?”
“She didn’t even mention the gay thing,” Cath said.
“Deviant.” He raised an eyebrow. Levi’s eyebrows were much darker than his hair. Too dark, really. And arched. Like he’d drawn them on.
Cath felt herself smile, even though she was trying to hold her lips and face still. She shook her head, then looked down at her food and took a big bite.
Levi scraped more eggs and hash onto her plate.
Sneaking around the castle, staying out all night, coming home in the morning with leaves in his hair …
Baz was up to something; Simon was sure of it. But he needed proof—Penelope and Agatha weren’t taking his suspicions seriously.
“He’s plotting,” Simon would say.
“He’s always plotting,” Penelope would answer.
“He’s looming,” Simon would say.
“He’s always looming,” Agatha would answer. “He is quite tall.”
“No taller than me.”
“Mmm … a bit.”
It wasn’t just the plotting and the looming; Baz was up to something. Something beyond his chronic gittishness. His pearl grey eyes were bloodshot and shadowed; his black hair had lost its luster. Usually cold and intimidating, lately Baz seemed chilled and cornered.
Simon had followed him around the catacombs last night for three hours, and still didn’t have a clue.
—from chapter 3, Simon Snow and the Five Blades, copyright ? 2008 by Gemma T. Leslie
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