“I don’t want to talk anymore,” Cath said when she woke up and saw him sitting there. She rolled away from him and hugged her pillow.
“Good,” he said. “Don’t talk. Listen. I’ve been thinking about you staying home next semester.…”
“Yeah?” Cath turned her head toward him.
“Yeah.” He found her knee under the blanket and squeezed it. “I know that I’m part of the reason you want to move home. I know that you worry about me, and that I give you lots of reasons to worry about me.…”
She wanted to look away, but his eyes were unshakable sometimes, just like Wren’s.
“Cath, if you’re really worried about me, I’m begging you, go back to school. Because if you drop out because of me, if you lose your scholarship, if you set yourself back—because of me—I won’t be able to live with myself.”
She pushed her face back into the couch.
After a few minutes, the coffeemaker beeped, and she felt him stand up.
When she heard the front door close, she got up to make breakfast.
*
She was upstairs, writing, when Wren came up that afternoon to start packing.
Cath didn’t have much to pack or not to pack. All she’d really brought home with her was her computer. For the last few weeks she’d been wearing clothes that she and Wren hadn’t liked well enough to take to college with them.
“You look ridiculous,” Wren said.
“What?”
“That shirt.” It was a Hello Kitty shirt from eighth or ninth grade. Hello Kitty dressed as a superhero. It said SUPER CAT on the back, and Wren had added an H with fabric paint. The shirt was cropped too short to begin with, and it didn’t really fit anymore. Cath pulled it down self-consciously.
“Cath!” her dad shouted from downstairs. “Phone.”
Cath picked up her cell phone and looked at it.
“He must mean the house phone,” Wren said.
“Who calls the house phone?”
“Probably 2005. I think it wants its shirt back.”
“Ha-bloody-ha,” Cath muttered, heading downstairs.
Her dad just shrugged when he handed her the phone.
“Hello?” Cath said.
“Do we want a couch?” someone asked.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Reagan. Who else would it be? Who else would need to get your permission before they brought home a couch?”
“How’d you get this number?”
“It’s on our housing paperwork. I don’t know why I don’t have your cell, I guess I usually don’t have to look very far to find you.”
“I think you’re the first person to call our house phone in years. I didn’t even remember where it was.”
“That’s fascinating, Cath. Do we want a couch?”
“Why would we want a couch?”
“I don’t know. Because my mom is insisting that we need one.”
“Who would sit on it?”
“Exactly. It might have been useful last semester to keep Levi from shedding all over our beds, but that’s not even an issue anymore. And if we have a couch, we’ll literally have to climb over it to get to the door. She’s saying no, Mom.”
“Why isn’t Levi an issue anymore?”
“Because. It’s your room. It’s stupid for you to be hiding in the library all the time. And he and I only have one class together next semester anyway.”
“It doesn’t matter—,” Cath said.
Reagan cut her off: “Don’t be stupid. It does matter. I feel really shitty about what happened. I mean, it’s not my fault you kissed him and that he kissed that idiot blonde, but I shouldn’t have encouraged you. It won’t happen again, ever, with anyone. I’m fucking done with encouragement.”
“It’s okay,” Cath said.
“I know that it’s okay. I’m just saying, that’s the way it’s gonna be. So no to the couch, right? My mom is standing right here, and I don’t think she’ll leave me alone until she hears you say no.”
“No,” Cath said. Then raised her voice: “No to the couch.”
“Fuck, Cath, my eardrum … Mom, you’re pushing me to swear with this stupid furniture.… All right, I’ll see you tomorrow. I’ll probably have an ugly lamp with me and maybe a rug. She’s pathological.”
Cath’s dad was standing in the kitchen watching her. Her dad, who actually was pathological.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“My roommate.”
“She sounds like Kathleen Turner.”
“Yeah. She’s something.” Cath pulled her shirt down and turned away.
“Taco truck?” he asked. “For dinner?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you change—you can ride with me.”
“Sure.”
SPRING SEMESTER, 2012
Fried tomatoes at breakfast. Every lump in his bed. Being able to do magic without worrying whether anyone was watching. Agatha, of course. And Penelope. Getting to see the Mage—not often, but still. Simon’s uniform. His school tie. The football pitch, even when it was muddy. Fencing. Raisin scones every Sunday with real clotted cream …
What didn’t Simon miss about Watford?
—from chapter 1, Simon Snow and the Selkies Four, copyright ? 2007 by Gemma T. Leslie
TWENTY-TWO