“There are already four light fixtures in here,” Reagan said. “What are we supposed to do with a lamp?”
The lamp was black and shaped like the Eiffel Tower.
“Just leave it in the hall,” Cath said. “Maybe somebody’ll take it.”
“She’ll just ask where it is the next time she’s here.… She’s insane.” Reagan shoved the lamp into the back of her closet and kicked it. “What brand of crazy is your mom?”
Cath’s gut pitched reliably. “I don’t know. She left when I was eight.”
“Fuck,” Reagan said, “that is crazy. Are you hungry?”
“Yeah,” Cath said.
“They’re doing a back-to-school luau downstairs. They roast a pig on a spit. It’s disgusting.”
Cath grabbed her ID and followed Reagan to the dining hall.
*
In the end, Cath hadn’t decided to come back.
She’d just decided to pack up her laptop.
And then she’d decided to ride along with Wren and her dad to Lincoln.
And then, after they dropped Wren off outside Schramm Hall, her dad asked if Cath wanted to go to her own dorm, and Cath decided that she did. If nothing else, she could get her stuff.
And then they just sat there in the fire lane, and Cath felt wave after wave of anxiety pound against her. If she stayed, she’d see Levi again. She’d have to deal with the Psych final she’d missed. She’d have to register for classes, and who even knew what would still be available. And she’d see Levi again. And everything about that that would feel good—his smiling face, his long lines—would also feel like getting shot in the stomach.
Cath didn’t really decide to get out of the car.
She just looked over at her dad in the driver’s seat, tapping his two middle fingers on the steering wheel; and as scared as she was to leave him, Cath couldn’t bear to think about letting him down.
“One more semester,” she said. She was crying; that’s how bad it felt to say this.
His chin jerked up. “Yeah?”
“I’ll try.”
“Me, too,” he said.
“Promise?”
“Yeah. Cath, yeah. I promise.… Do you want me to come up with you?”
“No. That’ll just make it worse.”
He laughed.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just flashed back to your first day of kindergarten. You cried. And your mom cried. It felt like we were never gonna see you guys again.”
“Where was Wren?”
“God, I don’t know, probably anointing her first boyfriend.”
“Mom cried?”
Her dad looked sad again and smiled ruefully. “Yeah…”
“I really hate her,” Cath said, shaking her head, trying to imagine what kind of mother cried on the first day of kindergarten, then walked out in the middle of third grade.
Her dad nodded. “Yeah…”
“Answer your phone,” Cath said.
“I will.”
*
“Somebody else got Ugg boots for Christmas,” Reagan said, watching the dinner line empty into the dining room. “If we had whiskey, this is when we’d take a shot.”
“I find Ugg boots really comforting,” Cath said.
“Why? Because they’re warm?”
“No. Because they remind me that we live in a place where you can still get away with, even get excited about, Ugg boots. In fashionable places, you have to pretend that you’re over them, or that you’ve always hated them. But in Nebraska, you can still be happy about new Ugg boots. That’s nice. There’s no end of the innocence.”
“You’re such a weirdo…,” Reagan said. “I kinda missed you.”
“I just don’t want to,” Simon said.
“Don’t want to what?” Baz asked. He was sitting on his desk, eating an apple. He left the apple in his teeth and started tying his green and purple school tie. Simon still had to use a mirror for that. Even after seven years.
“Anything,” Simon said, pressing his head back into his pillow. “I don’t want to do anything. I don’t even want to start this day because then I’ll just be expected to finish it.”
Baz finished his half-Windsor and took a bite out of the apple. “Now, now, Snow, that doesn’t sound like ‘the most powerful magician in a hundred ages’ talking.”
“That’s such crap,” Simon said. “Who even started calling me that?”
“Probably the Mage. He won’t shut up about you. ‘The one who was prophesied,’ ‘the hero we’ve been waiting for,’ et cetera.”
“I don’t want to be a hero.”
“Liar.” Baz’s eyes were cool grey and serious.
“Today,” Simon said, chastened. “I don’t want to be a hero today.”
Baz looked at his apple core, then tossed it onto Simon’s desk. “Are you trying to talk me into skipping Politickal Science?”
“Yes.”
“Done,” Baz said. “Now, get up.”
Simon grinned and leapt out of bed.
—from Carry On, Simon, posted January 2012 by FanFixx.net author Magicath
TWENTY-THREE
“What does ‘inc’ mean?” Cath asked.