Reagan looked up from her bed. She was making flash cards (Reagan liked flash cards), and there was a cigarette hanging from her mouth, unlit. She was trying to quit smoking. “Ask that question again so it makes sense.”
“I-n-c,” Cath said. “I got my grades back, but instead of an A or a B, it says, ‘inc.’”
“Incomplete,” Reagan said. “It means they’re holding your grade.”
“Who is?”
“I don’t know, your professor.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s usually, like, a special thing, like when you get extra time to make something up.”
Cath stared at her grade report. She’d made up her Psychology final the first week back, so she was expecting to see the A there. (Her grade was so high in Psychology, she practically didn’t need to take the final.) But Fiction-Writing was a different story. Without turning in a final project, the best that Cath had expected was a C—and a D was far more likely.
Cath was okay with that, she’d made peace with that D. It was the price she’d decided to pay for last semester. For Nick. And Levi. For plagiarism. It was the price for learning that she didn’t want to write books about decline and desolation in rural America, or about anything else.
Cath was ready to take her D and move on.
Inc.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked Reagan.
“Fuck, Cath. I don’t know. Talk to your professor. You’re giving me lung cancer.”
*
This was Cath’s third time back in Andrews Hall since she got her grades back.
The first two times, she’d walked in one end of the building and walked straight through to the door on the other side.
This time was already better. This time, she’d stopped to use the bathroom.
She’d walked into the building just as four o’clock classes were getting out, a flash flood of girls with cool hair and boys who looked like Nick. Cath ducked into the bathroom, and now she was sitting in a wooden stall, waiting for the coast to clear. Somebody had taken the time to carve most of “Stairway to Heaven” into the stall door; it was a serious amount of carving. English majors.
Cath didn’t have any English classes this semester, and she was thinking about changing her major. Or maybe she’d just change her concentration from Creative Writing to Renaissance Lit; that would be useful in the real world, a head full of sonnets and Christ imagery. If you study something that nobody cares about, does that mean everyone will leave you alone?
She opened the stall door slowly, flushing the toilet for appearances, then ran water in one of the sinks (hot in one faucet, cold in the other) and rinsed her face. She could do this. She just had to find the department office, then ask where Professor Piper’s personal office was. Professor Piper probably wouldn’t even be there.
The hallway was nearly empty now. Cath found the stairs and followed the signs pointing to the main office. Down the hall, around the corner. Maybe if she just walked by the main office, that would be enough progress for the day. She walked slowly, touching each wooden door.
“Cath?”
Even though it was a woman’s voice, Cath’s first panicky thought was Nick.
“Cath!”
She turned toward the voice—and saw Professor Piper in the office across the hall, standing up behind her desk. The professor motioned for Cath to come forward. Cath did.
“I’ve been wondering about you,” Professor Piper said, smiling warmly. “You just disappeared. Come in, come talk to me.”
She motioned for Cath to sit down, so Cath did. (Apparently, Professor Piper could control Cath with simple hand gestures. Like the Dog Whisperer.) The professor came around to the front of her desk and hopped onto it. Her signature move. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”
“I … didn’t go anywhere,” Cath said. She was thinking about going right now. This was too much progress; she hadn’t planned for this eventuality—for actually accomplishing what she came here to do.
“But you never turned in your story,” Professor Piper said. “Did something happen?”
Cath took a deepish breath and tried to sound steady. “Sort of. My dad was in the hospital. But that’s not really why—I’d already decided not to write it.”
The professor looked surprised. She held on to the lip of her desk and leaned forward. “But, Cath, why? I was so eager to see what you’d do.”
“I just…,” Cath started again: “I realized that I’m not cut out for fiction-writing.”
Professor Piper blinked and pulled her head back. “What are you talking about? You’re exactly cut out for it. You’re a Butterick pattern, Cath—this is what you were meant to do.”
It was Cath’s turn to blink. “No. I … I kept trying. To start the story. I … look, I know how you feel about fanfiction, but that’s what I want to write. That’s where my passion is. And I’m really good at it.”
“I’m sure you are,” Professor Piper said. “You’re a natural storyteller. But that doesn’t explain why you didn’t finish your final project.”