“Once I realized that it wasn’t right for me, I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. I just wanted to move on.”
Professor Piper regarded Cath thoughtfully, tapping the edge of the desk. This is what it looks like when a sane person taps her fingers.
“Why do you keep saying that it wasn’t right for you?” the professor asked. “Your work last semester was excellent. It was all right. You’re one of my most promising students.”
“But I don’t want to write my own fiction,” Cath said, as emphatically as she could. “I don’t want to write my own characters or my own worlds—I don’t care about them.” She clenched her fists in her lap. “I care about Simon Snow. And I know he’s not mine, but that doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather pour myself into a world I love and understand than try to make something up out of nothing.”
The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it, Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself.”
Cath hadn’t expected Professor Piper to be happy about her decision, but she hadn’t expected this either. She didn’t think the professor would push back.
“It just feels like nothing to me,” Cath said.
“You’d rather take—or borrow—someone else’s creation?”
“I know Simon and Baz. I know how they think, what they feel. When I’m writing them, I get lost in them completely, and I’m happy. When I’m writing my own stuff, it’s like swimming upstream. Or … falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.”
“Yes,” the professor said, reaching out and grasping the air in front of Cath, like she was catching a fly. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”
Cath shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. “Well, I hate it.”
“Do you hate it? Or are you just afraid.”
Cath sighed and decided to wipe her eyes on her sweater. Another type of adult would hand her a box of Kleenex about now. Professor Piper just kept pushing.
“You got special permission to be in my class. You must have wanted to write. And your work was delightful—didn’t you enjoy it?”
“Nothing I wrote compared to Simon.”
“Good gracious, Cath, are you really comparing yourself to the most successful author of the modern age?”
“Yes,” Cath said. “Because, when I’m writing Gemma T. Leslie’s characters, sometimes, in some ways, I am better than her. I know how crazy that sounds—but I also know that it’s true. I’m not a god. I could never create the World of Mages; but I’m really, really good at manipulating that world. I can do more with her characters than I could ever do with my own. My characters are just … sketches compared to hers.”
“But you can’t do anything with fanfiction. It’s stillborn.”
“I can let people read it. Lots of people do read it.”
“You can’t make a living that way. You can’t make a career.”
“How many people make a career out of writing anyway?” Cath snapped. She felt like everything inside her was snapping. Her nerves. Her temper. Her esophagus. “I’ll write because I love it, the way other people knit or … or scrapbook. And I’ll find some other way to make money.”
Professor Piper leaned back again and folded her arms. “I’m not going to talk to you any more about the fanfiction.”
“Good.”
“But I’m not done talking to you.”
Cath took another deep breath.
“I’m afraid,” Professor Piper said, “afraid that you’re never going to discover what you’re truly capable of. That you won’t get to see—that I won’t get to see—any of the wonder that’s inside of you. You’re right, nothing you turned in last semester compared to Simon Snow and the Mage’s Heir. But there was so much potential. Your characters quiver, Cath, like they’re trying to evolve right off the page.”
Cath rolled her eyes and wiped her nose on her shoulder.
“Can I ask you something?” the professor asked.
“I’m pretty sure you will anyway.”
The older woman smiled. “Did you help Nick Manter on his final project?”
Cath looked up at the corner of the ceiling and quickly licked her bottom lip. She felt a new wave of tears rushing through her head. Damn. She’d had a solid month now of no crying.
She nodded.
“I thought so,” the professor said gently. “I could hear you. In some of the best parts.”
Cath held every muscle still.
“Nick’s my teaching assistant, he was just here, actually, and he’s in my Advanced Fiction-Writing class. His style has … shifted quite a bit.”
Cath looked at the door.
“Cath,” the professor pressed.
“Yes?” Cath still couldn’t look at her.
“What if I made you a deal?”