“What’s this word?” she asked, pointing.

“Retinas.”

She’s standing in a parking lot. And she’s standing under a streetlight. And her hair’s so blond, it’s flashing at you. It’s burning out your retinas one fucking cone at a time. She leans forward and grabs your T-shirt. And she’s standing on tiptoe now. She’s reaching for you. She smells like black tea and American Spirits—and when her mouth hits your ear, you wonder if she remembers your name.

“So…,” Cath said, “we’re doing this in present tense?”

“Second person,” Nick confirmed.

Cath frowned at him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t like love stories?”

Cath could feel herself blushing and tried to stop. Stay cool, Little Red. She hunched over her bag to look for a pen.

It was hard for her to write without typing—and hard to write with Nick watching her like he’d just handed her a hot potato.

“Please don’t tell Mom,” she giggles.

“Which part should I leave out?” you ask her. “The hair? Or the stupid hipster cigarettes?”

She pulls meanly at your T-shirt, and you shove her back like she’s twelve. And she practically is—she’s so young. And you’re so tired. And what is Dave going to think if you walk out on your first date to take care of your stupid, stupidly blond, little sister.

“You suck, Nick,” she says. And she’s reeling. She’s swaying again under the streetlight.

Cath turned the notebook around and pushed it back at Nick.

He poked his tongue in his cheek and smiled.

“So our narrator is gay…,” he said. “And he’s named after me.…”

“I love love stories,” Cath said.

Nick nodded his head a few more times.

And then they both started laughing.

*   *   *

It was almost like writing with Wren—back when she and Wren would sit in front of the computer, pulling the keyboard back and forth and reading out loud as the other person typed.

Cath always wrote most of the dialogue. Wren was better at plot and mood. Sometimes Cath would write all the conversations, and Wren would write behind her, deciding where Baz and Simon were and where they were going. Once Cath had written what she thought was a love scene, and Wren had turned it into a sword fight.

Even after they’d stopped writing together, Cath would still follow Wren around the house, begging for help, whenever she couldn’t get Simon and Baz to do anything but talk.

Nick wasn’t Wren.

He was bossier and more of a showboat. And also, obviously, a boy. Up close, his eyes were bluer, and his eyebrows were practically sentient. He licked his lips when he wrote, tapping his tongue on his front teeth.

To his credit, he got over the gay thing pretty much immediately. Even when Cath gave gay-fictional Nick heavy black eyebrows and periwinkle blue wingtips.

Nonfiction Nick had trouble taking turns; he’d start to take the notebook out of Cath’s hands before she was done writing, and her green pen would pull across the page.

“Wait,” she’d say.

“No, I have an idea—and you’re about to ruin it.”

She tried hard to make her paragraphs sound like Nick’s, but her own style kept leaking through. It was cool when she realized he was imitating her, too.

After a few hours, Cath was yawning, and their story was twice as long as it needed to be. “This is gonna take forever to type up,” she said.

“Don’t type it, then. We’ll turn it in like this.”

Cath looked down at the green-and-blue-smudged pages. “It’s our only copy.”

“So don’t let your dog eat it.” He zipped up a gray hoodie and reached for his ratty denim jacket. “It’s midnight. I have to clock out.”

The book cart next to their table was still heaped with books. “What about these?” Cath asked.

“The morning girl can do it. It’ll remind her that she’s alive.”

Cath carefully tore their story out of Nick’s notebook and tucked it into her backpack, then followed him up the winding staircase. They didn’t see anyone else on their way to the first floor.

It was different being with him now. Different even from a few hours ago. Fun. Cath didn’t feel like her real self was buried under eight layers of fear and diagnosable anxiety. Nick walked right next to her on the stairs, and they talked like they were still passing the notebook between them.

When they got outside, they stopped at the sidewalk.

Cath felt some of her nervousness creeping back. She fumbled with the buttons of her coat.

“All right,” Nick said, putting his arms through his backpack. “See you in class?”

“Yeah,” Cath said. “I’ll try not to lose our novel.”

“Our first novel,” he said, taking the path that led off campus. “Good night.”

“Good night.” She watched him go, all dark hair and blue smudges in the moonlight.…

And then it was just Cath out on the quad. Cath and about a hundred trees that she never noticed during the daytime. The library lights switched off behind her; her shadow disappeared.

Cath sighed and got out her phone—she had two texts from Abel; she ignored them—then dialed her room, hoping her roommate wasn’t asleep.

“Hello?” Reagan answered on the third ring. There was music in the background.

“It’s Cath.”

“Well, hello, Cath, how was your date?”

“It wasn’t—Look, I’m just gonna walk home. I’ll be fast. I’m already walking.”

“Levi left as soon as the phone rang. You may as well wait for him.”

“He doesn’t have to—”

“It’ll be a bigger hassle if he can’t find you.”

“Okay,” Cath said, giving in. “Thanks, I guess.”

Reagan hung up.

Cath stood next to a lamppost, so he’d see her, and tried to look like the huntsman, not the little girl with the basket. Levi showed up long before she expected him to, jogging down the pathway. Even his jogging looked laid-back.

She started walking toward him, thinking she’d save him at least a few steps.

“Catherine,” he said, stopping when they met and turning to walk with her. “In one piece, even.”

“That,” she said, “isn’t even my name.”

“Just Cather, huh?”

“Just Cath.”

“Did you get lost in the library?”

“No.”

“I always get lost in the library,” he said, “no matter how many times I go. In fact, I think I get lost there more, the more that I go. Like it’s getting to know me and revealing new passages.”

“You spend a lot of time in the library?”

“I do, actually.”

“How is that possible when you’re always in my room?”

“Where do you think I sleep?” he asked. And when she looked at him, he was grinning.

Simon curled on his bed like a wounded unicorn foal, holding the torn piece of green velvet to his tear-stained face.

“Are you okay?” Basil asked. You could tell he didn’t want to ask. You could tell he found it quite distasteful to speak to his longtime enemy.

“Leave me alone,” Simon spat, choking on his tears and hating Basil even more than usual. “She was my mother.”

Basil frowned. He narrowed his smoky grey eyes and folded his arms, like he was forcing himself to keep standing there. Like what he really wanted to do was throw another sneezing spell at Simon.

“I know,” Basil said almost angrily. “I know what you’re going through. I lost my mother, too.”

Simon wiped his snotty nose on the sleeve of his jacket and slowly sat up, his eyes as wide and blue as the Eighth Sea. Was Basil lying? That would be just like him, the prat.

—from “Friends for Life—and After,” posted August 2006 by FanFixx.net authors Magicath and Wrenegade

SIX

“Dad? Call me.”

___

“It’s Cath again. Call me.”

___

“Dad, stop ignoring my voice mail. Do you listen to your voice mail? Do you know how? Even if you don’t, I know you can see my number in your missed calls. Call me back, okay?”