___

“Dad? I know you don’t want me to worry. But I would worry less if you called me back. And not at three A.M.”

* * *

“Ten days…,” Professor Piper said.

Instead of sitting in her usual spot on her desk, she was striking a pose at the windows. It was snowing outside—it had already snowed so much this year, and it was only early December—and the professor cut a dramatic figure against the icy glass.

“I’d like to believe that you’re all finished with your short stories,” she said, turning her blue eyes on them. “That you’re just tweaking and tinkering now, tugging every last loose thread—”

She walked back toward their desks and smiled at a few of them one by one. Cath felt a thrill when their eyes met.

“—but I’m a writer, too,” the professor said. “I know what it’s like to be distracted. To seek out distractions. To exhaust yourself doing every other little thing rather than face a blank page.” She smiled at one of the boys. “A blank screen …

“So if you haven’t finished—or if you haven’t started—I understand, I do. But I implore you … start now. Lock yourself away from the world. Turn off the Internet, barricade the door. Write as if your life depended on it.

“Write as if your future depended on it.

“Because I can promise you this one small thing.…” She let her eyes rest on another one of her favorites and smiled. “If you’re planning to take my advanced course next semester, you won’t get in unless you get a B in this class. And this short story is half your final grade.

“This class is for writers,” she said. “For people who are willing to set aside their fears and move past distractions.

“I love you all—I do—but if you’re going to waste your time, I’m not going to waste mine.” She stopped at Nick’s desk and smiled at him. “Okay?” she said only to him.

Nick nodded. Cath looked down at her desk.

* * *

She hadn’t washed her sheets, but there wasn’t any Levi left in them.

Cath pushed her face into her pillow as nonchalantly as she could, even though there was no one else in the room to judge her for it.

Her pillowcase smelled like a dirty pillowcase. And a little bit like Tostitos.

Cath closed her eyes and imagined Levi lying next to her, his legs touching and crossing hers. She remembered the way her throat had rasped that night and the way he’d put his arm around her, like he wanted to hold her up, like he wanted to make everything easy for her.

She remembered his flannel shirt. And his needy, pink mouth. And how she hadn’t spent nearly enough time with her fingers in the back of his hair.

And then she was crying and her nose was running. She wiped it on her pillow because, at this point, what did it matter?

Simon ran as fast as he could. Faster. Casting spells on his feet and legs, casting spells on the branches and stones in his path.

He could already be too late—at first he thought he was, when he saw Agatha lying in a heap on the forest floor.… But it was a trembling heap. Agatha may be frightened, but she was still whole.

Baz was kneeling over her and trembling just as hard. His hair hung forward in a way he normally wouldn’t allow, and his pale skin glowed oddly in the moonlight, like the inside of a shell. Simon wondered for a moment why Agatha wasn’t trying to escape. She must be dazed, he thought. Vampires could do that, couldn’t they?

“Go. Away,” Baz hissed.

“Baz…,” Simon said, holding his hand out.

“Don’t look at me.”

Simon avoided Baz’s eyes, but he didn’t look away. “I’m not afraid of you,” Simon said.

“You should be. I could kill you both. Her first, then you, before you’d even realized I was doing it. I’m so fast, Simon.…” His voice broke on the last two words.

“I know.…”

“And so strong…”

“I know.”

“And so thirsty.”

Simon’s voice was almost a whisper. “I know.”

Baz’s shoulders shook. Agatha started to sit up—she must be recovering. Simon looked at her gravely and shook his head. He took another step toward them. He was close now. In Baz’s reach.

“I’m not afraid of you, Baz.”

“Why not?” Baz whined. It was an animal whine. Wounded.

“Because I know you. And I know you wouldn’t hurt me.” Simon held out his hand and gently pushed back the errant lock of black hair. Baz’s head tilted up with the touch, his fangs popped and gleaming. “You’re so strong, Baz.”

Baz reached for him then, clutching Simon around the waist and pressing his face into his stomach.

Agatha slid out from between them and ran toward the fortress. Simon held Baz by the back of his neck and curved his body over him. “I know,” Simon said. “I know everything.”

EIGHTEEN

“Do you just hang out here now?” Nick pushed his library cart to her table.

“Just trying to write,” Cath said, closing her laptop before he started peeking at her screen.

“Working on your final project?” He slipped into the chair beside her and tried to open the computer. She laid her arm on top of it. “Have you settled on a direction yet?” he asked.

“Yep,” Cath said. “Lots of them.”

He frowned for a second, then shook his head. “I’m not worried about you. You can write ten thousand words in your sleep.”

She practically could. She’d written ten thousand words of Carry On in one night before. Her wrists had really hurt the next day.… “What about you?” she asked. “Done?”

“Almost. Well … I have an idea.” He smiled at her. It was one of those smiles that made her think he might be flirting.

Smiling is confusing, she thought. This is why I don’t do it.

“I think I’m going to turn in my anti-love story.” He raised his Muppet eyebrows and stretched his top lip across his teeth.

Cath felt her mouth hanging open and closed it. “The story? Like … the story we’ve been working on?”

“Yeah,” Nick said excitedly, raising his eyebrows high again. “I mean, at first I thought it was too frivolous. A short story is supposed to be about something. But it’s like you always say, it’s about two people falling in love—what could be bigger than that? And we’ve workshopped it enough, I think it’s ready.” He pushed his elbow into hers and tapped his front teeth with the tip of his tongue. He was watching her eyes. “So what do you think? It’s a good idea, right?”

Cath snapped her mouth shut again. “It’s … it’s just that…” She looked down at the table, where the notebook usually sat. “We worked on it together.”

“Cath…,” he said. Like he was disappointed in her. “What are you trying to say?”

“Well, you’re calling it your story.”

“You call it that,” he said, cutting her off. “You’re always saying that you feel more like an editor than a cowriter.”

“I was teasing you.”

“Are you teasing me now? I can’t tell.”

She glanced up at his face. He looked impatient. And let down. Like Cath was letting him down.

“Can we just be honest?” he asked. He didn’t wait for her to answer. “This story was my idea. I started it. I’m the only one who works on it outside the library. I appreciate all of your help—you’re a genius editor, and you’ve got tons of potential—but do you really think it’s your story?”

“No,” Cath said. “Of course not.” She felt her voice shrink into a whine. “But we were writing together. Like Lennon–McCartney—”

“John Lennon and Paul McCartney have been quoted multiple times saying they wrote their songs separately, then showed them to each other. Do you really think John Lennon wrote half of ‘Yesterday’? Do you think Paul McCartney wrote ‘Revolution’? Don’t be naïve.”

Cath clenched her fists in her lap.

“Look,” Nick said, smiling like he was forcing himself to do it. “I really appreciate everything you’ve done. You really get me, as an artist, like nobody else ever has. You’re my best sounding board. And I want us to keep showing each other our stuff. I don’t want to feel like, if I offer you a suggestion, it belongs to me. Or vice versa.”

She shook her head. “That’s not…” She didn’t know what to say, so she pulled her laptop toward her and started wrapping the cord around it. The one Abel had given her. (It really was a good gift.)

“Cath … don’t. You’re freaking me out here. Are you actually mad about this? Do you really think I’m stealing from you?”

She shook her head again. And put her computer in her bag.

“Are you angry?” he asked.

“No,” she whispered. They were still in a library, after all. “I’m just…” Just.

“I thought you’d be happy for me,” he said. “You’re the only one who knows how hard I’ve worked on this. You know how I’ve poured myself into this story.”

“I know,” she said. That part was true. Nick had cared about the story; Cath hadn’t. She’d cared about the writing. About the magic third thing that lived between them when they were working together. She would have met Nick at the library to write obituaries. Or shampoo packaging. “I’m just…,” she said. “I need to work on my story now. It’s almost finals week.”

“Can’t you work here?”

“I don’t want to waterboard you with my typing noises,” she murmured.

“Do you want to get together one more time before we turn in our stories, just to proof them?”

“Sure,” she said, not meaning it.

Cath waited until she got to the stairs to start running, and ran all the way home by herself through the trees and the darkness.

* * *

On Wednesday afternoon, after her Biology final, Cath sat in front of her computer. She wasn’t going to leave the room or get on the Internet until she finished her Fiction-Writing project.

She wasn’t going to stop typing until she had a first draft. Even if that meant typing things like, I don’t know what the f**k I’m typing right now, blah, blah, blah.

She still hadn’t settled on a plot or characters.…

She spent an hour writing a conversation between a man and his wife. And then she realized there was no rising or falling action; the man and his wife were just arguing about Brussels sprouts, and the Brussels sprouts weren’t a metaphor for anything deeper.

Then she started a story about a couple’s breakup, from the perspective of their dog.

And then she started a story where a dog intentionally destroys a marriage. And then she stopped because she wasn’t all that interested in dogs. Or married people.

She thought about typing up everything she remembered writing from Nick’s anti-love story. That would get Professor Piper’s attention.

She thought about taking one of her Simon/Baz stories and just changing the names. (She probably could have gotten away with that if Professor Piper wasn’t already on to her.)

Maybe she could take a Simon/Baz story and change all the material details. Simon is a lawyer, and Baz is a spy. Simon is a cop, and Baz owns a bakery. Simon likes Brussels sprouts, and Baz is a dog.

Cath wanted, desperately, to escape to the Internet. Just to check her e-mail or something. But she wouldn’t let herself open a browser window, not even to check whether the b in “Brussels” should be capitalized.

Instead, she shoved away from her desk and went to the bathroom. She walked slowly down the hall, trolling for distractions, but there was no one milling around trying to be friendly. Cath went back to her room and lay on her bed. She’d stayed up too late the night before studying for Biology, and it was easy to close her eyes.

It was almost a nice change of pace to be stewing about Nick instead of Levi. Had she actually liked him? (Nick, that is. She’d definitely liked Levi.) Or had she just liked everything he represented? Smart, talented, handsome. World War I handsome.

Now just thinking about Nick made her feel so ashamed. She’d been taken. Grifted. Had he planned to steal the story all along? Or was he just desperate? Like Cath was desperate.

Nick and his stupid story.

It really was his story. It was nothing Cath ever would have written on her own. Stupid, quirky girl character. Stupid, pretentious boy character. No dragons.

It was Nick’s story. He’d just tricked her into writing it. He was an unreliable narrator, if ever she’d met one.

Cath wanted to work on her own story now. Not the one for class. Carry On.

Carry On was Cath’s story. Thousands of people were reading it. Thousands of people wanted her to finish.

This story she was supposed to be writing for class? Only one person cared if she finished it. And that one person wasn’t even Cath.

* * *

She fell asleep with her shoes on, lying on her stomach.

When she woke up, it was dark, and she hated that. It was disorienting to fall asleep in the light and wake up in the dark, instead of the other way around. Her head ached, and there was a circle of drool on her pillow. That only happened when she slept during the day.

Cath sat up, miserably, and realized her phone was ringing. She didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“Cather?” It was a man’s voice. Gentle.

“Yes, who is this?”

“Hey, Cather, it’s Kelly. Kelly from your dad’s work.”

Kelly was her dad’s creative director. The panda bear guy. “Fucking Kelly,” her dad called him. As in, “Fucking Kelly is making us start over on the Kilpatrick’s campaign.” Or, “And then f**king Kelly got it in his head that the robot should be dancing.”