“Abel’s grandma hates my hair,” Wren said when she got back into the car. “¡Qué pena! ¡Qué lástima! ¡Niño!”

“Did you get the tres leches cake?” Cath asked.

“They were out.”

“Qué lástima.”

Normally, Cath would have a present from Abel and one from his family under the tree. The pile of presents this year was especially thin. Mostly envelopes.

Cath gave Wren a pair of Ecuadorian mittens that she’d bought outside of the Union. “It’s alpaca,” she said. “Warmer than wool. And hypoallergenic.”

“Thanks,” Wren said, smoothing out the mittens in her lap.

“So I want my gloves back,” Cath said.

Wren gave Cath two T-shirts she’d bought online. They were cute and would probably be flattering, but this was the first time in ten years that Wren hadn’t given her something to do with Simon Snow. It made Cath feel tearful suddenly, and defensive. “Thanks,” she said, folding the shirts back up. “These are really cool.”

iTunes gift certificates from their dad.

Bookstore gift certificates from their grandma.

Aunt Lynn had sent them underwear and socks, just to be funny.

After their dad opened his gifts (everybody gave him clothes), there was still a small, silver box under the Christmas tree photo. Cath reached for it. There was a fancy tag hanging by a burgundy ribbon—Cather, it said in showy, black script. For a second Cath thought it was from Levi. (“Cather,” she could hear him say, everything about his voice smiling.)

She untied the ribbon and opened the box. There was a necklace inside. An emerald, her birthstone. She looked up at Wren and saw a matching pendant hanging from her neck.

Cath dropped the box and stood up, moving quickly, clumsily toward the stairs.

“Cath,” Wren called after her, “let me explain—”

Cath shook her head and ran the rest of the way to her room.

* * *

Cath tried to picture her mom.

The person who had given her this necklace. Wren said she was remarried now and lived in a big house in the suburbs. She had stepkids, too. Grown ones.

In Cath’s head, Laura was still young.

Too young, everyone always said, to have two big girls. That always made their mom smile.

When they were little and their mom and dad would fight, Wren and Cath worried their parents were going to get divorced and split them up, just like in The Parent Trap. “I’ll go with Dad,” Wren would say. “He needs more help.”

Cath would think about living alone with her dad, spacey and wild, or alone with her mom, chilly and impatient. “No,” she said, “I’ll go with Dad. He likes me more than Mom does.”

“He likes both of us more than Mom does,” Wren argued.

“Those can’t be yours,” people would say, “you’re too young to have such grown-up girls.”

“I feel too young,” their mom would reply.

“Then we’ll both stay with Dad,” Cath said.

“That’s not how divorce works, dummy.”

When their mom left without either of them, in a way it was a relief. If Cath had to choose between everyone, she’d choose Wren.

* * *

Their bedroom door didn’t have a lock, so Cath sat against it. But nobody came up the stairs.

She sat on her hands and cried like a little kid.

Too much crying, she thought. Too many kinds. She was tired of being the one who cried.

“You’re the most powerful magician in a hundred ages.” The Humdrum’s face, Simon’s own boyhood face, looked dull and tired. Nothing glinted in its blue eyes.… “Do you think that much power comes without sacrifice? Did you think you could become you without leaving something, without leaving me, behind?”

TWENTY-ONE

Their dad got up to jog every morning. Cath woke up when she heard his coffeemaker beep. She’d get up and make him breakfast, then fall back to sleep on the couch until Wren woke up. They’d pass on the staircase without a word.

Sometimes Wren went out. Cath never went with her.

Sometimes Wren didn’t come home. Cath never waited up.

Cath had a lot of nights alone with her dad, but she kept putting off talking to him, really talking to him; she didn’t want to be the thing that made him lose his balance. But she was running out of time.… He was supposed to drive them back to school in three days. Wren was even agitating to go back a day early, on Saturday, so they could “settle in.” (Which was code for “go to lots of frat parties.”)

On Thursday night, Cath made huevos rancheros, and her dad washed the dishes after dinner. He was telling her about a new pitch. Gravioli was going so well, his agency was getting a shot at a sister brand, Frankenbeans. Cath sat on a barstool and listened.

“So I was thinking, maybe this time I just let Kelly pitch his terrible ideas first. Cartoon beans with Frankenstein hair. ‘Monstrously delicious,’ whatever. These people always reject the first thing they hear—”

“Dad, I need to talk to you about something.”

He peeked over his shoulder. “I thought you’d already googled all that period and birds-and-bees stuff.”

“Dad…”

He turned around, suddenly concerned. “Are you pregnant? Are you gay? I’d rather you were g*y than pregnant. Unless you’re pregnant. Then we’ll deal. Whatever it is, we’ll deal. Are you pregnant?”

“No,” Cath said.

“Okay…” He leaned back against the sink and began tapping wet fingers against the counter.

“I’m not g*y either.”

“What does that leave?”

“Um … school, I guess.”

“You’re having problems in school? I don’t believe that. Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

“I’m not really having problems.…” Cath said. “I’ve just decided that I’m not going back.”

Her dad looked at her like he was still waiting for her to give a real answer.

“I’m not going back for second semester,” she said.

“Because?”

“Because I don’t want to. Because I don’t like it.”

He wiped his hands on his jeans. “You don’t like it?”

“I don’t belong there.”

He shrugged. “Well, you don’t have to stay there forever.”

“No,” she said. “I mean, UNL is a bad fit for me. I didn’t choose it, Wren did. And it’s fine for Wren, she’s happy, but it’s bad for me. I just … it’s like every day there is still the first day.”

“But Wren is there—”

Cath shook her head. “She doesn’t need me.” Not like you do, Cath just stopped herself from saying.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll live here. Go to school here.”

“At UNO?”

“Yeah.”

“Have you registered?”

Cath hadn’t thought that part through yet. “I will.…”

“You should stick out the year,” he said. “You’ll lose your scholarship.”

“No,” Cath said, “I don’t care about that.”

“Well, I do.”

“That’s not what I meant. I can get loans. I’ll get a job, too.”

“And a car?”

“I guess.…”

Her dad took off his glasses and started cleaning them with his shirt. “You should stick out the year. We’ll look at it again in the spring.”

“No,” she said. “I just…” She rubbed the neck of her T-shirt into her sternum. “I can’t go back there. I hate it. And it’s pointless. And I can do so much more good here.”

He sighed. “I wondered if that’s what this was about.” He put his glasses back on. “Cath, you’re not moving back home to take care of me.”

“That’s not the main reason—but it wouldn’t be a bad thing. You do better when you’re not alone.”

“I agree. And I’ve already talked to your grandmother. It was too much, too soon when you guys both moved out at once. Grandma’s going to check in with me a few times a week. We’re going to eat dinner together. I might even stay with her for a while if things start to look rough again.”

“So you can move back home, but I can’t? I’m only eighteen.”

“Exactly. You’re only eighteen. You’re not going to throw your life away to take care of me.”

“I’m not throwing my life away.” Such as it is, she thought. “I’m trying to think for myself for the first time. I followed Wren to Lincoln, and she doesn’t even want me there. Nobody wants me there.”

“Tell me about it,” he said. “Tell me why you’re so unhappy.”

“It’s just … everything. There are too many people. And I don’t fit in. I don’t know how to be. Nothing that I’m good at is the sort of thing that matters there. Being smart doesn’t matter—and being good with words. And when those things do matter, it’s only because people want something from me. Not because they want me.”

The sympathy in his face was painful. “This doesn’t sound like a decision, Cath. This sounds like giving up.”

“So what? I mean—” Her hands flew up, then fell in her lap. “—so what? It’s not like I get a medal for sticking it out. It’s just school. Who cares where I do it?”

“You think it would be easier if you lived here.”

“Yes.”

“That’s a crappy way to make decisions.”

“Says who? Winston Churchill?”

“What’s wrong with Winston Churchill?” her dad said, sounding mad for the first time since they’d started talking. Good thing she hadn’t said Franklin Roosevelt. Her dad was nuts about the Allied Forces.

“Nothing. Nothing. Just … isn’t giving up allowed sometimes? Isn’t it okay to say, ‘This really hurts, so I’m going to stop trying’?”

“It sets a dangerous precedent.”

“For avoiding pain?”

“For avoiding life.”

Cath rolled her eyes. “Ah. The horse again.’

“You and your sister and the eye-rolling … I always thought you’d grow out of that.” He reached out and took her hand. She started to pull away, but he held tight.

“Cath. Look at me.” She looked up at him reluctantly. His hair was sticking up. And his round, wire-rimmed glasses were crooked on his nose. “There is so much that I’m sorry for, and so much that scares me—”

They both heard the front door open.

Cath waited a second, then pulled her hand away and slipped upstairs.

* * *

“Dad told me,” Wren whispered that night from her bed.

Cath picked up her pillow and left the room. She slept downstairs on the couch. But she didn’t really sleep, because the front door was right there, and she kept imagining someone breaking in.

* * *

Her dad tried to talk to her again the next morning. He was sitting on the couch in his running clothes when she woke up.

Cath wasn’t used to him fighting her like this. Fighting either of them ever, about anything. Even back in junior high, when she and Wren used to stay up too late on school nights, hanging out in the Simon Snow forums—the most their dad would ever say was, “Won’t you guys be tired tomorrow?”

And since they’d come home for break, he hadn’t even mentioned the fact that Wren was staying out all night.

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” Cath said when she woke up and saw him sitting there. She rolled away from him and hugged her pillow.

“Good,” he said. “Don’t talk. Listen. I’ve been thinking about you staying home next semester.…”

“Yeah?” Cath turned her head toward him.

“Yeah.” He found her knee under the blanket and squeezed it. “I know that I’m part of the reason you want to move home. I know that you worry about me, and that I give you lots of reasons to worry about me.…”

She wanted to look away, but his eyes were unshakable sometimes, just like Wren’s.

“Cath, if you’re really worried about me, I’m begging you, go back to school. Because if you drop out because of me, if you lose your scholarship, if you set yourself back—because of me—I won’t be able to live with myself.”

She pushed her face back into the couch.

After a few minutes, the coffeemaker beeped, and she felt him stand up.

When she heard the front door close, she got up to make breakfast.

* * *

She was upstairs, writing, when Wren came up that afternoon to start packing.

Cath didn’t have much to pack or not to pack. All she’d really brought home with her was her computer. For the last few weeks she’d been wearing clothes that she and Wren hadn’t liked well enough to take to college with them.

“You look ridiculous,” Wren said.

“What?”

“That shirt.” It was a Hello Kitty shirt from eighth or ninth grade. Hello Kitty dressed as a superhero. It said SUPER CAT on the back, and Wren had added an H with fabric paint. The shirt was cropped too short to begin with, and it didn’t really fit anymore. Cath pulled it down self-consciously.

“Cath!” her dad shouted from downstairs. “Phone.”

Cath picked up her cell phone and looked at it.

“He must mean the house phone,” Wren said.

“Who calls the house phone?”

“Probably 2005. I think it wants its shirt back.”

“Ha-bloody-ha,” Cath muttered, heading downstairs.

Her dad just shrugged when he handed her the phone.