Then one of the heavies on the biggest fansite, Fic-sation, called Carry On “the eighth-year fic”—and Cath’s FanFixx page got thirty-five thousand hits in one day.
She still tried to keep up with comments and questions as much she could. But it wasn’t the same anymore.
She wasn’t just writing for Wren and the friends they’d made in the old Snowflakes forums. It wasn’t just a bunch of girls trading birthday fics and cheer-up fics and cracked-out “I wrote this to make you laugh” stories.…
Cath had an audience now, a following. All these people she didn’t know, who expected things from her and questioned her decisions. Sometimes they even turned against her. They’d trash her on other fansites, saying that Cath used to be good, but she’d lost the magic—that her Baz was too canon or not canon enough, that her Simon was a prude, that she overwrote Penelope.…
“You don’t owe them anything,” Wren would say, crawling onto Cath’s bed at three in the morning and pulling Cath’s laptop away. “Go to sleep.”
“I will. I’m just … I want to finish this scene. I think Baz is finally going to tell Simon he loves him.”
“He’ll still love him tomorrow.”
“It’s a big chapter.”
“It’s always a big chapter.”
“It’s different this time.” Cath had been saying this for the last year. “It’s the end.”
Wren was right: Cath had written this story, Baz and Simon in love, dozens of times before. She’d written this scene, this line—“Snow … Simon, I love you”—fifty different ways.
But Carry On was different.
It was the longest fic she’d written so far; it was already longer than any of Gemma T. Leslie’s books, and Cath was only two-thirds of the way through.
Carry On was written as if it were the eighth Simon Snow book, as if it were Cath’s job to wrap up all the loose ends, to make sure that Simon ascended to Mage, to redeem Baz (something GTL would never do), to make both boys forget about Agatha … To write all the good-bye scenes and graduation scenes and last-minute revelations … And to stage the final battle between Simon and the Insidious Humdrum.
Everyone in fandom was writing eighth-year fics right now. Everyone wanted to take a crack at the big ending before the last Simon Snow book was released in May.
But for thousands of people, Carry On was already it.
People were always telling Cath that they couldn’t look at canon the same way after reading her stuff. (“Why does Gemma hate Baz?”)
Somebody had even started selling T-shirts on Etsy that said KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON with a photo of Baz and Simon glaring at each other. Wren bought Cath one for her eighteenth birthday.
Cath tried not to let it all go to her head. These characters belong to Gemma T. Leslie, she wrote at the beginning of every new chapter.
“You belong to Gemma,” she’d say to the Baz poster over her bed at home. “I’m just borrowing you.”
“You didn’t borrow Baz,” Wren would say. “You kidnapped him and raised him as your own.”
If Cath stayed up too late writing, too many nights in a row—if she was obsessing over the comments or the criticism—Wren would climb into Cath’s bed and steal her laptop, holding it like a teddy bear while she slept.
On nights like that, Cath could always go downstairs and keep writing on her dad’s computer if she really wanted to—but she didn’t like to cross Wren. They listened to each other when they wouldn’t listen to anyone else.
Hey, guys, Cath started typing now into her FanFixx journal. She wished Wren were here, to read this before she posted it.
So I guess it’s time for me to admit that college is hard—College is hard! Or, at least, time consuming!—and I’m probably not going to be updating Carry On as much as I used to, as much as I’d like to.…
But I’m not disappearing, I promise. And I’m not giving it up. I already know how this all ends, and I’m not going to rest ’til I get there.
* * *
Nick turned around in his desk as soon as class was dismissed. “You’ll be my partner, right?”
“Right,” Cath said, noticing a girl in the next aisle glance at them disappointedly. Probably because she wanted to work with Nick.
They were each supposed to find a partner and write a story together outside of class, trading paragraphs back and forth. The point of the exercise, Professor Piper said, was to make them extra-conscious of plot and voice—and to lead their brains down pathways they’d never find on their own.
Nick wanted to meet on campus at Love Library. (That was the actual name; thank you for your donation, Mayor Don Lathrop Love.) Nick worked there a few nights a week, shelving books down in the stacks.
Reagan looked suspicious when Cath started packing up her laptop after dinner. “You’re leaving the dorm after dark? Do you have a date?” She said it like it was a joke. The idea of Cath on a date.
“I’m meeting someone to study.”
“Don’t walk home by yourself if it’s late,” Levi said. He and Reagan had class notes spread all over Reagan’s side of the room.
“I walk home by myself all the time,” Reagan snapped at him.
“That’s different.” Levi smiled at her warmly. “You don’t rock that Little Red Riding Hood vibe. You’re scary.”
Reagan grinned like the Big Bad Wolf.
“I don’t think rapists actually care about self-confidence,” Cath said.
“You don’t?” Levi looked over at her seriously. “I think they’d go for easy prey. The young and the lame.”
Reagan snorted. Cath hung her scarf on her neck. “I’m not lame…,” she mumbled.
Levi heaved himself up off Reagan’s bed and slid into a heavy, green canvas jacket. “Come on,” he said.
“Why?”
“I’m walking you to the library.”
“You don’t have to,” Cath argued.
“I haven’t moved in two hours. I don’t mind.”
“No, really…”
“Just go, Cath,” Reagan said. “It’ll take five minutes, and if you get raped now, it’ll be our fault. I haven’t got time for the pain.”
“You coming?” Levi asked Reagan.
“Fuck no. It’s cold out.”
It was cold out. Cath walked as quickly as she could. But Levi, long as his legs were, never broke an amble.
He was trying to talk to Cath about buffalo. As far as she could tell, Levi had a whole class that was just about buffalo. He seemed like he’d major in buffalo if that were an option. Maybe it was an option.…
This school was constantly reminding Cath how rural Nebraska was—something she’d never given any thought to before, growing up in Omaha, the state’s only real city. Cath had driven through Nebraska a few times on the way to Colorado—she’d seen the grass and the cornfields—but she’d never thought much past the view. She’d never thought about the people who lived there.
Levi and Reagan were from some town called Arnold, which Reagan said smelled and looked “like manure.”
“God’s country,” Levi called it. “All the gods. Brahma and Odin would love it there.”
Levi was still talking about buffalo even though they were already at the library. Cath climbed the first stone step, hopping up and down to stay warm. Standing on the step, she was practically as tall as him.
“Do you see what I mean?” he asked.
She nodded. “Cows bad. Buffalo good.”
“Cows good,” he said. “Bison better.” Then he gave her a lazy, lopsided grin. “This is all really important, you know—that’s why I’m telling you.”
“Vital,” she said. “Ecosystems. Water tables. Shrews going extinct.”
“Call me when you’re done, Little Red.”
No, Cath thought, I don’t even know your number.
Levi was already walking away. “I’ll be in your room,” he said over his shoulder. “Call me there.”
* * *
The library had six levels aboveground and two levels below.
The sublevels, where the stacks were, were shaped strangely and accessible only from certain staircases; it almost felt like the stacks were tucked under other buildings around campus.
Nick worked in the north stacks in a long white room—it was practically a missile silo with bookshelves. There was a constant hum no matter where you were standing, and even though Cath couldn’t see any vents, parts of the room had their own wind. At the table where they were sitting, Nick had to set a pen on his open notebook to keep the pages from riffling.
Nick wrote in longhand.
Cath was trying to convince him that they’d be better off taking turns on her laptop.
“But then we won’t see ourselves switching,” he said. “We won’t see the two different hands at work.”
“I can’t think on paper,” she said.
“Perfect,” Nick said. “This exercise is about stepping outside of yourself.”
“Okay,” she sighed. There was no use arguing anymore—he’d already pushed her computer away.
“Okay.” Nick picked up his pen and pulled the cap off with his teeth. “I’ll start.”
“Wait,” Cath said. “Let’s talk about what kind of story we’re writing.”
“You’ll see.”
“That’s not fair.” She leaned forward, looking at the blank sheet of paper. “I don’t want to write about, like, dead bodies or … nak*d bodies.”
“So what I’m hearing is, no bodies.”
Nick wrote in a scrawling half cursive. He was left-handed, so he smeared blue ink across the paper as he went. You need a felt tip, Cath thought, trying to read his handwriting upside down from across the table. When he handed her the notebook, she could hardly read it, even right side up.
“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 f**king 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 g*y 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.”