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  She wondered whether there was any blood left in his arm.

  She wondered what happened when they got to the end of the story.

  She kept reading.

  There were too many boys in this book. Too many arms and legs and flushed faces.

  She’d expected to laugh when she finally got to the line “Stay gold, Ponyboy,” but she didn’t, because it meant that Johnny was dead, and she thought that maybe Levi was crying. Maybe Cath was crying, too. Her eyes were tired. She was tired.

  * * *

  “‘When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.…’”

  Cath closed the book and let it fall on Levi’s chest, not sure what happened next. Not sure she was awake, all things considered.

  The moment it fell, he pulled her into him. Onto him. With both arms. Her chest pressed against his, and the paperback slid between their stomachs.

  Cath’s eyes were half closed, and so were Levi’s—and his lips only looked small from afar, she realized, because of their doll-like pucker. They were perfectly big, really, now that she had a good look at them. Perfectly something.

  He nudged his nose against hers, and their mouths fell sleepily together, already soft and open.

  When Cath’s eyes closed, her eyelids stuck. She wanted to open them. She wanted to get a better look at Levi’s too-dark eyebrows, she wanted to admire his crazy, vampire hairline—she had a feeling this was never going to happen again and that it might even ruin what was left of her life, so she wanted to open her eyes and bear some witness.

  But she was so tired.

  And his mouth was so soft.

  And nobody had ever kissed Cath like this before. Only Abel had kissed her before, and that was like getting pushed squarely on the mouth and pushing back.

  Levi’s kisses were all taking. Like he was drawing something out of her with soft little jabs of his chin.

  She brought her fingers up to his hair, and she couldn’t open her eyes.

  Eventually, she couldn’t stay awake.

  “I’m sorry, Penelope.”

  “Don’t waste my time with sorries, Simon. If we stop to apologize and forgive each other every time we step on each other’s toes, we’ll never have time to be friends.”

  —from chapter 4, Simon Snow and the Second Serpent, copyright © 2003 by Gemma T. Leslie

  SIXTEEN

  Cath didn’t wake up when the door swung open.

  But she jumped when it slammed closed. That’s when she felt Levi sprawled out beneath her, the warm scrape of his chin against her forehead. Then she woke up.

  Reagan was standing at the end of Cath’s bed, staring at them. She was still wearing last night’s jeans, and her silvery blue eyeshadow had drifted onto her cheeks.

  Cath sat up. And Levi sat up. Groggily. And Cath felt her stomach barreling up into her throat.

  Levi reached for Cath’s phone and looked at it. “Shit,” he said. “I’m two hours late for work.” He was up then and putting on his coat. “Fell asleep reading,” he said, half to Reagan, half to the floor.

  “Reading,” Reagan said, looking at Cath.

  “Later,” Levi said, more to the floor than to either of them.

  And then he was gone. And Reagan was still standing at the end of Cath’s bed.

  Cath’s eyes were sticky and sore, and suddenly full of tears. “I’m so sorry,” she said, feeling it. Feeling it in her stomach and in every sore muscle between her shoulders. “Oh my God.”

  “Don’t,” Reagan said. She was obviously furious.

  “I … I’m just so sorry.”

  “Don’t. Do not apologize.”

  Cath crossed her legs and hunched over, holding her face. “But I knew he was your boyfriend.” Cath was crying now. Even though it would probably just make Reagan more angry.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” Reagan said, very nearly shouting. “Not anymore. Not … for a long time, actually. So just, don’t.” Reagan inhaled loudly, then let it out. “I just didn’t expect this to happen,” she said. “And, if it did happen, I didn’t expect it to bother me. I just … it’s Levi. And Levi always likes me best.”

  He’s not her boyfriend? “He still likes you best,” Cath said, trying not to whimper.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Cather.” Reagan’s voice was serrated. “I mean, I know that you are. About this. But try not to be an idiot right this moment.”

  “I’m sorry…,” Cath said, trying and failing to look up at her roommate. “I still don’t know why I did it. I swear I’m not that kind of girl.”

  Reagan finally turned away. She dropped her bag on the bed and grabbed her towel. “What kind of girl is that, Cath? The girl kind?… I’m gonna take a shower. When I come back, I’ll be over this.”

  * * *

  And when she came back, she was.

  Cath had curled up on her bed and let herself cry like she hadn’t all Thanksgiving weekend. She found The Outsiders wedged between the bed and the wall, and threw it on the floor.

  Reagan saw the book when she came back to the room. She was wearing yoga pants and a tight gray hoodie, and square brown glasses instead of contacts.

  “Oh, fuck,” she said, picking up the book. “I was supposed to help him study.” She looked over at Cath. “Were you actually just reading?”

  “Not just,” Cath said, her voice a hiccupy wheeze.

  “Stop crying,” Reagan said. “I mean it.”

  Cath closed her eyes and rolled toward the wall.

  Reagan sat at the end of her own bed. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said solemnly. “And I knew he liked you—he was here constantly. I just didn’t know that you liked him back.”

  “I thought he was here constantly because he was your boyfriend,” Cath said. “I didn’t want to like him back. I tried to be mean to him.”

  “I thought you were just mean,” Reagan said. “I liked that about you.”

  Cath laughed and rubbed her eyes for the five hundredth time in twelve hours. She felt like she had pink eye.

  “I’m over it,” Reagan said. “I was just surprised.”

  “You can’t be over it,” Cath said, sitting up and leaning against the wall. “Even if I didn’t kiss your boyfriend, I thought I was kissing your boyfriend. That’s how I was going to repay you for all the nice things you’ve done for me.”

  “Wow…,” Reagan said, “when you put it that way, it is pretty fucked up.”

  Cath nodded miserably.

  “So why’d you do it?”

  Cath thought of Levi’s warmth against her arm last night. And his ten thousand smiles. And his forty-acre forehead.

  She closed her eyes, then pressed the heels of her hands into them. “I just really, really wanted to.”

  Reagan sighed. “Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal. I’m hungry, and I have to finish reading The Outsiders. Levi likes you, you like him—I’m over it. It could get weird around here real fast if you start dating my high school boyfriend, but there’s no turning back, you know?”

  Cath didn’t answer. Reagan kept talking.

  “If he were still my boyfriend, we’d have to throw down. But he’s not. So let’s go have lunch, okay?”

  Cath looked up at Reagan. And nodded her head.

  * * *

  Cath had already missed her morning classes. Including Fiction-Writing. She thought about Nick, and right at that moment it was like thinking about almost anybody.

  Reagan was eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. “Okay,” she said, stabbing her spoon at Cath, “now what?”

  “Now what, what?” Cath said, her mouth full of grilled cheese.

  “Now what with Levi?”

  Cath swallowed. “Nothing. I don’t know. Do I have to know what?”

  “Do you want my help with this?”

  Cath looked at Reagan. Even without her makeup and hair, the girl was terrifying. There was just no fear in her. No he
sitation. Talking to Reagan was like standing in front of an oncoming train.

  “I don’t know what this is,” Cath said. She clenched her fists in her lap and forced herself to keep talking. “I feel like … what happened last night was just an aberration. Like it could only have happened in the middle of the night, when he and I were both really tired. Because if it had been daylight, we would have seen how inappropriate it was—”

  “I already told you,” Reagan said, “he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “It’s not just that.” Cath turned her face toward the wall of windows, then back at Reagan, earnestly. “It was one thing when I had a crush on him and he was totally unattainable. But I don’t think I could actually be with someone like Levi. It would be like interspecies dating.”

  Reagan let her spoon drop sloppily into her cereal. “What’s wrong with Levi?”

  “Nothing,” Cath said. “He’s just … not like me.”

  “You mean, smart?”

  “Levi’s really smart,” Cath said defensively.

  “I know,” Reagan said, just as defensively.

  “He’s different,” Cath said. “He’s older. He smokes. And he drinks. And he’s probably had sex. I mean, he looks like he has.”

  Reagan raised her eyebrows like Cath was talking crazy. And Cath thought—not for the first time, but for the first time since last night—that Levi had probably had sex with Reagan.

  “And he likes to be outside,” Cath said, just to change the subject. “And he likes animals. We don’t have anything in common.”

  “You’re making him sound like he’s some rowdy mountain man who, like, smokes cigars and has sex with prostitutes.”

  Cath laughed, despite herself. “Like a dangerous French fur trapper.”

  “He’s just a guy,” Reagan said. “Of course he’s different from you. You’re never going to find a guy who’s exactly like you—first of all, because that guy never leaves his dorm room.…”

  “Guys like Levi don’t date girls like me.”

  “Again—the girl kind?”

  “Guys like Levi date girls like you.”

  “And what does that mean?” Reagan asked, tilting her head.

  “Normal,” Cath said. “Pretty.”

  Reagan rolled her eyes.

  “No,” Cath said, “seriously. Look at you. You’ve got your shit together, you’re not scared of anything. I’m scared of everything. And I’m crazy. Like maybe you think I’m a little crazy, but I only ever let people see the tip of my crazy iceberg. Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and socially inept, I’m a complete disaster.”

  Reagan rolled her eyes again. Cath made a mental note to stop rolling her eyes at people.

  “What would we do together?” Cath asked. “He’d want to go to the bar, and I’d want to stay home and write fanfiction.”

  “I’m not going to talk you into this,” Reagan said, “especially if you’re going to be stupid. But I will say this: You’re being stupid. He already likes you. He even likes your creepy fanfiction, he won’t stop talking about it. Levi’s just a guy. A really, really good—maybe even the best—guy, and nobody’s saying you have to marry him. So stop making everything so hard, Cath. You kissed him, right? The only question is, do you want to kiss him again?”

  Cath clenched her fists until her fingernails bit into her palms.

  Reagan started stacking the empty dishes on her tray.

  “Why did you break up?” Cath blurted.

  “I kept cheating on him,” Reagan said flatly. “I’m a pretty good friend, but I’m a shitty girlfriend.”

  Cath picked up her tray and followed Reagan to the trash.

  * * *

  She didn’t see Levi that night. He worked Wednesday nights. That’s when Cath realized that she knew Levi’s work schedule.

  But he texted her about a party Thursday at his house. “party? thursday? my house?”

  Cath didn’t text him back—she tried to. She kept starting messages and deleting them. She almost sent back just a smiley-face emoticon.

  Reagan got home from work late that night and went straight to bed. Cath was at her desk, writing. “Levi killed our Outsiders quiz,” Reagan said, stifling a yawn.

  Cath smiled down at her laptop. “Did you talk about me?”

  “No. I didn’t think you’d want me to. I told you, I’m a pretty good friend.”

  “Yeah, but you’re more Levi’s friend than mine.”

  “Bros before hos,” Reagan said.

  Before she left the room the next morning, Reagan asked Cath if she wanted to go to Levi’s party.

  “I don’t think so,” Cath said. “I have class Friday morning at eight thirty.”

  “Who registers for a class that meets Friday morning at eight thirty?”

  Cath shrugged.

  She didn’t want to go to Levi’s party. Even though she liked him, she didn’t like parties. And she didn’t want the first time she saw him after what had happened to be at a party. With party people. With any people.

  * * *

  Cath was pretty sure she was the only person in Pound Hall tonight. She tried to tell herself that it was kind of cool to have a twelve-story building to herself. Like being trapped in the library overnight.

  This is why I can’t be with Levi. Because I’m the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight—and Levi can’t even read.

  Cath immediately felt bad for thinking that. Levi could read. (Sort of.)

  She’d always thought that either people could read or they couldn’t. Not this in-between thing that Levi had, where his brain could catch the words but couldn’t hold on to them. Like reading was one of those rip-off claw games they had at the bowling alley.

  But Levi clearly wasn’t dumb. He remembered everything. He could quote extensively from the Simon Snow movies, and he knew everything there was to know about bison and piping plovers.… And why was she even arguing this point with herself?

  It’s not like she was going to send Abel Levi’s ACT scores.

  She should have texted him back. (Levi, not Abel.)

  But that would have been engaging in this situation. Like moving a chess piece. Or kicking off from the ground on a teeter-totter. Better to leave Levi up in the air for a day or two than to end up stuck there by herself.…

  The fact that she was thinking about whatever this was in terms of playground equipment showed that she wasn’t ready for it. For him. Levi was an adult. He had a truck. And facial hair. And he’d slept with Reagan; she’d practically admitted it.

  Cath didn’t want to look at a guy and picture the people he’d slept with.…

  Which had never been an issue with Abel. Nothing was ever an issue with Abel. Because, she could hear Wren screaming, you didn’t like him!

  Cath liked Levi. A lot. She liked looking at him. She liked listening to him—though sometimes she hated listening to him talk to other people. She hated the way he passed out smiles to everyone he met like it didn’t cost him anything, like he’d never run out. He made everything look so easy.…

  Even standing. You didn’t realize how much work everyone else put into holding themselves upright until you saw Levi leaning against a wall. He looked like he was leaning on something even when he wasn’t. He made standing look like vertical lying down.

  Thinking about Levi’s lazy hips and loose shoulders just dragged Cath’s memory back to her bed.

  She’d spent the night with a boy. Slept with him. And never mind that that’s all they’d done, because it was still a huge deal. She wished she could talk to Wren about this.…

  Fuck Wren.

  No … Damn her. Never mind her. All Wren did lately was complicate Cath’s world.

  Cath had slept with a boy.

  With a guy.

  And it was awesome. Warm. And tangly. What would have happened if they’d woken up any other way? Without Reagan barging in. Would Levi have kissed her again? Or would he still have rushed off with not
hing more than a “later”?

  Later …

  Cath stared at her laptop. She’d been working on the same paragraph for two hours. It was a love scene (a pretty mild one), and she kept losing track of where Baz and Simon’s hands were supposed to be. It was confusing sometimes with all the hes and the hims, and she’d been staring at this paragraph for so long, she was starting to feel like she’d written every sentence before. Maybe she had.

  She shut the laptop and stood up. It was almost ten o’clock. What time did parties end? (What time did they start?) Not that it mattered, at this point. Cath didn’t have any way to get to Levi’s house.

  She walked over and stood in front of the full-length mirror that was mounted on their door.

  Cath looked like exactly who she was—an eighteen-year-old nerd who knew eff-all about boys or parties.

  Skinny jeans. Unskinny hips. A faded pink T-shirt that said, THE MAGIC WORD IS PLEASE. A pink-and-brown argyle cardigan. Her hair was pulled up into a floppy half bun on top of her head.

  Cath pulled the rubber band out of her hair and took off her glasses; she had to step closer to the mirror to see herself clearly.

  She lifted her chin up and forced her forehead to relax. “I’m the Cool One,” she told herself. “Somebody give me some tequila because I’ll totally drink it. And there’s no way you’re going to find me later having a panic attack in your parents’ bathroom. Who wants to French-kiss?”

  This is why she couldn’t be with Levi. She still called it “French-kissing,” and he just went around putting his tongue in people’s mouths.

  Cath still didn’t look like the Cool One. She didn’t look like Wren.

  She pushed her shoulders back, let her chest stick out. There was nothing wrong with her breasts (that she knew of). They were big enough that nobody ever called her flat-chested. She wished they were a little bigger; then they’d balance out her hips. Then Cath wouldn’t have to check “pear-shaped” on those “how to dress for your body type” guides. Those guides try to convince you that it’s okay to be any shape, but when your body type is a synonym for FUBAR, it’s hard to believe it.