Fangirl

stranger in the room? Cath wondered. Cath left the earbuds in when she finally crawled into her own bed and pulled the comforter up high over her head.
    *   *   *
    “You still haven’t talked to her?” Wren asked at lunch the next week.
    “We talk,” Cath said. “She says, ‘Would you mind closing the window?’ And I say, ‘That’s fine.’ Also, ‘Hey.’ We exchange ‘heys’ daily. Sometimes twice daily.”
    “It’s getting weird,” Wren said.
    Cath poked at her mashed potatoes. “I’m getting used to it.”
    “It’s still weird.”
    “Really?” Cath asked. “You’re really going to start talking about how I got stuck with a weird roommate?”
    Wren sighed. “What about her boyfriend?”
    “Haven’t seen him for a few days.”
    “What are you doing this weekend?”
    “Homework, I guess. Writing Simon.”
    “Courtney and I are going to a party tonight.”
    “Where?”
    “The Triangle House!” Courtney said. She said it the same way you’d say “the Playboy Mansion!” if you were a total D-bag.
    “What’s a Triangle House?” Cath asked.
    “It’s an engineering fraternity,” Wren said.
    “So they, like, get drunk and build bridges?”
    “They get drunk and design bridges. Want to come?”
    “Nah.” Cath took a bite of roast beef and potatoes; it was always Sunday-night dinner in the Selleck dining room. “Drunk nerds. Not my thing.”
    “You like nerds.”
    “Not nerds who join fraternities,” Cath said. “That’s a whole subclass of nerds that I’m not interested in.”
    “Did you make Abel sign a sobriety pledge before he left for Missouri?”
    “Is Abel your boyfriend?” Courtney asked. “Is he cute?”
    Cath ignored her. “Abel isn’t going to turn into a drunk. He can’t even tolerate caffeine.”
    “That right there is some faulty logic.”
    “You know I don’t like parties, Wren.”
    “And you know what Dad says—you have to try something before you can say you don’t like it.”
    “Seriously? You’re using Dad to get me to a frat party? I have tried parties. There was that one at Jesse’s, with the tequila—”
    “Did you try the tequila?”
    “No, but you did, and I helped clean it up when you puked.”
    Wren smiled wistfully and smoothed her long bangs across her forehead. “Drinking tequila is more about the journey than the destination.…”
    “You’ll call me,” Cath said, “right?”
    “If I puke?”
    “If you need help.”
    “I won’t need help.”
    “But you’ll call me?”
    “God, Cath. Yes. Relax, okay?”
     
    “But, sir,” Simon pushed, “do I have to be his roommate every year, every year until we leave Watford?”
    The Mage smiled indulgently and ruffled Simon’s caramel brown hair. “Being matched with your roommate is a sacred tradition at Watford.” His voice was gentle but firm. “The Crucible cast you together. You’re to watch out for each other, to know each other as well as brothers.”
    “Yeah, but, sir…” Simon shuffled in his chair. “The Crucible must have made a mistake. My roommate’s a complete git. He might even be evil. Last week, someone spelled my laptop closed, and I know it was him. He practically cackled.”
    The Mage gave his beard a few solemn strokes. It was short and pointed and just covered his chin.
    “The Crucible cast you together, Simon. You’re meant to watch out for him.”

    —from chapter 3, Simon Snow and the Second Serpent, copyright © 2003 by Gemma T. Leslie

 
    FOUR
    The squirrels on campus were beyond domestic; they were practically domestically abusive. If you were eating anything at all, they’d come right up to you and chit-chit-chit in your space.
    “Take it,” Cath said, tossing a chunk of strawberry-soy bar to the fat red squirrel at her feet. She took a photo of it with her phone and sent it to Abel. “bully squirrel,” she typed.
    Abel had sent her photos of his room—his suite —at MoTech, and of him standing with all five of his nerdy Big Bang Theory roommates. Cath tried to imagine asking Reagan to pose for a photo and laughed a little out loud. The squirrel froze but didn’t run away.
    On Wednesdays and Fridays, Cath had forty-five minutes between Biology and Fiction-Writing, and lately she’d been killing it right here, sitting in a shadowy patch of grass on the slow side of the English building. Nobody to deal with here. Nobody but the squirrels.
    She checked her text messages, even though her phone hadn’t chimed.
    She and