Carry On (Simon Snow, #1)

by Rainbow Rowell

The first time I came back to Watford, my second year, I climbed right into my bed and cried like a baby. I was still crying when Baz came in. “Why are you already weeping?” he snarled. “You’re ruining my plans to push you to tears.”

“What can possibly have got under your skin already?” I ask. “Trixie,” she huffs. Trixie’s her roommate. Penny says she’d trade Trixie for a dozen evil, plotting vampires. In a heartbeat. “What’s she done?” “Come back.” “You were expecting otherwise?”

“You just want a happy ending.” “Merlin, Agatha, don’t you?” “No! I don’t! I want to be someone’s right now, Simon, not their happily ever after. I don’t want to be the prize at the end. The thing you get if you beat all the bosses.”

Sharing a room with the person you hate most is like sharing a room with a siren. (The kind on police cars, not the kind who try to entrap you when you cross the English Channel.)

(Just when you think you’re having a scene without Simon, he drops in to remind you that everyone else is a supporting character in his catastrophe.)

Baz says it would confuse his minions to see him consorting with the enemy. He actually called them that—“my minions.” Maybe he was taking the piss …

“No. I mean, I’ve been reading a lot of books about vampires.” I stop myself from saying, “Self-help?” “What have you found out?” I ask instead. “That they’re dead and evil and like to kill babies.” “Huh,” I say. “Did it say anything about salt and vinegar crisps?” Baz eats them on his bed when he thinks I’m asleep, then brushes the crumbs between our beds.

We have time to kill after we leave his aunt’s, so we go to a library—the big one—and then to the reading room at the British Museum, where Baz steals at least a half dozen books. “You can’t do that,” I argue. “It’s research.” “It’s treason.” “Are you going to tell the Queen?”

“Is this a trap? Are you luring us all here to kill us?” He seems genuinely suspicious. “How did I lure you? You hitchhiked to my door.” “After you invited me,” he snaps. “Yes. You caught me. I’m a villain.”

Penny and Baz keep adding notes to the board. They’re fighting over the dry-erase marker.

“We could just talk to them,” Simon offers. “Can numpties talk?” “Barely,” Baz says. “And what are we going to ask them—‘Lose something?’”