Fangirl

by Rainbow Rowell

For one month, I could lie low at work and abandon my children.

Cath writes fanfiction because that’s the world that makes her happiest, as a writer. That’s the world she loves. I think you can write original fiction in the same spirit. You can create a world just because it makes you happy. You can write a book just because you want to spend time in it.

If Cath got a pair of black Ray-Bans, she could probably order a gin and tonic around here without getting carded.

“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?”

Nobody to deal with here. Nobody but the squirrels.

I like Abel. He’s steady.” “You just keep describing an end table.…”

“Someday you’ll need health insurance, and you won’t think working at Starbucks is funny.”

“Cath? It’s your dad again. It’s still late, but I couldn’t wait to tell you this. You know how you guys want a bathroom upstairs? Your room is right over the bathroom. We could put in a trapdoor. And a ladder. It would be like a secret shortcut to the bathroom. Isn’t this a great idea? Call me. It’s your dad.”

Cath couldn’t control whether she saw Levi on campus. But she could worry about it, and as long as she was worrying about it, it probably wasn’t going to happen. Like some sort of anxiety vaccine. Like watching a pot to make sure it never boiled.

Levi pushed his hand into the front of his hair and made a fist. (Maybe that’s why he was losing it prematurely. Constant handling.)

She wasn’t going to tell Levi that her last date had been at a math contest.

Cath followed him off the bus. He stopped to thank the driver by name. “Did you know that guy?” she asked when the bus pulled away. Levi shrugged. “He was wearing a name tag.

If Cath were making this decision just on eyebrows, she would have been “up to his room” a long time ago.

eyebrow-driven sex.…

and she wasn’t in the mood for … well, for Levi. For the constant good-natured game of him. If Levi were a dog, he’d be a golden retriever. If he were a game, he’d be Ping-Pong, incessant and bouncing and light. Cath didn’t feel like playing.

“You write fiction all the time.” “I write fanfiction.” “Don’t be tricky with me right now. I’m driving through a blizzard.”

“You know,” he said, “I keep wanting to say that it’s like Simon Snow threw up in here … but it’s more like someone else ate Simon Snow—like somebody went to an all-you-care-to-eat Simon Snow buffet—and then threw up in here.”

He told her about 4-H. “What do the H’s stand for?” “Head, heart, hands, health. They don’t have 4-H in South Omaha?” “They do, but it stands for hard, hip-hop and Homey-don’t-play-that.”

There should be a word for a laugh that ends as soon as it starts. A laugh that’s more a syllable of surprise and acknowledgment than it is anything else.

Levi’s earlobes were attached to his head. Which made Cath think of Punnett squares. And Mendel. And made her try to pull his earlobe away with her teeth.

Levi actually was the brightest thing in the room, in any room. Bright and warm and crackling—he was a human campfire.

Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.

“Are you getting peanut butter in my hair?” “It’s preventative. When I get gum in your hair later, it won’t stick.”