“Those are commemorative busts.”
“I feel sorry for you, and I’m going to be your friend.”
“I don’t want to be your friend,” Cath said as sternly as she could. “I like that we’re not friends.”
“Me, too,” Reagan said. “I’m sorry you ruined it by being so pathetic.”
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FIVE
“Please don’t make me sit in the hall,” Levi said.
Cath stepped over his legs to get to her door. “I have to study.”
“Reagan’s running late, and I’ve already been sitting here half an hour.” His voice dropped to a whisper: “Your neighbor with the pink Ugg boots keeps coming out to talk to me. Have mercy.”
Cath frowned at him.
“I won’t bother you,” he said. “I’ll just wait quietly for Reagan.”
She rolled her eyes and walked in, leaving the door open behind her.
“I can see why you and Reagan hit it off.” He got up to follow her. “You can both be extremely brusque sometimes.”
“We didn’t hit it off.”
“That’s not what I heard.… Hey, now that you’re eating in the dining hall, can I eat your protein bars?”
“You were already eating my protein bars,” Cath said indignantly, sitting at her desk and opening her laptop.
“I felt bad about doing it behind your back.”
“Good.”
“But aren’t you happier now?” He sat at the end of her bed and leaned against the wall, crossing his long legs at the ankles. “You look better nourished already.”
“Um, thank you?”
“So?”
“What?”
He grinned. “Can I have a protein bar?”
“You’re unbelievable.”
Levi leaned over and reached under the bed. “The Blueberry Bliss are my favorite.…”
Cath actually was happier now. (Not that she was going to admit that to Levi.) So far, being Reagan’s charity case didn’t require much—just going down to the dining hall together and helping Reagan ridicule everyone who walked by their table.
Reagan liked to sit next to the kitchen door, right where the buffet line dumped into the dining room. She called it parade seating, and no one was spared. “Look,” she’d said last night, “it’s Gimpy. How do you think he broke his leg?”
Cath looked up at the guy, a dangerously hip-looking character with shaggy hair and oversized glasses. “Probably tripped over his beard.”
“Ha!” Reagan said. “His girlfriend is carrying his tray. Just look at her—that is one shiny unicorn. Do you think they actually met in an American Apparel ad?”
“I’m pretty sure they met in New York City, but it took them five years to get here.”
“Oh, Wolf Girl at three o’clock,” Reagan said excitedly.
“Is she wearing her clip-on tail?”
“I don’t know, wait for it.… No. Damn.”
“I kinda like her tail.” Cath smiled fondly at the chubby girl with dyed black hair.
“If God put me into your life to keep you from wearing a fucking tail,” Reagan said, “I accept the assignment.”
As far as Reagan was concerned, Cath was already problematically weird. “It’s bad enough that you have homemade Simon Snow posters,” Reagan had said last night while she was getting ready for bed. “Do you have to have gay homemade Simon Snow posters?”
Cath had looked up at the drawing over her desk of Simon and Baz holding hands. “Leave them alone,” she said. “They’re in love.”
“Pretty sure I don’t remember that from the books.”
“When I write them,” Cath said, “they’re in love.”
“What do you mean when you write them?” Reagan stopped, pulling her T-shirt down over her head. “No, you know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. It’s already hard enough to make eye contact with you.”
Levi was right, they must be hitting it off, because now when Reagan said stuff like that, it made Cath want to laugh. If Reagan missed dinner, Cath would go down to the dining hall anyway and sit at their table. Then, when Reagan came back to the room later—if Reagan came back to the room later—Cath would tell her everything she’d missed.
“Soccer Sandals finally talked to Venezuelan Lindsay Lohan,” Cath would say.
“Thank God,” Reagan would answer, flopping down onto her bed. “The sexual tension was killing me.”
Cath wasn’t sure where Reagan went on the nights when she didn’t come back to the dorms. Maybe to Levi’s. Cath looked over at Levi now.…
Still sitting on Cath’s bed, eating what must be his second Blueberry Bliss bar. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. Maybe Levi worked at the Olive Garden, too.
“Are you a waiter?” she asked.
“Presently? No.”
“Do you work at the Lanc?me counter?”