Thanks to everyone who's reviewed and for all the kind words! I hope you enjoy this next installment.
Cath cries herself to sleep that night.
This reckless outpouring of emotion makes her feel so totally pathetic, but she's unable to stop. The salty flood won't cease, not until four in the morning when Reagan finally returns. She doesn't say a word, just flops into bed fully-clothed, and within minutes her breathing deepens. Still, Cath forces her loud sobs and her river of tears into occasional sniffles.
The next morning she's awake before Reagan. Saturday's are usually filled with more writing and working on homework in the dorm, but Cath doesn't want to be anywhere near Reagan, at least for a while. Maybe she'll calm down in a few days, but if Reagan were to wake up right this second, Cath isn't sure she'd be in control of her actions.
Dressing in black sweatpants and a dark gray sweatshirt, Cath dumps her textbooks and laptop in her backpack and heads to Love Library, where she's planning to stay all day, and maybe even overnight too. Once there, she writes three full chapters (about four thousand words each) and finishes her Fiction Writing assignment, writing from the view of a schizophrenic person – she picks farmer, and though she'd like to deny the connection to Levi, she can't really.
At one point, Cath looks up and is startled to see herself staring back. She's so muddled within the world of Simon Snow that she hadn't even heard Wren approach her corner table.
"You look a mess," her twin says, eyeing Cath.
She shrugs. "I guess I am a mess."
Wren's mouth looks pinched. "Have you heard from Dad?"
Cath nods, sticking the eraser tip of a chewed-on pencil in her mouth. "Yep."
"He told you he doesn't want us to visit until Christmas?"
"Pretty much."
Wren tilts her head. "And you're not worried about that?"
Of course I'm worried! He's our father, alone and half-insane and totally unreliable when it comes to taking care of himself. Aloud, Cath says mildly, "We'll see him in less than a month. I'm sure he can handle himself until then."
The expression on her sister's face flickers from anger to annoyance and back again. "If you say so."
That's basically the only form of communication Cath experiences for the next week.
Finals are closing in and the enter student body at UNL is in panic-mode. Everywhere Cath goes (and that's only from her classes to Love Library and her dorm room) she sees people racing around, papers flying around in their wake. Bleary-eyed freshman stare at homemade study guides and flashcards, their faces blank. Sophomores lean close to their papers in the dining halls, their eyes racing over terms and small details they can't afford to miss. Common areas are filled with pale, sleep-deprived juniors who are surrounded on all sides by textbooks. Seniors aren't really wandering the campus like the undergrads; they're locked away in their dorm rooms, twitching and desperately attempting to fill their minds with as much information as humanly possible before they expire out of a combination of exhaustion and lack of Vitamin D.
Cath herself feels pretty confident about her upcoming finals. All her exams are relatively self-explanatory; terms, essays, short answer questions. The only one she's truly worried about is Fiction Writing; that damn ten-thousand word short story isn't coming together like she hoped it would. She honestly has not a single idea. Every time she's faced with a blank document page or a sheet of crumpled paper, Cath panics and shoves them away. In fact, one time, instead of typing up only two pages worth of story like she promised herself she would, she clicked open Carry On, Simon and proceeded to frantically write six thousand words, all in one sitting.
Halfway through the week, Cath starts randomly dreaming about Levi. Lord knows she doesn't want to, but her unconscious self apparently has other ideas. She dreams about his blonde mop of hair getting tangled in an ocean breeze, his long body leaning casually back in a low-seated beach chair. Cath has never seen him without a shirt on, but she imagines him to be skinny and thin-boned, but still wonderfully tanned…and smiling, of course. Cath plops down next to him in the sand, watching him nap and soak up the blazing rays shining down on the beach.
"I miss you."
She could've sworn these words come out of her own mouth, but when she glances down at Levi, he's sitting upright, his eyes squinting at her sorrowfully.
"Me, too," Cath says. "I miss you too."
He takes her hand, gritty sand caught between their palms. "I'm so sorry for what I did to you. I miss you so much, Cather, you have no idea."
Cath's throat closes up. "Why can't you say that to me in the real world? Why can't you make everything right and admit that what you did was awful?"
He shakes his head, baffled. "I'm not sure. I shouldn't have done it."
"You're right. If you truly felt anything for me, you would never have touched that girl in the first place."
Levi's eyes fill with tears, and Cath has to look away.
All throughout the week Cath experiences variations of this same dream, with the same conversation and the same sunny atmosphere. She wakes up each morning feeling depressed and more exhausted than when she fell asleep.
Then, one week before finals, the moment finally arrives.
Cath, wearing loose jeans and a long-sleeved light blue shirt, finishes up a long-winded example essay question for her biology class. She hates these things; she spends all this time finding the answer and drawing it out into three or four paragraphs when most of the time the actual essay on the final isn't anything like the practice one. Still, Cath diligently (and methodically) answers every single question on every single study guide. She hurriedly finishes up once she sees it's a quarter past nine and practically sprints out of the library. Cath doesn't stop her mad sprinting until she reaches her dorm building; the air is so cold it could probably slice through wood.
Outside her room, however, Cath stops dead. The door's open.
For a moment, she considers turning around and running to campus security. But what if I'm making a big deal out of nothing? Then Cath would forever have to suffer the embarrassment of being too afraid to enter her own dorm room. Swallowing her fear, she hesitantly pushes the door open wide, her mind racing and her body readying itself to face an intruder.
Instead, she finds Levi.
The moment is nearly upon us! There's only two chapters left; after all, I don't want to drag this part of the book out too long. Remember, reviews are encouraged! Thanks for reading :)