Fangirl Read Online Free PDF Page B

stopped. Cath looked up. There was a guy standing in front of her. From where she was sitting—and where he was standing, with the sun behind his head—he seemed eight feet tall. She squinted up but didn’t recognize him.
    “Cath,” he said, “right?”
    She recognized his voice; it was the boy with the dark hair who sat in front of her in Fiction-Writing—Nick.
    “Right,” she said.
    “Did you finish your writing exercise?”
    Professor Piper had asked them to write a hundred words from the perspective of an inanimate object. Cath nodded, still squinting up at him.
    “Oh, sorry,” Nick said, stepping out of the sun and sitting on the grass next to her. He dropped his bag between his knees. “So what’d you write about?”
    “A lock,” she said. “You?”
    “Ballpoint pen.” He grimaced. “I’m worried that everyone is going to do a pen.”
    “Don’t be,” she said. “A pen is a terrible idea.”
    Nick laughed, and Cath looked down at the grass.
    “So,” he asked, “do you think she’ll make us read them out loud?”
    Cath’s head snapped up. “ No. Why would she do that?”
    “They always do that,” he said, like it was something Cath should already know. She wasn’t used to seeing Nick from the front; he had a boyish face with hooded blue eyes and blocky, black eyebrows that almost met in the middle. He looked like someone with a steerage ticket on the Titanic. Somebody who’d be standing in line at Ellis Island. Undiluted and old-blooded. Also, cute.
    “But there wouldn’t be time in class for all of us to read,” she said.
    “We’ll probably break up into groups first,” he said, again like she should know this.
    “Oh … I’m kind of new around here.”
    “Are you a freshman?”
    She nodded and rolled her eyes.
    “How did a freshman get into Professor Piper’s three-hundred-level class?”
    “I asked.”
    Nick raised his furry eyebrows and pushed out his bottom lip, impressed. “Do you really think a pen is a terrible idea?”
    “I’m not sure what you want me to say now,” Cath answered.
    *   *   *
    “Do you have an eating disorder?” Reagan asked.
    Cath was sitting on her bed, studying.
    Reagan was holding on to her closet door, hopping, trying to pull on a black heeled boot. She was probably on her way to work—Reagan was always on her way somewhere. She treated their room like a way station, a place she stopped between class and the library, between her job at the Student Union and her job at the Olive Garden. A place to change clothes, dump books, and pick up Levi.
    Sometimes there were other guys, too. Already in the last month, there’d been a Nathan and a Kyle. But none of them seemed to be a permanent part of Reagan’s solar system like Levi was.
    Which made Levi part of Cath’s solar system, too. He’d seen her on campus today and walked with her all the way to Oldfather Hall, talking about some mittens he’d bought outside the Student Union. “Hand-knit. In Ecuador. Have you ever seen an alpaca, Cather? They’re like the world’s most adorable llamas. Like, imagine the cutest llama that you can, and then just keep going. And their wool—it’s not really wool, it’s fiber, and it’s hypoallergenic.…”
    Reagan was staring at Cath now, frowning. She was wearing tight black jeans and a black top. Maybe she was going out, not to work.
    “Your trash can is full of energy bar wrappers,” Reagan said.
    “You were looking through my trash?” Cath felt a rush of anger.
    “Levi was looking for a place to spit out his gum.… So? Do you have an eating disorder?”
    “No,” Cath said, pretty sure it was exactly what she’d say if she did have an eating disorder.
    “Then why don’t you eat real food?”
    “I do.” Cath clenched her fists. Her skin felt drawn and tight. “Just. Not here.”
    “Are you one of those freaky eaters?”
    “No. I—” Cath looked up at the ceiling, deciding that this was one of those times when the truth