Fangirl

Cath feels like she is “pretending” to be a college student. She is too nervous to brave the dining hall, so she eats protein bars and peanut butter in her room. She is most excited about her upper-division intro to fiction-writing class, taught by Professor Piper. In their first class, they discuss why they write fiction. Everyone gives different answers, and Cath thinks that she writes fiction to “disappear.”

A section from the Simon Snow series shows Simon struggling to perform magic and being helped by an especially bright girl named Penelope Bunce.

Cath has trouble writing her fanfiction with Reagan and Levi in the room because she feels observed. The rest of the people on the floor all seem to want to make friends with one another. Cath feels estranged from them. She eats lunch with Wren and Courtney occasionally. By the second week of classes, she still has not exchanged more than a few words with Reagan. She declines invitations to the parties Wren invites her to.

A section from the Simon Snow series features Simon asking his instructor if he must continue rooming with Baz, who is a “complete git.” The instructor says they are meant to room with each other and that Simon should look out for him.

Cath contemplates how she does not miss her boyfriend, Abel. She has been dating him for three years and thinks he’s “steady,” but Wren thinks he is an “end table.” She compares this to Wren, who had many boyfriends throughout middle and high school and usually dumped them after she had won their affections. As she waits for her fiction class to start, a boy from class, Nick, strikes up a conversation with her.

In the dorm, Reagan asks Cath if she has an eating disorder; she saw Cath’s protein bar wrappers in the trash. Cath is angered by the conversation and admits that she does not know where the dining hall is, even though they are a month into school. Reagan insists on showing Cath the dining hall.

At the dining hall, Reagan asks why Cath does not think Reagan likes her. Reagan feels sorry for Cath because she spends so much time alone and has a “weird thing” about Simon Snow. Cath does not think Reagan would understand that her fan community is her friends and that Cath has fans of her own because of her fanfiction.

Cath arrives at her room to study, and Levi is waiting there. He asks if he can wait quietly inside for Reagan but ends up asking to eat her protein bars now that she visits the dining hall with Reagan. Cath is happier now that Reagan hangs out with her, though Reagan thinks she is “problematically weird.”

Cath’s current fic is called Carry On, a novel-length piece designed to feel like the final Simon Snow book. Last year, it went viral and got 35,000 views in a single day. She feels pressure and responsibility to do justice to the series’ characters, especially Baz, in a way the author, a British woman named Gemma T. Leslie, would not. She finds it much harder to keep up with her writing in college.

In her fiction class, she partners with Nick for an assignment where they trade off writing a paragraph of a story at a time. Levi insists on walking her to and from the library to meet Nick since it is dark out. Nick starts writing a “love story” to throw Cath off her game, but she uses her paragraph to turn the plot around, making the narrator gay and naming him after Nick. 

As they work, it reminds Cath of writing fanfiction with Wren, but she is more aware that Nick is “a boy.” They end up feeding off the other’s narrative energy and mimicking each other’s writing style. Cath loses her feelings of nervousness and ends up having fun. Levi walks her back to her dorm afterward.

Cath calls her father repeatedly, but he lets it go to voicemail. When she reaches him, she is worried. He is not eating well. Cath gets several voicemail messages from him describing the increasingly odd things he plans to do to the twins’ room, like installing a fireman’s pole to slide into the bathroom.

Professor Piper loved Nick and Cath’s story. Nick wants to write with Cath again on Tuesday, but just for fun. She wants to ask Wren what she thinks, so she calls her, even though it is 11:00 pm on a Friday. She wants to talk about their father and “boy stuff,” but Wren is drunk and pokes fun at Cath’s fanfiction writing.

The next day, Cath ignores a call from Wren and turns down an invitation to go to a football game with Reagan to write instead. Reagan insists she stop being a “sad little hermit” and takes her bowling with Levi. Levi talks to everyone at the bowling alley, and Cath does not know why he goes so far to be nice to people. After bowling, they try to get Cath to go with them to a bar called Muggsy’s, but she declines.

Abel calls Cath to tell her he has met someone who made him realize he and Cath never had a real relationship. He wants to be friends and continue reading her fics; the girl he met, Katie, was already a fan of Cath’s writing. Cath is meeting Nick to read each other’s assignments before class, so she ends the call quickly. She texts Wren about the call, and Wren offers to come to her dorm that evening.

Though it is Thursday, Wren is dressed to go out. She comforts Cath but does not know how someone who writes convincingly about love did not realize she did not have a romantic connection to her own boyfriend. She starts to tell Wren about Nick, but Reagan and Levi enter the room. When Wren leaves, Levi expresses shock that Cath has a “super hot” identical twin sister, which irks Cath.