Carry On - Rainbow Rowell Page 0,147

three in the world. We do our sessions over Skype. I want Baz to talk to her, too, but so far, he changes the subject every time I mention it.

His whole family has moved to one of their other houses, up north.

The magic hasn’t come back to Hampshire. Or any of the other dead spots—but there haven’t been any new holes since Christmas. (Dozens of new ones opened that day. I feel bad about that—those are the ones I could have helped.) Penny’s dad keeps calling to reassure me that nothing’s getting worse. I’ve even gone along on a few of his surveys. It’s not a big deal for me to visit the holes, the way it is for other magicians; I don’t have any magic to lose. I mean … it is a big deal for me. But for other reasons.

Penny’s dad thinks the magic will come back to the dead spots eventually. He’s shown me studies about plants growing in Chernobyl and about the California condor. When I told him I was going to university, he said I should study restoration ecology. “It could be very healing, Simon.”

I don’t know. I’m going to start with basic courses and see what sticks.

Baz is starting at the London School of Economics in a few weeks. His parents both went to Oxford, but Baz said he’d be staked before he left London.

“Would that actually work on you?” I asked him.

“What?”

“A stake?”

“I’d think a stake through the heart would kill anyone, Snow.”

He will call me Simon now, occasionally, but only when we’re being soft with each other. (All that’s still happening, too. I suppose I am gay; my therapist says it’s not even in the top five things I have to sort out right now.)

Anyway, Baz and I thought about getting a flat. But we both decided that after seven years together, it might be good to have different roommates. And Penny and I have always talked about having a place together.

I never really thought that would happen.

I never thought there was a path that would lead here, a fourth-floor flat with two bedrooms and a kettle and a grey-eyed vampire sitting on the couch, messing with his new phone.

I never thought there was a path that would lead to both of us alive.

When you look at it that way, it wasn’t that much to give up—my magic. For Baz’s life. For mine.

Sometimes I dream that I still have it. I dream about going off, and I wake up, panting, not sure if it’s true.

But there’s never smoke. My breath doesn’t burn, my skin doesn’t shimmer. I don’t feel like there’s a star going nova in my chest.

There’s just sweat and panic and my heart racing ahead of me—and my doctor in Chicago says that’s all normal for someone like me.

“A fallen supervillain?” I’ll say.

And she’ll smile, from a professional distance. “A trauma victim.”

I don’t feel like a trauma victim. I feel like a house after a fire. And sometimes like someone who died but stayed in his body. And sometimes I feel like someone else died, like someone else sacrificed everything, so that I can have a normal life.

With wings.

And a tail.

And vampires.

And magicians.

And a boy in my arms, instead of a girl.

And a happy ending—even if it isn’t the ending I ever would have dreamt for myself, or hoped for.

A chance.

“What time is it?” Penny asks. “Is it too early for tea? There’re biscuits in one of these boxes. I could magic them up for us.”

Baz looks up from his phone. “The Chosen One’s making us tea the Normal way,” he says. “It’s occupational therapy.”

“I already know how to make tea,” I say. “And I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

“You really were the Chosen One,” Penny says. “You were chosen to end the World of Mages. Just because you failed doesn’t mean you weren’t chosen.”

“The whole prophecy is bollocks,” I say. “‘And one will come to end us. And one will bring his fall.’ Did I also bring my own fall?”

“No,” Baz says. “That was me. Obviously.”

“How did you bring my fall? I stopped the Humdrum myself.”

Baz looks back at his phone, bored. “Fell in love, didn’t you?”

Penny groans, and Baz starts laughing, trying not to crack a smile.

“Enough flirting!” Penny says, flopping down into a stuffed chair her parents gave us. (Which I carried up by myself.) “I’ve endured enough flirting for this lifetime. I’m hungry, Simon. Find the biscuit box.”

Baz grins, then leans over and kisses my neck. (I have a mole there; he treats it like a target.)

“Go on, then,” he says. “Carry on, Simon.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Joy DeLyria and I have never met in person or talked on the phone, and sometimes we go months without e-mailing. But every time I was feeling desperately lost and stuck with this book, she’d send me an e-mail, asking, “How is Simon?”

And every time, she helped me get unstuck.

Thank you, Joy, for rooting so passionately for these characters, and for being so generous with your good advice.

Thank you, too, to Leigh Bardugo and David Levithan for being good friends and good readers. (Even if one of you was so tough, you made me cry.) (It was Leigh.)

And thank you to Susie Day for really listening to all this dialogue and talking to me about it. And to Keris Stainton, who answered countless questions about British life. If these characters sound American—or worse—it’s despite their patience.

Thank you to my husband, Kai, for his love and encouragement, and for never running out of clichés.

To Christopher Schelling, who insisted on a higher body count.

To Sara Goodman, who has given me such freedom as an author and so much support as a friend.

And to the wonderful people at St. Martin’s Press, who keep surprising me with their creativity and enthusiasm.

Finally—thank you to Nicola Barr, Rachel Petty, and everyone at Macmillan Children’s Books, for making me feel so welcome in the UK and for making such gorgeous books.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

If you’ve read my book Fangirl, you know that Simon Snow began as a fictional character in that novel.

A fictional-fictional character. Kind of an amalgam and descendant of a hundred other fictional Chosen Ones.

In Fangirl, Simon is the hero of a series of children’s adventure novels written by Gemma T. Leslie—and the subject of much fanfiction written by the main character, Cath.

When I finished that book, I was able to let go of Cath and her boyfriend, Levi, and their world. I felt like I was finished with their story.…

But I couldn’t let go of Simon.

I’d written so much about him through these other voices, and I kept thinking about what I’d do with him if he were in my story, instead of Cath’s or Gemma’s.

What would I do with Simon Snow?

What would I do with Baz? And Agatha? And Penny?

I’ve read and loved so many magical Chosen One stories—how would I write my own?

That’s what Carry On is.

It’s my take on a character I couldn’t get out of my head. It’s my take on this kind of character, and this kind of journey.

It was a way for me to give Simon and Baz, only half-imagined in Fangirl, the story I felt I owed them.