It's the first day of her freshman year at the University of Nebraska, and Cath Avery arrives at her dorm room, 913 Pound Hall.

Her roommate Reagan and Reagan's friend Levi are already there.

Reagan's a cool-looking girl with a cigarette in her mouth, and Levi's a tall, lanky guy who asks Cath if she wants to go with them to get burgers.

Cath says no and waits in the room for her dad and her twin sister, Wren, to bring up the rest of her boxes.

In the meantime, she's about to have an anxiety meltdown.

Cath wanted Wren to be her roommate, but Wren wants to meet new people and stop being an identical twin all the time.

Their dad wants to take them out for pizza, but Wren and her new roommate Courtney are going to the freshman barbecue that night; Cath totally wants pizza, though.

On the way to the restaurant with her dad, she notices that everybody in the neighborhood is her age. Being surrounded by young people freaks her out.

Her dad gives her a pep talk, though, and tells her everything will be fine.

Back in her dorm room, with Reagan and Levi still out, Cath unpacks pictures of herself with Wren and Abel, her very safe, high school boyfriend.

She also unpacks her Simon Snow stuff, but not too much, because she doesn't want people to think she's a freak.

All she needs are a few pictures of Simon and Baz on her corkboard, plus her Simon and Baz commemorative busts.

Cath wakes up in her dorm room. Reagan isn't there, and Cath assumes she spent the night with Levi; she texts Abel, telling him it's her first day.

She changes clothes in the bathroom, because she doesn't want Reagan to walk in and catch her getting dressed.

After eating the protein bars she brought with her, so as to avoid the dining hall, Cath logs into her Fanfixx account.

She writes a message to her fans, apologizing for not uploading a chapter of Carry On, Simon yesterday.

Cath goes to her first class, American History. There are lots of students. Cath feels awkward.

After class, she's starving, so she goes back to her dorm room to eat some more protein bars.

When she gets there, Levi is sitting in the hallway waiting for Reagan, but Cath refuses to let him into their room since she doesn't know him well.

She calls Wren, who asks if Cath wants to meet her and Courtney for lunch at Selleck Hall tomorrow.

Reagan and Levi come walking in, and Levi starts making Reagan's bed and trying to make small talk with Cath who is, as you might expect, awkward.

Levi tells Cath his major is range management, and Reagan tells him not to go off about range management again.

Fast-forward to Fiction-Writing class, which Cath and everyone else in the room has been waiting for all week.

Professor Piper, a real-live author, is their teacher. She starts class by asking the room why people write fiction.

The students give lots of answers: to express themselves, to explore new worlds, to hear their own voices.

Cath's answer, which she doesn't say aloud: "To be somewhere else.[…] To avoid being anything or anywhere at all. […] To disappear."

Cath's hanging out in her dorm room trying to write, which isn't so easy when Reagan and Levi are chilling on Reagan's bed.

Needless to say, Carry On, Simon isn't exactly flowing, so Cath grabs a protein bar and goes for a stroll down the hall to get some personal space.

The hall's full of people, though, which makes her feel like even more of an alien.

She goes into the bathroom and eats her protein bar, crying, in the stall.

After calming herself down, she goes back to her room, where Reagan and Levi are leaving.

Cath considers calling Abel, but he's leaving for Missouri Tech the next morning, and his family is having a party, so she works on Carry On, Simon instead.

The next day Cath meets Wren and Courtney in Selleck Hall for lunch, which is her first actual meal that isn't a protein bar since she got to school two weeks ago.

Wren's dismissive when Cath starts talking about Simon Snow, but Courtney's interested.

Wren, obviously embarrassed, changes the subject to all the parties she and Courtney have been to; tonight they're going to one at Triangle House, an engineering fraternity.

Three weeks into college, and Cath's eating a protein bar during her break between her biology and fiction-writing classes.

She's thinking about how she doesn't really miss her boyfriend, Abel, even though they've texted a few times; she texts him a picture of a squirrel who's trying to eat her protein bar.

Flashback to high school: Wren teased Cath a lot about how she'd hardly even kissed Abel, even though they dated for three years.

Wren, on the other hand, had a boyfriend named Jesse. It was hot and steamy, but he made Wren cry all the time.

As Cath feeds the protein bar to the squirrel, a dude named Nick from her fiction-writing class walks up to her and asks what Cath wrote about for their assignment.

He also wants to know how a freshman got into a junior-level writing class. Cath says she asked.

That night, Reagan asks Cath if she has an eating disorder, since she eats nothing but protein bars.

Cath admits she's afraid of the dining hall, and Reagan forces her to put her shoes on and go to dinner.

...In the cafeteria, Reagan asks Cath what's up with the Simon Snow heads on her desk, and when Cath uses the words the fandom, Reagan is horrified Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω Ω

...

Progress: Cath's letting Levi into their room when Reagan's not home instead of making him sit in the hall.

She's also going to dinner in the dining hall with Reagan, where they snark on everyone who walks by their table.

We learn that Levi is (1) a Starbucks employee, and (2) eating Cath's protein bars behind her back.

The problem with developing a social life is that Cath's falling behind on posting chapters of Carry On, Simon to Fanfixx.net.

This is an issue when your pieces get 35,000 hits a day and your fans are clamoring for more.

Cath's busy trying to wrap up all Gemma T. Leslie's loose ends, one of which is staging the final battle between Simon and his nemesis, the Insidious Humdrum.

She posts a note of apology to her fans and goes to meet her classmate Nick in the library. Professor Piper has assigned them to write a collaborative story with another person, and Cath and Nick are working together.

Levi walks Cath to the library since it's late, and talks to her about range management—specifically, buffalo.

Cath and Nick hand the paper back and forth, taking turns writing, and Cath gets a little fangirlish about Nick. Go, Cath, go.

So of course she names the narrator after Nick, and then she makes him gay.

They work on their story until late at night, and Cath calls the sleeping Reagan to say she's coming back to the room.

Levi comes to walk her home, because he's the nicest roommate's-ex-boyfriend in the whole world.

And by the way, he tells Cath, he loves the library; it's where he sleeps.

Grocery store and get some real food. He says he will.

He calls her back later that night, multiple times, and leaves messages telling her he wants to install a fireman's pole from her room to the bathroom.

In case you haven't noticed yet, he's manic—um, yeah.

It's a Friday night, and Cath's in her room trying to work on Carry On, Simon, but she can't stop thinking about Nick and how much Professor Piper loved their story.

Nick works at the library on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and he asks Cath if she wants to meet there and write during his shifts. She says yes, of course.

This necessitates a call to Wren, who actually answers.

Wren is—surprise—drunk. And when Cath says she wants to talk about boys, Wren thinks she means Simon and Baz.

Cath gets annoyed, hangs up, and worries about the fact that Wren's partying too much.

The next day in the dining hall, Reagan's so hung over she doesn't feel like snarking—or showering, for that matter. It's an epidemic.

Reagan decides to go to Target with her friend Eric that afternoon, who may be more than a friend.

Cath—surprise of surprises—decides to stay in their room and write.

Reagan puts up with it for the day, but that night she drags Cath out to go bowling with her and Levi.

Levi and Reagan are good bowlers. Cath is not.

Levi schmoozes everyone in the bowling alley, because he's the friendliest social butterfly ever, and after they're done bowling, Reagan and Levi decide to go to a bar called Muggsy's. They assure Cath she could get in too, even though she's underage.

Cath, as you've probably guessed, instead opts to go home and write alone.

Abel calls Cath from Missouri, which he never does.

He's breaking up with her for a girl named Katie, who got a 34 on the ACT, unlike Cath's measly 32, because that's a totally valid reason to break up with someone… not.

Cath wants to argue, but she's only halfhearted about it since she's just not that into him either.

When Nick comes walking around the corner, Cath tells Abel she has to go.

They go to Fiction-Writing together, and Cath texts Wren to come over after class.

That night, Wren gets Cath to admit that not only has she not cried over Abel, he was never really a real boyfriend.

What finally makes Cath cry, though, is that she thought she and Abel could stay together, unlike their parents.

Just as Cath is about to tell Wren about Nick, Reagan and Levi come bursting in.

Reagan is unimpressed; Levi oozes charm; Wren leaves to do something fun. Same as it ever was.

Y.E.S..M.O.R.E..I.N..N.E.X.T..P.A.R.T..L.E.T.S..G.O..