Where It All Goes Down
Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska
You might not think of Omaha as the big city, but it's big compared to Lincoln, which has approximately half of Omaha's population. Compared to Arnold, the small farm town Levi's family calls home, Omaha is practically a metropolis.
Cath and Levi meet on common ground, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. However, Cath and Wren make the hour-long trek back to their hometown of Omaha regularly—Cath to keep an eye on her dad; Wren so her dad can keep an eye on her. To Cath, going back to Omaha is comforting. To Wren, though, it's punishment. Cath briefly considers moving back home and attending University of Nebraska-Omaha; Wren acts like it's the end of the world when her dad, angry about her drinking, suggests she do the same. (Spoiler alert: They both go back to Lincoln.)
To go a little deeper, Lincoln is adulthood, while Omaha is childhood. When Cath goes back home—Omaha home—she looks out the kitchen window and sees the remnants: "Their dad still hadn't taken down their swing set. She wished he would; it was a death trap now, and the neighbor kids liked to sneak into the yard and play on it" (14.64). Nothing says childhood like a swing set, Shmoopers.
Even though Cath brought her commemorative Simon Snow busts to display on her desk at school, she realizes just how much of a fangirl she was (is?) when Levi drives her home for the first time. When they go up to her room together, Rowell writes, "It looked like a kid's room now that she was imagining it through his eyes. It was big, a half story, with a slanted roof, deep-pink carpet, and two matching, cream-colored canopy beds" (27.76). That Cath sees it this way lets us know she's doing some serious growing up back at school.
After spending a semester in Lincoln, Cath goes back to Omaha and realizes she's not a kid anymore, and she's got a decaying swing set in her backyard to prove it.