Page 102 of Flickerstate

“Why’d you say yes to me?”

“I thought you had healthy self-esteem. Do you have trouble coming up with reasons?”

Griffin grins. “I can think of a hundred. I want to knowyourreason.”

We enter Lucasson and hike to the second-floor stairwell, dark wood with a square blue carpet covering its creaky center. We’re so close now. I can’t let Griffin find his keycard missing. I definitely can’t let him stumble on Vik slipping the keycard back into his sock drawer. I have to admit something shocking enough to freeze him in place. Something he’ll know is genuinely risky for me to tell him.

Time to roll the dice.

I stop on the landing and listen. No footsteps on the stairs. I turn and face Griffin head-on. “I give you lots of flack. Which you mostly deserve. But we—we click. Despite the flack.”

“Because of the flack.”

“Sure, masochist. Point is, you know why I’d say yes.”

“Maybe. But then the question is why you almost said no.”

“Because I resent you. Your sister healed. And my—” I take a stabbing breath. I’m playacting my pain for Griffin, but playacting it hurts. “My dad hasn’t.”

Griffin’s face turns bleak. He steps close and pitches his voice low. “How many bites?”

“Nine,” I whisper. “Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t. I promise. I’m so sorry.” He means it. But “sorry” is also a placeholder, a rote response while his mind whirs through the implications. “You heard the Highwall cure rumors. You came to the Academy for that. For your dad.”

My mouth tastes sour. “Then I failed.”

“You didn’t fail. Your team did.”

Or maybe I failed my team. If I’d been honest with Candace earlier, with Bree ever—

“I don’t believe the rumors about a cure in the Archive. If Highwall had a cure, why not share it? She’d have raked in money and glory.” He looks down at our feet, toe to toe. “But if there might be other ways to cure your dad, would you want to explore them? No matter what?”

My throat tightens. With horror? Or anticipation? “You mean, whatever cured Candace.”

“I don’t know what cured Candace,” he says. “But maybe I could find out. Do you want me to try?”

I swallow and nod.

I’m not sure what I’m doing. Am I just buying Vik precious minutes? Or am I trying to find another path to a cure if the Archive doesn’t yield one? I can’t afford whatever the Academy’s selling. But if Griffin can pry the secret out of his father, maybe I won’t need millions.

“Okay,” Griffin says. “Give me a week.”

After that too intense exchange, laughter bubbles from my mouth, a strange breathless release. Griffin starts chuckling too. Ina second we’re hysterical, giggling at nothing.

Soon our hysterics die out, but Griffin’s chuckling a little when he says, “I do really need to change. These wet socks feel dire.”

If I keep stalling, after my partial confession, he’ll guess something’s up. “Onward march.”

We’ve just entered the third-floor hall when the door to the nearest block opens. Vik walks out.

I panic—Griffin will guess—but my panic makes no sense. Griffin knows Vik lives on this floor, liveswith himon this floor. Why would he find Vik coming out of their block suspicious?

“Where you headed?” Griffin asks.

“Back to the Archive,” Vik says. You’d never guess from his calm response that he’s just returned Griffin’s stolen property and is going to rifle through Griffin’s Archive section. You’d never guess, either, that until recently he and I were kissing anywhere we got the chance, in the woods mostly, but also on the basketball courts, in empty classrooms, in the all-gender bathroom on the foreign language building’s first floor. His eyes pass over me with none of the heat I saw earlier. Inside my glam dress, I feel as cold and heavy as a statue.

“Nose to the grindstone, huh?” Griffin says.