Page 105 of Flickerstate

BREE ALLEN.

I thumb through more tabs. More names I don’t recognize—no one in our Academy year, anyway—and then JACOB LIPPMAN.

A bunch more names, and then NORAH SULLIVAN.

Last of all, ARIA ZACCONI.

I pull my file. When I open it, Vik’s mentor feedback survey lies on top,Neither agree nor disagreechosen for every statement. In the margin, someone has written in blue ink,Mr. Souza uncooperative as usual.When I flip to the next page, I find a grid. A list of—what,characteristics?—runs down the grid’s left side. Along the top, numbers 1 through 5. On the row labeled NAVIGATION, someone has circled a 5; family social support, 3; family resources, 2; peer social support, 1; cooperativeness, 2. Below the grid, the same blue pen has written,Very strong navigation. However, while superficially eager to please, on a deeper level manipulative and willful. A possibility, but not an ideal candidate.

“Candidate for what?” I ask the room.

“It doesn’t say,” Vik says. “Every file is just that rubric clipped to a copy of the student’s application. And a mentor evaluation if the student’s a transfer.”

“They’re all students?”

“Yeah. I recognize some names—kids who were juniors or seniors when I was an underclassman. But judging by the dates on the applications, the files go back eight years.”

“Is there a pattern? Something that links these students together?” Linksustogether.

“No one was rated below a three on navigation or above a three on family resources.” Candace exhales. “At first we thought maybe Admin was rating candidates for assistantships. But that doesn’t explain the focus on family. And there’s no file on Vik, Griffin, or Mirabel.”

“I’ve made a list of the names,” Vik says. “Once we’re out of here, I’m going to look them all up.”

I open JACOB LIPPMAN: Navigation, 5; family social support, 1; family resources, 1; peer social support, 1; cooperativeness, 4. Below the rubric, neatly printed words:Fascinated bybleeding-edge research. Excellent navigator. Desperate for approval. Poor family. Practically perfect.

Then ARIA ZACCONI: Navigation, 4; family social support, 0; family resources, 1; peer social support 2, cooperativeness, 5. Again:Perfect.

This revelation that Jake, Aria, and I were all candidates for someone’s mysterious project makes my skin crawl. “Do you think Griffin’s seen these files?” While he was at the dance with me, and talking to me about mydad, did he know the Academy was considering me for—whatever this is?

“The box was fully sorted,” Candace says. “Probably a previous assistant did it.”

I rub my forehead. “These files look like another mysterious dead end. How many boxes do we need to search through?”

“We identified nine as important with leaguing,” Candace says. “Box 3—that was the candidate files. Then boxes 51 and 52, boxes 81 to 84, and boxes 101 and 102. I’m looking through box 51 now.”

“I’m on box 102, working my way back,” Vik adds.

“I guess I’ll take the 80s,” I say.

I find them high on a metal shelf against the deeply shadowed back wall. Box 81 is almost too heavy to lift. I haul it, biceps straining, to the nearest desk and flip a nearby light switch. A caged bulb blinks on over my head.

When I pry open Box 81, I see hundreds of beige folders crammed inside. I pull out a fat stack and start opening them.

It’s astonishingly random, this wood pulp detritus the Academy has gathered, cherished, and hidden: a paper menu with Highwall’snotes about dry cleaning and hair appointments scrawled across the appetizers. A specialty-foods-store receipt, where she bought $101.97 in artisanal olive oils. A newspaper clipping, a negative review of her ghostwritten memoir, on which she’s written in black Sharpie beside the bylineSCREW YOU TOO. A printout from a 1999 academic article inThe Journal of Navigationwhose reference page bears a rippling half-moon wine stain and the scrawled commentShould have cited me more.

It goes on and on like this. I begin to get a sense of Highwall: vain, thin-skinned, self-indulgent, obsessed with her legacy.

Also, she doodles.

She’s a talented artist—I recognize self-portraits, sketches of Miura bent over a book, a woman I think is Lucasson sweating midnavigation—but more than people she draws boxy architectural-looking things, arrows zipping between them.

I find so many doodles that when I spot an important one, I almost don’t realize what it is. It looks like a geometry exercise: a line between two points with a star marking the midpoint. A triangle with a line drawn from each vertex to the incenter, marked with another star. A square with diagonal lines making anXinside, a star in theX’s center. A pentagon with lines drawn from each vertex to the center, once again starred.

I’m about to turn the page when I notice minute letters. The two points that the starred line joins are labeledVandDM. The vertices of the triangle:V,DM, andKL. The corners of the square:V,DM,KL, andLDS. The five points of the pentagon:V,DM,KL,LDS, andMO.

“Guys,” I say. “Look.”

Soon Vik and Candace are standing at my shoulders.