Page 109 of Flickerstate

“That doesn’tsounduseful,” Candace says. “But the creepy schematic we found implies that Highwall and her teamdidbuild a machine to amplify nav that they didn’t tell the public about. So. Lend it to me?”

“I’ll bring it by tomorrow,” Vik says.

“Which leaves me with the notebooks,” I say. “Okay, tomorrow morning we read—and tomorrow afternoon we try three-person leaguing. Nowbreak.”

***

I wake around 10 a.m. with dull winter light glowing around my curtain’s edges. On my phone is an all-Academy email blast reminding us to attend Secretary Tully’s speech at 5 p.m. in the fine arts auditorium. Yeah, definitely skipping that.

I’m afraid to leave my room, afraid to go anywhere without the notebooks, but my stomach is growling. I jog to the dining hall.Fine snowflakes sift from the overcast sky as I hurry back to the dorm double-fisting to-go coffees, four hard green apples zipped into my bag’s front pocket. In our common room, Candace sits on the sofa in her pajamas, legs curled under her, reading. When the door closes behind me, she looks up. “Have you started yours?”

“About to.” I glance at Candace’s closed bedroom door. “Bree in?”

“Nope. She wasn’t in when I got back last night either. I guess curfew’s fallen by the wayside.”

“She was here when I got back from the formal, though. Weird.”

“Well, I texted her. I think we should tell her about, you know.” Candace nods to my wounded arm. “Leaguing.”

I swallow. “Are you sure she’ll want to help me after…”

“She will once she knows you’re dying,” Candace says flatly. “She may be a bubbly blond, but she’s rock solid, Norah.”

“O—okay.”

Candace’s lips curl. “Good. If she doesn’t text me back, I’ll call her after I finish…” She raises the paperback she’s holding.Parascience and the History of Navigation, the cover reads in blocky neon-yellow font. Around the title float a serpentine flickerbeast and several disembodied heads. The largest head has bee-stung pink lips and feathery platinum hair—Bizarro-World Sexy Highwall?

“Did the cover artist drop acid before mocking up that design?” I ask.

“Signs point to yes.”

“And Vik delivered it earlier.”

“Pretty early. I think you were asleep.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t infer that he’s intentionally avoiding you.” Candace taps her nails against the book. “What’s going on there these days?”

“Nothing.” I sound more bitter than I mean to.

“Which was your decision.”

“Which was my decision.” I turn to my bedroom. “Catch you on the flip side.”

At my desk, I slurp pilfered coffee, order Highwall’s notebooks according to the date on the first page of each, and start skimming. I stop whenever I come across initials—Highwall never writes out a full name—and read around for context. At first, I make a note of every time she mentions her possible leaguing collaborators—DM,KL,LDS,MO—but she goes out withDMso often, to what sound like pretty boozy lunches, that I have to stop.

Halfway through the last notebook, coffee drained and apples munched, I find an entry that readsLast night I dreamed.

Highwall doesn’t write what she dreamed about. But I know.

I skim faster.

It’s another four months of lab days and martini lunches and Sunday morning swims in the superexclusive fitness club pool before Highwall mentions her dreams again. It’s the same entry with a different date:Last night I dreamed. As I flip the pages, these entries increase in frequency: two months later, one month, three weeks, two weeks, six days, every day…

After a couple weeks where Highwall dreamed every night, she wrote,I had DM, KL, LDS, and MO over for dinner yesterday. LDSand MO dislike each other, but we overcame the problem. We managed it, finally: a five-person league. Last night I didn’t dream. I won’t again.

Five-person leaguing. It took five-person leaguing to cure Highwall’s bite.