Page 38 of Flickerstate

“She was not.”

“And the alarm?”

“Five a.m., snooze. Five ten, snooze. Five twenty, snooze. Five thirty…I went to the common room sofa to escape the noise, but even with the door shut, I could hear it.”

“What can I do?”

“Ordinarily, I’d say nothing. My roommate, my problem. But if she and I are going into the trials sleep-deprived, it hurts you too.”

I nod miserably. “We’re hosting an intervention.”

Candace sighs. “Looks like.”

***

All through dinner, Bree—sporting deep purple bags under her eyes—monologues about peer-reviewed papers on nav-assisted therapeutic research. Her face is cloudless, even sunny, despite her clear exhaustion, Candace’s ominous silence, and my panicky nail chewing.

My team won’t gel if Bree gives Candace another reason to be pissed at her. My team won’t win if Bree and Candace are debilitatingly sleepy. How do I make this right?

After dinner, huffing up the stairs to our block, Bree pants out her plans to apply only to universities with experimental nav labs and top-notch financial aid. She concludes as I swipe us into our block: “—which leaves me applying to the Ivies, plus Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, MIT, and Stanford.”

I close the door behind us. “Bree, we wanted to talk to you.”

She drops into the armchair, a confused smile on her face. “What have you been doing?”

“Listening,” Candace mutters as she takes the sofa.

I sit on the carpet. “About your alarm.”

Bree keeps smiling. “What about it?”

Candace clasps her hands. “You’ve been coming in around one a.m. and setting your alarm for five. It wakes me up. When you hit snooze, it keeps waking me up.”

Bree’s forehead crinkles. “I can’t help hitting snooze. I’m tired.”

Candace digs her nails into the back of her hand. “So am I.”

“Look, Bree.” I aim for a brisk yet understanding tone. “Candace needs sleep. You do too. And yesterday you told her you’dbe back before midnight.”

“Yeah, Kayla—my sister—she called me on the way to the library. I started my homework like an hour later than I thought I would. I had to set my alarm early so I could finish before class.”

“Did you?” Candace asks. “Finish before class?”

“I mean… No. Kayla called me this morning too. I couldn’t just hang up on her.”

“I need sleep, Bree,” Candace says slowly. “I couldn’t keep my eyes open in clinic today. We need a new system.”

Bree’s confusion shades worried, almost frightened. “I really can’t help it. It’s just… I can’t not take her calls.”

Candace watches Bree for a moment. Her frustration seems to melt away as she comes to a realization. “I’ve noticed Kayla calls you most mornings. Why don’t you tell us about her?”

Bree sighs, shoulders dropping, as if Candace has guessed her most embarrassing secret. “Um. She… Look. My mom works really hard to support Kayla and me. She wants us to achieve things she didn’t get to. Like, graduate college, become doctors or professors, live comfortable lives in comfortable houses in comfortable suburbs. But because she works so hard—I mean, growing up, Kayla and I spent more time with the upstairs neighbor who babysat us than we did with her. So Mom works around the clock for us, but she’s notthere, and like—I want to do psychology research, okay? I understand thedynamics. In a desperate bid for Mom’s attention, Kayla and I were either going to become brittle, anxious perfectionists, or we were going to rebel. Well,Ibecame a perfectionist, and Kayla rebelled. Which is fine! Except—Kayla wants me to rebel with her, and whenI don’t… After I made varsity track my freshman year, Kayla dropped out of her first semester of community college. After my team won the Oregon Science Olympiad, she quit her tattoo apprenticeship. And after I got into theAcademy, oh man. She totaled our car driving high. Which wasn’t exactly cheap for Mom to replace. I thought now that I’m at boarding school, the distance would, I don’t know, cool Kayla off? But when I told her I made the Archive trials, she threatened to quit the cosmetology program she just enrolled in. Mom already dropped like a thousand dollars for Kayla’s equipment kit. If Kayla quits, Mom says she’ll kick her out of the apartment, and I have literally no idea what will happen then. So when Kayla calls me at midnight or four a.m. or whenever she feels like, I pick up. I tell her all the ways I’m struggling at the Academy. And I beg her not to blow up her life. I get that this is not sustainable; I just…”

“Oh,” Candace says. “Oh, sweetheart. This is a hostage situation.”

Bree winces and smiles sadly. “Yeah. I know.”

I’ve listened to Bree spill her guts with mounting anger at this Kayla person. I can understand rebelling against your parents, sure. But sabotaging your baby sister? Forcing her to feel responsible for all your destructive bullshit? If I imagine treating Jo like that, I immediately want to punch myself in the face. “How can we help you?” I ask.