Page 39 of Flickerstate

Bree’s eyebrows jump, her mouth forming a littleo. She clearly expected a nonstop scolding, not an outstretched hand. “Do…do you guys have any advice?”

Candace nods. “I’m familiar with toxic families. I mean, my mom’s sort of an angel, but the stepdad goes pretty hard at Griffin.Which means I’ve gotten good at running interference. So. What if you set some boundaries with your sister but blamed them all on me? ‘My tyrannical roommate insists I use Do Not Disturb from eleven to six.’ ‘My insane roommate is demanding we study in the library’s phone-free zone after dinner every night.’ If you want, I can even yell at you while you’re on a call with her. For verisimilitude.”

Hesitantly, Bree nods. “Maybe that could work?”

Bree, Candace, and I agree to an eleven p.m. curfew for our block so that we’re all getting the minimum necessary amount of sleep. Instead of practicing nav, we spend the rest of our two hours brainstorming ways Bree can defuse her hostage situation. Bree accepts some of my and Candace’s suggestions and rejects others. By the end of evening, she has a plan.

She seems grateful, not mad, that we elbowed into her business to help her. That’s more humility and self-awareness than I would have shown, in her shoes.

Maybe we can make this team thing work.

Chapter Ten

Every day until the first trial, Candace, Bree, and I practice channeling after dinner. I relay to them the techniques Vik has explained inour predawn sessions. How to clear your mind before you navigate so flickerstate rises around you crisper, realer, more tangible. How to keep your heart rate low and your breathing rhythmic to steady the channel you’re building. How not to panic when you feel your power flowing away by concentrating on your trust in the navigator who’s receiving it.

We improve inch by inch. Bree struggles to clear her mind (“I have, what do they call it, monkey brain”). Candace hates rhythmic breathing (“Very Lamaze. Cringe”). And every time I channel to them, I either panic and pull back or shove too much power all at once, burning them up (“Sorry, sorry, I—!”).

Still, we do improve. It’s a relief.

Another relief: Candace has started smiling at Bree’s dorky navigation puns. Once, she even laughs, which makes Bree turnpink and beam. After that, Bree sits next to Candace on the sofa instead of on the armchair. They chat about their classes, Bree’s progress with boundary setting, and our class’s slow, slow realization that Candace’s healed wounds won’t kill anyone. Bree touches Candace’s arm when she wants Candace’s attention, and Candace nudges Bree softly with her elbow to underscore her driest jokes. They lean together when they talk. They’refriendsnow.

My team’s doing okay.

Vik and I, not so much. His tutoring may be on point, but our attempts to league? Argh. We detail the future we want painstakingly, narrowing our goals till we converge on a single red-gold gossamer possibility, try to navigate in tandem—

And nothing.

So no, I’m not learning how to league. What I am learning is Vik. How he looks in the dark, in the red sunrise, in the gold day. How he grins at my jokes but never cracks a smile at his own, so deadpan I’m not always sure whether the strange things he saysarejokes. How he’s always wearing some distractingly clingy, faded, Vermont-theme T-shirt because he has an extensive collection, gag gifts from his middle school best friend after the Academy accepted him.

“She wanted to remind me I come from the mean streets of VT,” he says.

“Which are...what, dirt roads roamed by poorly trained dogs?”

“Basically.”

“Do you see her in the summer?” I judge this to be a chill and normal way to ask whether the unnamed female friend is the hometown girl Griffin mentioned.

“Not really,” he says.

The evening before the first trial, I text to beg off the next morning practice. I tell him I need the extra sleep, but the fact is, I need a break from him. He tutors me, but he’s also competition. If we both reach the final trial, I’ll have to knock him down or fall myself. I can’t let myself think about him like—like—this.

***

It takes me a long time to get to sleep that night.

When I do, I dream.

I’m rushing out of Classic English Novels. It’s on the fifth floor of the Language Arts & Social Studies building. My next class is on the first. And I’m so, so late. I barrel down the hallway with its high fan-vaulted ceiling and carom into the stairwell, my backpack banging against my spine.

On the first steep stair, I slip.

I hang in empty air, arms and legs churning.

I land.

Crunch.

Agony explodes in my neck, and—