Page 74 of Flickerstate

“I’m sorry about dinner,” I say. “I must have slept through—”

“Not about that. Come on; let’s sit in the common room.”

She and Bree settle on the sofa, and I collapse into the armchair. This isn’t an unusual seating arrangement for us, and normally it’s cozy, but now, with the tense atmosphere in the room, it feels like a stress dream, like I’ve walked into a panel interview for an important internship I can’t remember applying for.

Bree tugs her nail from between her teeth and bursts out, “Look, we wanted to ask—are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say automatically.

Candace sighs. “Norah, please do us the courtesy of remembering we are not idiots.”

My shoulders pull defensively toward my neck. “What?”

“I vacuum-packed seventy-five pounds of clothing into twooversize suitcases to come here, but my whole wardrobe could fit in the bags under your eyes. You say you need to sleep. But you’re clearly not sleeping. For the past week you’ve turned us down every time we’ve asked you to hang out. And you’ve started flinching at loud noises. When Bree asks whether you’re okay, she means,whyaren’t you okay? And what can we do to help?”

The question hits me hard. Candace isn’t touchy-feely, and while I consider her and Bree my friends—my only friends, now I’ve lost Vik—a paranoid part of me still worries that to them I’m more like a coworker, a girl they hang out with just because we’re in the same block and on the same trial team. The care in Candace’s voice makes me want to cry. I cover my face to hide the tears burning my eyes. “Sorry, it’s…everything.”

“Candace, um, mentioned you and Vik…” Bree says. “Did—did something happen?”

“Oh,” I say from behind my hands. “Yeah. I ended it.”

“Ended it? So youwere… But why end it? You like him so much.”

I don’t ask how she knows. Maybe I’m that obvious. “He’s the competition. It was a bad idea.”

“Norah.” She sounds so sad for me. “Not everything’s about the competition. Not everything’s aboutwinning.”

Bitterness floods my mouth. Is that all Bree thinks of me—that I’m fixated on winning, snaring status and prestige, being number one?

“It’s smart to focus on the trials,” Candace says. “But are you just upset about Vik, or is there something else?”

I lower my hands. She’s staring at me with flat disbelief. Sheknowsthere’s something else.

My chest twists. I long to tell my friends the truth:My dad’s dying, I’m dying, I’m so scared. Please help me.

Then I remember how Bree shunned Candace, like all our classmates did, until she saw that Candace’s bites were healed. If she knew why I wanted the Archive—if she knew about my unhealed bite—would she try harder in the final trial to save me?

Or run screaming? Orreportme?

And Candace… She knows what it’s like to fear death breathing wetly down her neck. Maybe empathy would compel her to fight for me. But maybe, having escaped the doom of possibility wounds once, she’d do anything to stay out of their orbit again. Including ditch me.

I want to trust Candace and Bree. I do.

But I can’t risk it.

“Guys,” I say. “I’m stressed out and exhausted. And tomorrow’s the final trial. Can we just…leave it for now? Rest. Save the heart-to-heart for after Dr. Langmore names us this year’s Archive assistants.”

Bree smiles at my attempted optimism.

But Candace is unmoved. “We navigate better together when we’re honest with each other. I showed you my bites the day I met you. About a week after that, Bree opened up. Now we’re asking you to reciprocate, for your own good, and you’re stonewalling us.”

“I’m not—”You are, though. I try again. “It’s not one thing. It’s Vik, and the competition, and not talking with my mom, and notsleeping…”

“And what else?” Candace asks.

I swallow. “Isn’t that enough?”

“It’s more than enough. But you’re hiding something. You’ve been hiding something since you came to the Academy. You’ve got to know I know that.”