Page 91 of Flickerstate

I brace myself and start composing a text. I type, delete, retype. After a few minutes, I whittle everything I want to say down to a simple plea:Could you meet me on the basketball courts tomorrow at 5 a.m.? Or at least sometime really soon. Need to talk to you. Please don’t tell anyone.

Sent.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Candace does not text me while I creep into Lucasson. She does not text me overnight. She does not text me the next day during myjog to the dining hall to snag bagels and coffee, or my classes, or the surreal late afternoon I spend at my desk finishing problem sets and puzzling through a Jorge Luis Borges story, faking like my grades matter, like I’ll survive long enough to get this semester’s grades if she won’t help me and Vik.

I’m lying in bed after my dinnertime dining hall raid, readingVanity Fairfor English, when Candace walks into our common room, oxfords clicking distinctively on the hardwood. She pauses outside my door. I freeze while turning a page.

My phone, resting face-up on my stomach, buzzes. I flail.

I will meet you at 6:30 a.m. tomorrow, not before,Candace has texted.This had better be good.

Her shoes click away, muffled crossing the carpet, louder when they hit bare floor. Her door opens and closes. I want to rush outand thank her, but I’m too scared she won’t look at me.

I text Vik the good news.

***

I show up to the basketball courts at 6:27 a.m. Vik leans against the pole of the hoop nearest our footpath, reading on his phone.

Footsteps thud behind us. I turn. In the semidark, black interrupted by lampposts shining whitely, a runner with braided hair bustles fast around the Language Arts & Social Studies building.

Candace crosses the loop path behind the runner. When she reaches the courts, she stops and folds her arms. Her eyes dart from Vik to me. If she’s surprised to see us together, she hides it well. “What did you want to show me?”

“Not here, not with people on the loop,” Vik says.

“We can use the clearing,” I say. “I go first, you guys follow in three?”

She glances between me and Vik again—curious about what neither he nor I would want some jogger overhearing. “Fine,” she says curtly.

I bolt before she can change her mind.

It’s hard to sustain constant terror even when you know death’s stalking you. While I hurry down the footpath, my ears strain for a murderous crack overhead, but they don’t tingle with hypervigilance. While I wait under the hole in the clearing’s canopy, I am worrying, but not about copperheads in the undergrowth. No, I’m worrying how Candace will react when I show her mybite. She’s been healed for months. Maybe she’ll have forgotten the sickening pressure of possibility wounds. Maybe mine will only make her wonder whether I thought a bite could excuse my behavior.

Vik’s flashlight emerges from the dark path, followed by Vik himself. He walks to me.

Candace, behind him, stops outside the ring of flattish stones. “Show me what you’re going to show me.”

There’s no gradual way to do it. I roll up my sleeve and rip off the maxi Band-Aid.

Candace swipes on her phone flashlight and shines it on my wound: the fat scabs, the deepening punctures. Her eyes widen.

I want to puke. Nerves.

Instead I reach for Vik. He takes my hand, his grip strong and warm. Before Candace makes up her mind, we have to show her. Not just my bite.Everything. “We’re going to navigate,” I tell her. “Watch. Three, two, one—”

The red-gold mansion rises around us. Through our windows, we glimpse a towering sycamore, leaves emerald, bark peeling silver: Candace. Speeding down our hallways, peering through our doors, we search for the wound’s futures. In too many rooms, the marks open further, punch deeper. These rooms bristle with detail, so close to the real that we breathe the iron tang of probable blood. Soon our walls are shaking, about to crumble. We let go of our connection.

Back in the clearing, I’m sweating, shirt wet against my back. My head pounds. Vik looks how I feel: pallid, shaky, ready to buckleat the knees.

Candace stares at us. Her eyes gleam, sharp as arrowheads. “Whatwasthat?”

“Leaguing,” I say.

She barks a laugh. “Sure.”

“What did it look like?” Vik asks hoarsely. “In flickerstate.”