Page 97 of Flickerstate

I roll over and blink at the clouded sky, barely lighter than theblack canopy that frames it. “How do you see him in flickerstate?”

“Big-ass river.”

“And you’re a big-ass tree. Highly compatible nav concepts. He waters your roots, you stabilize his banks. So. Try the thing.”

She climbs to her feet, grumbling performatively about crazy blockmates, but she doesn’t say no. Meanwhile, I sit up, wipe my mouth, and grab for my fallen phone, trying to suppress my sudden, inappropriate, insecure jealousy. Because I’m right: Theydohave highly compatible nav concepts. Much more compatible than mine with hers, or mine with his.

That’s a good thing,I remind myself.They’re the ones who have to search the Highwall Collection with leaguing. Unless and until you get a chance to join them, you’re just playing lookout.

Remember teamwork? Try to do it right this time.

All that matters is our plan. All that matters is the cure.

***

Cold, gray, misty days slide by. It’s December now, students scraping ghost or turkey decals from their dorm windows and slapping up snowflakes, penguins, and reindeer. Each early morning when my alarm wakes me, I check my weather app and find the temperature has dipped another few degrees. In the dark and frigid clearing, Vik, Candace, and I try to league again and again. A week before the formal, Vik and Candace finally succeed. They last two seconds, and I wonder whether they’ll get good enough in time.

The day before the formal, they league for a minute andsummon a whole flock of white-throated sparrows, and I realize they actuallymight.

***

The formal starts at eight and ends at eleven. At seven-thirty, I’m sitting on my bed, stiff as a mannequin. Candace stands facing me, bent at the waist, expression dead serious as she does my makeup. “You know,” I mutter through tense lips—it’s hard to relax when someone’s wielding a sharpened eyeliner pencil that close to your cornea—“I’m not sure this is necessary.”

For my birthday—

Right. While Candace, Vik, and I were battering ourselves to bits trying to league and doing the planning-montage part of every heist movie, I turned eighteen.

I didn’t mention my milestone to anyone at the Academy. Just like on Thanksgiving, I talked to my whole family: even Kev and Irene, who hate the phone and mumble aggressively; even Dad, who has a harder time speaking through his pain every day; even Mom, briefly, sadly. That was going to be celebration enough. Except that morning in the clearing, stars clear as diamonds in the frigid winter sky, Vik (awkwardly) handed me a book wrapped in brown paper and Candace added that her gift for me was up in our block. And yeah, it was bad enough getting a copy of Shusaku Endo’sSilencefrom Vik—how did he guess I wanted to read that particular novel before I maybe died?—but later I found out that Candace had bought me an entire outfit for the formal because she’d noticed I’dpacked one dress and no fancy shoes, and when I told her it was too much and that she had to take it back, she smirked and said she’d known I would be difficult, so she’d bought my gifts from a designer consignment store that didn’t do returns.

At which point I cried. Candace tactfully pretended I had something in my eye.

So now I’m wearing this dress, entirely on the Winter Formal’s Hollywood Glamour theme: dark red velvet with long, off-the-shoulder sleeves and a plunging back. Candace has piled my hair on top of my head and pinned it, baring my neck and shoulders.

“It’s necessary,” she says. “Don’t blink.”

I try not to blink—or breathe—while she tickles my lash line with the eyeliner pencil. When she draws back, I say, “I mean, do I need to glam this hard to, like, execute the mission?”

“Stop second-guessing my aesthetic vision and be grateful.”

“Thank you, Candace,” I say in a breathy voice. “I love youraesthetic vision, and you are always right.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Are you doing Marilyn? Don’t.”

“Where’s Bree anyway?”

“Studying. She claimed she couldn’t afford a fancy enough dress and begged off. When I offered to buyhera dress, she told me I wasn’t her sugar daddy. Which, rude. Now stop distracting me.”

When she finishes, she forms a rectangle with her thumbs and forefingers, frames me, and makes a shutter-click noise. “I’m a genius.”

Soon I’m admiring myself in my phone camera. Somehow Candace has a lipstick (Uncanny Burgundy, whateverthatmeans) exactly matching the dress. I must say, I look good, but I can onlygaze at myself for so long. “You nervous?” I ask, putting my phone away.

Candace leans against my dresser. “I’m ready to find out what happened to me. We can talk about the nervous-making logistics when Vik gets here.”

Like his name summoned him, Vik knocks on my bedroom door.

“Come in,” I call.

He enters and stops dead with his hand on the knob. His black eyes drink me in: my burgundy mouth, my bare shoulders, my waist held tight by velvet that suddenly feels too warm despite the cool evening. He’s dressed down as usual, in a faded T-shirt he’s outgrown and jeans with ripped knees, but the hot twist in my stomach tells me he looks better than any of the tuxed-up guys roaming campus right now. His broad shoulders fill the doorway, and hishands—