Chapter Three
In mid-August, riding a shuttle from the airport to the Academy, I hunch in the back seat and thumb through pictures of my future roommates for the hundredth time.
Bree Allen and Candace Yang. If anyone had asked whether I was nervous to live with strangers, I’d have scoffed: I’m not some princess, I’ve shared a room my whole life, I’ll be fine.
But no one asked. So, privately, I’ve let myself fret about what I’ll do if Bree and Candace crank up death metal in the early a.m. or FaceTime their hometown love interests with a captive audience lying feet away.
I haven’t found any glaring red flags though.
Bree has limited privacy controls on her accounts, so I can see more about her.
She’s a curly-haired blond with a giant smile.
In most photos and videos she posts she’s singing solos for her high school choir, dripping sweat in a track uniform, or beaming in the middle of a Science Olympiad team’s group hug.
But in a few, an older girl with rhinestone eyebrow studs and an all-plaid wardrobe has her in a loving choke hold; Bree struggles to breathe and hug the girl back at the same time.
The girl’s tagged Kayla Allen. Bree’s big sister, I’m guessing.
Conclusion: Bree’s the straight-arrow high achiever of the Allen family, the classical concerto to Kayla’s grunge-rock anthem.
If Bree’s as type A as she looks, she’ll probably keep our room neat, so…fine by me.
Candace has privacy settings like Edward Snowden.
(Respect.) Since I can’t access her social media profiles, I google her.
Turns out she did debate in a Connecticut public school district where the houses are so astronomically expensive that the district might as well be private.
Her debate team made a national competition last year, according to her school paper.
I get my one glimpse of Candace in the photo that accompanies the article: She’s a small girl with bobbed black hair, staring down the camera like she’s challenging it to a duel.
I kind of like her vibe.
Bree and Candace haven’t been the only targets of my cyberstalking.
All summer I’ve scraped the internet for hints about the Academy’s senior class.
Opposition research. If the Archive only takes a few senior assistants each year, I’m competing against these kids for access to lifesaving information. I need to know them so I can beat them.
Unfortunately, I’ve only uncovered a handful of names.
When I read the Academy student handbook, I learned why: The Academy’s VPN blocks access to every social media platform known to man, and posting about the Academy online—photos, memes, whatever—gets you a week’s suspension on the first offense.
I’ll have to do my sleuthing on-site, the old-fashioned way.
The Academy’s orientation emails have instructed the senior transfers to gather by the Great Tree today at 5 p.m. From there, our student guide, Mirabel Delgado, will lead us to the “dining hall” (which I plan to call what it is, a cafeteria) and pair us with peer mentors, seniors who’ve attended the Academy since freshman year and can tell us which teachers are strictest and where the bathrooms are.
The shuttle driver parks outside Admissions and vanishes, spiriting students’ suitcases away. I have to hope he’s bringing mine to my dorm room, Lucasson 41A, wherever that is.
Late-afternoon sun gleams on stone arches and wrought iron curlicues. Warm breeze tilts the grass. The air is soft and fragrant.
No reason to feel like my lunch might escape, right?
My flight arrived just in time for me to catch the last shuttle to campus.
The students who’ve been directing transfer traffic all day have already clocked off.
I need to find my own way around. According to the campus map attached to the final orientation email, the Great Tree stands in the main quad’s center.
I pick a gravel footpath and head for it.
Past Admissions, around a turreted dorm, and—there.
Above the smooth turf towers the most sinister tree I have ever seen.
It has the unhealthy vitality of a tumor: a bubbling trunk, branches covered in lumpy growths, and massive crocodile-colored leaves with an eerie shine.
The tree’s creep factor so bowls me over—like, I’m all for old-growth forest and biodiversity, except in this case, chainsaw the monster now—that I take a second to clock the students milling in its shade.
Loose groups of what I assume are transfers stand in a circle, chatting with their backs to a girl leaning alone against the tree. The girl, short and slim, wears a white button-down and boyfriend jeans rolled up to her calves. Above her platform oxfords, her ankles look skinny and vulnerable.
I recognize her angled bob. It’s Candace.
I head for her.
A bright soprano calls, “Are you Norah?”
When I turn, a curly-haired blond—Bree—bounds toward me. I tug my wrinkled shirt’s hem. “Yeah, I’m Norah. Nice to—”
“Aaah, it’s so good to finally meet you.
I’m Bree. I’m from Portland—Oregon, not Maine.
I have a sister who’s four years older. Mom got pregnant in college, dropped out, and waited till she’d made some money as a nursing assistant to have me, so, age gap!
I found out I could navigate this January.
No kidding, I dropped into flickerstate in the poetry section at Powell’s.
I decided right away to apply to the Academy, because I want to do psych research, and flickerstate is the new frontier for experimental design. You?”
Bree’s either very excited or very caffeinated.
I’m not sure how to respond—or how to match her energy.
I am sure I don’t want to give my version of her monologue: I’m from St. Louis—city, not county.
Dad’s an invalid, and Mom works sixty hours a week for less than 60K a year.
I dropped into flickerstate the first time right before beasts swarmed me and my dad, and I have no long-term goals, because if I can’t cure my bite, I have no long term.
What a bummer.
“I found out I could navigate in February,” I say instead. “Uh… Met our other roommate yet?”
Bree’s eyes dart toward Candace without quite landing on her. “Um, no.”
I’d figured Candace, the one person Bree and I have in common, would be a safe topic.
But Bree’s reaction is—nervous? I glance at Candace again.
She’s still alone. Are the other transfers ignoring her on purpose?
A girl with a dark mole on her upper lip almost turns to Candace but jerks away.
A sandy-haired boy sneaks a glare at Candace and mutters to his friend.
I catch “I heard she…” and “Can’t believe they let that girl come… ”
Okay, whatever’s going on, I want to know now.
“Let’s go say hi,” I tell Bree.
When I stride toward Candace, Bree hesitates but falls into step behind me.
“I’m Norah,” I say. “This is Bree. We’re your roommates.”
“Blockmates,” Candace says.
“What?”
“Academy students don’t live in nasty little rooms off dingy hallways.
We live in what are, effectively, two-bedroom apartments with a common room for entertaining callers.
These apartments are known as blocks. I’m sharing Lucasson 41B with Bree, who is, in fact, my roommate.
You must have gotten the single, Lucasson 41A, which makes you my blockmate. ”
Candace has a dry, soft voice, nothing special—except the steely confidence of her delivery makes you hang on to her words. No wonder her team killed at debate.
“Okay, blockmate,” I say. “How did you become the leper of the senior transfer class?”
Candace shoots a sly glance at Bree, who blushes. Then she folds up her sleeve. Shiny scars, raggedly circular, mark her inner arm from wrist to elbow.
I recognize their lamprey-mouth shape. These are bites from a common form of beast manifestation..
Candace has possibility wounds. Healed ones.
“They demanifested? How?” I demand.
Hope slams my heart against my ribs. I’ve never met anyone with a healed bite before. Candace is proof, in the flesh, that Dad and I have a shot at surviving.
“I don’t know,” Candace says. “Why aren’t you bleating and fleeing like the rest of the herd?”
I don’t know? If not demanifestation, what healed the wounds?
Before I can ask, Bree cuts in. “I don’t think people know your bites are, um, inactive. That’s amazing. You should tell them. If you told them, they might be less crappy about it.”
“They might be less crappy?” Candace echoes.
Anger bubbles in my chest. There’s no proof the bitten pose a risk to others.
But even if there were, Candace has healed.
The usual superstitions don’t justify the stupid way our new classmates are acting.
It makes me wonder how Jo’s faring, back at Saint Cat’s.
Are the other girls recoiling from her, Dad’s sickness clinging to her like a bad smell?
I glare at the transfers. Nope, I’m not putting up with this. “Mind if I try something, Candace?”
She cocks her head. “Go on.”
I throw an arm around her. She stiffens, surprised, and then relaxes with a laugh. When I steer her into the crowd, kids gasp like I’m handling a copperhead.
“Hey, everybody,” I call. “I missed the introductions. Mind coming and telling us your names?”
The nearest transfer, the girl with the mole, stutters, “H-h-hi. I’m Aria.”
“Hi, Aria.” I offer her my hand without letting go of Candace.
Aria hesitates.
I keep my hand out. Yeah, let the moment stretch. Candace grins, small and sharky.
Another girl steps between me and Aria. She has mild resting bitch face and enviable hair, glossy chocolate sheets falling to her waist. She grabs my hand in a bone-grinding grip, pumps it, drops it, and turns to our audience.
“Hello, senior transfers! I’m Mirabel Delgado. I run the peer mentor program.”