Chapter Five
Before bed, I call Jo and fill her in on my day: my unhelpful peer mentor, my blockmate with healed bites. By the time we finish, I’m yawning hard.
But once I fall asleep, the silence keeps waking me.
I’m too used to city noise. Every few hours, I float into consciousness, ears straining for familiar sounds: Jo’s breathing, night traffic, far-off sirens.
Quiet presses down on me like a smothering hand.
When gray light creeps around my curtain, I call it.
My head aches with exhaustion, but nervous energy burns in my chest. I won’t get back to sleep. Might as well hop to it.
Vik walks through the door behind Candace, sees the other kids ignoring her, and takes the seat next to hers.
Okay. Point to Vik.
I sit down on Candace’s other side. One table over, Mirabel glances up. When she spots me with Candace, she glowers and turns primly forward.
Griffin’s next to Mirabel. I nod to him and raise an eyebrow at Candace. She scowls and shakes her head.
Damn it. We need a third teammate fast.
I glance back at Griffin and Mirabel. They’re close-talking, her hair brushing his arm on the table. Guess that’s an alliance to watch out for.
Bree busts through the nearest door and plops onto the last lab stool at our table.
“Do you guys feel like you’ve been running everywhere since you opened your eyes?
I was late to first period, and I didn’t even eat breakfast. Candace, next time I sleep through my alarm, would you mind waking me up before you leave? ”
“I’m not an alarm clock,” Candace says.
Bree laughs. “I know. It’s just, I’m a corpse when I sleep. When I was little, my mom used to shake me like a smoothie every morning so I wouldn’t make us late for school.”
In the winters, when our warped floor turned to ice, Jo would refuse to leave her warm bed. Mom deputized me to drag her into the world by the ankles. Jo and I made a rough game of it, her kicking, me grabbing her skinny feet. We had a point system. I smile, remembering.
My smile twists. If I don’t pass this screening, how will I face Jo?
“I’m also not your mom,” Candace says. “We’re peers. Technically.”
A confused frown puckers Bree’s forehead. She seems not to understand why Candace might resent her after yesterday.
I get that Candace is mad at everyone who shunned her. But Bree, unlike everyone else who shunned her, is now happily sitting at our table. Besides, given what else I have going on, I’d like my block to stay drama-free. So I change the subject: “How was your mentor dinner, Bree?”
She beams. “Great. Antoine’s super nice, and—”
Another door opens. Dr. Langmore walks through, flanked by two men.
“Attention!” she calls.
The command is unnecessary. We all shut up when she walked in.
“You know me. This is Mr. Davis.” Dr. Langmore gestures to the man on her left, fiftyish with a sad bulldog face. “And this is Dr. Ortega.” She gestures to the man on her right, a gangly thirtysomething with hipster glasses. “Mr. Davis will pass around the syllabus.”
In my other classes, the syllabi clocked in around ten pages, crammed with class policies and day-by-day breakdowns of the semester. This syllabus is a single sheet:
Monday, 8/16: Introduction, Syllabus
Tuesday, 8/17–Friday, 8/27: Siphoning
Screening, Break into Clinics A, B, C: Friday, 8/27
Monday, 8/30–Friday, 9/24 Unit 1: Channeling
Archive Trial 1: Friday, 9/24
Monday, 9/27 – Friday, Unit 2: Advanced Occlusion
Archive Trial 2: Friday, 10/22
Monday, 10/25–Friday, Unit 3: Summation
Archive Trial 3: Friday, 11/19; Archive Assistants Announced
Saturday, 11/20–Sunday, THANKSGIVING brEAK
Monday, 11/29–Wednesday, 12/22: Review
Sunday, 12/13: U.S. Navigation Secretary’s Annual Talk
Wednesday, 12/22: Final Exam
Thursday, 12/23: WINTER brEAK
Okay. The Archive competition will be over before Thanksgiving. I have about three months to get better at nav than kids who’ve been practicing for years.
Fabulous.
“If you pass the screening,” Dr. Langmore continues, “you’ll be sorted into Clinic A, where you’ll compete for an Archive assistantship.
Being an assistant opens doors. Every assistant since the Archive opened eight years ago has gone to their first-choice college.
The older assistants have gone on to excellent graduate schools or competitive jobs—Yale Law, Harvard Medical School, staffing the U.S.
secretary of navigation. Although . . .”
Grumbles fill the room. Since President Nixon formed the federal Department of Navigation, hoping Highwall’s newly discovered quasi-science would give the U.S.
an edge in the Cold War, presidents have appointed navigators to lead the department—until Secretary Tully, who can’t navigate his way out of a paper bag.
Our beloved current president appointed Tully to hack away at public funding for navigation research and beast emergency response.
I’m surprised that, according to the syllabus, Tully’s bothering to make the secretary’s usual visit to the Academy.
Dr. Langmore frowns and shakes her head.
“That is to say, Archive assistants are the best young navigators in the world. But the trials will be grueling and ultimately unrewarding for all but three of you, so we’re giving you a chance to self-eliminate.
Raise your hand if you’d like to bow out now, rather than after the screening. ”
I glare around me, willing kids to self-eliminate. No one does. All around the room, faces shine with hope and ambition.
Everyone wants inside the Archive.
“Good,” Dr. Langmore says. “Now, about your grades. If you pass the screening, you get at least a B for the semester. If the first trial, an A-. If the second, an A. Questions?”
Vik, glowering at the syllabus, raises his hand.
“Mr. Souza?” Dr. Langmore says wearily.
“Channeling’s a group activity, but it ends with solo navigation. Occlusion’s solo nav too.”
“Yes. What was the question?”
“Are we going to try genuine sharing?”
“‘Genuine sharing’?” The air quotes are heavy in Dr. Langmore’s voice.
Some of our classmates look confused. Others smirk. Griffin and Mirabel trade glances, his puckish, hers annoyed.
“Genuine sharing,” Vik repeats evenly. “When we channel, the group’s nav all goes to one person.
And that one person decides how to use the nav.
But there’s always loss of power in the transfer.
Your average navigator can channel half their power, maybe two-thirds if they have a great working relationship with the person they’re channeling to.
The rest is lost. That’s channeling. But in leaguing, the group pools power and decides how to use it as a group.
No transfer, no power loss. In fact, theorists of leaguing think it could magnify nav ability. ”
As Vik talks, our classmates’ confused looks melt into more smirks, like he’s announced we should try navigating with the Slenderman.
“Leaguing is just a theory,” Dr. Langmore says.
“A myth. Group navigation can’t work. To navigate, you need an individual will steering the ship.
One person to take control and lead the way.
Other questions?” She doesn’t wait for a response.
“Let’s continue. This year’s screening will be a set of siphoning duels.
For those who don’t know, siphoning is when one navigator takes another’s power by force.
You will try to take your opponent’s power, and your opponent will try to take yours.
If you win, you’ll use your opponent’s siphoned power to navigate through a card deck, ace to king, clubs to spades.
For the next two weeks, that’s what we’ll be practicing.
Any questions about that? No? Then I need two volunteers. ”
Bree raises her hand with a please-don’t-skewer-me smile.
I notice that she chews her fingernails as violently as I do: tiny scabs where she’s gnawed off cuticles, smarting quicks bared on her index and middle fingers.
“I know the theory behind siphoning, but they don’t teach it in county nav departments.
Could you maybe, um, demonstrate? Before we volunteer to try? ”
Dr. Langmore frowns at Bree. “Ms. Allen, correct?”
Bree nods like a bobblehead.
“At another school, your request would be appropriate. But at the Academy, we learn navigation by navigating. You’re the best of the best, so we expect more of you. Since you were brave enough to ask, you’re my first volunteer. Come stand by me.”
Bree’s eyes fly wide. That’s not what “volunteer” means. But she forces a smile and winds through the tables to join Dr. Langmore at the room’s empty center.
“Who else?” Dr. Langmore asks.
After a dragging pause, Mirabel raises her hand.
“Ms. Delgado.” Dr. Langmore smiles. “Following in her brother’s footsteps. His team won the competition six years ago.”
Mirabel’s mouth wobbles and sets. “I plan to outdo him.”
“A fine goal. If you miss, you’ll land among the stars, and so on. Come on up.”
Soon Mirabel and Bree are facing off. Dr. Langmore stands perpendicular to them, like she’s officiating their wedding.
Bree gives Mirabel a beseeching look. “So… How do we start?”
“I won’t hurt you if I can help it.” Mirabel speaks quickly, like a pilot warning passengers of onrushing turbulence. “Give me your hands. It’ll go faster.”
Bree’s hands stay stiff at her sides. Her eyes flicker around the students watching her, as if imploring us to intervene.
Incompatible emotions, water and oil, churn in my mind. One second, I’m impatient, thinking, Let’s get this demo over with. The next, I’m wondering what Mirabel meant by “if I can help it,” and I want to tuck Bree under my arm and march her out the nearest door.
Wait. I can march poor Bree out the nearest door, figuratively speaking. I can take her place. If I do, I get a freebie—a shot at learning how to siphon before any of the other transfers.
Sure, Mirabel might hurt me. But… God, Bree looks terrified.