Chapter Nine
I’m used to predictable reactions from people.
Teachers like me because I turn in my homework on time, never text in class, and participate in discussion in ways that carefully avoid challenging their unspoken but easy-to-guess opinions.
My friends respected me, back when I had friends, before they started avoiding my whole family like the plague, because I kept my promises.
And boys flirt with me as a third option when their first and second choices aren’t around—it’s almost like they feel obligated, but my personality keeps them from getting too enthusiastic about it.
Vik doesn’t exactly flirt. Instead, he has this half-professional, half-playful mode of talking to me that I can’t interpret.
He’s not wounding my pride—I swear, I’m not a complete ego monster.
I just like to know where I stand. That way, I can manage interactions better.
(I know, how conniving.) But Vik’s a sheer cliff face: no handholds.
Or maybe, given how he sees his nav, I should say a river: He slips through my fingers.
I’m brooding on this point when we exit the trees. Beyond the basketball courts, Candace sits framed in one of the dining hall windows. Griffin, beside her, spots Vik and me right away. He gives us an air-control wave.
I bite down a cussword.
Vik waves back and turns to me. “See you.”
“Wait,” I say. “What are you going to tell Griffin?”
“About what?”
“About why we were creeping around the woods at the ass end of the morning.”
“If he asks, I’ll tell him I’ve been tutoring you.”
Not much I can say to that. I wish Vik would lie outright, but I’m not low enough to beg him to. “Right. Have a nice day.”
I glare at his back as he walks off. Then I trudge toward the dining hall. Might as well face the music.
Once I’ve collected coffee, I join Candace and Griffin, setting my mug down like a challenge. “Good morning.”
“Not especially,” Candace says. Burst capillaries star her eyes, evidence of sleeplessness.
“I think it’s a beautiful morning.” Griffin sweeps a hand toward the window and barely misses upsetting my coffee. “A beautiful morning to sneak through the woods with unexpected people. By the way, Supergirl.”
I pull my mug toward me. “Yeah?”
“I spied with my little eye—you. Skulking around. With my teammate. Care to explain?”
“No,” I say. “Ask Vik.”
“He’s too honest. I prefer extravagant lies.”
“Supergirl doesn’t lie.” I sip my coffee. Strong as gasoline. Mm.
“Then I’ll have to come up with extravagant lies for you.”
I spin a finger in the air: Go on.
“Early mornings are the only time you can find to plan the wedding. Vik’s been so lonely since his hometown girl dumped him. I’m ecstatic for him. For you both.”
Hometown girl? I want to ask whether Griffin made her up, but he’ll needle me mercilessly if I admit I’m curious. “New topic: What’s the channeling trial going to be like?”
“Why would I share my guesses with my main competition?”
Candace raises red-stained eyes to her stepbrother. “In seriousness, who do you think the main competition is?”
“In seriousness, you. You’ll make it to the last trial if you have to bite your way there.”
Candace bares her teeth. “Thanks, dear.”
“Who other than Candace and her fangs?” I ask.
Griffin slouches back on his barstool. “Well, you’ve seen the rankings after the siphoning duels.”
I try not to clench my jaw. Candace and I were in the bottom half of the individual rankings, and Bree was dead last: As she explained to us later, she didn’t want to hurt anyone, so rather than try to siphon, she stalemated twice and lost once.
I admire her commitment to nonviolence, but that’s not the energy our team needs to win.
“Vik and Antoine are tied for first,” Griffin continues.
“Then Mirabel and me. Of the other four-year kids, the best are Paloma, Elena, and maybe Sam… But that’s enough chitchat.
I’ve got to do today’s homework before first period.
Excuse me, ladies.” Griffin hops off his barstool and strides jauntily toward the exit, leaving his dishes for me and Candace to bus.
Candace rubs her eyes. “We need to talk about Bree.”
“She wasn’t back before midnight?” I ask without much hope.
“She was not.”
“And the alarm?”
“Five a.m., snooze. Five ten, snooze. Five twenty, snooze. Five thirty…I went to the common room sofa to escape the noise, but even with the door shut, I could hear it.”
“What can I do?”
“Ordinarily, I’d say nothing. My roommate, my problem. But if she and I are going into the trials sleep-deprived, it hurts you too.”
I nod miserably. “We’re hosting an intervention.”
Candace sighs. “Looks like.”
***
All through dinner, Bree—sporting deep purple bags under her eyes—monologues about peer-reviewed papers on nav-assisted therapeutic research. Her face is cloudless, even sunny, despite her clear exhaustion, Candace’s ominous silence, and my panicky nail chewing.
My team won’t gel if Bree gives Candace another reason to be pissed at her. My team won’t win if Bree and Candace are debilitatingly sleepy. How do I make this right?
After dinner, huffing up the stairs to our block, Bree pants out her plans to apply only to universities with experimental nav labs and top-notch financial aid. She concludes as I swipe us into our block: “—which leaves me applying to the Ivies, plus Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill, MIT, and Stanford.”
I close the door behind us. “Bree, we wanted to talk to you.”
She drops into the armchair, a confused smile on her face. “What have you been doing?”
“Listening,” Candace mutters as she takes the sofa.
I sit on the carpet. “About your alarm.”
Bree keeps smiling. “What about it?”
Candace clasps her hands. “You’ve been coming in around one a.m. and setting your alarm for five. It wakes me up. When you hit snooze, it keeps waking me up.”
Bree’s forehead crinkles. “I can’t help hitting snooze. I’m tired.”
Candace digs her nails into the back of her hand. “So am I.”
“Look, Bree.” I aim for a brisk yet understanding tone. “Candace needs sleep. You do too. And yesterday you told her you’d be back before midnight.”
“Yeah, Kayla—my sister—she called me on the way to the library. I started my homework like an hour later than I thought I would. I had to set my alarm early so I could finish before class.”
“Did you?” Candace asks. “Finish before class?”
“I mean… No. Kayla called me this morning too. I couldn’t just hang up on her.”
“I need sleep, Bree,” Candace says slowly. “I couldn’t keep my eyes open in clinic today. We need a new system.”
Bree’s confusion shades worried, almost frightened. “I really can’t help it. It’s just… I can’t not take her calls.”
Candace watches Bree for a moment. Her frustration seems to melt away as she comes to a realization. “I’ve noticed Kayla calls you most mornings. Why don’t you tell us about her?”
Bree sighs, shoulders dropping, as if Candace has guessed her most embarrassing secret.
“Um. She… Look. My mom works really hard to support Kayla and me. She wants us to achieve things she didn’t get to.
Like, graduate college, become doctors or professors, live comfortable lives in comfortable houses in comfortable suburbs.
But because she works so hard—I mean, growing up, Kayla and I spent more time with the upstairs neighbor who babysat us than we did with her.
So Mom works around the clock for us, but she’s not there, and like—I want to do psychology research, okay?
I understand the dynamics. In a desperate bid for Mom’s attention, Kayla and I were either going to become brittle, anxious perfectionists, or we were going to rebel.
Well, I became a perfectionist, and Kayla rebelled.
Which is fine! Except—Kayla wants me to rebel with her, and when I don’t…
After I made varsity track my freshman year, Kayla dropped out of her first semester of community college.
After my team won the Oregon Science Olympiad, she quit her tattoo apprenticeship.
And after I got into the Academy, oh man.
She totaled our car driving high. Which wasn’t exactly cheap for Mom to replace.
I thought now that I’m at boarding school, the distance would, I don’t know, cool Kayla off?
But when I told her I made the Archive trials, she threatened to quit the cosmetology program she just enrolled in.
Mom already dropped like a thousand dollars for Kayla’s equipment kit.
If Kayla quits, Mom says she’ll kick her out of the apartment, and I have literally no idea what will happen then.
So when Kayla calls me at midnight or four a.m. or whenever she feels like, I pick up.
I tell her all the ways I’m struggling at the Academy.
And I beg her not to blow up her life. I get that this is not sustainable; I just… ”
“Oh,” Candace says. “Oh, sweetheart. This is a hostage situation.”
Bree winces and smiles sadly. “Yeah. I know.”
I’ve listened to Bree spill her guts with mounting anger at this Kayla person.
I can understand rebelling against your parents, sure.
But sabotaging your baby sister? Forcing her to feel responsible for all your destructive bullshit?
If I imagine treating Jo like that, I immediately want to punch myself in the face. “How can we help you?” I ask.
Bree’s eyebrows jump, her mouth forming a little o. She clearly expected a nonstop scolding, not an outstretched hand. “Do…do you guys have any advice?”
Candace nods. “I’m familiar with toxic families.
I mean, my mom’s sort of an angel, but the stepdad goes pretty hard at Griffin.
Which means I’ve gotten good at running interference.
So. What if you set some boundaries with your sister but blamed them all on me?
‘My tyrannical roommate insists I use Do Not Disturb from eleven to six.’ ‘My insane roommate is demanding we study in the library’s phone-free zone after dinner every night.
’ If you want, I can even yell at you while you’re on a call with her. For verisimilitude.”
Hesitantly, Bree nods. “Maybe that could work?”
Bree, Candace, and I agree to an eleven p.m. curfew for our block so that we’re all getting the minimum necessary amount of sleep.
Instead of practicing nav, we spend the rest of our two hours brainstorming ways Bree can defuse her hostage situation.
Bree accepts some of my and Candace’s suggestions and rejects others. By the end of evening, she has a plan.
She seems grateful, not mad, that we elbowed into her business to help her. That’s more humility and self-awareness than I would have shown, in her shoes.
Maybe we can make this team thing work.