Chapter Fourteen
Monday afternoon, Clinic A begins a unit on advanced occlusion.
Mr. Davis has left to wrangle the swelling ranks of Clinic B, so we’re down to two teachers.
Dr. Langmore orders the remaining students to sit at the inmost ring of tables.
Clustering together makes the space even emptier, the echoes even louder.
As Dr. Langmore explains it, advanced occlusion allows navigators to expand the protection that occlusion offers beyond themselves, shielding others from interference or hiding them from beasts.
It’s easy to guess what the third trial will be: Each team will pick a navigator to occlude their teammates, who will channel back to that navigator to sustain the occlusion. Whichever team holds on longest wins.
So Candace, Bree, and I have to struggle with channeling again. After dinner, rain pattering against our common room window, we sit, Bree and Candace brushing shoulders on the sofa, me cross-legged on the carpet, and discuss our options.
“Sorry, Norah,” Bree says, regretful but firm. “You messed up last time. The navigator can’t be you.”
Candace cups her chin and frowns. “I’m not happy with how the first trial went either. But Norah takes our nav and uses it efficiently. We can’t do that with her nav or each other’s.”
“Then let’s figure out how,” Bree retorts. “I’m sick of nosebleeds.”
Candace quirks her eyebrows. “Fair. Anything to add, Norah?”
I trace a hummingbird on the carpet with my finger. “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing. We’ve tried to mesh our flickerstate concepts, and we’ve failed. A lot. So what if we reconceptualized each other? Like, what if you guys saw me as something other than fire?”
Candace lifts her chin from her hand. “Is that possible?”
“Vik managed.”
“How does he see you now?”
“Fire.”
She cocks her head. “You mean, he saw something else first?”
I shrug, self-conscious. “Wings. With red feathers. Which doesn’t seem very…me.”
“But it’s not only the navigator who determines how their nav manifests,” Bree says. “It’s also the person looking at the navigator. So maybe it’s Vik giving you wings.”
“And everyone else is, what, setting me on fire?”
It’s a snide question, but Bree takes it seriously. “Their intimidation is, maybe.”
“I’m not intimidating.”
She chortles. “You know your class nickname is Intense Girl Norah?”
“Class nickname? We have cutesy alter egos?”
“Not all of us,” Candace says. “I have not been so blessed.”
“What about you, Bree?”
“I’m Weak Sauce,” Bree says. “Because I didn’t siphon anyone during the screening. I guess…people think I didn’t deserve to make the trials.” She forces a smile, pretending the joke doesn’t sting. Candace puts a comforting hand on her arm.
I rub my knuckles over the hummingbird, grounding myself in the carpet’s nubbly texture. “You guys don’t find me intimidating, right?”
“Kind of?” Bree says. “You are intense. Which isn’t always bad! But when you talk about the trials, you get laser eyes. And your face goes all…”
“Lapidary,” Candace supplies. “But no, you don’t intimidate me.”
Her chill makes me feel better. I wrench my mind from my other classmates, who have apparently been whining about my scary personality. “Well, overlook my face and imagine my nav as something nice, okay?”
Candace laughs, a sharp huff through her nose. “We can but try.”
The days till the trial fly past. Candace, Bree, and I work on shifting our flickerstate concepts.
Candace imagines me as a burning red sun, powering her plantlike nav through magical photosynthesis or whatever.
On our fifth try, I still singe her leaves, but she navigates through a fourteen-card draw with what she takes from me.
She imagines Bree as a pink wooden trellis supporting her, and that helps too—but not much.
The lattice keeps softening, suspiciously fabric-like, and collapsing.
“I see objects if I concentrate,” Bree explains, “but when I lose focus, it’s disco lights.”
“Then don’t lose focus,” I say.
She snorts. “Okay, Laser Eyes.”
***
That Thursday, Candace, Bree, and I go to the September Birthdays Party.
Candace believes in fashionable lateness. By the time we leave for Zipporah’s block on the second floor, we’re the only people in the stairwell.
Party sounds reach us: music, laughter, the splash of a dropped drink. When we exit onto the second floor, I see that Zipporah has commandeered the block opposite hers as well. Seniors spill from both doors, crossing the hall between them.
“Let’s say hi to Zipporah,” Bree says, heading for the door on our left.
Our blocks aren’t big enough for class-wide parties, but half the seniors I know have crammed inside this one anyway.
Four girls sit on the common-room armchair, two squashed together on the seat, two perched on the arms. Seven kids have piled onto the sofa.
Zipporah, in the middle, sits enthroned on her blockmate’s lap.
More kids stand against the walls. Vik, as promised, lurks in a corner, talking with Antoine and Jacqueline.
“Zipporah!” Bree hails. “Happy birthday. Thanks for having us.”
“If we were civilized people, we would have brought gifts,” Candace says. “As it is…”
Zipporah laughs. “Sodas are in the minifridge. Forbidden drinks are under the bed in room A.”
“Where’s the dancing?” Bree asks.
“Across the hall.”
Bree turns to Candace and me. “Want to check it out?”
“I’m going to go wish Vik happy birthday,” I say.
“Oh,” Bree smirks knowingly. “Okay.”
Before I can snap defensively, Candace hooks an arm around Bree and steers her toward the door. Well played, Candace.
Jacqueline smiles as I edge into the corner she, Antoine, and Vik have claimed. “Cool eye shadow. Where’d you get it?”
“My blockmate’s bag,” I say.
To kill time while we waited to be late, Candace insisted on dolling up me and Bree. She brushed a lot of shimmery bronze powder on my eyelids—more makeup than I’ve worn since my eighth-grade goth phase.
Jacqueline laughs. “Best place to shop.”
“You look nice,” Vik says, sounding like he’s remarking on the weather.
“I always look nice,” I say, aiming for confident banter and hitting puppy’s squeak toy instead. “That’s my face.”
“True,” he says, again like he’s agreeing it’s sunny outside.
We need to talk about something else before I combust from pleased embarrassment. “Vik and I were planning to discuss books, but I don’t want to derail your conversation. What were you guys talking about?”
Jacqueline rolls her eyes. “The trials. Like anyone talks about anything else.”
Antoine smiles at her. “You talked about makeup.”
“For one whole second. What books were you going to talk about, Vik?”
“The ones about which we feel complex, cerebral ambivalence.” He keeps a straight face, but his eyes crinkle at the edges.
“Pretentious. I love it,” she says. “Can I start?”
One by one, we share our hot takes. As the party gets louder, we huddle closer. My shoulder ends up pressed against the hard muscle of Vik’s arm. I force my eyes not to widen and pretend his surprisingly encyclopedic knowledge of literary horror has my whole attention.
“To recap,” I say, “you think any difference between high and low culture vanished before we were born. But I’m wondering—one of your favorite books is called My Heart Is a Chainsaw. Should we be worried?”
He locks eyes with me and deadpans, “Very.”
My entire body blushes.
Someone taps my shoulder. I whip around like I’m guilty of something.
It’s Griffin, looking expectant. “Thought you weren’t coming. Want to dance?”
“Uh,” I say. “Mirabel was right about that one. I do not dance.”
“Want to go laugh at other people’s dancing?”
I’d rather stay in this warm circle of conversation, pressed against Vik’s arm. But Griffin asked me nicely enough. “I’ve got no leg to stand on when it comes to laughing at other people’s dancing. But I’ll check it out with you.”
“Excellent.”
When I glance back at Vik, his eyes are still on me. “Happy birthday,” I say.
“Bye,” he says quietly.
I wave to Jacqueline and Antoine and head off. As Griffin and I walk through the door, he places a hand on my back. I’m not sure how to react. Is this a thing rich boys from Connecticut do? His hand slips away after a second, so I let it go without comment.
“I’ve got no leg to stand on either.” Griffin raises his voice over the music. “I laugh anyway.”
“Seems unwise.”
“Not if I’m fine with people laughing at me too.”
“Are you?”
“Watch.” He performs the lawn-mower, the fly-fisher, and the shovel—vigorously, with no relationship to the Top 40 pop floating from Zipporah’s or the Bronx drill blasting from the block opposite. I laugh.
Griffin stops and grins at me. “Mission accomplished.”
I gesture toward the drill. “Is that what I’ll see in there?”
“We’ve got to investigate to know for sure.”
We walk to the door. Inside, the block’s a mosh pit, kids crammed so tight they emit a rolling wave of body heat, everyone sweating, everyone jumping to the music, eyes empty, mouths taut, like they’re stomping out the pain and fear of our weekdays, our classes, our nav, the Academy.
Through the yo-yoing heads, I glimpse Candace and Bree.
They’re dancing, hands steepled together.
Bree’s beaming like she won the lottery. The crowd shifts, and they disappear.
“I’m not sure we can squeeze in,” Griffin says. “Maybe it’s better if we lurk in the hall. You see, I had an ulterior motive when I asked you to dance.”
I eyeball him. “Which was?”
He snorts with laughter. “So suspicious, Supergirl. I wanted to talk.”
“We could’ve talked in Zipporah’s block.”
“Okay, I wanted to interrogate you. Sans audience.”
“About?”
“Your secrets. I suspect you haven’t been forthcoming.”
“You calling me a liar?”
“No…” He draws out the word. “I’m calling you cagey. Cagey and evasive.”
Under my sleeve, my bite itches. I show Griffin my teeth. “I’m an open book.”
“Then why do I know hardly anything about you?”
“What don’t you know?”
“It’s not a specific fact. It’s why you’re so—business in the front, also business in the back.”