Chapter Sixteen
“How exciting,” Griffin says.
He’s commandeered us a table near the dining hall’s cornucopia. Kids walking past double take when they spot the last two trial teams breaking bread together cozy-like.
The truth is, though, that when Griffin proposed a friendly dinner to celebrate our victories, no one wanted to do it.
Candace glared at him like he was insisting, for the millionth time, that their family play a weird board game only he knew the rules to.
Bree’s eyes flittered between Griffin, Vik, and Mirabel, like at any moment they might siphon her. Mirabel wrinkled her nose in disdain.
Vik stared at the floor. Since the trial finished, he hadn’t looked at me.
Griffin grinned and clapped his hands together. “No objections. Great. We’ll reconvene in the dining hall at six.” And, inexplicably, we did—a testament either to Griffin’s charisma or his perverse refusal to read the room.
“What’s exciting?” Candace asks Griffin.
Her tone answers the question: Nothing. Nothing is exciting.
She’s changed into a dizzying dress with a deep V-neck and a metallic pattern involving palm fronds: half Klimt, half The White Lotus.
Its ferocious glitz gives her an aura of authority, like she’s secret royalty who could order us beheaded. If I were Griffin, I’d quake.
Griffin doesn’t quake. “Our triumphs, Candy dear. Now Daddy and Mommy will have to be proud of us.”
“They’re already proud.”
“Mommy is. Daddy likes results. Now he’ll have them.”
“From one of us.”
“If this a celebration, can we talk about something other than nav?” Bree pipes up.
“Like what,” Mirabel asks flatly.
“I don’t know. What’s the deal with Winter Formal?”
“It’s a formal. In the winter. Beyond that, there is no deal.”
Griffin takes pity on Bree. “The formal’s in the dining hall.
They move the tables into the kitchen so they can cram us all inside.
” He mimes crushing reluctant kids together between his hands.
“There are colored lights and streamers. We put on our fanciest clothes, and I break out my rendition of the robot. Norah got a preview earlier.” He tips a wink at me.
Bree smiles. “Fun. How fancy are we talking? Fancier than the dress Candace has on now? Though no one’s going to top that. Candace, you look amazing.”
Bree, Candace, and Griffin strike up a halting conversation about fashion. From time to time, Mirabel contributes a cutting remark.
I can’t concentrate enough to join in. Vik sits, not talking, not looking at me, long fingers shifting his knife across the tabletop.
This morning those fingers were in my hair.
I pull my phone out and text him under the table: Basketball courts after dinner?
“Are we boring you?” Griffin asks with razor-like good cheer.
I shrug tightly. “I’m not sure I’ll go to the formal, so.”
“Too cool for our quaint traditions?” he suggests.
I don’t want to wait here staring at Vik, willing him to text me back. I see my opportunity to leave and seize it. “And too highfalutin to finish my dinner. Ladies, gentleman, excuse me.”
***
Outside, copper clouds ripple across the sky. A cool breeze rustles the leaves in the woods beyond the basketball courts. If I stand still, I’ll get chilly. I grab a ball from the racks and get going.
I’d hoped shooting hoops would send me into a smooth-brained state of concentration. No luck. My phone presses hard against my hip bone, as if my pants have shrunk two sizes. Every second I’m waiting for a buzz.
Not that I’ll know what to say if Vik does show up.
Will I tell him we can’t keep doing whatever we’re doing now that we’re direct competitors?
Claim that his cold feet don’t matter, because mine are two blocks of Midwestern ice?
Or stage a country-song confession of my feelings, complete with a key change and a third-verse plot twist? What are my feelings?
When I miss two easy layups back-to-back, I cuss and call Jo.
I turn, murmuring, “Pick up, pick up.” Vik’s walking across the court toward me. He spies my phone, nods—without making eye contact—and scoops up the ball I abandoned.
The ringing cuts off. An automated message explains the concept of voicemail to me. Jo says: “This is Josephine Sullivan. I definitely saw your call. I didn’t pick up because who does that? Don’t leave a message. I won’t listen to it. Text me like a normal person. Bye.”
At the beep, I clear my throat. “Josephine Sullivan, you are an unbelievable twerp.”
Vik drains a three-pointer.
I return my phone to my pocket. “You’re pretty good.”
He snags the rebound and turns to me, stare hovering around my knees. “I’m not good. Not bad either. Solidly mediocre.”
“Are you another young navigator who never practiced good, clean athletics?”
Vik’s blank face shuts down further. “My nav didn’t manifest till I was thirteen.”
I’ve said something to alienate him. For once in my long history of alienating people, I have no idea what. “What’s the explanation, then? You’ve got the reflexes and the form.”
“Limited opportunities with the ball. I was a shrimpy kid. No one wanted to pass to me.”
“Shrimpy.” I look him up and down. “When did you double in height?”
He bounce-passes the ball to me. “Are we here for a H-O-R-S-E rematch, or…”
I wonder how aggressive to be. I decide on—hey, what the hell—aggressive. “We’re here because this morning we were on pretty good terms, and now you won’t look me in the face.”
He freezes, eerily unmoving. He still doesn’t look at me.
My jaw spasms. I dribble once and shoot—way too hard. The ball ricochets off the rim and flies at me, slamming into my chest. I snap my arms around it and stumble back.
Vik steps in, hand outstretched to steady me. He stops dead before we touch. “Sorry.”
I find my balance. “Why?”
He shakes his head.
“Did you not want me to?” I blurt.
“What?”
“You know what.”
“I…” He speaks to the asphalt. “I was glad you did.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
“I don’t, uh.” He swallows, lean throat working. “I don’t want to see you regret it.”
My frustration vanishes. Without it, I’m just confused. “Because we’re against each other in the trials now?”
“I know how badly you want into the Archive.”
“So do you.”
“Yeah, but I’d still…” He smiles, pained. “Can’t see you going for it, though.”
I’m standing there, hugging the basketball, blinking like an idiot, when I remember the nickname our jerk classmates gave him: Afterthought.
This morning, when I told him how stupid that was, he said, It’s not a big deal.
I know what I’m like. I assumed he meant some freshman-year taunt didn’t matter to him now that he’s a tall, muscular senior with stupidly pretty eyes and a legal right to vote, in the running for valedictorian and an Archive assistantship.
He didn’t mean that. He meant he couldn’t get mad because the jerks were right. That’s who he sees in the mirror: the afterthought in a group of all-stars, the shrimpy kid no one will pass the ball to. He can’t picture a future where I have to choose between him and my ambition, and I choose him.
But I don’t have to choose. Why should everything have to suck all the time?
I drop the ball and put my hands on my hips. “Look, you’ve helped me a lot. We probably wouldn’t be competing directly if you hadn’t tutored me. I’d still step on your face to walk into the Archive—”
He laughs, startled.
“—but why assume we’ll go head-to-head? Neither of the trials has been anything like that.
And I don’t want to stop—I mean, I—when we first met on my interview day, I thought you were so hot it made me angry.
Since I’ve gotten to know you, I’ve only kept liking you more.
I like you. I like you. What do you want to do about that? ”
He stares at me like he doesn’t understand what he’s hearing.
He kicks the ball out from between us and steps close. For a second we’re just breathing the same shuddery air, and then he kisses me.
***
When I key into my block sometime later—I’m not sure how much later; I lost track of time for a while there—I open the door silently and tiptoe inside. I’m hoping to sneak into my room without Candace or Bree asking where I’ve been.
They don’t notice me. They’re too busy making out on the sofa.
I freeze. A scarlet dusk fills our window, gleaming on the hardwood floor where the carpet ends. The air smells a little like perfume. And, yes, Candace and Bree are kissing with their eyes closed on the pale-blue sofa, Bree’s fingers twisted in Candace’s back collar.
So. Bree really likes the dress.
Do I…creep past them to my room? Moonwalk out into the hall?
Candace pulls back. “Ah. Norah. I was meaning to talk to you.”
Bree twists in her seat. When she sees me, she blushes fuchsia and beams.
“…Here I am,” I say.
Candace stands and smooths out her dress. “Let’s walk. See you, Bree.”
I follow Candace into the hall and down the stairs. She marches purposefully. I can’t see her face, only her ear and her jaw. It’s not till we’ve exited Lucasson that she slows down, waiting for me to pull up beside her.
“This conversation will be awkward now,” she says.
Not for the first time, I’m tempted to slip into flickerstate and spy on all the awkward possibilities. “Why exactly?”
She sweeps her eyes over the quad. The lamps have turned on, leaking powdery light into the dusk.
Glowing scarlet bands the horizon, but overhead, the sky’s purple, striped by gauzy clouds.
Students I don’t know, maybe freshmen, are sitting in the dark under the Great Tree.
(Little creeps.) “Shall we take the campus loop?” she asks.
We pass between academic buildings onto the paved loop. After a few seconds, I ask, “So?”
Candace bows her head, bob brushing her chin. “It’s going to sound hypocritical, but…you want to win?”
More than you do, I bite back. “Yes. I want to win.”
“More than you want anything else?”
“I feel like you’re catechizing me. Yes.”
“In that case,” Candace says, “I’m wondering if I should give you the talk about Vik.”