Chapter Twenty-Two
Candace does not text me while I creep into Lucasson.
She does not text me overnight. She does not text me the next day during my jog to the dining hall to snag bagels and coffee, or my classes, or the surreal late afternoon I spend at my desk finishing problem sets and puzzling through a Jorge Luis Borges story, faking like my grades matter, like I’ll survive long enough to get this semester’s grades if she won’t help me and Vik.
I’m lying in bed after my dinnertime dining hall raid, reading Vanity Fair for English, when Candace walks into our common room, oxfords clicking distinctively on the hardwood. She pauses outside my door. I freeze while turning a page.
My phone, resting face-up on my stomach, buzzes. I flail.
Her shoes click away, muffled crossing the carpet, louder when they hit bare floor. Her door opens and closes. I want to rush out and thank her, but I’m too scared she won’t look at me.
I text Vik the good news.
***
I show up to the basketball courts at 6:27 a.m. Vik leans against the pole of the hoop nearest our footpath, reading on his phone.
Footsteps thud behind us. I turn. In the semidark, black interrupted by lampposts shining whitely, a runner with braided hair bustles fast around the Language Arts the three distinct keycards that he, Griffin, and Mirabel received; the threat of expulsion that hangs over them if they share materials or information.
He tells her we want to use leaguing to search Highwall’s papers for a cure for my bite—for everyone’s bites.
On “bites,” Candace eyes shift back to my wound. “How long have you had that?”
“Junior year. It’s not just me. My dad—he has nine.”
Her face goes grave. “How old is your dad?”
“Forty-four.”
She thinks about it. The older you are, in general, the greater your baseline risk of death. The greater your risk, the faster a bite kills you. And with nine…“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I know it sounds like denial. “I came to the Academy for the same reason you did.”
The pieces slot into place behind her eyes. “To find out how bites heal. From the Archive. That’s what you’ve been worried about this whole time.”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’ll help.”
I gawp. “Just like that? Okay?”
She kicks the tufty clearing grass. Once, twice.
Deciding whether to tell us something. “Yeah,” she says.
“Because I think there’s a cure in the Archive too.
I think somebody knows, and they’re gatekeeping it.
And gatekeeping a cure… It’s not right. That’s why I wanted to get into the Archive. To set the cure free.”
Vik watches her closely. “Why do you think there’s a cure in the Archive?”
“Before my bite healed, I did a lot of research on possible cures. The one consistent rumor I found was that Highwall had cured herself and hidden the secret to it in the papers she willed to the Academy. I asked Griffin to look in the Archive for me. He told me that the only students who got access were senior assistants, so I asked him to break in. He said no. He said…” She ducks her head, glares at her oxfords, and looks up grimly.
“He said his dad would figure something out.”
I stare at her, at the cold rage and shame on her face. “Did he elaborate?”
“He did not. And believe me, I asked him to.” She tilts her head back and inhales deeply.
“I thought he was blowing smoke up my ass. Trying to keep me from getting angry when I was dying and he wouldn’t risk his Academy spot to help.
But then my mom insisted I take sleeping pills. I woke up healed twelve hours later.”
Vik’s expression shifts, bit by bit, until it conveys a nauseating suspicion. “Does Griffin’s dad have any connection to the Academy beyond you and Griffin going here?”
Candace laughs thickly. “Good question. Yes. He’s a big donor.”
A squeezing sensation grips my chest, like a helium balloon is inflating beneath my sternum, stealing space from my heart and lungs. “How much?”
“He started giving fifty thousand a year after Griffin’s nav manifested.
Upped it to seventy-five when Griffin got in.
After I woke up cured, I found a letter the Academy sent him documenting a onetime donation so he could deduct it from his taxes.
” Candace pauses. Maybe for effect—debate habits die hard—or maybe because it’s that hard to say. “Five million.”
We stand in silence, birds chirping, insects chittering.
The Academy knows how to cure possibility wounds.
At least, someone at the Academy does. Someone like Mr. Davis, the Archivist, who itemized Highwall’s secret papers.
They’re not sharing that information with the unwashed masses, but they have alerted a perfumed elite—and started selling cures to them and theirs.
“Tens of thousands in the U.S. alone. Bite-related deaths. Every year.” The words sound like they abrade Vik’s throat.
“We tried to break into the Highwall Collection last night,” I tell Candace. “But Mr. Davis got there first. He was sneaking a donor inside.”
Candace closes her eyes. “I keep wondering, does my mom know? Does Griff? Or did my stepdad tell them he’d fix everything as long as they didn’t ask questions?”
At orientation, Candace told me that her possibility wound had healed, she wanted to unlock the mystery of how, and she thought the Archive might hold the key.
And that was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
She wanted to unlock the mystery of her healing, yes, but not out of pure, hungry curiosity.
She wanted to understand what her family had overlooked or participated in to save her.
That question—it would be too sharp-edged, too damaging, to yank from her chest and put on display for the loud, bossy blockmate she’d just met under a creepy tree.
But I’m guessing that seeing my bite made her feel like she owed me the truth: She got a chance at healing I never had because her mom married a Connecticut finance bro named Terry. I’m guessing she feels sick, guilty, in debt. Like she doesn’t deserve to be alive.
That’s not fair to her. She didn’t ask for this.
“We’ll give the cure to everyone,” I promise her. “Here’s our plan.”
I lay out the steps: During the Winter Formal, she keeps eyes on Mr. Davis and Griffin while Vik steals the keycard from Griffin’s dresser. Vik and I go to the Archive, where we use leaguing to identify important documents quickly. As soon as we find the cure, we flee.