Chapter Eight
The next morning, I arrive early for my meeting with Vik and stand in the dark, surrounded by trees, thinking about what I want to say to him. Birds chirp. The humid air warms. The black sky tints navy. And my shoulders knot, tenser and tenser.
Until yesterday, I wasn’t worried about how I appeared in flickerstate.
When you’re gazing upon the mysteries of time and probability, your ego takes a back seat, even with an ego as touchy as mine.
But I’ve failed at channeling because my nav hurts people.
Too bright, too hot. Too much, too painful.
That’s enough to make anyone self-conscious.
And now, if I want to figure out how to channel, I’ll have to discuss all that with Vik, who already makes me burningly self-conscious for reasons I don’t want to acknowledge, let alone examine.
Ugh. Ugh.
Vik walks into the clearing, phone light pooling around his boots. Today he wears a T-shirt with 802 emblazoned across the chest, an outline of Vermont punched into the zero’s center. I almost ask what the number means, but I don’t want to admit my eyes were hovering in the vicinity of his pecs.
“How do I look to you in flickerstate?” I say instead.
He snorts. “Hello, Vik. Good morning, Vik. How’d you sleep, Vik?”
“You look dewy, Vik. I bet you slept like a baby.”
“I did. Thanks.”
“I’m happy for you. Now, I’m actually going somewhere with this, so tell me. What do you see when you look at me in flickerstate?”
He’ll say “fire,” I’m sure. I only ask to lay groundwork for a conversation about using flickerstate concepts to channel.
His stare slides to his boots, which he examines as if they are fascinating. I resolutely do not admire his eyelashes. “Uh,” he says. “Red wings.”
“Okay, so—wait. What?”
“You have red wings. Endless pairs. And there are red feathers clinging to your clothes, your hair.” He shrugs uncomfortably. “Why?”
This answer, so vivid, so alien to my self-experience, wipes the groundwork from my mind. It takes me a second to reorient. “I, um, I was talking with Candace and Bree about flickerstate concepts. About whether we can use them to help with channeling. Do you do that?”
“Privately. I don’t talk about my concepts with my nav partners.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t see the same things. The mismatch makes it harder.”
What does it say about Vik that he inhabits a flickerstate different from other people’s? What does it say about me that he sees me not burning but feathered and winged? It says he doesn’t know you that well. “How do you see yourself?”
“A river. Splitting into streams, reflecting sun. Kind of…gold.”
I nod. “Yesterday I saw you as gold filigree, branching into the air.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of what Jake saw.” He speaks unselfconsciously—but then his face goes blank.
“Jake. Your old blockmate? The one who dropped out?”
“Yeah.” He looks away. “Mirabel sees me as metalwork too.”
Clearly, he doesn’t want to talk about Jake. But my curiosity gets the better of me. I push. “People are saying Jake didn’t drop out. He was expelled for interference.”
“I know,” he says quietly.
“Do you believe it?”
He hesitates. “I’d like not to. Jake…”
I wait.
“He had a hard time here,” Vik continues.
“Admin’s always bragging that because the Academy’s tuition-free, it takes the best navigators no matter their background.
But come on. The admissions interview is basically just a nav demo, so kids whose parents can afford private tutors always have an edge. ”
“I do spy lots of Gucci sneakers around campus.”
“Yeah. But Jake—his mom was a high school janitor. His dad was on disability. And he… I’ve been told I’m awkward.
But he was awkward. And a powerhouse navigator.
Kids here looked down on him for being poor and weird, and they resented him for being talented.
If he hadn’t cared what they thought, maybe he—but he obviously wanted people to like him.
That made him vulnerable. Kids were…nasty.
When I called them out, they laughed. Said I couldn’t take a joke, he couldn’t take a joke.
He told me I should stop defending him, he could handle it.
The rumors say he used interference for revenge, but…
How can I put this? When kids tormented him, it wasn’t like they were stepping on a snake, someone who’d hiss and bite back.
It was like they were kicking a puppy. If I’d just… ”
He trails off, face full of anger and regret and guilt.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Whatever happened, it sounds like it fucking sucked.”
He laughs, startled. “Yeah. Yeah, it did. But… Sorry; we’re not here so I can monologue. Back to business?”
I want to give him a moment, sympathize with him, something. But he looks so uncomfortable I go with his change of subject. “Right. Navigation. If our flickerstate concepts don’t match up, that means we can’t use them to channel?”
“Not necessarily. If I take on your concepts—”
“Is that possible?”
He shrugs. “Why not?”
“I thought how flickerstate appears depends on our subconscious or whatever. We can’t choose what we see.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Trying’s how we find out.”
The idea does appeal to me: widening my sphere of control, leaving as little as possible to chance or fate. Why not change how you see reality? How you see other people? “I’m down.”
He smiles. His smile makes me feel clever and brave, though I’ve only agreed to an experiment that might blow up in our faces. “Okay. I’m gold filigree. And you’re…?”
“Fire.”
Maybe I sound like an emotionally unstable arsonist, but Vik doesn’t bat an eyelash. “That could work. Channel fire to me, and I’ll use it to melt the gold. Make it molten, manipulable. I think of my nav in terms of flow anyway. Now tell me why you see yourself as a fire.”
I hesitate. “What do you mean, why?”
He looks at me steadily. “There must be some reason. If you tell me what it is, it’ll help me see you differently.”
“I…” Okay, I think a lot, about a lot of things, especially myself: Vanity and insecurity are the twin motors that power my personality.
But even if I can explain why I appear as a fire, I’m not sure I want to.
Saying it out loud will hurt. Like pressing on a bruise.
“Can you go first? Explain the river to me.”
God, I sound childish, don’t I? I brace myself for mockery.
But he stares at me with—not gentleness, exactly, but acceptance. “All right.”
And then he starts talking.
He tells me—quietly, avoiding my eyes—about his life before the Academy.
His parents aren’t funny lactose-intolerant nutritionists, it turns out.
They’re surgeons, hard workers and bitter fighters.
He and his brother spent their early childhood hiding in separate bedrooms from the anger that filled their house.
After their parents divorced, Vik’s habit of solitude stuck.
He spent most after-school hours alone: running, reading, writing surreal short stories and showing them to no one.
“I was always meandering, flowing down the same set channel, by myself. High banks walling me off from the rest of the world.”
He sounds so resigned it makes my throat clench. “That’s not how I see you at all,” I blurt.
“Okay.” He smiles. “Why gold filigree?”
“I…I don’t know.” I think hard. “Gold’s one of the elements least likely to decompose.
It’s stable, not reactive. And you seem very…
consistently you. If that makes sense. As for filigree…
” Internally complex. Beautiful. I shrug, embarrassed.
“I don’t know. I’m taking Art History. Maybe it’s got me thinking in terms of art. ”
“But not when you think about yourself,” he says. “So now I ask again: Why fire?”
I don’t want to tell him. Because telling him all the reasons might lead us perilously close to my dad’s bite and my own—the one secret I can’t share. But also because I feel too raw in places, too vulnerable. My animal instincts say, Hide your throat.
“It might help us channel,” he says softly into my silence. “But if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to.”
He’s giving me an out. Somehow, that relaxes me, makes me more willing to talk. And if I can’t learn to channel—the most basic form of team navigation—I don’t think Candace, Bree, and I will make it through the trials.
I take a deep breath. “To know about me, you’ve got to know about my family.”
I talk about trying to be the perfect oldest daughter: babysitting Jo, babysitting Kev and Irene, handling chores, working summer jobs, winning school awards, being the Sullivan kid to do everything first. My mom and dad assumed that I would be a little helper to them and a role model to my siblings and an academic star.
Everything to everyone. It made me so proud and so resentful.
I want to care for my family, and I hate how much care they need.
The combination’s combustible. I want to warm people; I end up burning them.
“I have a lot of posters, reproductions of paintings, in my room at home. I brought a couple with me to the Academy. There’s one—Fire in the Sky—I mean, it’s abstract, it’s not of anything, but… it looks how I feel.”
Desperate. Terrified. Furious.
Burning. Burning. Burning.
Vik watches me for a long moment. Types something into his phone. His dark eyes reflect the intense red, slashing black, and pale bright sparks of the painting on his screen. He stares down at it with deep seriousness. Looks up at me. “It’s beautiful.”
A hot flush rolls up my skin, chest to hairline. He’s talking about the painting, and it is beautiful. Calm down, loser. “So, um. Can we make this work?”
“Let’s try.” He holds out a hand.
***
Our first try, I flinch from the tug on my nav and give Vik another nosebleed.
When I babble apologies, he flashes glinting eyes at me and says he remembered Kleenex this time.
Our second try, I overcompensate and blast him with all the nav I can muster.
In flickerstate I hear a hiss, like water heated to steam.
When he rolls his dice, he gets two sixes but then rolls a five.
Sheepishly, he admits he lost his grip on the metalwork concept, reverted to his river, and started boiling.
Our third try, I direct a steady tongue of flame at him. The gold filigree lacing the air brightens and drips, liquid, mobile, full of potential.
Vik looks into that Byzantine flux. Blinks. “Now.”
We drop out of flickerstate. He rolls the dice across the matted grass.
Six-six-six-six-six-six.
***
We try it the other way, Vik channeling to me. It takes five tries, but at last I nav six rolls out of six. We stand sheened in sweat over the conquered dice. I feel like I’ve been navigating for hours, but when I look up, three stars still glint in the sky’s navy dome.
“I’ve never got the hang of channeling that fast with anyone.” Vik’s tone is inexpressive.
“How long does it usually take?” I ask, thinking of my team’s failures.
“It took me and Griffin two months, last year. We still have trouble sometimes.”
“Your concepts don’t mesh?”
“I don’t know. He won’t tell me how he sees his nav.”
“He won’t tell you?”
“He gets squirrelly when I ask.”
Big, blond Griffin—acting like a rodent.
I smother a laugh. I want to ask Vik whether he sees Griffin that way in flickerstate: furry little creatures scurrying to the heavens.
But grilling Vik about his teammates wouldn’t be a good move.
If he thinks I’m fishing for intel, he might call off our deal.
Speaking of.
“All right,” I say. “Time to league.”